Looking back over all my years of riding, and that goes back to the late-1960s to present, leaving out that gap from 1984 - 2021, I’ve covered lots of miles, many on long trips. Most frequently I’ve ridden alone but have taken at least 3 long, multi-day rides with others. In ‘82 I did a ride from Southern California to Fernie, British Columbia with my sister, who rode a Honda CB 550 while I was on my Honda CB 750. We met up with biking friends and rode back to SoCal along the West Coast. It was a great ride which I wrote about here. In the summer of 2021 I rode my FJR from Montana to Maine, with the Pittsburgh to Maine portion riding with my son, him on his BMW, a trip I covered here. Then the ride to San Diego with Bill just a few weeks ago written about here. The long ride of 1979 was supposed to be a group ride but over time it turned out that I would be going solo and I did. Last summer I did a 10-day solo trip to Blaine, Washington, written up here,
All that said, I have some experience with going both solo and riding with others and I’m not going to declare that I prefer one over the other as they each offer different experiences. What I will declare is that if I plan a ride, I am going to go, whether or not others are involved as I have no problem doing things on my own. As people who know me can attest, I have many hobbies, interests, and passions and very few, if any of them, require other people to be involved in order for me to engage in them. Whether it’s drawing, doing film photography, fiddling with my old cars, running, or motorcycling, I’m motivated to do them for purely intrinsic reasons. That is not to say that I don’t enjoy sharing with others who have the same interests, evidenced by the vintage foreign car club I started after I retired, the Urban Sketchers group I joined, the running club I’m in, or the online photography forum I’m active in.
I think a lot of this comes down to keeping in touch with my inner-introvert. I know that I am an introvert by nature but have I have learned a skill set that allows me to play the part of an extrovert when I need to. This is something I had to learn in a previous career in the aggressive world of industrial design and contracting, and certainly well-employed it in the over 2-decades that I spent as a classroom teacher. I can play the part but my recharging takes place in solo activities. For more on this introvert/extrovert topic, check out the book “Quiet” by Susan Cain. You can also see here TED Talk here.
Of course, one can Google lists of pros and cons for traveling solo versus going with others and many are quite obvious. When solo, one can do whatever strikes the fancy of the moment, make changes on the fly, stay as long or short as one wants, and all the other freedoms associated with going it alone. With others, there is the advantage of sharing the experience as it happens, sharing the expenses for lodging, and having someone to assist in the case of roadside problems. Like most things in life, it’s about trade-offs and one has to weigh them to determine what provides the best experience for that endeavor.
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