S2 : The Decision!

When the first trip was born, I knew exactly where I wanted to go. I had It all laid out in my mind. I had been to India 5 times previously and fell in love with the country, the people, the culture and the freedom you have there. If i want to drive on the wrong side of the street... ok... i will. :) It wasnt those freedoms I fell for, it was being able to disconnect from the rest of the world and pretty much get lost.

I didn't know what to expect in terms of results, but I pretty much knew how it would go. I learned a lot, the team learned a lot during the process of planning, looking at elevations, knowing to book hotel reservations in advance :) etc etc. It was a fantastic first trip, the only thing i would have changed was making it longer. 

So as we plan a second trip, it is quite different from planning the first one given the first experience and our expectations to do better, or at least as good. Lots of bits to explore. There were no real standouts in terms of places to go. I think we were all just looking at maps of the world seeing what looked interesting. Iceland kept coming up, Taiwan and a few others. So we decided to make our own top lists, fill out an overly complicated spreadsheet of road conditions, temperatures, sites to see, distance between us all and many other extremely nerdy dimensions. A few definite criteria were that it had to be in January and as warm as humanly possible.

Some questions and our thought process of how we were working them out:

Do we add more members? The first scorch, with just the 3 of us was quite comfortable, no arguing, all getting along, easy going, agreeable ... somewhat funny :) so it all worked. As you add people, you have to make sure they will fit and most importantly ... not murder you in your sleep. I swear this is a condition me and Shruti discussed multiple times when evaluating candidates. :P In addition you need to have people on the team who are going to add something, anything ... even if it is just another intelligent brain to help make decisions, or a person who can work and plan. Believe it or not we actually were up to 10 possible riders at one point. A block of 3 dropped out, then there was an injury induced drop out and then our final teammate dropped due to not enough training... and we are at 5. Up from 3 the previous scorch. 


Where can you go in January when half of the world is in the dead of winter and you want to try something new? There were so many factors we worked through. 10 years of historical temperatures, at least 12 countries, road quality, cost, scenery, distance between us all [ thank god i will not have to commute for 24hours worrying about my bike in the cargo hold of the plane :) ]

How do we pack and get our gear from place to place? In other countries getting drivers is not as easy as India. We were beyond lucky to have a guy like G. He was a lifesaver and I never saw a 120lb man eat a cauldron of rice faster. This time we are all becoming mules and lugging our own gear.

We want to go big - the location needs to deliver from sites, to being rideable to having enough miles for us to cover. 

So at the end of it all, we have decided on Spain!! The route starts us off in Barcelona down the eastern coast, passed Gibraltar and down to the tip of the country. Roughly about 780 miles. Super excited as there is about 1 month left and still lots to put the finishing touches on. Packing, bringing more cameras [ taking it to the next level with my GoPro Black 5], colder gear, more and more training before January [ hopefully losing more weight ] and of course trimming the routes and working in the sites vs daylight and cooler temperatures.

Viva Espana!!