ElmoFromOK not a muppet

A few years ago, I stumbled across a strange reality show that features Ewan McGregor sitting in a thatch hut eating a stew made of lamb balls and other hard to identify chunks of what I hoped was meat. I was baffled and intrigued. I soon found out that it was a reality show / documentary that followed Ewan and his best friend Charley Boorman as they rode motorcycles from Scotland, to New York City the Long Way Round.  It was an insane idea with instant appeal for me and my wife.

I managed to get a copy of the full DVD set for the show not long after that and we devoured it in a few days, loving it every exhuasting mile. Watching these two actors move through so many different regions of the world, interacting with people who could not be farther removed from hollywood, is wonderfully human.

They spend three months on motorcycles, away from there wives and children, dealing with harsh weather, broken machinary, bruised egos and battered bodies. I did not think they would want to do it all again.

Luckily, I was wrong.

Last night they premiered the so called 'directors cut' of the movie version of the Long Way Down. This time the two traveled from Scotland to South Africa. The full reality show will premiere on Fox Reality this weekend and hopefully find it's way to Hulu.com soon after.

There are some really powerful moments in this journey, including visits to sites of massacres in a school in Kenya and a church in Rwanda. The school in Kenya was attacked by an unknown group of gunmen, and when the teachers saw what was happening they yelled at the children to run. The children old enough to understand, ran and hid, but the younger ones did not and were butchered.

'You can't conceive what happened here, you can't possibly imagine what would drive people to do that. They stole all of the villager's lifestock, they killed 60 villagers and 20 children, attacking the school. You can see the bullet holes.

'I mean the most horrific thing is that all the ones that were old enough to understand when the teacher came out saying 'run, run' ran, and all the little totty ones were just standing here, didn't really understand, so they didn't run. And that's just too much. And they still don't know why. They still don't know why - who did it or what for.'

The real benefit to program such as this is the connection it creates between us and something so far removed from our everyday existence. How could something so terrible happen, and we hear nothing about it? What should we do now that we know about it, and the other things that are happening all the time there? These are real questions we need to face and shows like this help us see those questions.

But the trek is not all hard moments, in fact most of it is joyful and very fun. There are some really amusing moments, such as watching Ewan walk up to a huge elephant, only to turn and run away giggling like a frightened school girl when it trumpets at him or watching Charley show off to the locals with his love of wheelies, while the produced bite there nails worried he will crash.

I really love going on these journies with the boys. And I do feel like I went on the journey. I wasn't just watching, I was riding along. I was there alongside Ewan and Charley as the interacted with the people, and with each other, and because of this I feel as if I was one of their mates.

Now, I want to go have a beer with them and ask them where are we going next?