Hi

I hope this is the right place to post this.

I post this request because I feel serious worried about what happened to a friend of us, a motorcycle world traveler.
We are friends since last year when we meet him at the Grand Canyon NP. WE stayed there together for 6 days and hiked together into the Canyon. His Name was Mike Newman and you can see a picture of him:




When we finally left, Mike wrote us his last Email from Tuby City, Arizona, on May 7, 2014. I know, long time ago, but I tried several ways to contact him in the last months, nothing worked. I am pretty sure he would have replied cause he was contacting us just a few hours after we left.

Mike is from Colombia, born in 1975, he started his travel around the World in February 2014 and was planing to be in Europe around this time. He is riding alone, sleeping in his tent, mostly somewhere on the side of the road / boondocking.
I have a feeling something happened to him, I hope it is not true...but I have to find out as thinking about it makes us even more crazy.
We are not motorcycle riders, (travelling in an RV), so we do not know the community. Mike mentioned that he has friends in an online community of motorcycle riders around the world, so I tried this one.

If you know any way how to help us in our search, let us know.

Bodo and Andrea


P.S: - If there is too much personal information in that posting I ask for deletion/editing it later. ALso If we finally can contact Mike, please give us the chance to edit this posting. Thanks

BTW: I signed up for instant email notification. If you want you can also write us at bodomalo@gmail.com - if you have personal thoughts or want to share information with us that should be keept private. Thank you

I would suggest also posting this on: Adventure Rider Motorcycle Forum

More American based.


I understand your concern but please don't get too worried just yet.

Is it possible he lost your contact details ??

Sometimes people WANT to be missing. Especially long distance travellers.

Anyway, I pray all is well with him. Let us all know if you re-make contact.

Ted

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

Thanks, I will try posting there too.

Well, we had email contact, I can still write without a bounced back message (active account), but replies do not come. Could be a small chance that all the emails are in his spam folder... Hopefully.
In our only email contact he asked us questions, so I would wonder why he would not answer now.

It is just a webmail, so I wonder, does yahoo ever delete inactive webmail accounts after a few years? ( I once had an hotmail account, when you do not log in they delete the account after 1-2 years)


Thanks
Bodo

As Ted says, people sometimes want to go quiet/missing etc. especially people who go on long distance tours. Some of them just move on, meet new people and can't (or don't want to) stay in touch with every person they have met along the way. I had a similar experience some years ago in Germany. A local guy I met in a bar in a small town called Montabaur when I was travelling by bike kept in touch by email for a couple of months afterwards then he stopped. The good news was that a few years later I was on another biking trip in Germany. I was passing through the same town and I called in to the same bar one afternoon. He was sitting there and we chatted and had a laugh. I didn't take it personally that he hadn't kept in touch.

When travelling, you meet THOUSANDS of people.

Even with the best intentions, it's almost impossible to keep in touch with everyone.

It's not disrespect. Just reality.

Before the world of email and facebook etc, it was just 'understood' !!!

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

Ok, these are nice stories and I understand that you might try to calm me down a little bit, but for me they do not make a lot of sense.
When we left we exchanged emails.
He wrote us, both, the same evening. He had misspelled my girlfriends email (bounced back), so he asked me for the correct one to send her a message too. I replied 5 minutes later, but we never heard of him again.
I tried a few times. The last time I asked if he is still alive.
Thats different to a "conversation" that just went out after a few weeks (that happend to me to and I understand it).
What concerned me was, that in his last message he wrote that his day was not so well. There was a lot of wind during that time, so he always had to drive extrem carefully. When he made a rest at a toilet his bike fell down from the wind and he had a lot of work to get it up back again (full packed)

One possibility could be that he is using a special spam filter and our emails are not on his whitelist. That chance is low, as he started a conversation and so my email should be automatically on that whitelist.

Other reason could be that he really wants to play death. Which does not make a lot of sense as it was not his kind of personality, he told us he keeps in contact with other riders over some "riders across the world" community.

Anyway, if someone ever finds Mike Newman, please just let us know where you have seen him - and tell us what make his bike is (I know) ;-)

Thanks a lot
Bodo

Bodo...first of all, we all hope your friend is safe and well.
But please accept that the guy may have moved on with his life in different places with different people. I'm sure he doesn't mean to offend you, perhaps he just has a fond memory of you and your girlfriend and nothing more than that.
Just because he didn't reply doesn't mean he's dead. Quite the opposite....it may mean he's very much alive and enjoying himself!

I just want to let you know that someone on the Advrider forum found a recent blog entry from last December, where an picture (made on that day) of Mike was posted. He is fine and we are happy with that. Thats all.

Excellent news Bodo