We’d thought hard about leaving Bar Harbour this morning, largely due to the price but the constant rain was also having an impact on our mood and decision making. Neither of us was happy and the bickering between us and sharp comments were just fall out. We headed into the National Park HQ and parked up, Keenly aware of the attention we’d already picked up just in the car park.

Spent the day in an ice-cream and coffee café as ….guess what? ….it was raining hard again!

Well, it’s bloody raining again! But we decided to explore a little of Bar Harbour in spite of the appalling weather.

Oh, c’mon!!!!!!!!

By mid afternoon we even managed to get a call through to Dan, one of the owners at White Horse Press. We’ve been thinking more and more about the idea of a book or several. We’re now asked at every presentation when ‘they’ will be available.

Well after countless conversations and a lot of thought we’ve decided that we’ll start down the long process and putting something to print. We really have no idea where to begin but White Horse Press have a strong history and specialize in publishing motorcycle books, everything from adventure travel stories to ‘how to’ and mechanical books.

Dan and Judy Kennedy run White Horse and if we needed to start our research anywhere then White Horse Press was going to be a great starting place.

After our call to Dan, we both had a little celebration after arranging a meeting on Monday. Hey, there was no guarantee or real reason to think that White Horse would want or agree to see us.

We headed down to North Conway and spent over 2 hours riding from motel to motel trying desperately to find bed for the night. We were having no luck. Everywhere was either full or incredibly expensive. We’d even tried a few B&B’s but at $187 for a room with no bathroom things were getting silly. We’d pulled over and were scratching our heads when Craig and his travel-ready F650Dakar pulled up alongside. By luck or fate Craig was an old friend of Dan’s and Judy’s and was on his way to their office. “Why don’t you follow me there, Dan knows everyone, maybe he can help find you somewhere”, Craig suggested. Well it was the best idea we’d heard for a while and so that was it and so tailing our new riding buddy we were soon pulling up in front of the White Horse Offices.

Dan was as surprised to see us as we were to be there. It didn’t matter and soon conversation was in full flow and as Craig had suggested Dan had even managed to find us a room for the night.

We’ve arranged to move our meeting forward to tomorrow.

Tonight we’re at the Old School House Motel and yes it’s still raining!!!!!!!!!!!!

With coffee in hand and following a tour of the offices and we sat down with Dan to discuss publishing and whether we have anything to offer.

The learning curve was steep and we had some difficult questions to answer. We know by heart, the breadth and range of the experiences we’ve dealt with, have learnt from and want to share, however, on reflection I know we did a poor job of verbalising what we have to offer and why we think a buyer would pick up our book as opposed to another.

It’s a funny thing, for all the enthusiasm and energy in the world, when it come sright down to it, we’re going to have to take a cold look at what we have to offer from our experiences

Accepted an offer to stay with Dan and Judy. Great evening. Went out to eat.

We’d accepted a kind offer to stay with Dan & Judy and had followed Judy back to their beautiful home nestled amongst the local forestations. The bikes looked at home parked in the large open plan garage.

It felt good to be here. Dan and Judy’s sincerity and straight talking blew away a few cob webs and the insight into the publishing world has been eye opening.

Lisa’s even managed an evening out with Judy and I know enjoyed the local theatre production.

For the most time I have of course been sat in form of the PC. Carefully picking through the 50,000 digital images we’ve now accumulated on the various hard drives we carry with us. With images selected I’ve been optimizing them, correcting errors made at the time of the lens snapping closed and digitally mounting them into a format that will look great printed. We’re working hard on getting ideas and products ready for an online shop. We’re hoping to sell a number of our high res’ photos online. Who knows?

All that hard work was about to pay and sooner than we’d hoped. Just yesterday we’d received an email from Kevin, a young guy that had met us at the LA bike show. Kevin had been searching through our online images and had even presented a number of the low res’ files to his company Nik Software, the company that produce the digital imaging and manipulation software for Nikon the camera company. The images had received some positive reviews and the email was asking for higher res’ quality images. Well I’d already been working on around 30 of them and so sent of 15 across to Kevin. Who knows what will come of it but just to be thought of was quit a compliment.

In the mean time Kevin’s provided me with the operating codes for all the software produced by his firm and as we speak I’m busy downloading from the web. From what I’ve seen so far the software pretty powerful and will work in with my Photoshop workflow. You can tell I’m pretty excited.

We’d heard rave reviews of the route that had become known simply as…”The Kang”. OK admittedly it sounds more like the nick name given to the bully at school, but there it is. We had to ride the Kang. The Kanamangus highway (route 112) would lead us South, through an interconnected and endless number of left and right handers. We’d received a countless number of warnings of the treacherous switchbacks; they could prove our downfall and secretly looked forward to them. We’ve missed bends.

The Kang was nice enough, we had a few nice bends when the front tucked in, grabbed the asphalt by the scruff of the neck and held on tight as the rest of the bike leaned in, followed and pushed us through to the straight. We’d waited for the switchbacks that never came and pushed on a little disappointed.

Finally we opened up, joined the highway and wondered what all the fuss had been about. We’ve definitely been spoilt over the last few years.

We were later than we’d hoped for when we finally arrived at Second Wind, but what a welcome. Darrell and Sandy welcomed us with open arms and more enthusiasm than we’ve seen for a while. The dealership has an energy to it that starts with Darrell and sandy and goes through to the workshop that much was apparent within the first 20 minutes.

We were in for a treat. Sandy handed over the room reservation paper. The name across the top read…The Crown Plaza. That sounded good.

As we were leaving Sandy gave us the news. She’d seen Lisa having difficulties with her neck and had made…err…arrangements. Sandy grinned as she explained that her masseuse would be turning up at our room in the morning. We could barely believe our ears.

The room phone rang at 8:45am and I’d answered in a sleepy voice. The chirpy voice on the other end said “good morning Mr Thomas, this is the front desk, you masseuse is here, may I send her up”? In my head I was saying…’oh hell yeah, giddy up, don’t spare the horses, what ya waitin’ for…why isn’t she here yet’?

I actually replied, “Yes that’s fine thank you”.

I looked at Lisa and gave her the news. Lisa’s grin was obscene. Andrea knocked politely on the door and hauled in her portable massage table. We spent the next two hours in a semi-Hollywood state of pampering and luxury, whilst trying hard to keep our ooohhhing and aahhhing to a minimum.

Bloody hell the presentation this afternoon is going to be our most ‘relaxed’…ever.

Andrea did a great job and at last we felt that some of our muscle issues that we’d been fighting over the last few months were finally getting sorted. This felt good. We were feeling so pampered.

Time was getting on and we needed to don our riding gear, pull out the bikes and ride down to Second Wind.

The warm welcome we had from Sandy and Darrell was just like yesterdays. Attendees were already parked up and checking out our bikes in seconds. We made our hellos and excused ourselves before heading inside.

All the tech stuff went well, our laptop spoke straight away with the projector and the sound system worked like a charm. The chairs were already out and we had our own space to lay out the prints and T-shirts from our trip.

There was a buzz growing and the atmosphere was setting us up for a good show.

Darrell was doing us proud, he’d already set aside time in the workshop, had grabbed the keys for both bikes and they were already inside and up on the ramp. Darrell had checked around and had managed to find some TKC80 throw always (tyres that someone has taken off to replace with new ones) and was putting those onto our bikes. By our standards they still had a few thousand miles left in them and in any case they were way better than what we were using now.

At 1:00pm with mic’s in hand we kicked off. The time flew by and we loved every second. The daft jokes, the silly double-entendres and photos we’d worked so hard to capture were all being enjoyed. The biggest thing for us is to get a reaction from the crowd. Our guests at Second Wind were great. The more reaction we get, the more motivated we are.

We’d had a blast. It’s truly a privilege being able to share our journey this way. The spread that Sandy had put out had been cleared and picked clean. Everyone was smiling and the buzz from earlier had now been exaggerated into something else.

We’ve spoken to Darrell and accepted his kind offer to open tomorrow for us, enabling us to get to grips with some overdue jobs on the bikes. Little things but overdue none the less.

Back at the hotel another surprise treat was awaiting. Darrell and Sandy had read on our website that our wedding anniversary was coming up on the 19th and so had arranged for a fruit basket to be delivered. The pungent aroma of exotic fruit was already fragrancing the room as we entered. This wasn’t a fruit basket; this was a work of art. It felt criminal to take it apart and eat it, but eat it we would. There’s something sublime about giant strawberries dipped in chocolate. Bloody hell this ‘adventure biking stuff’ is hard work!

For the rest of the evening we just ate the left over from last night’s dinner and enjoyed the lavish accommodation we were being treated to.

Unbelievable.