For 106 or so days I have been traveling. Skye, my motorcycle, and I left home in Breadalbane on April 30 and Canada on May 1, flying to London on an Air Transat plane into the East and the exciting, troubling and rewarding territory of riding solo around the world on a motorcycle.

I believe I’m way past midlife, so no, it wasn’t that!

We will get to lots of reasons why as we go along, because new reasons appear fairly regularly, unsought for, but mostly always welcome.

In the three and a half months since leaving, we (Skye, Hunter the mascot and I) have traveled through around 26 countries – an exact number can be counted if I head out to the street to count the number of flags on the bike.

I’ll do it later; I am currently sitting on the bed in a hostel drinking chai and eating Uzbek raisin buns for breakfast because as I write this, I am in Samarkand.

Next stop? Tajikistan.

There is a way to go yet. Kyrgyzstan, China, Laos, Thailand, Argentina and all points north to the Arctic, before I cross the threshold in Breadalbane again.

I would like to take you on the journey too, and that’s what this little column is about for a while.

Because I haven’t written about the past three months in The Review, I am going to take some columns to catch up a little with both highlights of those months as well as some more current happenings on the journey. It’s been difficult and fun so far, moments of despair, moments of frustration, moments of joy and peace.

Which is what it should be.

So come along with me, let’s see what the old planet has to offer together. It will do me good to have occasional company on the road as I sing (and occasionally swear) into my helmet.

Bear with me if there are delays. Sometimes, the Internet just isn’t. (The “isn’tanet” ho ho ho).

Let’s start with a look at the flight. Getting to Toronto is easy. Meeting up at work to say cheerio is straightforward. Obligatory pictures are fine. I stayed at a hotel close (ish, I am on a budget!) to Pearson and spent most of the night worrying about how to pack my stuff. You see, the airline will take the bike as freight, but nothing is allowed in it, no clothes or anything else in the luggage. You want those things; you get to fly with them as checked baggage. That is okay, but on a trip that is slated to last 14 months, inevitably you overstress and overpack, and this was my first taste of the uncertainty involved in “am I taking too much?”

The answer is usually yes. The next trick is figuring out what isn’t needed. I have not figured it out yet.

I was supposed to drop off Skye at Pearson around 12 hours pre-flight, so headed to the freight drop off at 7am. Of course it was closed: “come back at 10 or so” Back to the hotel and breakfast then on the way to try again.

I ran out of gas. Just as I turned off the highway to head to the freight terminal again. Skye had been showing the reserve light for some time, so my fault, right?

In reality they won’t take the bike with much more than a few litres of gas in it. So, I had estimated I would get there with a few litres. But I had forgotten that extra trip to and from because it was closed. Fortunately for me there was a gas station 2km up the road. Even more fortunate that the bike was unloaded! Half an hour and many laughs from truckers and car drivers on their way past as I pushed, I was back on the road and dropping off Skye. The process was seamless and the cab on the way back to the hotel to get my bags did not run out of gas (the one in Baku almost did though, but that is another story).

After that, we flew…

If you want to follow this trip more closely I would love that. Head to losolo.ca and follow links to Facebook or just the updates on the site. I post stuff almost daily.

Every day, a new beginning.

Submitted photos