Having arrived back in the USA after a couple of weeks in very cold South Korea, I came up with a great plan to see a bit of the country.

I'd passed my motorbike test shortly before coming on this trip and I decided to put this new skill to the test and rent a motorbike. So, with about 5 days total motorcycling experience behind me and almost 17 months without even sitting on a motorbike, I rented a new BMW F650GS and set off on a 4000 mile road trip across the country! No half measures here you know.

It took a little while to get 'back in the saddle' as it were. And, unfortunately, the first 40 miles or so were through the VERY busy LA Freeway system. Still, in at the deep end and i'd have to say, quite ..exciting at times!

A Joshua Tree

I had hoped to get an early start from LA and make it all the way to Lake Havasu City (home of London Bridge), but it was almost 1pm before I managed to get away from Long Beach and so I revised the original plan as the 350 miles i'd hoped to cover today were looking very unlikely.

As it was, I made it to a small town called Twentynine Palms just next to the town of Joshua Tree and The Joshua Tree National Park. Some 150 miles short of the days target, but a great location to start exploring the National Park first thing in the morning. The Joshua Tree (yes that is the same one of U2 fame) is actually a very large Yucca found around the Mojave desert, but in the largest concentrations here in the Joshua Tree National Park.

One of the other things i've done since I arrived in the US is to buy a Laptop. There seemed to be a distinct lack of Internet Cafes here and those that do exist are expensive. So, I bit the bullet and bought some more technology to lug around. As it turns out most of the motels i'm staying in have wireless Internet and of course there's aways the coffee shops. So I no longer have any excuses for the website getting out of date. For the bike trip, i'll try and post daily entries with a map, although I won't send out daily notifications.