8 months not working and counting

Try five years.  That's how long Dave Radford plans to travel the world on his motorcycle.

Last January in New Zealand, Mark and I were staying the night at a really nice place with a camping spot that looked over the ocean.  

This was a place where the endangered Yellow Eyed Penguins live.  I saw a motorcycle with Alberta plates ride up with the rider checking out the view.  Then he took off.   Turns out he thought where we were camping (with two other tents) was too crowded, he needed to find his own tent with a view on the other bluff.  I found this all out when I saw him again, this time with his motorcycle boots on so I could identify him.  

Of course me being the chatty one, I started a conversation with something like "you've got a nice motorcycle" or "we're from Calgary" and we got to talking a bit.  It turned out he was from Edmonton and he was taking five years out spending his "retirement" on the travels. At that time, we had been on sabbatical from work since July and August respectively, and he had been travelling for several years all by himself. He says he prefers to be alone because then he gets to go where he wants to without any compromising.

This is the map on his pannier that he has drawn his route travelled so far.

He's still got some big continents to ride through, he is in Australia right now.  We had hoped to meet him in Nepal if our timing synced right.

While we didn't make it onto his blog (see the January 17, 12 post), the place where we camped made it.  By reading back through his blog, I found two newspaper stories about him that are pretty detailed. Here are the first and and the second. I hope we'll meet up with him again.