Going The Distance

One of the most volatile times of the day for the Clear marriage is the morning. There are a number of things which you should know about Team Clear:

1. They love beer. They drink it, often in abundance, every night. So every morning is a struggle.
2. They both need 8+ hours sleep a night. 10 is usual. Hosts are usually horrified.
3. Neither particularly wants breakfast when they wake up.
4. BUT THEY BOTH NEED IT.
5. They know this, but forget it everyday. Which is where the fights come from.

It takes about an hour to hit the road in the morning. A fact which depresses both team members, so both are in denial about (”alarm for 9, on the road by 9.30″ – translates to ‘alarm for 9, snooze til 9.30, shower/pack bike till 10.30′. If, for any reason (data or web), a computer is turned on, you can add another hour to that departure time). Breakfast is usually forgotten as team members get increasingly fractious, but instantly melts the tension when it arrives.

This happens every morning.

No amount of “we should get breakfast as soon as we wake up” or “let’s remember it takes us about an hour to pack the bike” can shake us out of the daily morning quagmire.

The reason that it takes so infernally long to pack the bike is that we, like the culture we are wading through, are slaves to our stuff. The bike is laden with gizmos and gadgets, all “vital” to the success of our deranged trip.

Let me introduce you to it:

What we wear

1. The jumpsuit. Designed by none other than 2 times round-the-world motorcyclist, Austin Vince, we were told (by him!) that this was the only thing to wear to look fabulous on the road. (Let the record reflect that I was dubious about this sartorial decision from the get go). It has its bonuses (everyone knows that we’re on the same team – whatever team that is; white is great for reflecting the sun and staying cool; it’s a very easy item to throw over whatever you’re wearing, etc) it also has its disadvantages. Namely, when it rains/gets cold/gets windy (ie when weather happens), it is as if we are naked. Also, other bikers (of whom there are many) and, let’s be honest, most people, think we are arch tools. But we’re getting used to it. It definitely starts conversation. And there’s a convenient zip so that Mike can wee without taking it off (no such benefits for the be-flanged). Also, a hole at pocket height which means that Mike can reach his wallet and his balls without too much effort.

Each of the suits has patches of our choosing on it. They can be of anything but have to match the red, black and white of the team livery. Imagine Mike’s delight at finding a sew-on patch matching that criteria in Chicken, Alaska, which hollers “I got laid in Chicken”.

2. Headphones. In the top left hand pocket of the sidecar dweller (95% of the time, that’s me), resides the iPhone, source of all music. A headphone splitter means that both our headphones are plugged into it, and I deal with the music. Usually a pre-created playlist on shuffle to prevent too much Will Young slipping through the net.

3. Helmets. The Evil Knievel (RIP) Bell End helmets. We had them shipped up to Seattle from California. Made in Beijing (safety over cost, natch). They came with blue, white and red stripes on a silver background. One of our “vital” tasks in Anchorage was finding someone who sold black vinyl strips which we laboriously stuck over the length of the blue stripe. We’re slaves to perfection. Much delight when Mike realised that the stripes on the helmet ended in the exact position to lead into the stripes on the jumpsuits. Pretty exciting.
On to these old-school helmets, we have face screens which we can pop. We have three of them: one clear one which looks like a fishbowl, “the bubble”, which Mike doesn’t like wearing because it’s foolish – so I do; and two dark ones for when it’s sunny. Mike’s is a 5 popper (one of the many criteria of things which I had no idea about before this trip) which makes him look like something out of a Daft Punk video. Mine is more in the YMCA policeman vein, I’m proud to say. It’s a 3 popper with a visor I can lift up and down. Less cool, but more chat. That pretty much sums me up.
Inside the helmets are our communication systems. We have a bluetooth receiver/transmittor which clicks onto the outside of the helmet and extends with a microphone, and the speakers live in the earholes inside the helmet. These have been a cause of much conflict: my hearing is obviously dodgy so had to fashion foam wedges to put into the earholes, so as to press the speakers against my ears. Which made Mike too loud. So I ripped them out and had them free floating, and I’d adjust them daily. Mike, thinking he was being helpful (but really being dictatorial) glued them in place so I now can’t hear anything. Cue another fight. But apart from that, they work really well and we can chat on the road – though we mostly turn them off and listen to music. And I sleep.

4. Shoes. The Official Shoes of Going the Distance are white Converse boots. They are not comfortable, they are always filthy, and mine smell as poisonous as any shoe I have ever owned. When we get into the tent in the evening, I can stink the place out in under 10 seconds. It’s satisfyingly vinegary. For me, at least. Not sure Mike’s entirely satisfied.

5. Driver gear. One pair of light gloves (red with black), one pair of leather gloves (black with red), dark goggles, clear goggles. Etc.

On the bike

The bike itself is a wonderful, reliable (so far!) packhorse which patiently takes all our shit. Sergey, the Russian head mechanic at Ural HQ, was dismayed by the weight of the bike. (1450 lbs at last roadside weigh in). But she still goes. We have 2 small extra ammo cans at the front (tool kit and paperwork), an extra fuel can at the back (10l), a big ammo can at the back left of the sidecar (more tools and bulky general bits). The boot is 100l and holds all camping gear, shoes, cables for our electronics. On the back of the sidecar, we carry a spare wheel with a rack above it. On that rack are the tent (my pillow in the sidecar as long as I’m not leaning on the spikes), our camping mattresses (mine’s slightly puffier than Mike’s because I threw a bit of a hissy fit in the camping store) and camera stuff.
Behind Mike are 3 saddlebags with our clothes, towels and food in them. Then there’s a bag magnetised onto the tank which holds more electronics.
It sounds masses, but for 7 months, I’m pretty impressed with us clutter monkey Clears.
When we stop for the night, our stuff explodes out of the regimented containers like a jack in the box, rendering spare bedrooms and campsites alike in a state of total disarray.

Life in the sidecar:

It’s surprisingly comfortable. The chair is leather and puffy, I can fully extend my legs. There is no way, to my increasingly extensive knowledge, of getting in or out elegantly.

There is a little step at the side to help, but it tricks you into thinking that you can slip in or out without looking like the half tonne man preparing to take a crap – all tentative steps and nervous shuffling. Once I’m in, I’m loaded up with anything which is homeless or huge – so I end up with an Oxfam pile at my feet. Which is very annoying, but useful. I then tuck myself in, doing up the leather cover around myself to prevent from cold. I have a wool rug, a wedding present from a friend, which we decided should make it for the trip and thank God it did. I wrap myself up like a bug in a rug when it gets chilly. We also have a handy picnic rug for the rare occasions when I’m allowed to beguile Mike from whatever task is at hand.
To my left, at my eyelevel, are Mike’s flanks. Which get tickled if he pats me on the head. More fool him. I have a little windshield of my own, and sometimes the Go Pro action camera is afixed in front of that windshield so I have to be camera operator. But most of the time I sleep or have to reach rapidly for one of our small camera collection to capture a quickly-disappearing moment. Or turn music up. If I’m typing, I prop a small, cheap computer on my knees, hook it under the “Shit bar” (named because it’s what you grab onto in times of emergency) and away I go.
When we stop, it’s usually too hard for me to get out, so Mike disappears to pay for petrol or get lunch or whatever, and I get cornered by every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to know about the bike.

The Ural Effect

The bike inspires conversation like nothing I’ve ever seen. So much so that it’s been named “The Ural Effect”. It drives Mike nuts – we’ll be trying to pay for petrol (already an hour and a half behind our naive schedule) and someone will wander over and start up with anything from “is that a BMW?” (which requires the full Ural story) to “neat bike/outfits, what are you guys up to?” (Going the Distance story). I suffer distraction gladly so will always yak away. Which also drives Mike nuts when he’s wanting to leave. But my feeling is that you never know who is going to be really interesting. Like Scott, the trucker, who I got chatting to in a petrol station on the Kenai Peninsula, south of Anchorage, and didn’t think anything more of until he pulled up beside us a couple of days later on his pristine Harley, told us to pull over, said he’d been thinking about our journey a lot over the last couple of days and bought us a “freedom bell” (a tradition amongst Harley riders – to hang a small bell on the bike to ward off bike gremlins) on the offchance that he’d bump into us again. What a guy.

Whenever we park up, people will crowd around the bike when we’re gone (great to watch if you can get a window seat in restaurants).
Children LOVE the bike. When we are driving along, they are the ones who point and stare, wide-eyed. I like to wave at them, though it does sometimes throw them a bit. We have given a few kids lifts (my 3 year old cousin and her friend; the 3 year old son of one of our interview couples in Vancouver), getting them to put on their cycle helmets and taking them around the block. It’s the most adorable thing in the world. I swear it’s what these bikes should have been invented for. We get them to go on it in twos, they cling to the Shit bar, gaze up at Mike until the engine starts then you watch their little heads bobbing about as they disappear up the road. So cute.

Bike on the road

People in cars definitely take note. Sometimes we get a smile, sometimes they just follow us with their heads. In our matching outfits and Knievel helmets, it’s pretty hard to ignore us. There’s a custom amongst North American bikers, when they pass each other on opposite sides of the road, to reach out their left hand (on the clutch, so it’s possible – unlike in the UK where you’d have to let go of the throttle), keeping it low (so it comes out diagonally) as a form of greeting to other bikers. People have variants with what they do with their hands – a peace V sign, an OK sign, a thumbs up, a flat hand. I’m always delighted when they do it do us. I know that we’re a bike, but I always feared we might not be included into the biking community. Mike has developed our own tag, he holds out his thumb and first two fingers – for our 3 wheels. 

Mapreading.

I can’t tell my left from my right. A problem, and cause of a few riproaring early arguments. So now a Garmin GPS resides in front of the handlebars, seemlessly removing the need for the dyslexic navigator. Or a wife at all, really.
We can cover about 350 miles a day, relatively comfortably. With stopping to film stuff, that’s about tops. Though we have – as with everything – taken a while to learn that. Our route tends to be dictated by where the stories are – so, for example, we knew we had to make it to Salt Lake City to get to the Mormons at some point, and a friend in Portland told us the best route to take to get there which would take in more interesting sites than the interstate freeways which have pretty much dominated our trip so far.

A day in the life

We have two different types of day – doing days and driving days.
1. Doing days. There are a huge number of things to be doing every time we stop, especially if we have access to the internet. Mike has to log all the film from the 5 cameras, creating files by interview or by day in each location. He then has to transfer and back it up on various hard drives, which eventually get sent back to our director/editor in London. This takes HOURS. If he manages to finish that, which is unusual because of the length of time it takes, he will create short edits to upload to the website. The interviews are usually so long and now so abundant that we simply haven’t had time to create anything from them – so edits tend to be of points of interest (ear pulling final at eskimo olympics, or footbag world champion) or Clear interactions (fights, crashes, etc). At some point, we hope to get the interviews up online, but if not, they will be chewed through for the eventual documentary.

The website, despite looking a little ropey (through no fault of the awesome designer, Tom Dearden – tomdearden.com -  rather the rare updates from us), takes a huge amount of work. Every entry needs a latitude and a longitude for it to be featured on the map, and the photos all need to be geotagged. I write the daily updates on the road, then upload them in bulk – but even that takes ages, and we often go for a while without being able to upload, which means the site gets stale quickly. As you may have noticed…

I am social secretary (as we always said, I’m the mouth, Mike’s the trousers): so I’m in charge of research, PR and web updates – and where we stay. Which basically means that everytime we stop anywhere, I need to get to the bottom of what that place is about and try and find a couple which embodies it. If we’re heading to somewhere large, then I try to start the conversations as early as possible so that we can find good people to interview.

But often that’s not possible so we try and hit the web as soon as we arrive anywhere. An example of how I find people – I knew in Alaska that I wanted to find representatives of the Russian community, to capture the state’s links with its neighbour. So I started off thinking that I’d find a Russian Orthodox couple, and got online – trying to find Russian Orthodox communities near Anchorage. Nothing really came up – until I was flicking through a book on Alaska in a bookshop and I saw a photo of Russian Old Believers’ community called Nikolaevsk. So I got online, found out that it’s a reclusive community which preserves the traditions of its original church – kind of Alaska’s answer to the Amish. I then found the name of woman in the community and called her up, explained what we are doing and she agreed to meet us. You just never know whether you’re going to get a yes or a no, but hey, it’s worth a shot. Recently, I have been sending requests to experts in sociology, marriage, sex therapy, etc, with great success. We interviewed two of the US authorities in their fields, both appeared willingly – intrigued by our mad project. Getting people to agree to contribute is so satisfying that it makes all the hard work worth it.  
My father has also been helping with research (our Head researcher is currently involved with a Channel 4 documentary but should be back on the project in the next couple of weeks!) Dad has been awesome, finding GOLD DUST leads in Vancouver and Salt Lake City. He’ll phone up excitedly with a new and crazy idea which he’ll disappear off trying to make happen… The man is very good at this!

The rest of Doing days are then filled with interviewing couples. We tend to have to be in places for a while so that we can find then interview people – also because the best research is done on the ground. Lots of doorknocking and shoulder tapping from me. Who knows how I’m going to manage in Spanish… I think probably not. Perhaps that will be the excuse to have enough time to edit the couples’ interviews.
When I can, I try to do PR. This is very very time-consuming and deeply unrewarding. Unless you have a way in, all you do is send a press release to the great press release email bucket and hope. I emailed 10 radio stations (as local as possible) in Vancouver and 4 local TV stations and only got one bite – from a student radio phone in online. Hmmmm. All that for around 3 hours of work finding names and tailoring press releases.

The interviews: we try to go to the couples’ houses and film them in a place which they feel comfortable in and which sums them up. Women on the left of shot, man on the right. Mike sets up the camera and frames the shot, I mic up the couples and ask the questions. The interviews usually take an hour or so, longer if there’s loads we want to get to the bottom of. They are usually surprisingly tiring – and emotional. The couples often, even usually, cry – mostly from happiness or overwhelmed by emotion. It’s very moving to be part of it, and often we cry too. Saying goodbye is really sad, because we know that we’re not going to have the time to be as in touch with people as we’d like to be as we return to our whirlwind – but here’s hoping that we see some of them in London someday.

2. Driving days. After hanging around somewhere (usually if there’s a clean bed and friendly faces), we’ll suddenly realise that we have to bust our guts to get somewhere by an all new deadline. It’s usually thousands of miles away, and we usually have left ourselves too short an amount of time – especially since the topspeed of the bike is 65mph (depending on favorable tailwinds). Mike does pretty much all the driving – he’s amazing because the bike is heavier than a regular bike and being buffered by the wind to boot is totally knackering. I sleep a lot of the time (I really have turned into a human koala – probably sleeping around 12-14 hours a day) so he’s left with only the music to keep him awake. Very occasionally, if it’s a really long day, I’ll take over the driving for an hour or so to let him get some sleep and recharge before he takes over again. We have a charger in the bike so I can now type when we’re on the road, which is where all this gubbins comes from. 

We tend only to do interviews during these few days of burning it up if they land at our feet. We might occasionally detour if there’s a specific site with a fascinating story, but usually we’re tired and a bit tense. And I can’t be arsed to throw myself at strangers. In Dawson City, after 8 hours of driving, I decided we had to have a goldminer. So I left Mike having a kip, headed to the tourist information board, who said I should either go to one of a number of bars where miners hang out (!!) or call the town historian, John Gould. I got his number and tried it repeatedly. After a few times of trying that, I thought s*d it, and dragged Mike with me to go find his house and knock on his door on the offchance that a) he was in (with his wife) and b) they’d be up for it. A long shot, but it paid off and we had a great evening with the Goulds. Lots of laughs, a great interview (as featured on the Canada edit on the site), and then beers with them after the camera was turned off. We left, quick dinner, bed, on the road for another 10 hours of driving. And they turned out to be our only Yukon interview – but who better to capture the Gold Rush spirit of the Yukon than a 90 year old goldminer whose father staked the family claim during the Gold Rush on which John had worked all his life?

Filming

Apart from filming couples, we are supposed to be filming ourselves. This is much much harder than you’d think: there are only two of us. Oh for the Nissan vans of support crew in Long Way Down! So generally we have an argument then remember that we should have had the cameras on… We never have time to do the detailed post-couple analysis which we had planned to do either. Time is a real problem: every minute of the day is filled up. Which is great – we’re working really hard, but having a ball – but there’s no real downtime. The real ballache is that everytime we want to film on the road, we have to stop, get out the camera, set up the tripod, leave the camera running and drive away from the camera (leaving it to the elements – and the opportunists…) which adds hours to our journey time. But does make for some amazing shots. Our director, Ant, back at base, gives us feedback on what’s working, what’s not, what we need more of, less of, etc. We have hundreds of hours of footage already. I weep for the editor on this one!

But for the moment, it’s Mike working his magic to get short edits up online. Here’s hoping they add up to something awesome.