Long Way Up

Its quite obvious that the petrol heads who live and breath bikes are once again having a tanty over these two guys adventure. Ultimately that's what the show is, these two great friends adventures around parts of the world less travelled and they happen to love bikes.

On the First trip the haters went after them for the fact they had support cars following, on the second trip they got angry that bmw was supporting them with quick air shipment of spare parts, and now they are just angry at the notion of Electric.

well too bad, its pure jealously that the haters dont get to do anything remotely close to a trip like this. they dont seem to understand that the show isn't just about one thing, its not just the bikes, its not just the adventure and its not just about these two guys. Its the whole package, its the planing, the shenanigans, the route, the bikes and the whole crew.

all the people complaining about charging, what did you expect? nobody has done electric adventure like this before on bikes. that's part of why they did it.

Nobody said throw away ur petrol bikes and go full electric right now, everybody knows its going to take decades to get even a small percentage of the world into electric. Some of the destinations dont even have petrol stations so of course charging would be a problem. Both these guys still have many petrol bikes and won't be giving any of them up, yet you all seem to think thy are eco warriors with a green agenda rather than giving them credit for being pioneers in adventure travel.

This is Apple TV+'s first attempt at a documentary styled adventure travel show, and they've certainly gone big with it by taking on the Long Way franchise. The show features actor Ewan McGregor and his friend, Charley Boorman, going on a three-month, 13,000-mile motorcycle trip. Filmed in the fall of 2019, they ride through South America, Central America and Mexico, before finishing up in Los Angeles. The first episode starts slowly but held my attention with Ewan's wonderful, down-to-earth personality. I became even more interested when Harley Davidson stepped up with two prototype, electric "adventure bikes" for Ewan and Charley to take with them on their journey. For the bored and stuck at home, the EV aficionado and the lover of motorbike road trips the series holds a lot of promise, as the two venture through the Andes, Central American rainforests and back to California on fully electric motorcycles, demonstrating innovative engineering ingenuity and filling our empty, wanderlusting hearts with the opportunity to accompany them from our sofas while we wait out the pandemic.

Ewan and Charlie make an entertaining double act and the old production gang comes back together for a new road trip. The most obvious question, though is, "why didn't anyone tell them batteries don't like the cold"?

It seems that it takes them about 2 weeks to work this out. Whoever did the logistics must have been evilly laughing as they seemed to be constantly 10 miles short of powe.

Anyway, I'm about half way in now and in it for the long haul. The scenery is great (the drone pilot was pretty busy and seems to have his/her own battery supply) and the miles soon disappear.

And at least the charging issue gives a bit of jeopardy for the show. Worth a watch.

The idea of using electric bikes seemed nice in the beginning but it turn out to be a problem and a boring one as they always were trying to fin a charging point. Seems electric bikes are still a long way to go before they become mainstream in motorcycling. Claudio didn't even use one!, he was on a HD sporter I think. The constant searching for a way to charge became really annoying for viewers in my opinion and prevented them from seeing parts of chile and argentina that were "too far" from a charging point. Also the issue with the range was annoying, 140 miles a day is not really much for such a long trip, I imagine how bored they were most of the day waiting for the bikes to charge. The speed was kind of ludicrous too, riding most of the time at 40 miles per hour to preserve charge in the batteries.

Ewan and Charlie are so fun to watch. I used to watch it because I rode motorcycles but it's a good show on its own. If you like travel and reality series and motorcycles and funny banter you will enjoy it. The film crew does a great job of capturing the experience as well.I was going to give it nine stars but I decided to give it 10 because every time I start the series I can't stop watching it so what more can I ask for?