You’re Not Weak. How to Beat the 10 Solo Long Distance Fears

You're not weak. Your solo long-distance fears are real concerns. As a woman who rides solo, here's how I address those 10 biggest fears you have about riding solo. I've ridden mostly alone across the country and back to Tail the Dragon, Key West, the Ozarks, Sturgis multiple times, all of which are long videos you can watch on this channel. And not just as a woman, but as a rider on the road alone. I get a lot of questions about how I stay safe on these long trips. First question being, are you afraid of aggressive drivers or even just aggressive people on the road? Someone with bad intentions looking for a victim. So as far as aggressive drivers on the road, my forever philosophy is don't bring a bike to a car fight. Sure, sometimes car drivers are not doing the right thing or are not paying attention. You are very vulnerable on a bike. No reason to prioritize being right or making a point when you're on a bike and someone's in a car and you don't know what their mental state is. I just prioritize my safety, being polite, not necessarily always being right. Thank you, or if needed, apology waves. As far as people not necessarily drivers, in general, I just use common sense. Trust your instincts. Your dog could sense that your ex-girlfriend was not good for you. If you can trust your dog's instincts, you can trust your own. As far as protection goes and all of that, I'm not going to address that publicly, but I do make it at a point to address that. That's all I'm going to say about that. Even if something just feels wrong, prioritize your safety over being nice. I'd much rather you be wrong and maybe thought someone had bad intentions when they didn't. Maybe they really did just want a small talk, but maybe they didn't. Your life is not worth the risk of hurting someone's feelings. They'll be fine. The next concern is the fear of getting injured, especially alone in a desolate area. I recently crashed and it's why I'm filming in my garage instead of out on the road on a beautiful spring day. When I went down, I could not get up for several minutes. Luckily, there were people around to help, but here's what I would have done if there was no one around. Call 911. If you don't have signal, I now have a satellite phone. The satellite in your iPhone is not good enough. You literally need to search for signal for it. If you are down and injured, you cannot walk around searching to line up your phone with the satellite. Not to mention, some satellite phones, like one that I have, I'll link to down below, actually has medical assistance so you can get medical advice. The gear you're wearing can make a huge difference between a bad couple minutes or a bad several months. So just wearing full protective gear and ride extra cautiously, especially in the desolate areas, can make a huge difference. So what about the fear of just being tired? Fear of fatigue and drowsiness? Definitely do not ride while tired. Statistically speaking, you may actually be more in danger of being in an accident while tired than under the influence of alcohol. When I ride on my own, different one have a group. When I'm a group, I usually just stick with the group as long as they're riding within my riding ability. But on my own, I do not push myself at all. I take a lot of breaks. And the later in the day or even the later in the trip I am, the more breaks I need. For instance, very first day, first morning that I'm doing a trip, I can usually go for a couple hours and still feel very comfortable. But even if I'm comfortable, I will make myself stop at the two hour mark or so just so I can stretch and move and drink water. And once I get off that bike and I'm taking that break, I suddenly realize like, oh, wow, I did have to go to the bathroom. I was thirsty. I was hungry. I feel so refreshed. I didn't even realize it. But once it's been later in the day or later in the trip, I need to stop like every hour and a half because I'm getting tired. My body's hurting. I'm hungry. I'm thirsty. I'm tired. Taking frequent breaks, I realize has made a huge difference how my body feels, reducing that achy body soreness level and how tired I feel at the end of the day. If I push myself so hard when I get to the hotel room that night, I just want to pass out and sleep and maybe not even eat dinner, which is also not a good recovery for you. But if I do take a lot of breaks, drink water, take snacks, I'm having a much better night's sleep because my body's not hurting. I have the energy to eat a good meal. It's just it's just great. I love taking breaks and being chill. Y'all keep telling me, what about Iron Butt? I do not want to do Iron Butt. Absolutely not. I like to go slow, enjoy the scenery, and relax on the road. What about the fear of loneliness? Personally, I find a solo road trip very relaxing. When I used to work a full-time office job and the bulk of my riding was commuting, I just loved silence in my helmet. It was so calming to me. But once I started doing some long-distance riding and I'm riding all day, I'll listen to music. And I would listen to audiobooks more, but they're much quieter in my helmet. So if I'm going highway speeds, they're harder to hear. Audiobooks, if you got a Cardo or a Sena, you can call people. But for me, when I'm long-distance riding, it's mostly just music. The reason I do ride solo so much is because I would rather ride alone than be riding in a group where I just feel lonely. So I had a lot more solo riding on the earlier part of my channel. But since then, I have found some people that I love to ride with, like The Medicine Will Ride to Sturgis, and now Maria and Whitney are some of the best road trip buddies ever. But if you're that kind of person that just needs other people, then solo road trips probably is not for you. But if you really like your alone time, you might love solo road trips. Okay, so what about running out of fuel? All my long-distance trips have all done with pretty hefty tanks, where I had about 200 miles to the gallon, depending on my speed and how I was riding. There are parts of the U.S. where it's so desolate, where there were times where I didn't know if I was going to make it to the next gas station. I would plan my stops, not just stop when I felt like it, where I'm like, oh, I'll stop when I see another gas station. No, no, no, no. I put the gas station stops on my route so that I know exactly, okay, I'm stopping at 150 miles, 150 miles, 150 miles. Because you don't want to be thinking that you're just going to stop when you feel like it, and when you feel like it happens to be in one of those dead zones in the center of U.S. where there's nothing and nobody, Area 51, and abandoned missile bunkers. Check out my cross-country series if you don't know what I'm talking about. Another concern is poor cell signal in remote areas. So remember how I mentioned earlier about satellite phones and not relying on your iPhone satellite feature, because it's just, it's not going to be reliable. I can also attest that some of those iPhone apps that say they will notify someone that's following you and tracking you when you go down. I tested it last month and it did not work. If you are using your phone, maybe you're mounting it on your handlebars, you're using it as a GPS, don't do what I did and get just any cheap phone mount off of Amazon. Because when I did that, the vibration from the handlebars ruined my camera lens and I had to replace my whole phone. I mean, that's what I used to film a lot of these videos. So what I have on my bike now is a mount made for mountain bikers and motorcyclists and it has a vibration dampener in it and it's the Peak Design phone mount. So you can get it with the cover so that it can attach and it's magnetic and clips. So it's, it's not coming off. I got the one with the magnetic wallet and there are different colors too and different styles you can get. I also just did a wireless charging one. You can get a mount that you can connect into your bike and it'll charge your phone wirelessly. And I have the handlebar mount, but you can get ones that mount on different parts of your bike. So shout out Peak Design for being a sponsor of this video. I will link to that down below. Another fear is what about weather? Especially going across vast distances. My family was particularly concerned about me riding across America. They said the center of U.S. was windy and I'm thinking, what's wrong with wind? What's the, what's the big deal about that? Well, when you're riding through Tornado Alley and dust storms and winds so high, they're top one semis, that's when it's bad. I've also ridden through coastal flood warnings and extreme heat and extreme cold. When you're going very long distances, just checking the weather is not going to cut it. Unless you want to check the weather for like every hundred miles about every couple hours and also anticipate the exact time you will be leaving your destinations and exact time you will need to break and how long you need to break. And that's why it doesn't work. You just got to be prepared for as much as possible. So my cross-country trip, the temperature ranged from anywhere from 35 to 100 degrees. Rain, high wind advisories. So I really needed everything, all the gear. So I had really versatile gear. I had ADV gear on that had vents for the hotter temperatures. Cooling vests do work, but at the time I didn't have a cooling vest. And just wetting your shirt in the sink can help but only for about half an hour. When I rode to Sturgis with the Medicine Wheel ride, the photographer there made everyone bandanas and we put a bunch of ice in the bandana and that just like melted on you as we rode through Arizona and it felt great. And for extreme cold, I personally definitely need heated gear from head to toe. Definitely around 35 degrees Fahrenheit, maybe just heated gloves and heated top around 55 degrees Fahrenheit. If you have to save space, rain gear can be really good for just helping you stay warmer. So sometimes I've used rain gear even though it's not raining, just for extra warmth. And sometimes I haven't brought all my gear, like maybe I will forgo the heated socks and the heated pants and just bring the heated top and gloves. So what about the fear of your bike breaking down in a desolate area? There's some essential things you can take with you, like a tire plug kit. And watch the video on how to use that before you go on a trip, just in case you're stranded in the middle of nowhere with no signal, or portable wi-fi hotspot to watch a YouTube video on how to use it when you need it. As much as you can, get the basic maintenance down. One way I remedy this is I just stick to mostly newer bikes, especially on solo trips, because I know my limits. I know how much knowledge I have and don't have. And I know that if I were stranded in the middle of nowhere and the problem was something bigger than a nail and a tire and roadside assistance couldn't come out to me, I'd have a long day of tracking down a ride and tracking down a towing company myself to come back and to the location and find my bike. So what about the fear of getting lost again in a remote area? I use my phone a lot when I'm on road trips. I actually don't have a GPS, but I will download maps to my phone so that I can still use them even if I have no signal. You can do that with Google Maps. I probably should have a paper backup. That's something that Amanda Zitto, who has ridden all over the U.S. and across the country multiple times, does. Some trips she's done where she has only used paper maps. As a millennial, I don't even know what that's like. So what about the fear of wildlife or road hazards? A lot of animals that scurry along the road are very active at night, so I, as much as possible, try to avoid riding at night, which is usually pretty easy for me, being so sleepy and wanting a good night's rest and a nice big meal before bed. And as far as hazards and daytime animals, that's why it's so important to be alert and be awake and not ride tired, because your reaction time, just what you notice, is going to be that much better if you are alert and awake. And now a bonus fear, the fear of your bike being stolen. If you've noticed, the theme here is that pretty much all of these apply to guys too, not just ladies. Kind of the question I get so much about staying safe on the road is, as a woman, as a woman, as a woman, as a woman, it's more Statistically speaking, haven't really looked at that, but that's why I'm addressing that angle. So the things I do to keep my bike safe. I have a portable GPS. The one I use is from Monemoto, and they're coming out with a wired one as well soon. But I really like the portable one because it's small and I can move it across different bikes, and I ride a lot of different bikes doing this as a job. So with that, it's super sensitive. Once even just taking the seat off of my bike triggered it, but it'll call you and then you can track where your bike is on your phone and send that location to the police. No need to track down any thieves yourself. But as far as preventative, you can also bring a disc brake lock, which if you have a really light bike, a couple of thieves can still maybe lift your bike and put it in the truck bed. Sure, you can get a big chunky heavy chain, but I think that's better for if you're parking at home and all you have is outdoor parking. On the road, we pack light, so I guess that's just the risk we take. Wherever I go to eat or to spend the night, I ask wherever I'm staying if I could park my bike either in view of my room or in view of their cameras. Some people are really friendly and will even let me park it right in front of the lobby. Now that you've overcome those fears of riding long distance solo, you'll want to avoid some common mistakes. So I'll link to that down below, and you can check out one of my really cool road trips right over here.