"Yes, like them, " I shrug before pointing out it is a different route and that many bikers have done this trip over the decades without it being on television. The route on this journey of epic proportions is from Argentina to Alaska, my good friend Stephen and I on our trusty (hopefully! ) BMW F650s.

The idea started nearly two years ago as wishful thinking which, like a snowball gathering pace down an Alp, turned into extensive planning, research, sleepless nights and bouts of excessive map staring. This time last year neither of us even owned a motorbike. So we purchased 10year-old BMWs, got our full licences and got plenty of riding experience.

I hail from Cork and Stephen is from Dublin. And yet these facts have not deterred us! Both Stephen and I currently hold conventional nine-to-five jobs, but dream daily of our approaching end to the commute/work/commute/eat/sleep/ commute cycle. I work in sales for the Irish Flapjack & Muffin Co and Stephen is a data support technician for a major mobile company. We both realised that our dreams of travel would need to take precedent over our current working lives.

Although we do plan to work on our wanderings, it will be work of a different variety. We have joined WOOF, an international association of farmers who will give you employment in exchange for food and shelter. There are hundreds dotted across the Americas and they vary from small new-age self-sufficient organic vegetable patches to thousand-acre ranches brimming with cattle, sheep, horses and tasty steaks. You work a few hours a day and enjoy the countryside and its people without having to spend any money, and if you tire of it you just move on.

We are both 27 now and, having travelled extensively, we know what we are letting ourselves in for. Like many, we first got the travelling bug from our first major trip abroad, the J1 visa to the United States. Also, like many, this led to a group of us heading to Oz for the year and taking in a few Asian countries on the way back. This seems to be a standard Irish travel pattern. My last escapade was an overland sojourn from the Pacific to the Atlantic, crossing through China, Mongolia, Russia and on down to Gibralter. We like to think big, so this trip will be from the bottom of the Americas to the top.

There is a fine line between bravery and stupidity. Hopefully we fall on the bravery side. Of course most people think we are crazy and enlighten us to the dangers of bandits, kidnappings, FARC, pickpockets, cocaine, BMW motorbikes, Peruvian Shining Path Guerillas, malaria, anacondas, earthquakes and Tamil Tigers. OK, maybe not that last one. Believe you me, I am acutely aware of my own mortality, but I once knew a guy who got hit by the 84 bus. My point is that bad things can happen to you no matter where you are in the world, so fear should not restrict you from seeing that world. It is with a mixture of luck and bravery and a bit of stupidity that we hope to reach our destination of Prudhoe Bay within the Alaskan Arctic Circle.

Our families, although slightly apprehensive, fully accept our plans.

Stephen is single while my girlfriend Phoebe and I will go our separate ways for now. She is leaving to study winemaking in New Zealand in January and I will miss her greatly.

The godfather of modern-day motorbike adventuring is Ted Simon, an English journalist who in 1974 set off on a Triumph to circumnavigate the planet. It took him four years. He wrote a book about his adventures called Jupiter's Travels. Like Stephen and I, Simon had never owned a motorbike before he decided to go. The reason we decided to take bikes is not because we are fanatics, but because it is without doubt the most practical means of transportation. It allows you to take dirt tracks that a car could never dream of tackling. Bikes can take you truly off the beaten track and allow you to see, meet and greet people who would not be on the normal backpacking routes. It has been said travelling by car is like watching a film, as everything is framed for you, whereas riding a motorbike is like being in the film.

The vast majority of our trip will avoid cities, camping all the way.

Lines have been drawn on our maps connecting all of the National Parks on our route. The trip could be completed in a few weeks if we rode like a bat out of a well-lit cave but Stephen and I have set aside two years, presuming we can live cheaply and siphon petrol from locals. . . only kidding. The funding is the culmination of a few years' savings.

Accumulating camping and sports gear has been a mission for the past few months and we will be equipped with everything from snorkel gear, fishing rod and football, to solar panels and a world radio. No fancypants GPS required, my old Chinese compass should suffice. I am carrying a ridiculous amount of books, 15 at the last count, which makes me more mobile library than biker. Both of our bikes and all of our camping equipment were shipped in a large crate to Argentina a week ago. We rendezvous with them in a month. Bureaucratic nightmares await us at the Buenos Aires docks as we will need to custom-clear our bikes . . . we have heard bad things.

One week of acclimatisation in Buenos Aires and then we hit the road. . .