One Couple’s International Odyssey On Two Wheels

Tim and Marisa Notier are living a motorcycling dream: They quit their jobs, sold their home and possessions, and embarked upon the adventure of a lifetime. They are traveling the world together for three years, aboard their KTM 1190 Adventure. Out on the road for over a year and half now, we discovered them via social media, and reached out to strike up a friendship. Currently in Kenya, Tim shared with us this excerpt from their newly published 2nd book, “2-Up and Overloaded“, available on Amazon. We hope you enjoy this little glimpse into their life unplugged, a true #RideLife story-

My wife Marisa and I traveled down Route 40 in northern Argentina, bumping along its corrugated washboard, and swiveling through its sandy patches, until we found what we considered to be the perfect spot to camp.

There was a gushing stream of fresh water that made a narrow grassy oasis on either side as it wound through the otherwise dry landscape. Giant red boulders and towering cliffs stood sentry on either side of the valley and rose quartz crystals dotted the ground. The sound of the water trickling over the smooth stones made the landscape idyllic, and we knew that we had found another exceptional place to spend the night.

Marisa and I ate our dinner while the setting sun cast a blanket of red and gold over the hills. A gigantic full moon rose on the opposite side of the sky that was seemingly magnified to three times its normal size from the curvature of the atmosphere. We crawled into the tent to sleep as the chill of the night started to penetrate our bones. I set my alarm for 1AM to take more pictures of the stars that spread across the night sky like small windows to other worlds.

When I woke up to the sound of my alarm, I realized that the full moon might make it difficult to capture the stars. But I crawled out of the tent regardless and grabbed the tripod. I set the camera’s shutter speed to fifteen seconds and clicked the remote trigger on my phone. I was shivering from the chill of the night as I waited for each long exposure to be captured. I did this a few times as I moved the tripod around to capture different angles of the bike, the tent, and the stars above.

Then, I freaked out as I didn’t understand what was happening above me.

The full moon was slowly turning from a bright white to a burgundy red color right before my eyes. It was like a scene from a bad horror movie where the plot was something along the lines of an evil witch/vampire/sorcerer who had been locked away in an eroding iron cell for centuries, only to regain their powers on the eve of a rising blood moon that only took place once every five-hundred years.

“Marisa!” I shouted. “You have to see this!”

“What is it?” she asked from inside the warmth of the quilt.

“The end of the world? The beginning of a new age where dragons rule over us?” I stated, “I have no idea what’s going on.”

I had piqued Marisa’s curiosity and she crawled out of the tent to see what I was rambling on about.

Marisa looked up to see a quarter of the moon bathed in a hue of transparent red.

“Oh wow!” Marisa said. “My mother emailed me that there was going to be a total lunar eclipse this week, but I completely forgot.”

“Why is it so huge. . . and eerily red?” I asked.

“It’s a super blood moon,” Marisa stated casually as if I should have known. “And because it’s the first full moon of the year, it’s called a wolf moon.”

“A super blood wolf moon!” I gasped. “You really need to tell me these things ahead of time. I was sure that some kind of apocalypse was about to be initiated.”

We sat on a boulder and watched the sliver of the moon become smaller and smaller, until finally the whole of it turned a deep copper color as it was covered in the earth’s shadow. For Marisa and me, this was a special event. We had left on our journey a year and a half ago on the day of the full solar eclipse back in the States. And now, this full lunar eclipse marked another celestial wonder that we knew was a good omen, not a sign of a doomsday event.

“Imagine if we lived a hundred years ago and saw this,” Marisa said. “I would’ve completely freaked out.”

“Yeah, that was me an hour ago, not a hundred years ago,” I reminded her.

We continued to watch the shadow crawl across to the other side of the moon until it was once again full. I was so elated that I had set an alarm for a random time to nonchalantly take a few pictures and accidentally discovered this phenomenon. The whole timeframe from the first shadowy bite into the moon, to the last hint of it happening, was only a three-hour window in the middle of the night.

We crawled back into the tent and went to sleep with the warmth that comes along with happiness and wonder. It may have been freezing cold outside of the tent, but we went to sleep comforted by memories of the amazing experiences that we had encountered.

Tim Notier

To learn more about the Notiers and their globe-trotting adventures, check out their website: NotiersFrontiers.com

Catch up on Tim & Marisa’s adventures through the pages of 2Up and Overloaded – Chicago to Panama available worldwide on Amazon here: http://hyperurl.co/yb903l

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