Dear readers,

been fairly quite here for a while... myriad of reasons... not gonna fall back to a mode of justifying myself here. I am past that.

I just flickered through my Instagram all the way back to the starting line at the Arctic Ocean in Alaska. It was the perfect reaffirmation to finally keep on keeping on. I don't mean the riding [no reaffirmation needed, still having a blast basically every single day]. I have to keep on documenting here as I would simply bust my ass afterwards if I wouldn't.

As you can see on the map I basically crossed Mexico. I am in San Cristobal just a day ride away from the Guatemala border. Amongst others 4 weeks of riding with Ilma through Southern Mexico are behind me. But I'll take you there.

To put the pressure on, I decided Guatemala has to wait until I completely caught up with everything. I booked myself an Airbnb, 3 stories [kitchen, bedroom, rooftop terrace, sweeeeet], 15€ a night, one week and even consider extending the stay if necessary.

Luckily I am not starting from zero. I've written a fair share of days during the past two month. I am simply missing some in between. You probably will notice differences between the posts and I might even experiment with the formats a bit. Thanks for baring with me! Alright, two beers deep [Thanks for baring with that, too], let's get going.

For those of you who don't know when I stopped. Day 156 was the last day I posted what feels an eternity ago.

I have another announcement to make, actually an open invitation... Two cars just crashed outside. Zoomed out to see what happend. Everybody is fine! Where was I? Oh yes, an open invitation!

Long story long: A few weeks ago I received a lovely, no strings attached e-mail of a friend telling me what has been going on in his life since I've been on the road. I sensed a little [totally unnecessary] regretful undertone of not having written earlier. You know who you are: I was over the moon about it!

I must admit, this was not the very first e-mail of this kind. I am over the moon about everybody reaching out even though I struggle to answer! I am sincerely sorry for this!

I always wanted to start picking up a more personal conversation medium with more of you. Really! But as I write all of this on my stupid phone I must however admit, that I simply can't type anymore than I already do. In fact my only physical "injury" of the trip so far, was an inflammated thumb from typing on the phone writing this blog for three days straight.

Phone calls are an amazing way, I know and I try to make use of it. But low coverage, the time difference and the unpredictability of most of my days make it difficult to reach a lot of you, too. [Didn't I not want to get into justification mode!?]

The longer I don't post the more I realize how many people are actually reading this and wonder what's going on with me as I don't post. Since I've been unsure how to put it, I took the chance to talk with a few folks about this in the past days. What has been totally clear in my own little mind, turned out is in fact not all that obvious to everybody outside of my head. So let's put it out there: I AM SUPER, SUPER INTERESTED TO HEAR WHAT IS GOING ON IN YOUR LIFE!

I wanted to take the chance to encourage everybody to reach out that might only be held back by thoughts like: "why should I bother him with my stuff".

Long, long story short: If you feel like reaching out, sending a few lines about whats going on in your life, a voice message or what not! Please do! I do appreciate every single bit of it. The message functions here and mitradeln@posteo.de would be some of many ways.

Want to be fully transparent, though. If, when and in what form I am able to answer will be a bit of a gamble on your side. Please do not take this as a sign of non-appreciation [as much as I don't take the fairly one way communication on this blog as such]. But let me also say, everybody who doesn't feel like it: Simply don't! Fully understood!

If I may form just one shy wish. If you decide to reach out don't over think what could be interesting to ME. Just as I write in this blog what is interesting to me, I want to know what currently is [and maybe was in the past months] interesting to YOU!

Alrighty, now we got this out of the way. So let's start the journey back to mid January into the Copper Canyons - one of my biggest adventures of the trip so far. To get you fired up a bit: drug cartels, bike pushing for days on end, the world's best ultra marathon runners... Happy readings!