Destination Alaska: the story of how two riders set out on the adventure of a lifetime
Lisa Morris and Jason Spafford are four and a half years in to an 80,000-mile adventure – this is just part of their story…
The gruelling satisfaction of long days, side-byside on motorbikes can make or break a relationship. Life together in the saddle with my partner Jason is a tremendous adventure, packed with highs and the odd low. We are four and a half years into the journey and our story is still unfolding.
Undivided attention
From the day we first met I wanted to make an impression, and it’s fair to say I did. Things were going well until the last day of the trip – when out to further impress somewhere in the Hurghada Desert in Egypt, I lost control of my quad bike. Hot on my tail, Jason had little choice but to run over me. His 200kg machine came down on me causing three broken ribs, internal bleeding and a punctured lung. Laying unconscious, I’d argue that was the first time he gave me his undivided attention. It turns out that getting mown down by a guy creates the greatest reason to stay in touch.
If you make a change, make it a big one
Over the next ten years, we never determined success by our salaries or our postcode, and both of us tired of domesticity, so we opted to become location independent. We didn’t have kids nor were we married, so why not make an 80,000-mile trip from Antarctica to the Arctic?
As a brand new rider, I sourced ‘Pearl’ a factory-lowered 2001 BMW F650GS on eBay, chiefly because I liked the colour. And it complemented my helmet, much to Jason’s face-palm exasperation. Pearl became our pack mule, while Jason reserved his 2008 BMW F800GS for all our tech, which included a drone, camera and assorted lenses.
The fact my bike always seemed the most loaded did have me questioning the logic as we rolled onto the ship destined for Uruguay.
Geeing up captain slow
Playing to our strengths, Jason assumed the roles of mechanic and navigator. Each morning, he brought me coffee and throughout the day he picked up my laden bike after I crashed, which was all too often in the early days. He subtly applauded every time I showed independence and spatial awareness, and I made him laugh, gave him compliments when he needed a confidence boost, and corrected his atrocious spelling and grammar.
No getting away from it
Compatibility aside, constant companionship is the best and worst thing about moto-travel. Even though you love your marvellous other, there’s only one person on which to vent your spleen, which typically involves them anyway. If I had a pound for every time I heard: “Come on Captain Slow, give it some beans!” Fortunately, we don’t bear grudges, but woe betide when one of us got hangry. We’ve taken it in turns to wear the trousers and the truth be told we’d be lost without each other.
‘We didn’t have kids so why not take an 80k mile trip on the bikes?’
Opposite ends of the riding spectrum
We were crisscrossing Argentina heading for San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, munching 150 miles on a rugged mountain pass situated between the two countries. Quietly, I watched in envy as much as awe as Jason effortlessly glided along the soft trail. I arrived at the Chile border broken and dismounted slowly, like I was lowering myself into an ice bath. That night, Jason sat me down and without sugaring the pill, explained what a liability I had become. Namely, my riding style was putting us at avoidable risk. It was hard to hear this critique of my riding career to date. The fallout of my agonisingly cautious riding through a remote region became glaringly obvious