Long Way Up
Ten years ago Kim gave me a Christmas gift of the DVDs of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman riding their BMW GSAs around the world. First there was Long Way Round (2004), taking the Silk Road from Europe through the Far East, and then there was Long Way Down (2007), from the Highlands of Scotland to the tip of South Africa. I am a motorcycle aficionado to the max and I like global touring (less the off-road type, but road touring for sure). In fact, my ride of choice as of this year is a BMW R1250GS Adventure, which I adore and think is the best motorcycle I have ever owned. I have ridden all over Europe from France to Croatia, Greece and Sicily (usually renting and riding a BMW GS). Last year we toured all over Turkey and were scheduled to be in the Pyrenees of northern Spain last month (no joy thanks to COVID). But when I was given these Ewan McGregor DVDs, I thought I would find them a yawn. Why should I want to watch two guys ride bikes like I ride to places I like to ride when I can do the same myself anytime I want? Well, I was wrong, very wrong and on several levels. While at the time I had no pandemic to slow me down, I did have more demanding work schedules. And now, of course, I have had two motorcycle trips cancelled due to COVID and another on the screen for January/February that is looking sketchier by the moment as the resurgence of COVID (infections are rising in Europe, India and more than 28 of the 50 United States, as I write this).
But I loved the two programs from start to finish and can remember watching them from my bed in the South Street Seaport while family and guests for the holidays were out watching some holiday movie or other in the living room. I always liked Ewan from both his Star Wars roles and the few other movies I had seen him in. I had never heard of Charley (he was a minor bit actor in his day), and despite him being a bit crass in a British sort of way with his floppy hair that always looks to need a cut and his crooked British smile, I quickly came to like his affable and go-for-it attitude. This guy impressed emerging market villagers around the world with his chubby torso and his incredible wheelie capabilities. Charley Boorman would pull up his motorcycles’ front end with great abandon on every departure on every morning and it started to be a signature move even though he was hardly the inventor or even the best in class at doing wheelies. There was something about his devil-may-care attitude that I found very appealing. I guess I was not alone because almost every motorcyclist I know knows who Charley Boorman is. He has attained a level of adventure motorcycling immortality through those two videos.
But it has been a long time since I have thought about Ewan and Charley as much as I enjoyed their travels and adventures. Then, the other day, I got an email from Apple TV+. Like everyone else these days, I get lots of spam into my various inboxes. But there are several companies I don’t ignore and to which I do try to pay attention. There is National Geographic for one. Perhaps MSNBC for another. Sometimes I read my Tesla mail. When Google or Facebook reach out to me I have no problem hitting “delete” with great alacrity. But I have an impossible time not sitting up to take notice when the largest company in the world, Apple, sees fit to send me a message. And like my other favorites, I find their suggestions more likely simpatico than not. This email highlighted the latest Apple TV+ series that showed none other than Ewan McGregor and a repaired Charley Boorman (he had suffered a terrible almost fatal accident that would probably have ended the riding career of most men) astride two Harley Davidson prototype Live Wire electric motorcycles.
The name of the series is Long Way Up and it is a sequel of sorts where the two friends brought back together their travel and documentary team to plan and capture their trip. The trip needed to start at the southern tip of the South American continent in Ushuaia, Argentina in Tierra del Fuego, and then cover the 13,000 miles to go up the spine of South America, from Patagonia through the Andes, into the Atacama Desert, through the Western Amazon, into the mountains around Machu Picchu, into the hills of Colombia to plunge into the treacherous Darien Gap into the wilds of Central America and the Canyons of Copper in Mexico. The trip was scheduled to end in Ewan’s adopted home town of Los Angeles after three months on the road. The trip was only really unusual in two ways. It was heading north where most such trips ended in Tiera del Fuego at the end of Route 3 (hence the name of the series). Many have done the Pan American Highway route, but even longer from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, much further north than Los Angeles, and 6,000 or so miles further on the odometer. But Ewan and Charley decided to do the trip on electric motorcycles, the second and far more significant innovation or challenge.
In 2019, when Tesla was ramping up its Volkswagen-like Model 3 sales, there were few electric motorcycles on the road. Electric bicycles and scooters were far more common, but the motorcycle industry was less convinced that its battle to maintain its market (which was demographically shrinking by then) would be helped by introducing a silent EV to whisper its way down the road for a few miles. And therein lay the problem that Ewan and Charley encountered…EV motorcycles had a range of 70 miles or so and the math simply didn’t work to cover the necessary 180 miles per day needed to make the journey in three months. The discovery was that it was a combination of “you can’t get there from here” and “there need to be more than 24 hours in the day to make the math work.” Enter Harley-Davidson with its prototype 550-pound bike (100 pounds heavier than its competitors) that had a range of closer to 150 miles, which suddenly made the math of the trip work. However, the operative word in that proposition is prototype. The generous offer by the heavy-metal folks from Milwaukee (with big promotional bucks and rationale), while genuine, was faced with the reality that the entire recharging and durability process of an EV motorcycle was still in its infancy.
I have not finished the series yet, but I like it already. The biggest reason I like it is that my motorcycle group is technically considering a Patagonia ride in the First Quarter of 2021. We, like everyone else, would end, not start, in Ushuaia, but alas, I fear that its odds sink further every day as COVID rages on…even in Patagonia. I cannot help myself but remind everyone that Patagonia, the region of the Southern Cone, is quite different from Patagonia, the company whose lables now say “Vote the Assholes Out”, but I am about as likely to make it to Patagonia for a motorcycle ride in February as I am to actually fit into one of those wonderfully and appropriately labeled shirts. It is a long way up from Patagonia but it is an even longer way up from the depths we find ourselves with COVID and all manner of things of governance until the assholes get voted out.