After 10 years “on the road” and many, many miles logged, my dreams of visiting and riding through the lower 48 states of America on my motorcycle were now very close to becoming reality with only 5 more states to garner - North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.
How exciting for me.
I have been trembling with excitement since my return from my spirited ride in the Appalachian Mountain Range back in May of 2019.
I cannot begin to put into words, the euphoria of living and feeling one’s dreams of a lifetime slowly coming to fruition.
It’s as if I have been afflicted with an illness.
An illness of excitement stemming from my motorcycle traveling experiences.
How contagious can I make this affliction so it can rub off on all I share these stories with?
Stemming from the countless people I have met along the way, their warm hospitality, their personal experiences and stories of and in life, the unfailing willingness of them to help, their curiosity and the desire to one day be able to do and experience what I do in this respect and let alone the humanity I have been exposed to along all the many miles across this country, has no doubt made me feel that my life has truly been enriched.
So with this feeling - combined with the anxiety of a little child - I began to prepare for this next adventure of my lifetime.
Even though it was a little over a year away in the future, it felt like it was to be tomorrow!
Over the years of traveling, each journey and time on the road had afforded me the lessons of planning and preparing for each successive trip through my experiences in order to maximize my safety, the enjoyment and increased education that I have garnered.
So to me, it was imperative to be as best prepared as I could be in order to maximize my gains from this final trip of Phase-1-to-be.
More importantly I wanted to have greater redundancy on “stuff” like batteries for the camera gear and the GPS unit. (Although I always carry a Rand McNally Atlas of North America.
Yes, I have been in many places where I’ve had no satellite or cellular phone signal).
So it would mean an increase in trip preparation expenses, in excess of what I have usually expended for each of the past trips.
Photography was extremely high on my list of priorities for this upcoming trip.
I have heard, read and seen many documentaries and videos of the Pacific Northwest, enough to agree with the general consensus that it is probably the best, if not, but certainly one of the most scenic and diverse parts of the country with respect to the beauty of its natural resources and development.
Saying I am excited to see it all is a serious understatement!
My main preparation was to build and finally finish a project I had started 7 years ago but never completed due to personal cost overruns, delays by others I was relying on for certain aspects of work and just insufficient time to devote to it.
“It”, is a tow-behind trailer for my motorcycle, to allow me to accommodate my now-ballooned quantity of camera equipment and more so to reduce the luggage weight on the bike and for more convenience when needing to reach for various needs without the removal of lots of luggage each time. - the history of this is a story on its own and I promise to incorporate it (photos and all) and others, following completion of this journal.
2019 marked 2 years since my last visit to Ghana, West Africa.
A trip to visit Mum and celebrate her 94th birthday in November was on tap. Hence my short, inexpensive riding trip to “The Smokies” that year.

Fast Forward to November 2019.
I arrived in Ghana on a hot, hazy day at 6:00 a.m. after a 9-hour crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.
It was a pleasant flight.
It was the beginning of the Harmattan Season, a particularly strong one, judging from the temperature and amount of haze in the air/sky.
Visibility was unusually low due to all the minute dust particles in the air and was reminiscent of my early days growing up in Ghana.
The global weather patterns have truly changed over the years and seem to be cyclical, repeating themselves after several years of uncharacteristic conditions.
Within 2 days of arriving in Ghana, I got deathly ill, afflicted with a sickness the likes of which I had not experienced in my recent memory.
Tell you the truth, I cannot recall when I last fell as ill as I did. It had been a while.
Anyway, it took 2 weeks to get over it, by which time I was ready to fly back home, here to the states.
It was great quality and family time with Mum and my siblings.
Times to cherish, times to catch up with our lives and times that we are so grateful for.
At the age of 94, she is in good health and happiness.
Although I noticed that physically she had markedly slowed down.
At that age it is to be expected.
No doubt we shall all get there someday if blessed with good health and long life as she has been.
We chatted the whole day long.
I brought her up to speed on her great-grandchildren - all 5 of them, sharing photos and videos of them.
I could see the happiness and joy in her heart, but tempered with some sadness in the fact that they were not physically present.


2 weeks of holiday went by so fast! It felt like the blink of an eye.
All too soon I was saying goodbye and beginning my return journey.
Arriving back in the states, I was back in full-swing, preparing for “the tour”.
For a considerable amount of time in the sweltering African heat, my mind had never been far from thoughts and dreams of being on the road heading out to the much cooler Pacific Northwest Coast of the USA to which my soul and spirit were being beckoned!
Lordy, Lordy it was hot. I was looking forward to some much cooler weather!
I couldn’t wait to leave this hot weather behind!
Researching roads, picking out places I would like to visit, routes, time constraints, things I would like to see along the way, identifying, sourcing and purchasing my “essentials” for the trip etc.
Christmas came and went.
End of year came and went.
Beginning of the new year came and went.
The weather turned colder.
Much colder!
I spent the whole holiday season working, as I have done for almost all of my professional life.
Such demand has been and still is the nature of my profession.
Oh how I miss the African heat!

Beginning of February 2020.
Gosh, February already!
Time to “put in” for my vacation request for the trip.
I had chosen the 3rd week of August 2020 to head out and return on Labor Day of this year.
Time was getting close. Very close. I was down to 6 months to go for embarkation of my upcoming tour.
The butterflies in my stomach were coming to life!
They were beginning to churn!
I ordered my new front tire and with that, I had pretty much everything needed on my “must-have” list for the trip.
All I had to task myself with at this time was to come up with a final decision on my route, which was proving to be a very big challenge.
Too many things and places I wanted to see.
I was in the throes of whittling the list down to a more manageable plan.
I had to pare it down from where it presently stood at just over over 9000 miles (16,200 km), to a more manageable 4250 mi (7,650 km) spread over the 17 days of vacation time I had allotted to myself.
It was shaping out to be a struggle!
I cannot begin to tell you how many times I tried re-routing and cutting out stuff from my list and plans.
I lost count at about the 9th effort. But I persisted. I had to make it happen.
I definitely wanted to slow down and smell the roses on this trip!

In life, I have come to learn, certain events manifest themselves without any input from you, that seem to change your life when you least expect them.
One such event came in the form of a phone call just before Valentine’s Day 2020.
Mum’s health had taken a turn for the worse over the previous 2 weeks …………..

………… I put the brakes on everything I was doing, sought my necessary time off from work and was on a flight back to Ghana within 24 hours.

I am sad to announce that one week later, my mum passed away.
I was blessed to have had the opportunity to spend the last 6 days of her life at her bedside, with her.
I want to ………….. , I like to think ……………. , that my presence, being “the baby of the family” brought her some measure of happiness and eternal peace.
It was the most difficult farewell I have ever had to experience!

Return to America was followed almost immediately by the revelation of the Public Health Pandemic in the form of the Covid-19 virus beginning to affect our lives!

At the time of editing this section of this journal, the virus has been with us and affected us in all aspects of life for a little over 8 months now.
In the interim, I have a grandson (gifted to me by our youngest daughter) who is currently 4 and a half months old, whom outside of Skype and FaceTime calls, I have not yet met.
The smile I receive with each video call chat is a temporary blessing in the hope that soon we shall get through this nightmare that has been saddled on us.
With 5 grand daughters (soon to be 6), he and I, the males in the family, are still seriously outnumbered!

Well, my thoughts turned back to motorcycle touring.
I was still struggling to come up with a final route and plan.
Things just did not seem as usual. Nothing was “falling into place”.
I had made purchases which were beyond my norm and it just left me feeling uneasy.
All this combined with the raging public health conditions made me feel apprehensive.
But I soldiered on, opting to get myself totally prepared for the trip at least a month ahead of time.
All the while I kept tuned in to daily reports of the Covid Transmission rates along my chosen route.
It wasn’t looking too good.

June 29th, 2020.
I spent the weekend of June 27th and 28th modifying arranging a new rear mount for my B-Roll video camera.
The Ram Ball Mounts I chose to use for my design allowed me greater flexibility and multiple mounting options.
I struggled though, because due to the nature of the design of the body of the Honda ST 1300, it was almost impossible to get a good vibration-free mounting point.
Finally I came up with an option to mount off of my custom built luggage rack.


As the saying goes - “A good photographer never goes anywhere without his camera”.

On this day, I decided to ride the bike to work despite not-so-great riding conditions of the previous day.
It was an unusually pleasant day.
Clear blue sky, good sunshine and very little breeze.
This was one of those “bonus” riding days that appear during this time of year and are available to be able to ride during the winter season.
So as always, I loaded my camera gear into my “top box” on the bike and headed off to work.
17 miles along the highway, I heard an unusual noise that sounded like an impact or vehicular collision behind me.
I made a quick “head-check” and looked in my rear view mirrors and did another head check before a lane change and noticed to my horror that it was gone!
My top box was gone!
My brain screamed at me!
“It is gone, It is gone! Your top box is gone!
Camera gear and all! Your top box is gone!
I felt instantly sick to my stomach!
I wanted to cry! I spent 2 years saving up to buy the camera body alone.
Not to mention the extra high dollar lenses and GPS module that I also spent other years saving up for!
The top box had dislodged from the rear and flew off the bike at 65 m.p.h.!

I thought I had heard something barely a few seconds earlier.
I knew I had heard something.
There was no mistaking that feeling now!
The reality began to sink in and hit home!
Finding my way into the slow lane, I pulled over on the shoulder (berm) of the highway.
I immediately felt worse in my stomach!
I seemed to walk around for several seconds, not knowing what to do.
Carry on to work not knowing where my gear was?
Go back and go look for it?
Wait for someone to pull up behind me, having found it and return it to me?
Oh gosh, I felt sick!
I was trembling!
I began walking.
Don’t ask me where I was going ‘cos I didn’t know myself. I was just walking and after about a quarter of a mile or so I thought I could make something out at the side of the highway on the inner lane shoulder which could pass for my box and camera bag.
Now I had to find a way to cross the highway, 4 lanes of which were full of vehicles with everyone rushing along and going about their own business, to check it out.
After what seemed like forever I got lucky with a break in the flow of traffic and made it safely across.
Yes it was my gear.
Busted top box and battered camera bag.
I retrieved my stuff and whatever broken pieces of the top box that lay strewn about over several square feet and waited for another opportunity to get across the highway back to my bike.
Oh gosh, I felt sick!
I was in a hurry now, so I needed to hurry in an effort to not be late for work.
That was now my focus.
So at this point I did not even know whether my camera gear had survived the “65 m.p.h.-fly-off” or not.
I opted to inspect when I got to work.
Despite the horrendous damage to the top box, I was able to re secure it onto the bike.
I slung my camera backpack onto my back (I was not taking another chance of losing it off the bike again. I was lucky enough, very lucky, to have at least been able to retrieve it from within a short walking distance of where it dislodged.)

I was pressed for time now and asked the ST to do its thing and get us to work on time, if possible.

She got us to work with 3 minutes to spare and after donning my uniform, got a chance to check my equipment.
And to my horror : - I’ll let the pictures speak for this part of the story.

I felt really sick to my stomach now.
Much, much worse than before.
At this time, I had 7 weeks before my planned departure time for the trip - and had “busted” my camera.
No way I could go on the trip without a still camera!
Reluctantly, out of desperation, I whipped out the “Plastic Money” and by dinner time, had another camera conjured and on the way to arrive in 5 days! ….. and now further in debt as well.
It would mean more austerity to be able to pay for it.
Oh gosh, I felt sick!
I was concerned about my lenses, not knowing if they had suffered some damage as well.
Until I mounted them on a camera body and put them into service, there would be no way of knowing whether they would work or not.
But I would have a new replacement toy soon.
Only then would I be able to assess all damage.
The plan now was to try and see if I could find an authorized repair center and have the now damaged camera repaired.
That being possible and becoming reality, it would become my backup camera.
My new camera body arrived on July 6th, 2020. (It couldn’t have been soon enough)
With trembling hands and much anxiety, I opened up the package, installed the battery and mounted lenses.
To my joy no damage had been suffered to the lenses - a personal testament to how tough my Nikon lenses are!
I felt lucky.
I had only the expense of a new camera body and GPS module to work my tail off for.

So far everything to do with planning and preparation for this trip was moving at a not-so-comfortable/sure pace.
Everything seemed to be a struggle.
It just didn’t feel right like all the other times.
Too much money laid out, difficulty in making plans and decisions, public health concerns, the need to now finance the trip by “plastic” ……………
2 weeks ahead of departure time, I began seriously considering cancelling my plans, due to higher viral transmission rates being reported in the country.
I continued to watch the case numbers and finally with one week to go, my daughters, wife and I came to the unanimous decision that I ought to put off my trip this year.
All my concerns were pointing in the same direction.
So mainly for health reasons, I put the trip off!
I think it was the best decision under the circumstances.

After all : “He who does not ride this year, may live to ride next year”!