Going The Distance

Team GTD at the Girdwood Alaska Backpacker Inn

A long week: Getting things sorted to travel 20,000 miles on a Russian motorbike you don’t own, starting in a country you don’t live in, find people you don’t know, convince broadcasters to be interested in the idea enough to talk about it, not to mention eating, sleeping, travelling without a car in a city which thinks nothing of a 40 mile commute, sorting a bike you know not much about, buying phones, bike and filming equipment… it’s been a really tough and very hideous week. Big thanks to the amazing people at Ural global HQ for sorting everything about the bike, packing it up to ship north, fine tuning it, and generally being amazingly patient.

Flight to Alaska. 3.5 hours. From Seattle! Jesus. This is a mahooosive country.

Anchorage. The sun doesn’t particularly set in this country – 11pm is as light as 4pm in the UK in summertime. Downtown not too inspiring (broadly, it’s the leap off point for adventures in the mighty Alaskan wilderness) so Camp GTD shifts out to the wonderful, hippy, ski resort town of Girdwood, 40 miles south of Anchorage, for the next week.

Mickey Sherfield, of Classic Motorcycles and Urals of Alaska, has the unenviable task of getting this operation on the road. The bike was set to hit Alaskan shores a week later, but he needed to order the right bits for it even before its arrival. Mickey is an Alaskan through and through: bearded, alpha male, always armed, hands so big they could fell a bear. So the two scrawny Brits spend long days loitering around his workshop, watching him work, using his internet, borrowing his enormous and ancient brown truck, getting on his nerves… He’s a kind, generous man who looked after us with a huge heart. If this trip is built on any kind of foundation, the only one to speak of is one Mickey Sherfield.

Alanna demonstrates the comfort and beauty for the relationship guidance book

Day 2 in the Big Lover House. We’re back with a spring in our steps, this time. We have new friends (a lovely and totally normal couple from San Francisco) who we giggle with during the breaks and have curry lunch with. We still feel like children running amok in the halls of a Relationship Hospital, but we’re able to be a bit more earnest about the whole thing (we didn’t stand a chance at resisting the great wave of American sincerity…) and start talking to each other like we can imagine no longer being in love (“what’s your inflexible core on this issue, Mike?” – leaps and bounds on from Mike’s response to my question “Name a big fight” – meaning in our relationship – and him writing Evander/Holyfield 92)

Seattle is awash with sunshine, and we wander away from Relationship 101 through Gay Pride carnival and meet two wonderful lesbians, Tee and Alicia, who are more genuinely in love than anyone we’ve been around for 48 whole hours.

150 couples at the Seattle Center (in the shadow of the Space Needle). Bright sunshine, a room electric with hope. Drs John and Julie Gottman lead the session (8.30am – 5pm over two days). Chat, then we break for exercises (each couple finds a space on their own to work through the exercises together), more chat, more exercises. More details on the Science of Love page.

Holy shit. A day of scrutinising our relationship from every conceivable angle. And we still have the entire weekend (of Couples’ Therapy workshop fun and games) to go. We spent all day with a certified Gottman therapist, the charming Terry and his wife Laurie, holding our marriage up to the light and examining the cracks.

• Scan day.
• Day starts with GTD filming introduction to film at Love Statue. In matching overalls. Curiosity bordering on concern/fear from passers-by. Something to get used to, I suspect.
• To the MRI! New York University campus, Neural Science building.
• Push through heavy door with large red exclamation mark, DANGER and PELIGRO emblazoned across it. Enter small, strip-lit, be-lino’ed room. Computers and processing devices all around. Dr Helen Fisher and Lucy Brown, the neuroscientist analysing the scans, to watch from here. 3 screens facing a wall of dark glass, looking out onto another room with the huge MRI device. Keith to lead the operation.
• Each of us shown photos of the other and results analysed.
• Then on to meeting with Eric Holzle of scientificmatch.com to take cheek swab for DNA.
• (for all the details of the tests, go to the Science of Love page)

• NYC. Alanna deranged by jetlag, stress and yellow fever vaccine after-effects. Barely recognisable. A gorgon. Things not looking good for chances of Going The Distance.
• Cameraman for New York leg: Damon Bundschuh. Patient, charming, disbelieving of GTD’s profound lack of knowledge. About anything really.
• 3pm: Couples interview with Dr Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist, the real Love Doctor. At her apartment, Upper East side.
• She talked through what to expect from the MRI the next day. Then hour-long individual interviews with Alanna and Mike to learn about the relationship and exactly what kind of feelings would be aroused by each of the photographs which the couple had been asked to provide before the scan.

• Father’s Day! Hurray! At least someone’s going to have a good day.
• Team GTD in state of prolonged panic trying to pack. Tears from Mrs GTD, gentle but palpable disdain (perhaps even regret about lifechoice?) from Mr.
• The travelling circus hit the road for LHR. Sobbing from Mrs GTD and her mum at departure gate.
• Ah, the sweet tonic of Duty Free.
• GTD takes off.

• An extraordinary wedding: alternative meets moneyed. Earnest and exquisite. Having only communicated with Mike in To Do list points for the previous month, the sunny reality of what we were trying to capture and celebrate with Going The Distance peeped through the thick clouds for an instant.
• For one moment, I remembered that I really did love Mike. Then he got steaming drunk, and it was harder to see.
• Sat between Jack Osbourne and his producer at dinner. Lots of tips for trip from their experience of making a (proper) TV show: kidnap insurance, satellite phones, etc. All helpful for pre-trip panic attacks.