Sports Illustrated Centerfold Article from 2003
The epiphany for Chris and Erin Ratay came in late September 1999, as they rode their motorcycles out of Prague and into the forests of the Ore mountain range, the Czech Republic's northwestern frontier with Germany. They were headed to Berlin, and, as usual, they were in a hurry. They had been on the road for four months, since May 20, when they had flown with their BMW bikes from New York City to Casablanca to begin a 15-month ride around the globe. Now, 19 countries and nearly 14,000 miles into their high-octane odyssey, husband and wife were struck with the same realization: We're going to need more time.
The Ratays thought they'd already had their Zen-like moment of clarity 11 months earlier, when they'd decided to quit their jobs and sell their one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan to finance a round-the-world trip. They closed the sale on May 18, netting $100,000. Two days later they boarded a plane bound for Morocco and zoomed around that country, then throughout Europe as if on a two-week holiday. On a swing through Germany, they ripped off more than 700 miles on the autobahn in a single day. "When we left Prague, we'd had it," says Erin. "I was cathedraled out. Everything was becoming redundant, and we were kind of ho hum about it all, and Prague is not a place to be ho hum about. We knew we had to slow down."
Chris and Erin had dubbed their trip "the ultimate journey," and now they set about making sure the expedition lived up to its title. They stuck to secondary roads the rest of the way, riding shorter distances and making longer stops, including a 7 1/2-month layover in New Zealand. The final numbers that describe their circumnavigation suggest motorized Magellans: 50 countries, six continents, 1,539 days, $110,000 in expenses, 48 tires used (19 front, 29 rear) and 101,322 miles traveled, 44,000 miles more than the existing Guinness world record for longest ride by a couple on two motorcycles. When the Ratays finally rolled back into New York, in August, they were a full three years behind schedule--and way, way ahead in state of mind. "We were yuppies
when we started," says Chris. "We thought we were going to have this amazing experience and then come back to New York and pick up where we'd left off. Now we want something different."
In 1999, while Erin, then 34, was working as assistant director of career services at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, Chris, 32, was earning "in the low six figures" in the cosmetics industry, peddling counter displays to Revlon and Maybelline. Though a born salesman, he was growing frustrated by the constraints of urban life. On their honeymoon, in 1996, Chris and Erin had made a three-week cross-country excursion on Chris's BMW K100LT. Erin had bought a cycle of her own near the end of that trip (a BMW K75), and the two had been skipping town as often as possible, but they had little time for breaks of longer than a few weeks. "We weren't unhappy, but we thought if we went away for a year, it would be worthwhile to quit," says Erin.
Paring down the essentials of their lives to a few changes of clothes, their riding gear and some camping equipment, the Ratays loaded their bikes and set out, determined to get by on $40 a day. They rarely spent more than $15 a night on lodging. "We learned how to be frugal," says Chris.
They learned also to adapt in far more significant ways--to conditions and traffic alarmingly different from any they had seen on weekend jaunts over the backroads of New England. Riding through India in December 1999, they were regularly run off the road by motorists who seemed content to trust their fates to karma. "It was the only country where I thought I was going to
die," says Erin. "Every day, we'd see two or three major truck and bus accidents. Crumpled, you know? Where people died."
Then there was the Nullarbor Plain, a vast limestone desert in South Australia traversed by a highway known as the Ninety-Mile Straight, the longest unbent piece of tarred road in the country. The Ratays crossed the Nullarbor in January 2001, at the height of the antipodean summer, and the temperature ranged from 117° to 127° for three days. Rationing their water, they stayed hydrated by drinking salted 7-Up.
The scariest moment of the trip came in Malaysia in July 2000, when Erin was hit by a truck and thrown from her bike, sliding 30 meters down the road--crumpled, you know?--into the face of . oncoming traffic. Amazingly, both she and the bike emerged with only a few scrapes. The accident deepened the Ratays' resolve. "If that had happened in the first year, we probably would have gone home," says Erin. "At that point we were almost two years into the trip and were past the point of thinking that a broken bone was going to end things."
Almost as an afterthought, Chris and Erin had built a website (www.ultimatejourney.com) before they left as a way to keep family and friends informed of their adventures. They regularly updated the site using a digital camera and a laptop computer. To their surprise, they began receiving e-mails from other bikers curious about the planning necessary to make an international journey. The site grew to include not only the journal and photos but also a maintenance log, an itemized cost breakdown and detailed cargo information for each country from which the Ratays shipped their bikes. "The Internet developed into something bigger just in the time we were gone," says Chris. "The site caught on, and people began finding us."
Many of the people the Ratays heard from were fellow enthusiasts offering everything from maintenance help to a place to stay. In Istanbul during the first year of their trip, for example, Chris and Erin were treated like visiting celebrities and treated to dinner by the local BMW club after merely asking for recommendations on routes and hotels. When Chris's bike broke down in India, he got his hands on a vital repair manual by corresponding with a fellow biker in Arizona, who faxed him pages from his copy. Such moments were routine. "We found," says Chris, "that the more trouble you're in, the more people want to help."
The Ratays had always relished the rush of motorcycle travel, the sense of being a part of the environment, not cooped up in a car--a "cage," in Chris's words. Now they gained an appreciation for what they call the "approachability" of motorcycles. "If you're on a bike, people are always coming up to talk to you," says Chris. "In Asian or Latin American countries, they see
backpackers all the time. With a bike you're doing something different. People came up to us bursting with information. It was like taking a cute puppy into Central Park."
For all their obvious pride in their son's accomplishment, Robert and Gabriella Ratay are wary of Chris's fascination with the blue highways of life. The elder Ratays, natives of Budapest, fled Hungary as young adults during the Soviet crackdown in 1956 and made their way to the New York suburb of Manhasset, on Long Island. Robert, 66, still consults as a structural engineer,
while Gabi, 64, just retired from a 27-year career teaching mathematics at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. For most of their marriage the Ratays worked to give Chris and his sister, Andrea, the kind of stability they themselves had never known. Which makes Chris's decision to throw his career away confusing to them. "As clever as he is, he will not be able to make up the
financial security that he lost in the last four years," says Robert. "I'm not saying that it's going to be better or worse, but I think they've made a permanent change to their lifestyle."
That was the point, say Chris and Erin. The couple are applying for residency in New Zealand, where they plan to enter the field of motorcycle tourism. The current plan has Chris working in Queenstown for Ayres Adventures, a new venture based in Plano, Texas. "We want to use all our experiences to make a living," says Erin.
"One of the things I've always believed is that things have a way of working out," says Chris. "The trip has reinforced that. Now we'd just like to try out a life somewhere else.
