Apparently, if you decide to ride tiny, toy Motorcycles across a desert country, people will stop you and ask about it.

And sometimes, those people wear the uniforms of the Moroccan police. And if you tell them that you are doing a “race”, they will put you in jail.

They probably should’ve jailed us anyway, for the sheer stupidity of it all.

Our Goal was simple. Get to Marrakech in Seven Days.

The Adventurists (the company putting on the Monkey Run) got you the bikes, the paperwork, they arranged accommodations at the start and finish, brought beer for the parties, and that was about it. Break down? You’re on your own. Get lost? Hope you brought a map. It wasn’t an adventure if they did all the problem solving, is what they said.

Looking at the maps we had, it was pretty clear you could get to the finish line in three days, if you took the highways. But this was strongly discouraged.

Again, this wasn’t a race, this was a run. Speed wasn’t what was celebrated, stories were. So they suggested we take the long way round. Which is exactly what the three of us decided to do. We also were determined to do it without the use of our cell phones, which had surprisingly good service the entire time we were in country. But who needs modern technology when you had three outdated maps, three compasses, and a bit of determination?

I still felt unconfident on the back of the bike and uneasy with the back road through a world not particularly fond of Americans these days. But on the other hand, this was incredible. All of it was incredible. I was taking any fears I had and giving them a tiny motorcycle sized middle finger.

We pushed west the whole day, making our way through small desert town after back desert road after windswept two lane highway. We stopped at a little cafe for a lunch and a mint tea. Then we continued onward, buzzing down the Moroccan “highway”, without a destination in mind. 

We made it all the way until 5:00pm until we had our first crash.

I was zipping through a small village, no more than a collection of houses off the main road, and really starting to get the hang of it. I was leaning into my turns, driving a little faster, I was becoming a MOTORCYCLE MAN. And then I took a left turn, leaned in a little too hard, failing to notice the gravel that had crept onto the otherwise dirt packed road. Suddenly, my bike was suddenly no longer where I had put it. Both the bike and my side went sliding along the gravel several feet before coming to a stop.

I popped up laughing, more from the adrenaline than anything else, but aside from a few scrapes along my left side, I was okay. It was then I noticed several kids sitting by the side of the road. I had crashed with an audience, and the audience was pointing and laughing. Fair, I thought. Little did I realize what monsters the children of Morocco were. But I would. I would soon enough.

I hopped back on the bike, and we pressed on, trying to find the town of “Goulmima”. It was a larger dot on the map, so we figured it must be sizable. We started to get a little nervous, as sunset was around the corner, and we weren’t entirely sure where we were going to sleep. We didn’t know the size of the town, or whether there were hostels, or whether it was cool.

We rolled up to the town around 6:30. Everyone stared. This was to become a regular occurrence. There weren’t many people who looked like us, and there CERTAINLY weren’t many people who were riding what we were riding, so we tended to attract attention wherever we went. But we shrugged it off and located a place to stay around twenty minutes later. Turns out they had a couple rooms, including the “suite”, a small hut in the back with two beds and running water. A coup. The guy was nice enough, he took our information and charged us WAY too much for the room, but by then it was dark, so what were we going to do? We paid and took our stuff to the back.

The room was fine, but the backyard was an eden. There was a huge tent with pads to lie on, overlooking a huge garden full of rosemary and mint and an irrigation system chipped out of the dirt. There was an orange tree. A beehive to harvest honey. Camels bleeted in the distance. I felt transported back in time to a distant, faraway land because I was. I was further away from anything I’ve ever done before.

We walked through the “lobby” and the manager announced, “Your friends are here!” We looked at him confused. No one was anywhere. We were the only ones in the hotel. Through broken english and pointing, we realized that he was referring to another group of monkey runners had arrived in TOWN, not even at the hotel we were staying at. This confirmed what we already felt – we weren’t going to be surprising anyone. 

We walked fifteen minutes into the town center and found a sandwich stand, where we purchased sandwiches and sodas while we chatted with the owner, a boisterous and lovely man with a thick mustache and a lot to say about volleyball, strangely enough.

We took another walk down a few streets, before getting creeped out and headed back to the hotel to sleep. The first day was done.