Travels

My original plan, when meeting up with Sophie for a week in Morocco, was to follow a few of the routes that I have done before solo. Show her a few places I really knew well and knew what the conditions were like. Instead, we ended up trying a new route that turned out to be rather epic...

It's time to say farewell to Idris, my BMW S1000XR. In the five years since I bought it, we have made a pretty good job of living up to the "adventure" category this bike supposedly falls into in the BMW Motorrad line-up. We have travelled across dozens of countries in two, nearly (!) three, continents and ventured off-road once or twice in that time. 

“Would you like to come to my wedding?” I receive as a Slack message from a friend in the Drupal community.

“Sure! When is it? Where?”

“It’s in November, in Kota”

“Oh - wow - yeah, I’ll come if I can!”

At this point, it seemed like a good idea to look at a map - where on Earth is Kota????

For the last few years, I have made it a little tradition of mine to use the motorbike to get to as many DrupalCon events as possible, certainly all the European ones and I even had thoughts of how to do this for Minneapolis this year. 

Of course, 2020 came along and everything changed. Still, given DrupalCon is a "high intensity" time in Drupal Association staff's calendars, I knew spending a few days riding after DrupalCon Global 2020 was definitely a good idea.

As Community Liaison, I find it important to liaise face-to-face whenever I can, and an opportunity presented itself to visit a community I have not been able to spend time with until now; that in India.

This was going to not only be the first time I’ve worked with the community in India but also my first time in India. I couldn’t help but wonder, “Will I see any elephants?”

As freelance web developer, my day usually involves working from home and, simply to make sure I speak with real, live human beings during the day, in local cafés. So, why not do the same but from another country, whilst riding my bike at weekends? Here goes...