Going The Distance

We head back to my friend’s flat to do the interviews. The first will be Helen and Lucy talking us through the results of the previous scan, the second an interview with just Helen by Sue. We’re set to spend all day with Sue and John, with them filming just us. So this is just the start.

It’s difficult to write about the first interview because the aforementioned fellow who I feel real attachment to won’t let me ‘fess up the results of the first set of tests, housed in the famous envelope. So you’ll just have to wait for the book/the documentary for that one.

But the interview with Helen is totally fascinating. Not least because Sue, the Canadian documentary producer, is fantastic, drawing the extremely good Helen on questions about why marriage as an institution still exists at all if divorce is at an all time high, and if general confidence in the institution should appear to be fading. Helen, the biological anthropologists, talks to humans’ need to couple up. It lasts about an hour, and (given that it is 1am and we have been sitting in a plane waiting in vain to take off in heavy snow for 4 hours) I can’t remember much of it. But I’m delighted to say that we have every single minute on tape so I don’t need to feel guilty about dodgy grey matter. Again, it’ll make the book…

It’s around now that I start to feel rubbish. Really rubbish. Like little-kid-gets-flu rubbish. This feeling with last for the next 5 days.

Once again, Dr Lucy Brown has given us 2 lengthy questionnaires to fill in before we meet. It’s curiously wonderful to fill in these questionnaires, which delve into how the two of us feel about each other, how we feel about ourselves, how we react to everyday situations, and what we treasure in our relationship.

The brainscan is scheduled to start at 9.45am at NYU’s Center for Neural Science. We have two hours and every minute of the session costs $15. Which means that there can be no arsing about. At all. Last time, Mike’s little claustrophobia attack gave everyone the willies because it ate into valuable time. Not so this time, we’re pros.

The CBC documentary crew set up all their equipment, and I’m up first. The fMRI scanner is a beast of a machine, located behind heavy locked doors at the NYU neurology department. It’s a huge block of metal with a hole in the middle, with a gurney which slides into the centre. It is basically a massive magnet.

For this reason, absolutely no metal is allowed near the scanner – earrings out, belts off, coins out, underwire bra off. I lie on the gurney, familiar with the process this time. Dr Helen Fisher is the hand holder at this point, getting a prop for under my knees, a blanket for warmth. Keith, the guru of the fMRI – he runs the machines and knows the brain well- gives me earplugs because the machine is violently loud. Foam is then put either side of my head to protect my ears further, then a Hannibal Lectur cage is lowered onto my head to hold it in position. Above my eyes is a small mirror which is angled so that I can see a screen at the back of the tube.

As I’m being slowly moved into the central hole, there’s a clunk. Disaster is only nearly averted as a quarter leaps from my pocket to the inside of the tube, slowed by the blanket. No blanket and I could have cost us all thousands…

Once the quarter is retrieved, I slowly glide into the tunnel. For the first ten minutes, they are just trying to get images of the brain without any stimulus. I lie fairly contentedly for a few minutes until I’m seized by the need to scratch my nose. Not cool. I breathe through it, trying not to move my head. I then panic that no images have appeared on the rear screen yet, so I wave my hand which is protruding from the base of the tunnel. No worries, I’m told. They are about to start.

The scientists are looking for neural activity in reaction to three sets of stimulus. Mike and I have provided three photos of each other to the NYU team in advance (of our first brainscan all those months ago). The basic idea is that there are three types of love in our brain: romance, attachment and sex.

We have to provide photos of the other one’s face which inspires those feelings. For romance, I have a black and white photo of Mike’s face smiling during our first dance. For attachment (the feeling of comfort and security with a partner), I have a photo of him smiling on a holiday in Beirut which I really love and inspires happy memories (I have to confess, I found this a hard sentiment to capture in a photo) and finally, of sex, a photo of his head on a pillow (also a very difficult one to do – “make a sexy face Mike!” “erm…”).

The brainscan works in blocks of about ten minutes. First romance, then attachment, then finally sex. The image of Mike in our first dance appears. I haven’t seen it for a while (well, 8 months since we were last here) and I smile hard then get tears in my eyes. Probably a good reaction, but you just never know if what’s happening in the old walnut during this thing is right. But generally, with the romance, I throw myself into memories of how I felt at the wedding, some of Mike’s most romantic gestures (he was surprisingly good at them in the early days – romance is, as you’d expect, very linked with the feelings of the early days. Dr Fisher later says that it is unusually to see strong feelings of romance last longer than around 3 years in a couple. Of course, there are wonderful exceptions) That said, there were moments on our trip which were magically romantic – as I lie on that gurney, I think of lying on a Scottish tartan rug in the deserted southwest of Oregon, with Mike beside me, staring up at the inky black sky alive with glittering stars, during one of the few summer nights of meteor showers when the sky seems to be striking matches, and feeling like my heart was swollen with love for this man as we talked for hours into the night before crawling into our own little world of the tent by our bike. Our little daily signal to tell the other that we loved them, whilst in the shared solitude of the bike’s long journeys, was something we learnt from a couple in Fairbanks: 4 squeezes which say I love you (2 for love – so, forgive the dodgy Morse code: 1 – 11 – 1). They taught it to us because they said that they liked to be able to ‘say’ I love you without other people knowing, and Mike and I have embraced it wholeheartedly. I squeezed my own leg in the formation (I would put my hand up onto Mike’s thigh as he drove, and he’d reach across and do it to my hand).

We were asked to provide a photo of someone who we felt totally indifferent about. This is a tough one (how do you ask someone if you can take a photo of them because you feel totally indifferent about them?) – I used a security guard at my clients’ building. I happened to remember him from ten years earlier when he was security during a brief stint I did at Warner Music so occasionally I chat to him. He’s a perfectly nice guy, but I feel nothing about him.

Romance: Mike’s face for around 10 seconds, then the ‘nothing’ face, then we are presented with a fairly large number (like 2035) on a white screen and, beforehand, told to count down from it in increments of 7. This desperate concentration basically flushes out the feelings of anything at all. Mike’s face again. ‘Nothing’ face. Number. Alternated a bit, but repeated 4 or 5 times.

All the while, the machine is punching the air around me in loud blasts as it ploughs through my brain taking images slice by slice. Particularly creepy when the eyeballs are in shot.

Romance over, onto attachment – same process with ‘nothing’ face and numbers but with the attachment photo this time. Attachment is a harder one to evoke. I feel it more strongly than ever now that we have finished this trip. A feeling of complete trust and contentment with one person. What swirls in my head during this time is a happy cocktail of shared jokes, laughter in good and bad times on the road, the peace that I felt in the sidecar when I looked up to his face and watched him driving, the thought of having children with him, the life we are building with each other, my love of being around him generally. I smile everytime the picture comes up.

As the scan goes on, I get sleepier and I worry that I’m not giving them the brainjuice that they need. Then I worry that this worry is going to throw the results out totally. Then I try and think of nothing and get back to the job in hand.

I’m mad.

Finally, sex. Now, this one is a bit different from the other two because it’s so physical. The first time we had our brains scanned all those months ago, I had terrible jetlag and was suffering from the aftereffects of the yellow fever jab was so feeling wretched and was very worried after the scan about the first two. But when it was time to think sexy thoughts, I really had no problem. I’m not quite so randomly horny this time, but I don’t have a problem. Apparently, that’s fairly normal and is why they leave this one until last.

After the sex block is over, they put on a DVD (of Planet Earth this time, of The Simpsons last time) for 10 minutes to get more of the control pictures of the brain. I fall asleep and only wake up when my hand falls off the gurney. Since the last time that we did the scan, they have got a new device which allows them to see where we look during the images. This new technology has opened the door to whole new studies where individuals are shown films and researchers monitor what part of the screen their eyes are looking at during certain frames – this could well dramatically change the way that we are presented images (surely if they know that we are concentrating on one corner of the screen in, say, a scary bit, they’ll make that corner more interesting? etc). In our case, however, they use it to make sure that we’re not asleep during the study. They are fine with me falling asleep at the end – otherwise they would have woken old koala bear here up.

I’m motored out of the tunnel, all good. I go into the study area on the other side of the glass, and Mike heads in. He seems much calmer than last time, and sure enough, he has no problems. In the hour or so that he is in the scanner, I chat to Helen about my feelingsduring the scan, which she documents. This time, she is keen to know how they compare to last time too. I tell her that attachment was easier to evoke this time. She is surprised – her hypothesis with us too is that we would return having fuelled our romantic feelings towards each other with the whirlwind and magic of travel.

The reality, I tell her, in my experience, is that travel is far from romantic. Yes, it’s about sharing experience and creating memories together but most of the day to day reality is not romantic at all – it’s practical even. It’s about learning to get a strong instinct for each other’s moods, about sharing the highs and, more importantly, the lows. Especially when Mike and I are sharing a professional dream here too, an all consuming project which we have both invested ourselves entirely in. The stress is daily and follows waves which are relatively unpredictable. My pride and my happiness in what we have achieved lies much more in the attachment area than the romance: what I now feel for Mike is a love much deeper than I could ever have anticipated. When we started, neither of us could understand how we could love each other more, but somehow we both do, and it’s because of the fact that we have shared EVERYTHING – from the random panic attacks, the desperate frustration at trying to get interviews or great shots, to the same thoughts.

And I say to her that I actually value attachment much more than romance. Romance, to me, feels like the cheap flirt of the family. The butterflies in the tummy at the start of the love affair, the fire that burns bright but not for long, the reaction that has people blind to faults, has people seeing only what they want to see. Attachment is the truth laid bare, it’s the eyes wide open, the acceptance, the feeling of total completion by another human being. It’s happiness and it’s my whole world.

She says she’s never thought of it like that before. The truth is that all three are important in a relationship, she says. And I say yes, but that I like the Big A the best. The other two are great but they are cheap.

The reason that we’re back here in New York is to have our brains scanned once again with Dr Helen Fisher and Dr Lucy Brown to see what has changed in the way that we feel about each other after all this time on the road.

In addition, we are being filmed by a Canadian documentary crew doing a programme on marriage. Specifically, ‘why do people still get married?’. They are talking to experts, and focusing on 3 young couples with different ideas about marriage. One of whom is little old us.

We land in New York, after a hideous 20 hour flight marathon from BA via Santiago and Toronto (?!), crash out then head out to meet Sue, the documentary producer and John, the cameraman, for dinner.

The dinner was exactly what my neurotic head needed. Having been very concerned in Buenos Aires that what we had done was of little interest to the outside world, Sue and John asked lots of questions, and listened to us chat and basically vent our concerns about what we are making as a documentary. Having both being in the documentary field for over 20 years, they soothed our troubled minds. Sue reassured us that noone really knows what they are doing (and anyone who pretends they do is not to be trusted…); that it’s vital – even though very very hard – to watch over every second of footage that you have shot because what you remember is always different from what you captured and you’ll be surprised (though it will take you ages); that we should give ourselves a break – and celebrate what we have, rather than berate ourselves for what we don’t. They listened, seemingly focused (thank you Sue and John) not to only our worries, but our naive methodology, and all in all, the dinner was the most useful and soothing that could have welcomed us to the city. After winging it throughout the trip, finally, we could have a heart to heart with the professionals.

If you ever find yourselves in Ushuaia, may I recommend the Double Decker City Tour. Not least because the English translation is now written and read out by me! (We stayed with the couple who run it, and we offered to replace the version that they had as a thank you – Mike is the editor!)

I’m now on the plane back to civilisation and real life. A wave of sadness crashed over me as I took my seat on the plane, and I looked out over the beautiful bay of Ushuaia and cried and the thought of all this being over. Half tears of sadness – leaving the bike was much harder than Mike or I had anticipated, as I watched it pull away for the last time, again I shed a tear. Mike kissed the tank to wish it on its way, also for the fact that I’m cross with myself for wishing away the last month on the road, which now I long to do over (just as I knew I would). That said, they were tears of happiness too, at the thought of all the people that we have met along the way, all the places we have seen, all the things we have learnt. It’s been such an extraordinary trip for the fact that we are far from tourists, we never see the things that the travellers we meet talk about, but every single location we have passed through has been brought to life by the people we have met.

Mike and I spent our last night on the road, at the end of the world, arguing. And really pretty hard. I’d say that it was our biggest argument in months, in fact. After a day spent largely apart (he was working on the bike with Dean, I was translating the City Tour guide voiceover), we reunited for dinner, having bid the bike farewell, and the realisation of this trip being over having hit both of us in its own way.

I told Mike that though I had not put the results of the envelopes on facebook, I had emailed 3 of our friends to tell them what the envelopes contained. Mike was very angry about this. Why hadn’t we talked about it? He asked. The decision to share the contents of the envelope with anyone, he said, was one that we should have made together. I have never felt as strongly about what the envelope contains as he has, so it’s true, I should have consulted him. But I felt cross that he had had such a go at me. Inevitably, the argument spiralled and we found ourselves on a freezing cold, dark street outside a pub where we had planned to meet our friends to celebrate the last night on the road.

I’m guilty of silence in arguments. I don’t like to argue (a characteristic which is very unhealthy in relationships – arguments are vital, we’re told, for expressing and resolving differences of opinion) and so I tend to go very quiet. It’s horrible for Mike as he is almost totally unable to penetrate my cloud of stewing resentment. One of the other things we have learnt during this process is that while men experience a sudden burst of rage which passes, women’s neurological processes mean that they are unable to let an argument go so quickly and are left festering long after a fight is over.

Well, that was where I was. I felt so distant from Mike and like we had learnt nothing during these 8 months on the road. I felt like I was the one who relied on my friends (wanting so desperately to share the results with the loyal few who have followed us) and that he was able to be so much more distant, and calculating almost. I was, of course, wrong. We have learnt mountains about each other on this trip, and actually, arguments are almost the way that a couple learns. Mike really wanted to tell his friends to their faces. Which is a totally reasonable desire. He worries that people just aren’t going to be interested in what we have done once they know what that envelope contains – why not keep a bit of suspense for the return party? Fair enough.

The argument ultimately stemmed from our total exhaustion. Not just from the stress of the last week, but the stress of the last 8 months. And the pressure of what awaits us now. We live in a kind of shadow, under the terror of what now will become of everything that we have worked to create. Mike is much more practical about it than I am, but when I think about how little we have been able to capture of our own relationship dynamic (through lack of a third person to film us and our interactions as they happen), I get very stressed. I feel the pressure of all the people who have believed in us to make something of this trip. God, I hope we can…

At the beginning of the journey, Mike and I decided to test our relationship scientifically (as well as the inevitable test of 8 months on the road). We underwent three tests:
1. A brainscan at NYU to assess neurological activity in various parts of the brain. The basic idea is that 3 areas of the brain are responsible for “love”, and when I was shown pictures of Mike (and vice versa) that inspired activity in those centres, the scientists would analyse it to be able to tell us how we feel about each other.

2. A DNA test. The basic principle of this test is that pheromones play an important role in our choice of partner: we subconsciously try and choose a partner with an immune system as different as possible from our own, in order that our children might have the greatest resistance to disease.

3. Psychology. We spent an entire day doing various tests with a Gottman-certified therapist (Gottman is world-reknowned for his work at analysing relationships, and with one particular test, being able to predict with 94% certainty the likelihood of a couple staying together)

We put the results of these three tests into an envelope to be opened at the end of our journey. If the results are positive, the plan was to renew our vows. If the results our negative, we are considering divorce…

And today’s the day.
_____________________________________

The Big Day dawns bright. We’re ready.

We have found a beautiful old boat, the Barracuda, with an English-speaking Ushuaian captain, Danilo, who is empowered to renew our vows if the envelopes come out with a positive answer. He will be the one to open the three envelopes and read the results.

A local TV station wants to video the entire event and interview us. So we had a presenter and cameraman organised too.
Mike had organised for a local divorce lawyer, Oscar Vidal, to be present at the opening, so that he could be ready to initiate divorce proceedings if the results came out positive.

We bought a ring. I bought a plastic top hat and $5 veil and some heart-shaped balloons in case things went our way.

I got increasingly nervous as the hour approached. I’ve been very blase’ about the envelope, blithely assuming that it would be positive – and if not, well, hell, it was ignorable, wasn’t it? Mike has been more concerned throughout. He often talked about the Pandora’s Box factor – if something bad came out, how would we be able to forget about it? That said, even he was less concerned as we got further south – saying that he was so sure, so totally positive, that we are a great couple, that it doesn’t matter.

We arrive at the boat on the bike. Suits on, everyone ready. And we get underway.

Capitan Danilo

We’re in the back room of the boat, its panoramic windows open out on the city of Ushuaia. The captain, in full regalia, readies himself. We start with an interview for the local TV crew – how are you feeling? are you nervous? – the usual made-for-tv stuff. Then we stand sombrely in front of the captain as he works his way through the three envelopes, with us reacting to each answer.

After much discussion, Mike and I have decided not to publish the results of the tests. We’d like to

be able to tell you in person at our return party on March 13th in London. For those of you who won’t be there, I promise I’ll put them up here on March 14th, complete with pictures of the event – and our brains!

I can tell you though that they were totally fascinating. Again, more details to follow.

The blog doesn’t end there, folks. To your disappointment – not to mention my own.

The next stage of the adventure: selling the bike. Easier written than done, it would appear. I won’t bore the tits off you, but basically, it’s against the law in Argentina to buy or sell second hand motorbikes. And since Mike’s name is all over the documents, and the Argentinian computer systems, it makes sense not to cut any corners.

Argentina has really loved the bike. We have attracted crowds in this country bigger than any other that we have been through (probably exactly because second hand bikes are illegal here and import taxes on new vehicles from the US are through the roof so there are no Urals and nothing like them in this country). So when we put a For Sign sale on the bike here in Ushuaia, we were inundated with blokes interested in buying it. Really serious about it, but without realistic solutions on how to get around the law (“you could drive it across the Chilean border then we could ship it back in a truck” that kind of thing). Very stressful.

One man, Luis (who has turned out to be a blessing from heaven, and with whom we are now kipping), came the closest to having an answer. Classic vehicle registrations, border crossings, other ideas. Costly, but just about viable. We need to get rid of the bike before we leave because it’s Mike’s name on the papers, but even this was not the ideal solution. Lots more driving, which is the one thing we’re keen to avoid. Much as I love the donkey, nothing would be more depressing than having to spend days doubling back.

Just as we were beginning to lose all hope, fate intervened.

12km away from downtown Ushuaia, further along the wooden and winding coastline is the Parque National. 12km further into the park, the Panamerican highway ends as Argentina’s National Route 3 comes to a close, and a well-photographed sign. We needed a photo opportunity.

As we headed into the park, we passed a laden cyclist. As I mentioned before, Ushuaia is the great bottleneck of all the long distance travellers, so we pulled up beside him and asked how his trip had been. Turns out that he’s just arrived and planned to cycle to Alaska.

Dean is his name. He’s spent the last 4 years cycling up Africa from South Africa, arriving in Lisbon a few months ago. From there, he got a flight to BA with his bike, spent a couple of months learning Spanish in Montevideo, Uruguay, then got on a bus with the bike down here to start the great ride up South America.

Dean Fiore, new owner of the Ural, hands over the side panel to the old owners.

He pulled up beside the sign as we were recording our final piece to camera with the bike (much “I can’t believe we’ve made it and we’re still married” etc). We explained that we were done with our journey and looking to sell the bike. And he said, with a certainty which surprised even him, that he wanted to buy it. He was fed up of two wheels and pedal power and had been asking himself how he was going to motivate himself to do it all over again.

So that’s what we’re up to now. Transferring ownership of the bike over to him, sorting it with Ural HQ (who own the bike) and Alaska (who own Mike’s ass).

Boring but true.
That said, Ushuaia is an awesome place to be stuck for a bit (unlike Bolivia…) It’s a big enough city, perched on the bay at the base of mountains (after the flat nothingness of North Eastern Patagonia, nothing could be more welcome than topography). It all feels very Scandinavian, and I love a bit of Scandy. It’s the main set off point for Antartic boat trips, so there are lots of tourists, all with a whiff of adventure about them. The town (sorry, “city” – it needs that status as it proudly states that it’s the southernmost city in the world) absorbs the tourists well, and maintains its own outdoorsy character without drowning in its many tourist tat shops. I like it a lot.

We have found a sea captain who is prepared to read out the results of the tests, and renew our vows if they come out affirmative. I have spent the afternoon buying “Te Quiero” balloons and the like. Mike has found a divorce lawyer who is on hand for if the results are negative (Mike has been disturbingly excited about this). THAT will be tomorrow’s little update. With any luck, the write up will be a little spicier than this prolonged bike yawn.

We made it.

The Clears and the Russian pulled in to the southernmost city in the Americas at 7.35pm on Friday, February 5th after 31,591km, 15 countries and 207 days. Not to mention 116 couples interviewed and over 400 hours of footage…

I can’t really believe that we’re here. All those dark days of wishing that I could be back in a world with a roof and routine are suddenly distant memories as I contemplate life without the bike and feel not only real sadness about it, but almost panic.

Mike confessed to camera that it feels like the bike is the third (and most reliable) member of our marriage. It’s been the three of us the whole way down (bar a couple of weeks in Bolivia which was not the bike’s fault but our own). The bike has made this trip – it’s started conversations, broken down barriers, got us interviews – got us noticed! The thought of all that being taken away is currently so hard to consider that it feels like a weight on our chests, and the planned elation at making it to the end is considerably more muted than we could ever have expected.

Surprise surprise, a big day of driving. This time, 2 borders to cross. Chile owns the Magellan Straits, so we have to cross into Chile, catch a small ferry to Tierra del Fuego, drive for a bit then cross back into Argentina. We’re told that the borders aren’t a big deal (but they are – because coachloads of people are travelling this route so the queues are horrendous).

We don’t set off early enough to make it back into Argentina. We bump into a Quebequois motorbiker whose bike has totally died here in Rio Gallegos. He’s stranded. Fixing the bike costs more than its worth so he’s deciding what to do. We sympathise, and pray that our little Russian friend will make it the rest of the way.

The novelty of bikers in this part of the world is low. Admittedly, our 3 wheeled friend is still the centre of much attention, but we really are aware that we are reaching the great biker bottleneck of Ushuaia: petrol station windows are covered in stickers proclaiming, in myriad languages, lengthy 2 wheel adventures; the road is peppered with bikers coming towards us – returning from touching the end of the world back to the real world. As always, the biker code is strong: lights flash, hands wave – acknowledgement of shared realized dreams.

It’s proper cold now. Really really freezing. We’re wearing everything we’ve got. No rain, just cold wind. We make it to the ferry for around 6.30pm, dangerously low on fuel. The ride is short, cold, blustery but beautiful. Spectacular to watch the end of the American landmass slowly disappearing. Two bikers from Utah are kind enough to give us their spare fuel, which gets us to San Sebastian. It’s late but it’s light when we arrive at the border, we’re freezing, the Chilean roads aren’t paved. We decide to camp in the one hotel just before the border in a remote cluster of buildings. It’s warm and wonderful and very very welcome at the end of yet another long and cold day’s driving.