Moto Journalist Sets Off for Latin America

© Edward Wilkinson

Before she could hit the boarder, she had to get there. Clickenger came south from New York.

After reading the book The Camino, by humorist Shirley MacLaine, about a Century's-old spiritual trek across Spain, the then-Director of Operations for an IT company quit her job to walk the Camino de Santiago (Way of St. James) herself. She was walking to find herself, but after her first westward journey across Northern Spain, Alisa Clickenger says she felt more lost than ever. So she went back and walked it again.

This time, she met a German moto-journalist at the height of her trip, literally - they were on the highest point on the Camino. They became fast friends, and they started traveling together. She didn’t know it then, but Clickenger had found what she came to find – the answer to the question that had been haunting her ever since she returned from her first walk on the Camino: What did she want to do with the rest of her life?

The answer – ride around on a motorcycle, find and write stories, and get paid for it.

When she ended her second walk, she got on a plane, flew to Munich, and traveled through the Alps (on a motorcycle this time) with her new friend. Motoring, she found, was jarringly different. “When you’re walking, you see the same mountain for days. On a bike, you’re going very fast, passing mountain after mountain at 70 miles-an-hour. It’s very overwhelming.”

Overwhelming, but not unwelcome. “Motorcycling is everything to me now,” she says. And, “Now that I’ve found myself, I want to share my gifts with the world.”

To do that, Clickenger is embarking on a zig-zagging trip across Latin America in order to raise money, and awareness, for breast and ovarian cancers. “I’m really riding for the grandmothers,” she says, explaining that one of her grandmothers died of breast cancer, the other died of ovarian cancer. She’s also going to “inspire others to get over their fears, step outside the box and do what they love.”

And she’s going it alone. Clickenger will be joining the ranks of  women who have also ridden through Latin America solo. “I’m not extraordinary,” she says, “many women have done this trip – just not many American women.”

Though she doesn’t have a planned route for this pilgrimage, she does have a rather personal intention. Just like she came to find herself, and her’s life’s passion, on the Camino, she plans for a new layer of herself to emerge on this trip. “There are a lot of insights that come when you’re traveling by yourself,” she says.

There are also problems. “I’m not gonna lie, I’m scared about this trip,” Clickenger says, bringing up issues surrounding border crossings, and shakedowns by the local police.

But, she says, “I’ve led a life of measured comfort. In order to grow, I’ve got to step outside that comfort zone, explore boundaries and my relationship to the world.”