What has me in such a tizzy today: an air gauge. Filling your tires is said to improve fuel efficiency by wide margins; it helps your tires last longer; decreases overall braking distance; woos women from afar with just a wink and a smile. Ok, I’m not so sure about the fuel efficiency. This is a task that should be something we focus on when filling our vehicles, but it isn’t. Most gas stations do not have air systems at the pump and often you need a pocket full of quarters to operate what air pump they do have. Don’t they know that pocketfuls of quarters are better spent with Ms. Pacman?

I have found what I consider to be the pinnacle of air gauge design. Not only does it attach directly to the valve stem securely with a clip that can be operated with gloves on it also includes a finger valve to release air pressure should overfill. It stays attached and not at a wrist shattering angle trivializing the battle you will have with the tangled air hose. While I cannot speak for the accuracy of it’s calibration tire pressure for me is more of a close-enough-for-rock-and-roll affair.

Accu-Gage EZ Air Check and Inflate Tires
Pros
• Just long enough hose to get the job done, not so much it’s a hassle.
• Cheap, like we’re talking sub $20.
• Rubber cover and carrying case included.
Cons
• Comes in any color you want, as long as you love brass and black.
• Bigger than a pen gauge, eats space under bike seat.
• Dial could be smaller and still be useful.

Attractions abound however. You would catch my eye if you said trains; you’d catch my eye if you said graveyard. When you say ‘train graveyard’ you now have my full attention. Just before the turn of the century English entrepreneurs built railways across the Salar and their cast off engines are blissfully rusting in piece to this day.

If trains don’t get your engine pumping there are three distinct species of flamingo that use the briny waters as a breeding ground in November. There are 80 other species of birds populating the dormant volcanic islands amongst the salt, enough to keep the amateur ornithologists eyes busy.

Everything on the Altiplano happens around ten to eleven thousand feet so temperatures will be moderate to well below freezing at night.

There exists an overwhelming number of resources that will claim to be “easy” but nothing has ever been sold by claiming to be “grueling”. I have surveyed a few materials and would like to share my impressions of what works best. I’ll save you some time: none of them were sufficient on their own, you have to actually seek out Spanish speakers and talk to them to learn. It has to be turned into a habit, and your resources need to help you do that.

Books

As infants we learn by listening and aping the sounds we hear. Our brains are wired to make sense of this and the blocks fall into place and we learn. Why then do we purchase books to learn a language? This isn’t to say that books aren’t helpful, they will give you a jump start on vocabulary which will help you fumble around while you learn. I purchased a few books used on Amazon.com, there are plenty of people who have been interested and have given up and are selling their books for a pittance.

Spanish For Gringos

My mother bought Spanish For Gringos for me at a Pemex station when we were visiting my Grandfather in Mexico in 1994. It was immediately engrossing to me, but nothing more than the vocabulary contained really stuck. There are two books in this series brimming with cartoons depicting words with excellent pacing with regular doses of humor. I would put this as more of a casual book for just cracking open and learning a few words regularly which I believe is the authors theory on learning. If you have the words and an opportunity to use them, you’ll make sense of the grammar and syntax without sweating.

Teach Yourself Latin American Spanish

When I flip through any of the books in the Teach Yourself on any topic they offer I’m immediately impressed with the density of material. I don’t think this is overall an asset. This is a book that would be a good secondary or tertiary material. Well worth the $.01 I spent on it used however! The main detractor to this series is the desicated sense of seriousness. There are no puns, quips, or sarcasm present in this book – even government forms have a greater sense of irony.

Madrigal’s Magic Key to Spanish

Did you say you want some vocabulary? Madrigal’s has it. Page 1 drops the hammer on Spanish words that you already know. Springing from the same phylum English and Spanish share many cognate words. Example? Vocabulary vs Vocabulario. If you had to pick one book it should be this one. It starts different than other materials that you’ll find, and the illustrations are done by Andy Warhol himself.

There is only one other book that has not arrived at my door yet that I’m looking forward to and that is Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish. The reviews on Amazon were entirely favorable and spoke of the book illuminating useful topics such as etymology and expletive idioms. When learning a language you are also learning a culture.

Software

I went straight to the market leader in this case despite there being a myriad of offerings. Rosetta Stone has a course specifically for Latin American Spanish. These are however expensive. Were I not able to track down a friend who would lend me their copy I would not have chosen to try this. That would have been a mistake. This has turned out to be one of my favorite resources despite how patronizing and infuriating it can be.

On a positive note it does not give you direct English transalations. You must figure out the language from the context of pictures and previously learned phrases. A trap in learning another language is that you’ll just translate to yourself back and forth. This will work, but you’ll never get a sense for what you are saying. Often you are prompted to test your pronunciation with a microphone into the computer. Every phrase is clearly recorded by male and female speakers and each unit has plenty of review and repetition.

Which is my complaint about Rosetta Stone. There is so much repetition that I find it to be mind scaldingly boring at times. This may be something unique to me however as I have a knack for memorization and vocabulary. Living in a not-so-quiet apartment also has drawbacks when recording your voice. Rosetta Stone does do some analysis of your speech that I have yet to puzzle out what it tests for. It does ding you for not enunciating enough, but any background noise such as road traffic or neighbors showering makes the recording parts impossible.

If you can borrow a copy or find one at the library you should try this method. I’m not convinced that it is worth the full price. Though they have diversified into the mobile market of iOS devices which may be more fun than sitting at the computer. I’m using version 3.5 and 4 was just released with a larger online component.

Websites

Much like any topic there are more websites on learning Spanish than you can shake a stick at. However I have found not a single one to be a definitive success. There are some decent flash cards at Memrise, the BBC has a decent interactive course, there is a wealth of uncompelling resources at SpanishDict.com. There is one bright spot however: DuoLingo. This site is still in beta and expanding fast with new languages all the time. It attempts to “gamify” the process in a way that is refreshing after the linear drugery that is Rosetta Stone though with that same familiar format.

It is unfortunately not sufficient as a sole resource. Only once I’ve covered the phrases in another resource am I able to use DuoLingo with confidence. This may be intentional thoguh, it seems to be a more interactive version of flash cards. DuoLingo makes good use of speech synthesis to good and bad effect. The good: the site is free as they do not need to pay voice actors to speak every phrase. The bad: they don’t use voice actors. Some of the phrases come out in very mechanical and hard to understand blobs of audio. Instead of a lusty latin flourish you get Spanish-Bot 2000. QUIENESTÁHABLANDOAHORA! or LOSIENTO DAVE NOPUEDOHACERESO! BEEP BEEP BEEP! I see this site only becoming more refined over time, and hey, it’s free.

iPhone Apps

Sorry Android users, I only have an iPhone. There were a few apps of note that I’ve tried. DuoLingo has a mobile app that is identical to their website content. Most apps seem to be vocabulary games the best of which I’ve found to be the MindSnacks series for five bucks. That is a bit more than I want to spend on an app, but the games are cheeky and fun. This is another area where there is no “killer app” yet.

Audio

The resource that I find the best and easiest to use has been a language tape series. The Pimsleur type series were the best. I found a copy at the library and encoded it as MP3s in iTunes and stuck it onto my phone for the ride into work. I’ve listed to about 30 of the modules in the past month and a half and I feel that I’ve learned more and better from doing this than anything else. Yes, the dialog is cheesy and often I wonder if the fictional characters aren’t junkies and pimps from how often they bicker about money and going to the hotel. The audio was convenient enough that I could just put the headphones on and waddle to work. This has allowed me to develop a habit of 30 minutes a day I study Spanish.

What Next?

Ye Olde Job has been bought out by Evil Corporate Overlords™ and they’ve offered up a training budget. Since I deal directly with the public on a daily basis it would be good if I knew some Spanglish to get the task done and I’m conniving to get them to pay for immersion classes. It is a pretty cost effective vacation to go to Central America and stay with a host family for a few weeks. I’m confdient that more learning would occur over dinner with native speakers than a month of books.

I wish it were that easy. I still feel like I need to justify to others the choices I make for myself. I’ve read furiously, plotted curiously, talked to many and had a spectrum of reactions. From, “Isn’t that dangerous?” to “I’m proud of you,” there has been everything between trepidation and apathy. And I still haven’t told my mom yet.

“Just don’t tell her, just get up and go. You can call her from the road and be like, ‘Hey ma, guess where I am?’ and the answer can be: Belize.” Smirking at himself Dan loads up his plate with more of the szechwan beef he ordered before asking me, “More tea?”

I’ve made that call to my mom before. Every other time I do something monumentally stupid I end up calling my mother after the fact. She must cringe every time I say, “Hey Ma, guess what?” I did it on my first road trip, she was nice enough to pay my bail. I did it when I marched to the courthouse with a Ring Pop and married some girl I barely knew. I’m sure she’d appreciate some notice from me this time around.

Reboot is a good way of thinking about it. I’ve been fortunate to make mistakes in life and catch it off the bounce. I didn’t come up smelling like roses, but there was no actual tragedy either. In all I’ve had two lives previously that were interrupted. Each time I’ve made a new choice, in a new direction and sailed that way for a while. One ended when I broke my arm and lost a job. One ended by marching back to that same courthouse and filing for divorce. The second trip was slightly more bitter than the previous raspberry flavor I remembered.

I graduated, finally, from a long trek through higher education and to my surprise quickly found a job. It’s the same job I had when I was 21 just a decade removed. This puts me in a peer group that wasn’t done trading Pokemon by the time I was voting for a president for the first time. We have a lot in common for better or worse. I think one of the betters is a healthy does of wide eyed naïveté – the ability to make momentous plans and to slam the door on the pernicious doubt in the back of your mind.

My mother took me on a trip up to see my grandfather in Nebraska. He took us all out on his boat on the lake for an afternoon. He let me steer, but more than let me steer he showed me how to steer. “Unless you want to just go around in circles you have to pick a point on the horizon and keep yourself pointed there or the wind will just push you all over.” He walked away and left my juvenile self to keep my eye on the horizon. Adjust your course when you need to, but set point where you are going and when the environment changes you’ll still be on course.

“Hey look at that, it’s snowing.” I hadn’t even noticed until I turned around after paying the bill. We piled into the truck and I drove Dan home. I’ll have to make a point to talk to my mom.

One sub-culture that seems to be obsessed with having on hand only the minimum required is that of survivalism. Enthusiasts of this discipline can appear a bit paranoid, but they do possess a few ideas that are intriguing. Having spent just a cursory amount of time as a boy scout in my youth, and coming from a family that you would not call ‘outdoorsy’, I suffer from a dearth of knowledge in the areas of hiking and camping. As is the norm these days there is a wealth of knowledge online of both good and bad quality. One resource that I found quickly was that of Willow Haven Outdoor, who grabbed my attention with an article concerning 11 ways that a condom can save your life and how to tie the nigh on unpronounceable shemagh.

The site is operated by Creek Stewart who has penned a volume of information titled Build The Perfect Bug Out Bag. As I was not able to obtain a copy of this book through my local library I sought out a used copy off of Amazon. This weekend I have chewed through it and farmed some interesting tidbits of information. Of moment I found the chapters on water treatment, shelter & bedding, fire, and tools to be the most instructive throughout for the purposes of touring. Seemingly mundane tasks like starting a fire were given a bit more relevancy than I had previously considered. Stewart does a fantastic job of being budget minded throughout and avoids recommending pricey items and seems to default to wanting items that serve multiple uses.

This focus on utility makes sense when starved for the amount of items one can carry. Maximizing the utility of what you own is a radical idea coming from a society where consumption is the norm for expressing identity. I was first convinced of this concept by Alton Brown of the cooking program Good Eats that comedically plays up a loathing for kitchen utensils that are gimmicky or serve only one purpose. Anyone that has lived in tiny studio apartments for years can appreciate the space savings this leads to.

At around 200 or so pages the book was a quick read being readily stocked with photographs and asides on the various topics. The lists of supplies and advice on order of packing alone are worth the time it will take to quickly thumb through. The one omission that was glaring however was the lack of importance placed on always having a beach towel with you. This is dire for any publication that describes itself as a guide.

Planning

• Route
  • Rough Outline
  • Classification of ‘Must See’ Sites
  • Border Crossings
  • Possible Hazard
• Financing
  • Research Credit Availability
    • Secure or Eliminate Debts
  • Credit Cards
  • Saving and Budgeting
  • Ways to Save More
  • Bank Accounts
  • Income While Abroad
    • Volunteering
    • Jobs
    • Residual Income
  • Liquidate Available Assets
• Feasibility
  • What needs to be modified to ensure a successful trip?
  • Timeline of Departure
  • Length of Trip
  • Emergencies
• Requirements
  • Legal
    • Power of Attorney
    • Passport
    • Vehicle Registration and Title
  • Personal
    • Insurance
    • Health
    • The Cat
  • Mechanical

Preparation

• Education
  • Language
  • Legal Matters
  • Culture and Regional Customs
  • Survival Skills
• Purchasing
  • Motorcycle
  • Clothing
  • Camping Equipment
  • Electronics
    • Cell Phone
    • Cameras
    • Computer
• Personal
  • Acceptance of Emotional Cost
  • Sharing Intentions with Family

Execution

• Packing
• Testing
• Departure

Each item in this outline will need to be filled in. Hopefully in the next few weeks I can revisit this post to add links to more materials and provide some revisions after I have researched further.

I found myself watching one of Dan’s favorite movies last night. He’s a huge fan of Master and Commander, a drama about a ship during the Napoleonic Wars. Yawn, I know. However the film is amazing and the special effects are unobtrusively awesome. Sure there isn’t a Kenworth that turns into a giant talking robot, but accurate ships rigging is impossibly complex.

This stands out as the crew accommodations on the ship were spartan and consisted mainly of hammocks. I’ve been trudging through Frommer’s Costa Rica 2013 which the library was kind enough to have on the shelf for me. I saw trudge as this guides style compared to the others I have read leads me to believe that I am not their target audience. Frommer’s seems to be targeted more to the family traveler and I think my tastes are leaning more towards the student style of travel, call it backpacking if you will. I have come to prefer the Lonely Planet series of books, specifically there are editions for South and Central America. There are constant references to the ability to save a few bucks by sleeping in a hammock slung between two anchors in these guides.

Serendipity is amazing. Perhaps for not the merest glimmer I have contemplated actually owning a hammock as an adult. This morning I have spent about an hour shopping for this very item. I have found a lot of camping gear sites, a few extremely enthusiastic testimonials to the virtues of the hammock, and some entertaining misinformation on the history of the hammock. There was even a very interesting Kickstarter project that has the clever name of Kammok.

I don’t know how I feel about clever brand names coming into popular usage and this name seems like it could hit that point trivially. I don’t like referring to a tissue as a Kleenex or an adhesive strip of gauze as a Band-Aid, especially in usage that is not as a proper noun. I have seen this occur with the brand Under Armour who at least has the temerity to dash the continental spelling of ‘armor’ around liberally. This grousing aside I shall digress; my linguistic preferences won’t be dictating speech until I am crowned emperor anyway.

At around one pound in mass and the volume of about a clenched fist (third of a liter) a modern hammock is something I will have to consider further when packing and procuring equipment. The hammock in the case was a very effective muse.

The Crash Course series of videos on YouTube are fantastic. I stumbled across these in a circuitous route via the lovely Hannah Hart of My Drunk Kitchen who was nice enough to allow Hank Green of Sci Show fame to guest chef in a recent episode. This lead to clicking around wasting time watching videos and I found this gem. The internet is a magical place.

There are a few things that we should focus on and perhaps set a few assumptions so that we can objectively compare things. Subjectively speaking I already know that I want a Ducati, but that probably isn’t wise. We’ll need to consider the type of bike most likely falling into the traditional categories of either touring or dual-sport. It is probably safe to say that a supersport won’t be practical, that isn’t to say that it isn’t possible and that somebody hasn’t ridden a Yamaha R1 all the way around the world already.

Size is another consideration. Much of what I’ve read so far has seemed to fall into the “less is more” camp. If only for the inevitable need to pick the bike up this makes sense. Yes, the bike will “take a nap” as they say on advrider.com and you will have to muscle it back to where the shiny bits point to the sky. There are other advantages to a smaller bike in terms of fuel efficiency and purchase cost. There will probably be a larger bike that will be more comfortable on the long stretches of tarmac but just like the rest of life, there will be a compromise.

Assumptions

Let’s set some measures for our purposes in nice round terms. I’m going to say that the total distance ridden will be 20,000 miles and that the average cost of fuel will be US$3.50 per gallon. The fact that the United States is completely ass backwards to the rest of the world in terms of weights and measures this complicates the matter. For the purpose of our theory craft we’ll stick to US currency and measures, later on the trip we’ll be better served to make sure our calculations are in metric units (1 gallon = 3.78541 liters).

Fuel Efficiency

With these assumptions in mind lets make a hypothetical case of a bike that gets 50 miles per gallon (MPG). The trip will take 400 gallons of gas at $3.50 summing the total fuel cost to $1,400. There are two extremes on modern motorcycles in terms of effective fuel efficiency that lie on either side of this number. The first being 30 MPG on the low end of the scale. This would require the diabolical number of 666 gallons putting our total fuel cost at $2,333 for the trip. The high end of 70 MPG takes 286 gallons with a total fuel cost of $1,000.

Before those numbers make your eyeballs cross lets put some meat on their bones. The travel guide that I’ve been reading has given a rough estimate of $20 per day needed for accommodations, lodging, and food in Central and South America. I think that the bike that gets 70 MPG is a mechanical marvel the difference of $400 doesn’t convince me that a larger bike isn’t where I want to be in terms of overall comfort. The difference of nearly a thousand dollars between 50 and 30 MPG however does get my attention. In this I think it behooves me to choose a bike that gets close to 50 MPG.

This shouldn’t be too tricky to do, my current steed of a blue SV650 does get 50 MPG according to the tracking I’ve done on Fuelly.com.

Type

This comes down to two logical choices: Dual Sport or Touring. There is a fair amount of overlap in these categories with the advent of the BMW GS series of bikes pioneering the category since 1980. The overwhelming majority of roads in the world happen to not be paved. And a fair amount of the paved roads outside of the US don’t have the same silky smooth tarmac laid on them as we’re used to. With that in mind there is the question of overall durability and relative scarcity of parts and service options on a long tour to be considered. In Mexico traffic control is often enforced by the tope, or raised metal, pavement, or stone escarpment. There is also the option of long stretches of dirt roads to explore.

These considerations don’t necessarily equate to need a Dakar worthy bike but longer suspension travel and more aggressive tread on tires will more than likely come in handy. There is also quite the aftermarket parts bin for modifying bikes for more durability in this category than your typical tourer or sport style.

Size

Since my trip is planned as being solo on the bike without a passenger I have a bit of flexibility in the size department. Having already discussed fuel efficiency it seems there is a pattern of bikes fitting either category relative to their engine displacement. 1000cc bikes tend to get 30 MPG, 600cc bikes around 50 MPG, and 250cc can put you in the range of 70 MPG (though there is a Honda that munges this a bit). My estimation is that the 600cc displacement will be the “sweet spot” between the extremes and there are a wealth of models to choose from at this spec.

New vs. Used

Who doesn’t love a brand new shiny motorcycle? Few things are as satisfying to ride or behold. However you foist over a mint for this feeling and it is fleeting at best. Purchasing a used bike has a few advantages. You’ll be able to find a bike for around 50-70% of the original MSRP and it will more than likely have enough miles to have the gremlins knocked out of it. The initial servicing and valve check is something that you’ll want to make sure has been done before flogging an engine for 20k miles. You may also be able to find someone willing to part with various farkles that they have purchased in the sale price of the bike.

Cost

Somewhere between the bright orange glory that is the $15,000 KTM 990 Adventure and the $250 “I found this in the back of the garage” special there has to be a bike that will work marvelously. Some Suzuki cycles will be priced at nearly half that amount. Considering that a lower priced bike will free up all that cash to cover the fuel, bags, and farkles you’ll need on the trip I think it’s safe to say that the sheer utility is the most important factor.

Coming soon I’ll be taking a look at specific models and drooling balancing the pros and cons of each model.

As it turns out U.S. Department of State has a really good page on the process of applying for a passport. The wealth of information available via the internet on different processes is truly astounding to me. Dealing with any bureaucracy is a pain, even dictionaries seem to include this as a definition. My impression is that once you have all the requisite paperwork in place it’s just a matter of running around to the appropriate offices with the appropriate documents (mind you, don’t sign them until told to do so).

The form you’ll be filling out is DS11 as WikiPedia points out in a post complete with much background information and links, it’s worth a quick peruse. Surprising information you’ll need to know (and that I had to ask my mom) is place of birth, both parents place of birth, and the dates you were married and divorced (you’ll need to know where they were born too).

At a guess, it is likely that most USians will be using their birth certificates to prove citizenship. With this you’ll need a photo ID as well, your drivers license is probably the most common option but there are others. All of this is made much easier if you have a previous passport that you are renewing, then you can just present that to receive a new passport. All of these documents need to be photocopied in an unaltered state (you can enlarge the image if you like, just don’t make it smaller).

You’ll have to get your pretty mug photographed in a 2×2 inch format. No matter how presentable you make yourself look this photograph will make you look like you walked across hell backwards in a stiff wind. Hence the adage: “When you look like your passport photo, it’s time to come home.” All of this should be presented at an Acceptance Facility or as I like to call them – the post office or courthouse.

Once your documents have been reviewed you’ll be asked to fork over some cash. There are a couple of options here. If you are just going into border areas of Canada and Mexico (and a grip of small islands) you’ll have the option of using a passport card instead of your full passport at import stations. This is $30 for the adult version and probably worth having as a secondary form of identification when roaming around border crossings officials will want to confiscate your passport while they review your passage. There is a $25 execution fee to produce the passport and mail it to the mailing address you listed on the DS11 form. Typically the passport costs $110, for my purposes I’ll be paying about $165 in total for all of my documents.

I’ll post more info once I’ve dropped off the paperwork and received my passport with any gotchas that I ran into.