This week I’m across the pond to see something I’ve wanted to check out for years – the Isle of Man! Last week I asked for some suggestions and y’all came through with excellent advice that I will be frequently referring to over the next few days. Let’s do this!
May 28th, 2023 – Los Angeles, California to London, England: ~5,400 miles
Day 1 (as usual with my travel stories) is mostly just about hopping on a flight.
But this time I’m going to start a few weeks back. The last time I’ve been out of the country was for an Aprilia Tuareg 660 First Ride review for RevZilla back in 2021. My lack of travel since meant I wasn’t keeping tabs on when my passport expired, and I didn’t realize that I had to get my passport renewed until about 4 weeks before my trip. A quick poke around the State Department’s website made it clear that I needed to call, so I did. But I was surprised to find that they wouldn’t give me an appointment until I was within two weeks of my flight. There is an expedited mail-in option but they couldn’t guarantee it would be done within four weeks, and the nice lady on the phone reassured me that it wouldn’t be a problem to get an appointment in person in the 2-week window. Spoiler alert: she was wrong.
Fast forward to two weeks before my trip: I was actually in South Dakota for an ADV story with Motorcycle.com – more on that later, though in a bit of symmetry I was back on the Tuareg 660 and having even more fun this time around. What a bike!
Yours truly getting both wheels off the ground (just barely)
I called the passport hotline number to be politely told that there were no appointments in Los Angeles before my flight. Hmm.
The customer service agent kept checking…no appointments in San Diego. No appointments in San Francisco. No appointments in Arizona. The closest appointment she was able to find geographically was in Honolulu. I wasn’t excited about having to fly out to Hawaii just to get my passport and immediately fly back during the middle of the work week, but I didn’t have any other options (and it was my fault for not renewing the passport normally, anyway). When I got back to LA and had more free time I kept calling the passport line and was eventually able to find an appointment in Denver instead. The flight cost would have been the same but the travel time would have been roughly half. The Monday morning before my trip, I tried a last ditch effort of going to the Los Angeles office in person to see if anything could be done as a walk-in…it couldn’t.
The LA Passport Office – a fortress I could not penetrate.
Luckily, I got a message from a client who was in a similar situation just a couple of weeks ago. He mentioned that he found a private company which was able to get his passport expedited in 3-4 days. I immediately rushed over there even though they wouldn’t be opening for another 45 minutes. Long story short – it cost me $1,028.82 plus a $190 money order to the US Department of State but on Friday I had my passport and I was ready to go! It ain’t cheap, but I was looking at $600 for flights to Denver and I would have been out of the office for a couple of days so it all works out. I worked with a woman named Yolanda at the passport company and I’d highly recommend them if you find yourself in a situation like mine (but hopefully you never do).
Back to Sunday – Day 1 of this trip. Early in the morning I got a text from a couple of Iconic clients in Texas – they told me that there was a Desmosedici track bike on eBay and they wanted to discuss it. After a conversation that ended with me saying “if you don’t buy this, I’m going to,” they are now co-owners of one of the coolest track bikes I’ve ever seen! I’m very excited for them…and for me, because they’ve told me that they’ll be bringing it out to an Iconic-hosted track day soon and I’ll get to spin it for a few laps.
It’s an impressive track package (check out the listing!) that just needs some paint.
We’ve had Brook Henry from Vee Two Australia at Iconic for the last week, we brought him in to work on some Ducati bevels as a guest mechanic – I like to joke that he’s a “mechanic-in-residence” much like when famous singers stay in Vegas for a couple of months at a time. He’s been working on a couple of Darmahs, a 900SS, and a 750SS Green Frame. Unfortunately he’ll be back home in Australia by the time Adam and I get back from this trip but he’s been a blast to have at the shop and I think there’s enough customer demand for his expertise in the US that we’ll probably have him return for a similar residency in another six months or so.
Pictured: my partner Adam, not Brook.
My buddies at Arai gave me one of the 2023 Isle of Man TT Limited Edition Corsair helmets as they knew I was headed to the event this year. Vy and I stopped by the hangar to grab the helmet (I’m thinking about bringing it with me around the track with a sharpie and having as many racers as possible sign it).
Photo from Arai
Then we got some lunch before my flight at a noodle place we like in Japantown called Killer Noodle. Amusingly, there was an apartment complex called Notting Hill near where we parked, and it had a sign like what you would find with the London Underground. It seemed appropriate to get a photo as I’d be heading out that way very soon!
Vy drops me off and says goodbye! She is the best – I will miss her, and I’ll just have to fill the void in my heart with motorcycles this week.
I joined up with Adam, his wife, and his daughter at the airport. They grabbed some lunch but I was already full so I had…one french fry (plus a margarita, of course).
My huge lunch.
As boarding started, our party got called up on the PA system and I assumed the worst. I was thankfully wrong and was very glad to hear the phrase, “your tickets have been overbooked, we’re going to upgrade your seats to Business class.” I didn’t know how much of a blessing that was until I got on the plane – this was about to be the first time I’d have a lie-flat seat on a flight. Vy recently had a similar experience on her way to Thailand (she was acting in a HBO show called The Sympathizer) and she was joking that she would never fly internationally without a seat like this. I let her know that she’d be flying with someone else because I couldn’t justify the cost of that ticket…but now I am spoiled as well. I need to make more money.
Adam and his lovely wife Tija are excited, too!
The flight was uneventful (my favorite way to describe a flight). I watched the new Thor movie, which I thought was pretty bad. So then I watched Thor: Ragnarok because that movie is awesome. I’m normally miserable in coach on international flights because my knees are pressed up against the seat in front of me, so I took advantage of my fancy seat to get some sleep and even goofed around with a silly rally racing game to get my speed kick satisfied because I won’t be riding a bike for the next few days.
The day ended with me asleep in my fancy seat, just a couple of hours outside of London. Tomorrow we get settled in!
On to Day 2!