"The journey begins when the dream ends, because you start to turn it into reality, and therefore you begin to change it, transform it, even reviewing your initial ideas, to adapt them to the real possibilities and circumstances. This means not only to study the route and prepare the luggage, but understand if you're ready and able to do it."
Here we are. It's time to break the white background with the first lines - although digital, and not of my beloved ink - to begin to tell of an adventure that is going to happen to me, Valentina, and my life and travel companion, Matteo.
I think it would be proper to introduce ourselves a minimum, saying who we are and what we do, but this blog wants to talk about a trip and probably thanks to it we will not be the same people as before.
At this very moment we are a couple of 33 and 27 years old who decided to turn a dream into a concrete project: a journey from Italy to Japan by motorbike.
Two motorbikes, to specify - already a small detail of who we are comes out itself - because we both love to drive our two-wheels we chose to do this trip together, but at the same time alone with our own bike, to be able to grab those unique feelings that only this mean of travel can give.
In fact, the adventure has already begun despite not having made only one km in the direction of Japan, since this venture requires a long and complex organization that made the departure date look too close, even though we had already begun the preparation ahead of time.
So, I decided to start writing some notes in order not to miss out these first emotions of the preparation, which are likely to be lost in the hectic days that we are living, days that include mechanical works, bureaucratic adventures, runs to get better equipped and also physical training.
How do you prepare a trip like this? I'll tell you step by step, but first we should ask: how can you come up with such a thing?
First of all, any epic adventure worthy of respect needs an introduction that excites the reader; before the hero of the story trains himself and gears up, he must first have a mission to accomplish, and it's not an every day thing to imagine to go to Japan by motorbike.
Actually it is difficult for me to neat back a common thread between the thoughts in order to find one track only; I think this project is the culmination of a real stratification of ideas and dreams that initially didn't have a precise form, but contained general entities as 'motorbike', 'travel', 'adventure', 'far away', 'exotic', combined with echoes of stories read in books and scrolled down on the web by travelers ventured in every direction, but whose most fascinating ones responded to the call of 'Asia', 'Silk Road', and in my imagination it came to life images of galloping horses into the grasslands of Mongolia, lakes in the middle of the desert, solemn Asian temples of the beautiful shapes, oriental eyes and slow and spiritual gestures, straight streets and winding roads, Mount Fuji on the horizon ... we know that by letting the fantasy go, it loses itself creating millions of scenarios and I spent hours fantasizing.
I am speaking in first person because the idea of the Trip with a capital T grew up a bit before knowing Matteo, but thanks to him it could take the real form that it has now.
Matteo was the one who put me in front of the reality. At the time when my dreams became so cumbersome to continue to come out of my mouth, I was already used to drive the motorbike since a few years, but I had no idea what it was to drive on dirt, nor did I know that the amazing route that I fantasized to travel was characterized by many stretches without tarmac or often in conditions of discomfort because of potholes, natural worn-out due to climate changes and lack of maintenance, not to mention other difficulties like spending many hours in endurance motorcycle driving under various climatic conditions, stress, tiredness etc.
In short, when we started to evaluate a remote chance to make this trip together, he was categorical: he said no, with me he would have not! A moment of shock. But …how come? He explained. It was not because it was "me", I mean, our life together had begun at full speed and it was not a matter of "type of company", but he explained that he did not want to put me - and by reflection, himself - in danger, in a situation where I was not ready in first place, both for fitness status and driving skills, things that as a result would have affected him making him living with constant anxiety throughout the trip.
I hated his words. Because he was right. I felt frustrated but also selfish, and I wanted with all my strength to do this thing, I felt it strongly.
Since I do not like being in front of a waiver without first having examined all my chances and without having completely put myself at test, I decided to commit myself to try to become able to endure the venture this trip would have been.
I think that day was the real beginning of the trip, it was the summer of 2014.
The first lesson I had from this adventure was patience - and to say it is a very impatient person - but I realized that things would have come only through sustained efforts, that needed time, and I had to trust to commit.
Today, almost two years since then, but only a month to the official start, I can say that was one of the best decisions ever taken.
In my next post you'll find the next stage of the preparation: the workout.
Goodbye!
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