Leaving it all Behind to Ride a Motorcycle Around the World | S1E06

Oh, someone's coming my way. Oh, there's a logging truck. Scary. My journey around the planet begins at North America's most northern drivable point. The plan is to ride through Canada and America before crossing over to Europe. From there, I'll make my way through the Middle East and Asia. After island hopping through Indonesia, it'll be Australia, and finally, New Zealand. The end of my journey will be marked by the southernmost point of the South Island. I'm calling it the Big Spiral, and this is act two to an Alaskan beginning. Alright, the bike is finally ready and it's time to start on this adventure. I've been waiting so long to do this. I've got the bags on the bike. I've got everything set up properly. I'm so stoked to go. So you gonna film me leaving? You wanna use my phone? Okay. So you can just press this to record that red one? Yeah. It's pretty heavy. Alright, it's time to go. Oh God, it's heavy. My dad filming me on the way out. I have to get my camera, my phone. You turned it off? I pressed it again, it's not filming right now. Let me get off the bike. Please. Yeah. You turn it on. Oh good. Then you go there. Until you are not visible anymore. Perfect. Yeah? Okay, I'm going now. Give me a hug. Yeah. Take care of yourself. Yeah. Be safe. Safe travels. I'll do my best. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Enjoy. Yeah. Bye. Bye bye. Oh, I can't believe it's happening actually. This is something I've been wanting to do for quite a while now. And I finally got all my ducks in a row to do this. Oh, I'm so excited. I can't believe this. This is the start. I'm heading towards Alaska. And from there, I'm going all around the planet. And I'm going to end up in New Zealand. That's the idea at least. That's the idea. Alright, let's find a quiet spot where I can show you guys the plan. Hopefully some shade because it is so hot out right now. How about over here? So in the production of these videos, I'm definitely going to be drawing some inspiration from other people. The first one is from Michael Palin. You might know him from Monty Python. But he also did a travel series. He's done many travel series in fact. And on one of them, he brought a little globe with him. So I'll call this Palin's Globe. It'll be handy to help me show you what the plan is. So the plan is to get from Vancouver. And we'll go through BC, Yukon, through Alaska to get to Prudhoe Bay. And that'll be technically the start of the trip. So my second source of inspiration would be Nora Lee from Itchy Boots. Good morning internet. It is quarter to eight in the morning. And welcome back to the channel. She does a lot of drawing on maps. I wouldn't say she's the first person to draw on maps. But she's definitely made it kind of her thing. I've done a lot of brainstorming about what's the best way to communicate to you guys. Where I'm going and what I want to do. And really, drawing on a map or pointing at a map is probably the best way to go. And also the easiest. So I'm going to do the paper map thing. Hopefully you guys don't get too angry at me about this. I know people can be pretty protective. But I think it'll be really helpful to show what the plan is. Alright, so I got my map here of British Columbia. And today the journey started in Abbotsford. So the plan for today is to hopefully get to Pemberton. But we'll see about that. And typically you'd probably go this way on the highway. But there's a road up Harrison Lake. That goes all the way up here that I've always wanted to do. And in fact, around here there's a hot spring that I really want to visit. So it's possible I may stop at the hot spring because there's a campground there. Or I may continue through to Pemberton. But I'm really excited for this one. Because I've always wanted to take this route up Harrison Lake. And I've always wanted to visit those hot springs. Alright, and we're off again. Alright, here's our turn off at Harrison Mills. It's going to be still a little bit of paved road. But soon we'll be on gravel. And the gravel. Sweet! I haven't really ridden the bike with all this weight on it. So I'm a bit nervous about it. So anyways, heading to Sloquette Hot Springs. I don't really know much about it. Other than that the access is a bit difficult. Well so far the road's good enough for minivans. The road's good enough for RVs too. Someone's coming my way. Oh a logging truck. Scary. Oh my god it's so dusty. I can't see anything. If I can I'd like to get down to the lake and take a little break. I think I can see a spot on my map where I can probably get down to the lake. There should be a right turn around here somewhere. Looks like it goes right to a beach. Easy on the throttle Eric. I don't think many people are going down here. Oh god. It's pretty punched out. Should go, should go. Alright we can do this, we can do this. Just worried about my front wheel getting deflected. This should be good, this should be good. Oh yeah. Okay. Oh a tree. I wonder if the jeeps can make it through. Alright nice deep pitch. Oh my god. Oh yeah there's a beach here. Oh I made the right choice didn't I. Oh this is so cool. Yes. Okay I can just park it here. Oh I can get on the beach I think. Okay let's get on the beach. Oh yeah. Oh this makes me so happy. Looks like some jeep got down here too. There's some tow trucks. Okay. Let's take a little break. Oh it's beautiful. I gotta do some yoga. Okay. Alright now I gotta go up the hill but I feel like that's gonna be easier than going down so. Alright so I have something to admit. I barely nearly lost the drone. I flew it behind a hill. When you lose signal the drone will automatically try to fly home. But the drone was set to 15 meters so basically it wants to fly home at 15 meters. Which is clearly not high enough to go over those trees and the mountain and everything else. It does have like some like proximity sensors on it. And right as it came back into signal I seen images like flying in the treetops and very confused and like oh my god. That would have been bad if I lost it the first the first ride. But alright. Now it's set to 200 something meters so it'll fly over those next time but because you're just kind of standing there. You have no signal. There's nothing you can do other than like kind of walk to a spot where you might get a better signal. And uh Meanwhile the drone is just kind of like bouncing around in the treetops like like a stupid robot you know. Anyways. Very glad I got it back. Because the other thing is if you lose the drone you lose the footage too because it's being recorded on the device. Anyways. Oh here's that spot I got nervous at. Okay here we go. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Woohoo. Oh this is really tough too. When in doubt throttle out. Woohoo. Oh yeah. Creek crossing. Backsliding out. Oh my god. Oh these rocks are a bit weird. Okay. Not exactly the line I wanted but I got it. I got it. I got it. There's the road. I'm so glad I went down there's so beautiful. Oh there's dust. I better be careful here. Make sure I don't get run over. Okay turn right. Woohoo. Okay so I kind of think what time is it? It's about 4 o'clock already that at the hot springs I'm just going to camp there and we'll ride through Pemberton tomorrow. Should be some camp spots I would think. Oh that temperature is so good. Oh it's so beautiful. Oh the light is getting really nice out now too. Oh it's beautiful right now. Oh look at these rocks. Woo. Oh my god is that ever beautiful. Oh watch out for the gravel. Oh my god. Looking at this it's amazing up here I had no idea. It's an interesting feeling in here with the tall trees but also these slush piles and stuff. Huh. Pretty in here. Boats here and stuff. Is it all logging? Are they floating logs down the lake? Oh there's people swimming. Huh cool. Yeah they must be floating logs because it's a whole pile of them here. It's clearly a big logging camp here. Big ol' log plucker I guess. I don't know what it's called. I'm going to call it the log plucker. Oh wow these trees are beautiful here. My navigation says to turn right so I just want to double check because it seems a bit Is there a gas station here? Okay I have to go see that. There's a gas station. What the heck. Alright if I go straight and turn right there should be a gas station. But maybe it's First Nations gas station? Yeah oh there is a gas station. And cool drinks. I can't pass up the opportunity to get something to drink. Oh there. And air too. Very good. Alright well that was really nice surprise cold drink. So I'm actually a little embarrassed to say this but I don't know how to pronounce that the name. Zatsta? First Nation? Yeah the beautiful totem pole there. Yeah what a great place to live. Basically this is the north end of Harrison Lake. We've traveled the full length of the lake now. Yeah so we're actually getting pretty close to the hot springs now. It's about 10k away according to my map. Good how are you? Alright I was hoping. What's that? It's warm? It's so warm yeah. Are you the caretaker here? Sure. Oh yeah cool. I was hoping to stay the night and go to the hot springs. Yep. $20 per vehicle per night. Alright I can provide you with $20. Right now you'll be the only one up there for tonight. Awesome that's exactly what I want to hear. I figured on a Tuesday it should be fairly quiet. Pretty quiet yeah. Where are you from? I just came up from Abbotsford actually. How was it? Not bad. The road was better than I thought. I always heard that this road was like the road from Abbey was really rough but it's not. It's pretty good. You got something that's a short wheelbase. Yeah it helps yeah for sure. How do you pronounce the name of the town down there? Tepella. Tepella? Yeah. Okay. The X messes me up. That one is my native language. That one's Hakcha. Hakcha. Yeah. But the regular white man version is Tepella. Hakcha. So why is it so different then? Tepella is when the logging company was down there and Hakcha is my first nation's name. Like my nation. Hakcha is power of people. That's awesome. What a beautiful place you live in. Can I get your name? Yeah Eric. E-R-I-C. Sweet. And then just go pick a spot that a table is available. What year is this bike? 2024 actually. It doesn't look anything like it does from stock. I completely modified it. So it's a KLX 300. Oh you got dual tanks on there. Yeah. It's like a split tank. It goes all the way down there and stuff. Both sides? Yeah. So I can do like 500k on it. Actually this is like my first kind of long road trip with it. So yeah. Okay. I'll find a spot. Go and enjoy. Alright. Thank you. Have a good one. Well I've officially had my first mosquito bite of the trip. They're not too bad but they're definitely around. So now I'm going to try and find these hot springs. It's not obvious actually. There's no sign saying hot springs this way with a big arrow. So I'm just kind of walking around. Trail's got a bit steep. And I'm wearing flip flops. Oh it smells like sulfur. That's a good sign. Uh oh. Is it warm? Oh it's really hot. Oh my god. They are so hot. I'm really surprised. Usually, not all the springs but a lot of springs in BC are just kind of lukewarm. These are really hot. In fact, it's almost uncomfortable. They're so hot. They put all these little shelves or whatever in and it should get cooler the further you go down. Okay that was super cold. Alright I'm going to go upstream. I think I saw a waterfall. And I'm wondering if it's a hot waterfall. If it is, that would be awesome. It might be too hot to stand under. Oh my god. It's actually going to burn me actually. It's that hot so I'm not going to do that. I bet some crazy Scandinavians would do it but not me. This is really hot. Well, that may have been one of the nicest hot springs I've been to in BC. But the thing is this is the first day of my massive trip. Probably the first day of like, I don't know 600 days? Who knows how long it's going to take but it's going to be a massive undertaking. And I don't know I'm just really excited. But the one thing that kind of, you know life is about balance, right? And before this I went to my friend James' wedding. And I saw a lot of old friends and you know, a lot of people that I care about. Yeah, I'm leaving them behind. They'll still be here when I get back but you know it is kind of sad that I'm just taking off and I know some people are a little upset with me for you know, always leaving but I don't know, I just love traveling so much and but you know I'm just really excited for this trip and really excited for the adventures it's going to take me on. And if this is how it starts, like it can only get better from here, right? But anyways I hope you guys choose to follow me along on this trip and you know, I won't be able to do it without a lot of you guys watching so if you're into it hit subscribe and notification bell too, possibly? Anyways yeah I'm really excited for this and I hope you guys are too. Do it again! Vroom! Oh no! I don't want to be in it! Edit it out!