Tiffany Ambling through America

[Tiffany]

Just to backtrack a bit to the beginning of the journey now that I've got time and I'm not dashing across country.

Going back a couple of weeks, it was almost like a bad dream as I found myself heading off on a trans-continental journey that will last several months and I looked down to find myself perched on a Honda 125cc scooter with a bulky bag containing my possessions strapped on the rear seat.



What on earth was I doing that I had it so wrong? How do you ride with these little wheels? And, most importantly where's my bloody Beemer?

I looked round to see another one was following



Was it some sort of nightmare or anxiety dream? Nope, just a rather unorthodox (for me anyway) start to my trip. I'd been hosting a couple of unusual bike travellers, meet Tipi and Chae (with my friend Annie)



Tipi and Chae are from South Korea and had ridden to England on their Honda scooters- yep, folks 125cc automatic ones with those tiny wheels across 12,000 miles including the wastelands of Siberia,



They're my heroes and really nice people to boot. They arrived in time for Christmas and joined 16 of us at my parents' three bedroom house for the festivities. I don't know what they made of their time with my somewhat eccentric family, what I do know is that they blogged six pages about it on their website but as it's all in Korean I don't understand a word of it - they might well be describing the fact that their accommodation was a tent inside a barn during December ...but when they saw where the rest of us were sleeping, they said they had the best deal.

In the run up to my departure, they had come back down to Cornwall. The morning arrived that I was setting off, they offered to help me get to the train station. Their suggestion was that we ride in convoy on their scooters, they would be two up while I had my bag and then they would ride both scooters back to my house.
It worked like a dream, once I was used to being on such a different bike. I made it safely down to the train station, my shoulder was aching a bit, but then it has been a bit painful for a while. I injured it six weeks ago snowboarding when I had a fall whilst going a bit fast and heard my shoulder go crunch. I carried on boarding but somehow my shoulder didn't feel right and gradually became increasingly painful. When I got to the doctor, this was how the x-ray looked.




Torn ligaments had resulted in my shoulder being a bit odd looking- that's the space showing between the bones. Damn - no more snowboarding for the final two days of the holiday followed by weeks of inactivity. I headed to the nearest bar to drown my sorrows, wearing a sling that was closely related to a strait-jacket



Six weeks later after some intensive and painful physio, I was back on two wheels and heading off to America, my shoulder had healed just in time, this, believe it or not is the healed shoulder- it still looks a bit odd in real life too, but the doctors were pleased.



I was ready to hit America- the question was... would America be ready for me?