Notes from a motorcycle trip

(personal) by Whiskeydaemon (1.5 hr) (print) ? I like it! Tue Mar 25 2008 at 18:04:07

Washington State, Day One

A cold clear lake is framed by the Olympics. The road behind you still gives off a summer heat, and traffic winds around you as you sit in contemplation, watching the pine trees and other vegetation stake a claim between the giant rocky expanse of mountains.

It's the first stop I took, apart from a couple of quick gas stops. I put the kickstand down, undid my helmet, hung it on the handlebars and took a deep breath. The first part of any long trip is a bit hairy, until you get used to the high speeds and the traffic, and until you get out of the main traffic areas and have miles and miles of unimpeded roads to explore.

I checked the webbing on the back of the FXR. The gas canisters, sleeping bag and other items were still in place. Removing them, I accessed my main pack. Luckily I had packed in such a way that other T-shirts and chaps were available, cause you're not really registering that high altitude enough to keep snow around all summer round might be cold until you're in it.

The view is stunning. There's something about a range that goes on forever that takes your breath away, and the oasis of animals and plants in the lake make for a very peaceful stop.

Eastern Washington State, Day One

She was so beautiful I had to talk to her. She had a British Columbia license plate and a tattoo that wended up the left side of her body. Three things happen once you get over the pass - the mountains and hills become flat, the green expanse of pines and mosses turn into a pale yellowish grass and farmland, and the road turns into a highly broken up, treacherous gravel expanse with liability-removing signs saying "EXTREMELY HAZARDOUS FOR MOTORCYCLES. TRAVEL WITH CARE."

So I had pulled over to see if I could find out just how long I was going to have to travel under the limit, and she was at the same rest stop, cleaning road food remnants out of her car. She was an actress heading to Toronto seeking her fame and fortune, and turns out the US was faster and cheaper to travel through. I wished her well and we went our separate ways. She passed me on the road and waved at me with a smile I'll never forget, as she took her car to ninety miles an hour and roared away, never for us to meet again.

Idaho, Day One

Idaho is gorgeous. The lakes at Coeur D'Alene are breathtaking. Here you have trees and mountains together in a stunning display of colour and texture and differing heights. I stopped for gas in the shadows of a small restaurant and gas station in a town of several hundred. I went into the store to pay pre-emptively for the gas and found the familiar scent of an old wooden building and a hand lettered sign warning me not to thaw frozen bait in the microwave available to those who wanted to reheat whatever food they just bought. Two young new-school rednecks in a pickup were buying chewing tobacco and discussing a sexual conquest with the laconic young man behind the counter. I'd never seen a man more content with his lot in life.

I looked aside at a few handicrafts locals hoped that the people coming in for gas on the way from wherever to wherever had put in the gas station to sell. Nothing caught my eye, but I felt a certain sadness at this, the same one I felt in Mexico as people came to the tourist buses trying to hock anything they could, from those without money to those with it.

Montana, Day Two

There's nothing like it. Feeling the rumble of a V-Twin through your feet, hands and ass, the comforting snoring of the engine at full bore, and in this case, a trip through an out of the way mountain pass. Wind racing through your hair and taking the temperatures, scents and experience of the road with it in its wake.

Thompson pass is NOT on the beaten trail, and it's a serpentine road wending through remote houses, beautiful trees and lakes, and a view on an outlook that you'll never see again - an expanse of trees and valleys that seems infinite and makes you feel nothing but awe for the wonder of creation.

Upshifting, downshifting, banking into turns and the pull at your shoulder sockets when you rocket out of the turn and straighten out, fishtails singing. There is NOTHING like it in existence. And I was going to meet up with a fellow biker in his pad in Montana.

His log cabin was tiny, but functional. Animal parts decorated every surface, and it was obvious from his total isolation that his social skills had atrophied. He'd greeted me with "you sound like a woman" and retracted it immediately. He gruffly chose his bike for our run, a hard-tailed 1930s Knucklehead chopper with a hand-banger and a solo seat that gave me warm tingly feelings just looking at it. He looked oddly at my helmet, telling me that it wasn't required in this state. I kept it on as we rode to a bar and loosened up over burgers. He'd long given up drinking and I never drink when I drive - and the shady bar had more than a few patch holders, so we kept to ourselves and discussed technical matters of motorcycle maintenance until he had to get back and I had to hit the road - but not before he pointed me to a road back to the highway through a place aptly named Paradise.

Montana, Day Two

The Sky Motel is in a strip of civilisation called Drummondville, with a clattering rail junction on the other side of the road, and the lone highway on the other. It's a few miles down the road from the famous bar that serves deep fried bull testicles during a highly raucous weekend. It's got more wood than it knows what to do with , so it's panelled with it in a highly claustrophobic way reminiscent of summer cottages built in the 50s and basement dens built in the 70s, but it's clean and cheap, and the people are friendly. The shower curtain is plastic and has mountain/bear/pines thereon, which pales ridiculously when compared to the true beauty of the real thing right outside the door.

Within a half an hour I was completely shitfaced in a local dive bar with some new friends who were quite hospitable. There was football on the screen and some college students wearing loincloths and face paint who were travelling through. I was smoking Camels, as I do when getting highly drunk, and bemoaning the fact that this bar didn't have deep fried balls. The only downsides were that this being a small town there were no single women, and the bartender overheard a remark from someone else he thought I had said and took a dark dislike to me as a result.

What followed was people taking my side and trying to start something with the bartender, who had his own following. The bartender changed his tune - well, if I hadn't said something highly offensive to him, at the very least I was wasted, and should probably leave. The people I was with enjoyed my company and disagreed. The argument got quite heated, during which I slipped out the side door and crashed out at the Sky. To my horror, I realised the following morning at 85 mph fifty miles down the road from Drummondville, I was still drunk. I calculated the time it would take to clear it all and spent the entire morning eating food in a cafe near a converted jail until it passed.

Wyoming, Day Three

They call Eastern Montana "Big Sky" and it applies to Wyoming as well. The horizon is normally bracketed in every other place by trees and hills, which gives you up typically one third of the sky and makes it seem framed in. Especially in cities, where buildings obscure most of the view, the sky seems like nothing other but the absence of city.

And yet, just like Douglas Adams claimed that a big room conveys infinity more than infinity itself does, the rolling hills of Wyoming and its strangely reddish highway make the sky look more infiinite than an unbroken horizon. The rolling hills look like the Teletubbies set and/or the backdrop of Microsoft Vista, but you're somehow above it all looking down. Some miles in I simply stopped the bike by the side of the road and was the only soul for miles and miles. I walked off the road and into the field beside the road and lay in the grass, feeling cradled by the earth around me, looking up into the clouds and the deep deep blue that is Big Sky.

I was clearly sunburned at this point, the SPF 50 was doing sweet F.A. And as I sat up, I saw dark rainclouds dusting distant mountains with rain. I watched the road wend and the pattern of the clouds and realised I wouldn't get rained on, but I'd feel the cool and moisture in the air and watch it rain beside me.

And indeed it did. That afternoon I got gas in a converted trading post that sold pistols and rifles and was decorated by taxidermists and Native tribes. That night I stayed in a Western town whose hotels were all owned by Indians, save one whose sign proudly and in racist fashion claimed to be "American Owned".

Sturgis, South Dakota, Day Four

"Yeah! YEAH!"

Biker mecca. Infamous gathering place of the tribes. Tiny and pointless to be in any other time of the year. Just past Sundance I'd hit the heavy concrete corduroy that makes up the South Dakota highway. The heavy grooves in the road catch at a motorcycle tire and make the riding experience kind of like riding on ice. Hairy, scary, and you pray you do not have to brake or change direction suddenly.

I'd stopped to get a oil tank badge for a patch holding friend of mine. And I was hearing this fellow's cell conversation despite myself. He was dressed almost EXACTLY like Dog the Bounty Hunter, and had the hair and wrinkles to match.

"The airline lost my luggage, honey. YES! THE PIERRE CARDIN LUGGAGE!"

I was transfixed.

"I got the Escalade at the airport."

I looked up and down the road. Sturgis biker T-shirts, three for $20.

"We're picking up the rental bikes in half an hour, but I've now got to go back and get the luggage when they find it."

I quietly wiped some road carbon off my face. The bike itself was grimed up and there were bugs on the fenders. That night I was gonna have to adjust the lifters, check the tire pressure and the oil.

"They didn't have any choppers, honey, I had to go with the Road King."

But apart from the leather jacket, I didn't really look the part to be a biker. This man did. Much more than me. I looked like the developer I was. He looked like an ex-con.

"I'll pick you up at the airport soon." *flip* The phone had a Gucci logo on it.

I bought the badge and was back on the road in fifteen minutes.

printable version
chaos

Notes from a motorcycle trip part II	March 25, 2008	smoking	Nescience
ex	The Woman Who Sat on a Toilet and Wouldn't Get Off	Glimmers	Magic mushrooms
White Cross Movement	Sea gherkin	knocked up

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