And then, crickets…at least until last Friday when Jimmy Fallon asked McGregor about his experience in South America during an appearance on The Tonight Show. 

A newly clean-shaven McGregor lights up remembering the ride, explaining that he and Boorman chose to go with electric Harley-Davidsons instead of traditional adventure bikes simply because they wanted to be a part of the new “wave” of transportation technology. 

“It proved to be amazing, and quite tricky at the same time,” he says of charging the e-bikes along the way. And while they could sometimes charge the bikes at hotels, and restaurants during lunch stops, many times they had to rely on the generosity of locals, knocking on doors and asking to use an outlet.

“There’s no real infrastructure for charging in the middle of Patagonia, for instance,” says Ewan, who goes on to describe camping in people’s backyards and plugging in overnight, occasionally blowing their host’s fuses while charging the Harleys’ greedy 15.5kWh Lithium-ion batteries, which can take over 12 hours to fully energize using 120 V household current. 

In contrast, energizing the LiveWires on the Level 3 DC “fast charger” stations we’re used to in North America would take only 40 minutes for an 80% charge and an hour for 100%.  

Back in September when the guys left from Ushuaia we reported they were traveling with an extensive vehicular entourage, including at least one backup LiveWire, a Ford F350 truck and a Mercedes Sprinter Van that likely carried portable fast chargers. How much they relied on crew support for charging (if at all) is still unknown. What we know is that Charley reported upon their arrival in L.A, they were only able to average about 120-180 miles in South America, Central America and Mexico due to charging issues. Once they crossed into the U.S. in Arizona they were able to step it up to 300 miles a day, thanks to modern charging stations. 

While Jimmy doesn’t ask the question we’d most love answered (When will it air?) he does ask what they did when they ran out of juice while riding, a situation Ewan says happened to him several times though never to Charley (and that Charley would claim it’s because he’s a better rider of the two). 

“I ran out a couple of times and I would just hold onto a car,” Ewan says as Jimmy and the audience laugh in astonishment. “If you open the back windows and front windows of the car, you can put your arm around the pillar and just muscle along like that.” This, a questionable trick the Scot says he learned while riding in a New York City Yellow Cab in his early 20’s when a Harley rider “clattered into the side of the cab, grabbed the pillar and shouted out the the address of the Hells Angels clubhouse to the driver, who just took him there.”

Knowing that Ewan and Charley’s first show, Long Way Round, aired less than three months after the end of their life-changing, trail-by-fire journey around the world, and the second show, Long Way Down, was on the BBC only two months after their return, makes us hopeful we’ll soon see announcements about the Long Way Up airing soon.

Judging by the heavily-used state of Ewan and Charley’s LiveWires when they arrived in Los Angeles, it looks like the friends got into some tricky situations. But even if this new show doesn’t deliver all the deep water crossings and dropping of bikes we’re used to, going along for the ride with these hilarious guys as they problem solve their way across some of the most beautiful countries in the world ought to be worth our time. 

Author: Jamie Elvidge

Jamie has been a motorcycle journalist for more than 30 years, testing the entire range of bikes for the major print magazines and specializing in adventure-travel related stories. To date she’s written and supplied photography for articles describing what it’s like to ride in all 50 states and 43 foreign countries, receiving two Lowell Thomas Society of American Travel Writer’s Awards along the way. Her most-challenging adventure yet has been riding in the 2018 GS Trophy in Mongolia as Team AusAmerica’s embedded journalist.