Another Archival Delight from the Blue Ride Journal about the world of Riding

Wind

I fly low, a noisy bird moving through the world. I’m in it but not of it. My mouth is full of wind and my hair snaps like flags where it escapes from my helmet; my ears burn with the buffet and boom of the air around me. Air that is not a breeze but a bully, air that doesn’t slide but air that pounds and slaps and knocks me around on the back of my motorcycle.

The wind surprised me when I met it the first time on the road. It stiff armed me and left my cheeks cold and my nose burning inside like I’d inhaled hot ashes. I didn’t really take the wind seriously until I headed out across the prairies; I’d only flirted with it before then. The wind on the prairie blows hard and long, like a living spirit out there with you on the road.

A long day’s ride across a gold summer prairie will bring cold fingers of icy air in the morning that tease and pull your pants loose from your legs and invites the wind in to fondle and freeze your ankles. Your eyes tear and your nose aches from the cold and about the time you adjust to the chilly embrace the day’s wind warms and the layers come off one at a time in a sort of wind assisted strip tease. At each stop you lose another piece of gear; first the leather chaps, then the jacket, then the warm sweatshirt. By afternoon you are hot, down to a tee shirt and jeans with eyes that burn from the insistent hair dryer heat of the wind on your face. Your nose burns inside up to your eyebrows with the dry heat. When you stop for gas or a cold drink you hunt for the Vaseline, Chapstick or Carmex, anything greasy in the way of lip balm that you can squish out of a tube and smear on your mouth and use to coat the inside of your nose. Attractively greased up with Vaseline from your chin to your eyebrows you hit the road again, only to discover that now when a bug hits it sticks to the grease.

By early afternoon you are just about hammered by the freight train of wind. You have on your goggles that shut out the wind from the sides so your eyes stop tearing, your nose is full of Vaseline and dead bugs and you have put in your foam earplugs. Sort of like three monkeys in one go--see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. In this case it’s more like feel no wind, smell no wind and hear no wind. When you get the pain factor caused by hours in the blistering wind under control, you start to notice other things.

Things like when you ride down into a draw or a little valley the wind stops for a few seconds. You notice immediately that when you come out the other side it has changed course and is now pounding you sideways from the other direction, causing a handlebar clenching moment while you compute the new angle of lean you will be taking. I started learning the wind on my first epic ride to Sturgis.

My road partners were three firemen, who have been riding for years. Add to this the notion that firemen are, shall we say, different? These are people who enjoy running into burning buildings when the rest of us are running out—and they like it. They are not exactly ‘adrenaline junkies ‘as the phrase goes, but they do tend to live life at a level ratcheted up a notch from the rest of us and they are fairly nonchalant about the tough stuff.

On our jaunt across the country when we hit the prairies and the endless winds the stories started. As a brand new green-gilled, wet-behind-the-ears motorcyclist my eyes got bigger and my stomach got tighter with each Paul Bunyanesque tale. Horrific stories of riding in wind so strong bikes were blown across three lanes of freeway and into oncoming traffic. I heard about winds that were so blustery bikers rolled down the road tipped over to the point they could drag a hand on the pavement if they’d wanted to. I heard about headwinds so fierce your bike wouldn’t go over 20 miles an hour and tailwinds that blew you along all over the road willy-nilly like yesterday’s newspaper. I gritted my teeth and thought to myself, while adding more grease layers to my chapped face and bug collection, “Oh goody, one more novitiate terror for my list, I’ll add this one on right behind tightly wound mountain roads and gravel driveways.”

After the first ‘Windsday’ I wasn’t scared any longer, I was just cranky and irritated from the ceaseless blowing. I did get shoved all over the road when the breeze suddenly changed hats and came from the other direction; I endured headwinds, tailwinds, and side winds. One spot in South Dakota was so windy we were all leaned to the left so far it looked like we were going around a banked corner. This happened to be on a stretch of road that’s flat as a flounder and straight as a stick right to the horizon. It doesn’t feel like you are riding tipped to one side. You don’t realize it until you look at the string of riders ahead of you and realize everyone’s riding at a bizarre and drunken looking angle strung out in a line ahead of you.

Like most of the novice terrors, this one required riding through it and out the other side. Motorcycles don’t have reverse for a reason; you just have to keep going forward. You come to realize if you ride, you ride with the wind. Sometimes you ride on it and sometimes it rides on you but I have learned to always carry a few pairs of those foam earplugs stuffed in a pocket somewhere. Oh, and get used to calling the wind Mariah. She’s not going anywhere.

 

17 Years is Still Gone Too Soon

The father of Gonzo journalism and my Hero of Writing, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, killed himself today. It really did shake me and break my heart a little. Michael Moore is the closest person I can think of as an heir apparent but he dwindles to a buffoon and a clown when you stand his corpulent carcass up next to the master.

I think my exposure to Hunter probably tainted my both sense of humor and my sense of outrage. Everything rolls downhill and  all of my children did not fall far from the mother tree. My  kids are all hilariously cynical and terribly bright in that out-on-the-edge-rip-your-lips-off style Hunter had, and I’m glad because America demands both disbelief and cynicism on a daily basis. My unicorn is a red Selectric typewriter just like his, he shot holes in it but it still worked.


I think I own everything he ever wrote, and if hasn't been borrowed away I own it still--although in all fairness the later stuff was losing its saucy edge and turning into burnt out rants with occasional flashes of brilliance.

Hunter would have been seriously thrilled by the news that the moronic piece of landscaping occupying the White house has admitted to smoking dope and being a friend to gays today--although he says he has to hold the party line. Quoi? Where are you when we need you Doctor? If we ever needed your venomous pen and voluminous vocabulary it was today. I find it personally ironic that something that desperately needed Hunter's smoking touch came over the wire just as he left us behind in a trail of dust and blood.

Dr. T, I raise a glass to you, hell I’ll raise a whole bottle and 3 doobies, you deserve it. Here’s to an eternity full of sunshine, big redheads, Caddy convertibles and great drugs, here's to enough politicians in heaven and hell to keep you wound up way too tight until the world’s end. You will be sorely missed, and having you take that last long road feels like the end of the sixties arrived today. Thank you for giving us Gonzo journalism and ranking right up there with Don Quixote in the annals of making runs at windmills.

I rode the Coast highway last summer from the Bay to Big Sur on my motorcycle and thought of the Doctor and his legendary spins on the same stretch of road all those  years ago. Thanks for the gifts man, the accidental ones mean the most and you were the best.

 My favorite bracelet which I wear almost daily is Hunter S Thompson quote,. "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."  He was my spirit animal and totem. Rock on Doc!

 

Faye Dosha and Pearl (Lee) Fowler, my grandparents

      This is a true story about my crazy mother and her family. She grew up 

      in the West on a Colorado ranch and this tale has been family legend since

      I was little myself. I have merely written it down the way it might have happened. 

My mother's best friend Helen, her sister
 Darlene and my mother Dorothy in 1929, winter in Denver

      Dorothy Fowler turned ten in 1930. That world was a very 

      different place than this one, refrigerators ran on blocks of ice and 

      radios were big enough to be special furniture in the parlor- if you were 

      lucky enough to have both a radio and electricity.

     There were no freeways and not very many paved roads and lots of folks 

      still had horses and buggies instead of cars.  Clothes dryers were ropes strung

       between two poles and  cooking stoves cooked with wood.

      Denver, Colorado is a mile high and it's a place where winter comes early 

      and leaves late, Dorothy loved it up there. She could see about half of forever from

      the front porch and the air was always as ringing clear as her mother's best glasses.

      Every spring the ranch hands ran the cattle up from the low valleys where 

      they had wintered and pastured them in the lush upper meadows for the 

      summer. Life got more lively in the summer when all the hands were in the 

      bunkhouse and her mother was steering the family and the hands like they were 

      her own personal ship’s crew. Everyone had chores from the youngest child 

      up to my grandfather, Lee; who became Pop as my granddad. 

Pop's first truck, 1929

      Each week wound down to Saturday afternoon when everyone to

      go to  town to shop and visit; and in the case of the hands hit the tavern

      and let off steam. Dorothy being a somewhat dreamy child, was 

      usually the first started and last finished with her week’s work. This 

      particular week she had not finished the last of her chores and so was 

      forbidden the treat of going to town. She watched sadly as all the cowboys

      packed themselves into the back of the truck for the ride; laughing and 

      singing, happy to escape cows, blisters, running fence, and all the myriad 

      jobs it took to run the ranch. 

      Her brother and sister, Wayne and Darlene, were stuffed in the front seat 

      between her parents. They made horrible faces at her through the window of 

      the truck when their other wasn’t looking, sly and pleased as cats at her 

      punishment. 

      As the loaded truck careened down the hillside and out of sight, she moped her 

      way back to the kitchen. It was time to finish the baking that had deprived 

      of her of an afternoon gawking at things in the shops; things she fully intended 

      to have someday. 

      She got out the flour, the salt and sugar, the crock of yeast starter, the heavy 

      mixing bowl, wooden spoons and bread pans, all accompanied with sighs and 

      sniffles as she prepared to put together the week’s bread. Fourteen loaves 

      had to be baked for just one week, a full day’s worth of work. Boring, hard and 

      monotonous work it was too. Measure, mix, knead, stir, only two loaves 

      could be made up at a time in the enormous blue stoneware bowl. 

      Dorothy Imogene was bored. She imagined all the wonderful things she would 

      prefer to cook if she only knew the recipes; taffy, Turkish delight, 

      round loaves of bread studded with raisins, nuts and saffron, and all the 

      delights of the mysterious East she read about in school books. Yet here

      she was making wheat bread; boring, bland and plain. Her eyes roamed

       over the open  kitchen shelves as she kneaded the bread and she saw her

       mother’s little glass vials of precious food coloring. In two shakes

       she had the top off the blue jar and was dripping blue onto the mass

       of bread dough. “Robin’s egg blue bread, oh how lovely,” she sang

      to herself as she kneaded the lumpy dough mass to smoothness  and she

     still sang  as she put it with the first two blue loaves to rise in the second best wash tub.

     

     She even sang as she started on the third batch of blue bread, but at some point

     reality returned and she turned  around to look at the blue mound of dough

     rising on the hearth.  Her mother would not look happily upon blue bread, 

     pragmatist that she was, and visits to town might easily be outlawed forever

     for a  transgression of this magnitude. How to get rid of the evidence? She 

      wasn’t singing anymore, she was huffing and puffing as she pulled the 

      dough-filled tub out the door and dragged it uphill to the pigpen. She 

      heaved the sticky mass of dough over the fence into the far end of the 

      pigpen, knowing when the pigs woke from their morning naps they made short 

      work of anything edible. 

      Dorothy headed back to the kitchen, anxious now to make up for lost time 

      and clean up the evidence of her blue sin. The warm sunny day made 

      the huge lump of dough left in the pigpen rise quickly, hissing 

      occasionally as blue gas bubbles deep in the dough escaped. It sat  

      growing in the corner in all it’s blue gassy glory while the same lovely sunshine

     kept the pigs sound asleep longer than usual. When they finally woke 

      they heard something hissing in the corner and they didn’t 

      like that sound at all. 

      Dorothy didn’t think anymore about the blue bread, she thought only of the 

      job at hand, making the good plain wheat bread. She finished it with a 

      will and the scent of fresh baked bread wafted from the house as the truck 

      returned from town.

      The sun was just slipping behind the peaks leaving everything bathed in

      the soft purple shadows that marked the day’s end. 

      The pickup stopped at the edge of the porch and her father got out and 

      handed her mother and siblings down from the cab. “Zeke, you take the boys 

      to the bunkhouse and the truck back to the barn and then you all wash for 

      dinner and come on back,” 

      Zeke obligingly folded his long legs into the cab of the truck 

      and disappeared around the corner as the family went into the house with

      their packages, busy with getting dinner on the table. Suddenly, 

     gunshots rang out loud in the evening quiet. The sound came from north

      of the barn and her mother roared off like her skirts were on fire with her

     father in hot pursuit. Everyone  followed as fast as they could run, including 

    Dorothy Imogene. They all came to  a screeching halt at the pig pen.

      Three fat pigs were cowering in the far corner of the pen while a huge 

      blue mass slowly deflated in the opposite corner. A shaken Zeke said, 

      “Lordy, Mrs. Faye, I come around the corner of the barn and I seen the 

      pigs a-looking scared in the corner there and I seen that blue thing just 

      swelling up and hissing and I didn’t think, I just shot it! I don’t know 

      if I killed it or not.” 

      Mama looked at Zeke and then she looked at the hissing blue pile. She 

      walked to the pig pen fence, leaned over and stuck two fingers into the 

      sticky blue mess. “Bread.” she said quietly to no one in particular. She 

      looked at Dorothy Imogene’s scared face and at Zeke’s scared face and her 

      family and the circle of cowhands clustered around the pen. She sat down 

      quietly on the ground, just folded in half right there in the dirt wearing 

      her second best dress, her town shoes and her best jet earrings. She was 

      bent over and her shoulders were shaking. Then she did something unheard 

      of, she laughed so hard she fell over backwards. 

      My grandad and the hands were paralyzed, just staring at my grandma Faye. After a 

      little bit, one got brave enough to stick his hand out and touch the mess 

      and he fell down too, laughing till the tears came. Soon the yard was 

      littered with grown ups rolling around in the dirt and laughing to beat 

      the band and all hollering, “Bread!” 

      The children never did understand what was so funny, and it was deemed 

      the responsible thing to never leave Dorothy Imogene home on town day 

      again.

      

     

Terry at Glacier

Apres Sturgis

 Archival Post, Way out of Order, I'm getting ahead of myself, I am so glad I wrote all this down on my amazing ride across America.

Tuesday 8/2: The guys, Don, Bill and Terry, want to leave early. We have been thoroughly Sturgisized. We all pack in a the bikes in a flurry of activity and then go stand in line in the campground office to get our money back for the days we didn’t stay, nice of them to return it to us. The office is in a log cabin with a long porch and inside the walls are festooned with motorcycle trinkets- all for sale, of course. I’m bored waiting so I look in all the glass cases. I find a pin to buy; a pin that says “I Rode Mine” and an official Sturgis patch with the year. I feel like a swaggering cowboy as I leave the office and step onto the wooden porch. I made it. I rode all the way here and I’m still alive and now I’m looking forward to riding more. I guess I have ceased to be the green girl who wobbled out of Olympia and turned into this tough sunburnt biker chick. 

Leaving Sturgis, the newly minted biker chick

Leaving in packs of racketing bikes of all stripes, sizes and colors and terrified tourists in cars and RVs, we push north. It’s hot, windy and dry.

Wednesday 8/7:  I see only tons of wheat, miles of wheat, acres of it, millions of acres, to the horizon in every direction. Once in awhile a river runs through it, the Platte, the Milk River, unnamed creeks all run through this thirsty country. 

We find one really evil, scary eleven mile stretch of construction. So much for being the bold biker chick, I white knuckle my way through the big trucks that I swear are trying to throw crap on me when they barrel past going the other direction. My least favorite sign again, Road Construction Ahead, Motorcyclists Use Caution. Okay, what else would I be using?

 I see a road sign that I really love; it says “Buffalo” with an arrow pointing to the right and “Bison” with an arrow pointing straight ahead, makes me wonder what the difference is.

 This town is pretty laid back and interesting. I wish we had time to explore more. We are at a Laundromat tonight and the laundry is trying to dry. But it’s still wringing wet after an hour of flopping around in the dryer so I’m watching dryer instead of television tonight. Tomorrow we ride for Glacier, on the Highway to the Sun, which sounds like its long and steep. So, I’ll sit here and watch the wash and worry about falling down or doing something else incredibly embarrassing in front of my very cool pack of guys. Can a pack be three guys and me? I guess it’s my half pack.

 We hit really strong winds where the mountains rear up from the plains. It’s funny to see our string of bikes going down the road leaning sideways. You can’t feel it on the bike, the correction for the wind is natural but when you ride down a dip and the wind stops it really feels odd to come upright, until you zip from the dip and lean once more into the wind.

 We rode through Glacier today. I was terrified to the point of a stomach ache about the roads through the park. I tried not to drive the guys crazy asking about the Road to the Sun Highway, just shut up and rode. It is beautiful here with wide, gliding sweeping turns into St Mary and the Park entrance. We ride into the park under cloudy and sunny skies. The road runs along the lake and the lake demands to be admired. It’s like something from a western fairy tale. It’s late enough in the day to catch the light at a glancing angle and it looks like a broken mirror. Dark trees pile up right to the lake edge. We stop for photos and I am overwhelmed by the sheer otherworldly beauty of this place. The best thing about a bike is that it’s like riding through your own movie, starring you while you watch it; you can see everything and be there too.

 Suddenly the road takes off the front of the cliff to Logan Pass. There are lots of turnouts for tourists to take pictures along the way. It’s a steep curvy road but everyone is only going 35 mph. I was delighted to see so few motor homes; the road is too narrow for them to get through comfortably in most cases.

 We stopped at the top of the pass. Wow, marked motorcycle parking is provided, Terry says this is pretty common but it’s my first experience of it, I guess I’m easily pleased. We all strolled over to the rock wall at the edge of the parking lot and took in the stunning 365 degree view provided courtesy of Mother Nature. I take a bunch of pictures and one of Terry that will prove to be an all time favorite. He’s wearing his vest, a white tee shirt, his hair is long and he has a raccoon tan and he's surrounded by mountains.  The marmots poke their heads out to take us in as we take pictures of each other and marvel over the view. This is all old marmot hat to them and they probably wish we’d all go away now. 

 Back on the bikes, the thunderstorm is beginning to grumble at our heels. We are frustrated and irritated by a car that is so slow on the 6% downhill grade that we are in first gear. The guys aren’t helping much, yelling back and forth jovially about tuck and roll if you go over the edge and not riding a rocket over the wall. Don says he read a bicyclist did go over the wall last year and get killed in a long fall. Yechh.

 The ride is actually fun but it requires real focus because the back side is as twisty as a pretzel. It never fails, one dopey driver turns off and we pick up another one—this one goes 35 for miles and miles. As a consequence we get caught in the rain. Terry tells me don’t hit your brakes and you’ll be fine. Right… and you would suggest stopping how?

 The rain ends and we turn into the park tourist shops to buy trinkets. Don breaks down and gets his wife something really nice. I knew he had it in him all along. Don is not cheap, let’s just says he’s careful and be polite. I get a great pair of earrings that are black ravens and something for Torin to stuff in my full saddlebags. I know Terry loves traveling with me on the bikes because shopping is curtailed by just volume available. Ha, jewelry takes up no space I have found.

 Back aboard we make it a fast run into Kalispell and Whitefish. Montana is an amazing place, a different world indeed. The sky really is big here. The light is hard and white and wonderful. I saw so many photographs I wanted to take. Dilapidated grain elevators towering against the blue sky enchant me. They have been replaced by modern sheet metal structures; one even says General Mills in huge letters painted across the front of it. The Wheat fields are a hundred subtle shades of green, brown and deep gold. I see old falling down house abandoned in fields, wheat growing right to the doorsteps. Farm equipment is parked every which way on hill tops while the farmers are where? Who knows but there are very few humans in the landscape.

 It is fascinating the see at a distance machines that I don’t recognize cutting, mowing, harvesting all through the Plains leaving dust plumes and clouds in their wakes.  One of my favorite sights was four shiny silver grain silos in a row. Parked to their right was a 1950’s vintage low bed truck, old and rusty red but still in service. This vignette is strung along the top of a ridge against the blue sky, and a gold wheat field fills the foreground running right to the road’s edge.

 Friday, 8/9: Yesterday we left Havre, a depressing town on the plains of Montana. We fought the wind in our faces all the way. Our merry band was pretty unmerry and tired, running towards thunderstorms and trying to beat them into town for the night. The clouds were astonishing, huge silvery gray and white thunderheads had me worried as I scurried along. The shadows felt wonderful when they fell over us as the clouds rolled our directions.

 We made it into Havre under a brass yellow sunset sky. It’s a flat town with grain elevators and railroad tracks as its reason to be. We found a motel with a Spanish motif, orange walls, terracotta roof and a good excuse for cactus in the planters. We tucked the bikes in carefully and snugged down their covers, expecting the sudden buckets of rain-- and the thunder and lighting. The storm lasted most of the night and started new fires in Glacier National Park.

 Saturday 8/10: We met at McDonald’s for breakfast. The guys had insisted on ‘camping’. I say this isn’t camping; it’s just sleeping in a tent. I must be a spoiled brat because when I’ve been on the back of a bike eating bugs and wearing dust for eight sweaty hours I don’t want to roll up in a tent. I want a shower and a real bed, so call me a weenie and find me a Holiday Inn. 

 

The Ministry of Silly Falls

Feb. 9th, 2004 | 07:46 pm

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Monty Python had a Ministry of Silly Walks in their arsenal of hilarity. I think motorcyclists should have a Ministry of Silly Falls. I discovered in my first year of riding that falling over on your bike does not engender humiliation even if done under the dumbest possible circumstances. Perhaps it is our own memories of falling down with a 500 pound machine on top of us and getting back up again in one piece that makes us all identify and commiserate with the recently dumped.

I took my motorcycle safety class last year and passed it to my surprise and terror. Part of the deal involved in getting my own bike. One of the reasons introduced in the rules of the class for getting booted off the playing field instantly was dropping a bike, so the entire class was hypersensitive and focused on staying upright, a prescription that stuck with me as I began my riding career.

Shortly after I finished the class the bike of my dreams, a Blue Bonneville Triumph America '03 came to live at my house. I managed to get home from the dealership on my first solo ride in one terrified piece but the first time out of the garage we tangled up and fell down in a pile together in the driveway while standing still--within five minutes. I remember muscling that TR out of the garage for my first real ride, I started to think I must have learned to ride on a toy bike-- and I missed it a lot. I longed for that little bitty 250cc Kawasaki when wrestling with the Bonnie. Weighing in at 790cc and almost 500 pounds, she was definitely Real and Real Heavy and Real Awkward. The retro look of the TR that attracted me in the first place was the root of many of my problems to come. The effect of the rake on the stretched out front end that gives the bike it's distinctive look also gives it a floppy front end that wants to throw itself on the ground like a two year old in a tantrum if you don't watch it carefully. As far as I knew back then a rake was something you used on the lawn or a bad guy out of a romance novel set in merry old England. I learned pretty quickly that this bike's front end translated into her having Parking Lot Issues.

I wasn't ready for the sheer dead weight of the Triumph when I rolled it out either. Shaking like a leaf from the adrenaline and the effort of keeping her upright I managed to hoik the kickstand down and just stood there and panted for awhile, while my heart slowed down to something approaching normal. I carefully went over all the steps I learned in class, got the engine check complete and climbed aboard elated and terrified at the same time to start her up.

Neutral, engine started, kick stand up, then a nice slow motion fall over to the left, still astride the bike. My leg was pinned underneath and my ankle was bent sideways, lovely, I couldn't even reach the key from that position. Needless to say, I was cursing very loudly as my terrified white faced husband ran over and heaved the bike off of me thinking he'd made a big mistake letting me have a bike. The only damage was a bruised shin and a bruised ego. I wanted to ride and I didn't want him to think I needed training wheels, so like falling off a horse, I got right back up on the bike and staggered down the driveway in one piece. That afternoon, I contracted a permanent case of Riding Fever and I was willing to do whatever it took to ride.

About two weeks later, still green as grass and practicing my new skills every chance I got, I was leaving a parking lot at my son's baseball game. Stopped carefully, both feet on the ground and wanting to go left, I looked to see if traffic was clear to the left. Unfortunately, I seem to have leaned the bike a bit too far to the right and suddenly, I was on my way down again, under the bike. I was slowly discovering the laws of balance and how to be ready when physics and the bike's dynamics kicked in; unfortunately I seemed to just learn by doing which was hard on my shins and the nerves of everyone around me.

The baseball dads who ran over and heaved the bike upright were more shaken than I was-- except for the riders in the group. The two bikers immediately dusted me off and shared their Silly Falls stories. They waved as I rode off and assured me it happens to everyone sooner or later. This began my months of feeling seriously stupid and trying really hard to figure out what I had done so I wouldn't do it again.

My Silly Falls shook up my nerve, courage and trust in the bike and myself even though I was not hurt either time. I found and read more books about riding and turning and trails and physics and how a bike works. Experiencing several light bulb moments in my reading, I put the information to use as I rode hundreds of miles and practiced stops, starts, turns and SIPDE in preparation for my first major adventure, a two week ride to Sturgis that was going to make me or break me as a rider.

The second day out on the big trip across half of the United States, I was riding well and paying close attention to my low speed maneuvers. I was feeling pretty good as I pulled flawlessly into a crowded grocery store parking lot in Southern Oregon. I executed a tight turn at low speed and came to a complete neat stop. I was so proud of myself; I had finally figured it out. I leaned over turned off the key, and got off the bike. On the way down I realized I had forgotten one thing: the kickstand. That was my Really Silly Fall and made me a card carrying member of the Silly Fall Hall of Fame.

Each ride has gotten better as I've learned how my bike works and responds. Book learning is great and gives you an explanation for the bikes behavior that you can you take and put to use, but only riding, riding, and more riding can propel you from dangerous novice to semi-trained intermediate rider.

I'd like to be able help someone else get a fallen bike up if it ever happens in my vicinity, I'd like to be able to say, "No worries", dust them off and tell them about my Silly Falls. I'm also going to invest in some nice highway bars so I can rescue myself if the need ever arises--although I really hope it won't. I've seen articles in bike magazines about a woman who teaches other women to pick up their bikes. I want to learn to do that, find a class and learn to get my bike back up and yours too, if they decide to participate in a Silly Fall. Now that's my idea of women's liberation.

 

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Riding Season Begins with the Banana Woman

Feb. 8th, 2004 |

It's February, the camellia outside my living room window is blooming. The flowers are a surprise and a delight, when everything else is still gray and either soggy or desiccated depending on its nature. I noticed the flowers yesterday when I stepped out for the first ride of the season. They were peeking out of the shiny green leaves of the plant, so soft and pink and perfect, they didn't look real. The day was sunny and warming by ten a.m. The sky was blue and only a few clouds scudded by, not your typical Washington-in-February day. We decided to carpe the diem and head out for a ride.

I haven't been up on the blue dragon since last October. Every time the weather has relented and I had a shot at riding weather, reality, a.k.a. my job, got in the way. T. has had to ride without me for the few times he has gotten out to freeze in the breeze. So it was with both anticipation and spookiness I suited up to embark on my second season as a 'bikesta' (rhymes with gangsta but rides a motorcycle). I have put on just enough weight during the hamster hibernation season to render my chaps miserably tight which made me really cranky for A)putting them on and B) now having to get them back off.

Not wanting to A) freeze my chubby rear off or B) miss the ride, I unpacked my new bright yellow Triumph one piece all weather suit thinking I'd give it a go. I cut off all the tags, laid it on the bed and began to dress in layers of clothes to avoid freezing at speed on the bike. On went woolly long johns, woolly socks, blue jeans, and a warm woolly shirt. By the time I got the first two layers on, I was breaking a sweat. I found a warm gray jacket, zipped it up over the woolly shirt, got a little warmer still and started to investigate the mechanics of the bright yellow one piece all weather suit. The zippers on it are three miles long-each--- and open from the ankles to the neck. You'd think it would have had those zippers that you can run from either end but no, these ones start at your ankles and each leg has its own personal zipper. The front of the thing also features enough lapped over patches of Velcro to close up a circus tent water tight. Once I managed to rip the Velcro apart and then convince it to stay that way by standing on the legs of the suit and pulling it apart up to the neck, I started on the zippers. The directions say right there in enthusiastic black and white script "Easy step in, easy on and easy off." Right. Staring at the suit, unzipped and ready to step in it occurred to me that getting back out might be a fairly ferocious undertaking, so with a sigh, I peeled off at least one layer and made that final pit stop.

I stepped back up to the suit, seriously sweating now and laced into my riding boots. I stepped in, I bent over, I zipped up the zippers, ankles to ears, and belted the belt of the suit over my woolly long johns, my jeans, my woolly undershirt, my woolly shirt and my woolly coat. The suit was obviously made for a man much taller and wider than my 5 foot four inch height. There was enough excess suit, even over the various layers of me to make another whole rain suit for a really big dog. I looked in the mirror and thought to myself, "You look like the Michelin man after too many bananas." There were bags and bunches of fabric, the bulk of the too long sleeves was rolled up each arm making it look I was carrying the life preservers from the Titanic over the end of each arm. Still, I was more worried about the Washington State winter cold than the goofy looking banana-yellow woman staring back at me from the mirror. I straggled valiantly out the back door towards the garage where the bikes were parked and waiting. I was hot and getting cranky and all the bunchy sagging fabric was making walking a real chore and causing enough plastic rubbing racket to scare my cat into full-fledged hair up hissing fit when I lurched into his patch of sun and woke him up.

Staggering into the garage, I found my winter gloves and tried to pull one on over the life preserver arm. Nope, the top of the glove wouldn't fit over the wadded up fabric. That did it. The banana suit from hell got peeled off one long zipper at a time and chucked into the corner accompanied by a serious string of bad words. My husband was smart enough to not say one single word. He warmed up the bikes and stayed out the fire zone while I grouched and grumped and pulled on my old rain paints to cut the chill over my leather chaps. I pulled off the woolly gray jacket and put on my lined

black leather jacket and my helmet over a warm hat and headed out the door. By then I was so hot and so cranky over the suit from hell, hat I forgot to worry about riding and the old: how will I do? Will I fall down? Will I run into the side of a car? Will a car run into the side of me? What if? What if? I completely forgot to review my whole novice rider litany of things that could happen. That litany accompanied me every day for about the first 4500 miles of my riding career so being aggravated right out of it was a good thing.

The temperature was creeping up into the high forties when I pulled on my warm winter gloves over my now regular sized arms, crawled onto my warmed up bike and pulled up the kick stand. We headed out into the sunny day, both bikes purring like big cats. Surprise! It was great, it was wonderful and it was like last summer's hard earned 5500 miles were just clocked yesterday. I remembered all over again why I love riding and I can hardly wait for more sunny days to invite me to get out and ride.

We both noticed we stayed warm the whole day, neither one of us got cold anywhere but our noses. We had so much fun we scrapped the original plan of a quick trip down to the coffee shop and home, we wound up staying out and riding all over the county for the whole day and didn't drag ourselves home until the day started to head towards evening and take on a distinct chill.

And the yellow suit? Well, maybe I'll put it in that cute little bag in came in and carry it on trips. It could come in handy, there's probably enough room in it to camp overnight with all my luggage and a camp stove if I have to. You might want to look out if you see a woman flapping down the road on a bike like a load of wet wash in that suit. You could be seriously injured if you laugh so hard you run off the road.

And So It Begins, Men and Motorcycles, Summer 1997

 It's July. The middle of July, after the summer rains have ended. The weather is hot and the sky is hard and blue for days on end. The northwest summer has arrived and I find myself flying up the road in my sky blue car to meet a man in Anacortes, four hours away from Olympia, Washington. He has a motorcycle and he has been riding on it somewhere in the west for the past two weeks. He is my best friend and I miss him. Somehow, I have convinced myself that is a good thing to do and it will be fun, but there is a part of me in here huddled in the back of my head somewhere screaming behind my eyes saying, "Big Mistake! Turn around and go home you idiot!"

But I don't go home, there isn't much home left to go. The ruins of a marriage to a man who stepped out of it a long time ago for someone else wait behind me. We both agree, I will finally give up and move out of my husband's house as soon as I can save up enough money. It has taken me years to figure it out, sometimes you can love someone but love is not enough. My friend B. explained that concept to me and it took awhile for it to sink in but she was right. So here I am with nothing much left to lose and a lot of mixed up feelings in my head and heart.

Aida is on my car tape player, Elton John's lusty version and it is great to listen to while I rocket up the freeway. It's close to sunset, about 9:00 p.m. and there are deer on the verge of the freeway, beautiful but a scary sight on an interstate. I finally slow up, leave the free and find the motel where we are to meet. It's not a palace but it's not a rat bag flea trap either. I see a big black Harley out front as I get out of my car. He hasn't been here too long because I can hear the engine clinking as the metal cools, those little pops and pings you get from things contracting after a long hot day. He comes out of the room and sees me and I am just flooded with the worst mix of feelings. I feel like a shy five year old. I am all but rubbing my toe on the parking lot asphalt, suddenly bashful.

He grins from one ear to the next, he looks like a racoon with a fierce tan across his cheekbones and forehead, but where his sunglasses masked his eyes there is shockingly white skin. It makes me laugh to see him in this sort of mask and we hug awkwardly. I drag my stuff inside and we settle down on the bed to talk and watch television in dual confusion, exploratory and tentative with each other. I am not comfortable here and I am feeling awkward and a little spooked. Will I have to fight this guy off? How well do I know him after ten years of friendship? He's never even kissed me, and here we are in a motel, for crissakes. I think this is beyond tacky and I desperately wonder what was I thinking when I agreed to this trip but I keep my mouth shut and ride the feelings. I feel like a real cheeseball when I try to explain somehow that I am not into the whole rip his clothes off and rip my clothes off and get all sweaty thing. This man is a gentleman, I can tell he had high hopes and expectations too, riding around the west alone thinking about his dream girl waiting for him in a motel when he got back, but he doesn't press the issue and we finally fall asleep. I'm tense and in full pajama regalia and  about as snuggly as a fence post, but I finally drift off. We roust ourselves out in the morning and pack up, walking down the road to find espresso in the warm sunny morning, smacked now and then by a cool breeze that runs it's fingers inside my sweater and through my hair.

The car and the bike caravan together out to the ferry boat landing and I park in the long term parking, leaving my little blue car and taking just my back pack and the helmet I am handed. I crawl up on the back of the bike and we roll down the road to the long lines of cars waiting to embark for the San Juan Islands. I am swaggering a little in my boots, shades and helmet perched up behind him in his leathers on this big, big black Harley. People look at us with envy and respect, it's different on a bike. You are not invisible anymore and I wonder why?

Rolling on to the boat we haul around to the sunny side, settling in for a long breezy ride out through the beautiful islands, past Shaw and Lopez and Upright Head, where nuns in wimples from the priory on the island are taking time out from herding sheep and instead running the dock. It makes me laugh to see them in habits and safety vests tossing hawsers and directing traffic. A good omen for this beautiful day. Finally putting in at Orcas we climb on the bike and hurtle off first before the herds of waiting cars. Throttle wide open and roaring up the hill and around the corners. It's cold! In and out of the trees and the meadows, my nose is assaulted with smells and I go from shivering under the evergreens to basking in the sunny meadows as we going sailing through twisty corners and fly past struggling bicyclists burdened like pack animals on their way to campgrounds.

Somewhere on the outskirts of Doe Bay, it happens. I can literally feel myself re-inflating. I feel like a squashed beach ball with a new patch. I am ready to shout for joy but settle for pounding him on the back, this girl is NOT DEAD! She's in here, ten years of hell fall off the back and I am filled with bubbles of sun and happiness and peace and hope. I feel like I could float right off the back of the bike except my teeth are chattering so hard they pretty much counterbalance the bubbly feeling allowing me to crawl off the back and up the stairs of the B and B.

My first Bed and Breakfast, the Kangaroo House. Kangaroo house is run by a couple of terminally cheerful retired US Forest service rangers. The rooms are Victorian and charming, each one is different and has a girl's name. Our room is right next to the bathroom which is rather handy, and I feel smug until about ten o'clock that night when some huge fatty goes in and lets loose with the remnants of his dinner and we get to hear it all through the paper thin bathroom wall. This is so teenage potty humor hilarious and mortifying that we both roll on the floor with tears in our eyes, hands over our mouths trying not to laugh out loud at the hideous sounds emanating from the window and through the wall.

In the afternoon I discover the ultimate Bath Tub. The bathroom at the K House is huge and vaguely western influenced with a lot of knotty pine, brass and ruffly cotton curtains. This tub is the stuff Cleopatra's dreams are made of, this is the tub Miss Kitty of Gunsmoke fame must have lolled in. It has four claw feet, it's about a foot off the floor and I can lay full length in it, up to my ears in warm water and just soak in bliss. It's warm out and warm in and completely wonderful. I soak for an hour until I'm waterlogged. When I get back to our room, he decides to go for a run and I go out on the deck to read.

When he comes back he is visibly upset and I follow him up to the room to try to figure out what has happened to our wonderful weekend. Turns out testosterone  has reared its ugly head again. I don't want to sleep with him and he is not happy. I am not willing to be anyone's fantasy girl ever again, I'm not giving in, I'm not ready for this after ten years of treachery and shifting currents, I don't know how to trust anymore and I'm not even sure I want to remember how. I never promised a sexual fantasy weekend to this man. I thought we were friends and meant the world to each other as friends and I'm standing my ground this time. Maybe it would be easier to just give in and go along; after all I grew up in the sixties and know that going along part way too well. But not this time, this man means too much to me and if he wants just a quick roll in the hay maybe I'm wrong about him.

He is acting like a spoiled brat and I finally have had it with the attitude and pick up one of the big fluffy pillows on the bed and just haul off with everything I've got and clock him upside the head with it. He looks shocked, stunned and then he starts laughing and grabs a pillow of his own. Two grown people are having an epic pillow fight and we fall down laughing and winded when it's over. The air is cleared and we are able to talk about our expectations and I feel better. I am beginning to feel the edges of happy again and recognize it as something that might still be in the world.

In the evening we decide to walk the mile or so to town and dinner. A guy picks us up, a retired air force officer, and we hear his life story on the way downtown. It makes me want to live here too. He dumps us off in front of the fire station and we wander around town until we find a restaurant with a downstairs deck and a large gaggle of locals all lounging and drinking and chatting each other up. We are happy to be here on this patio overlooking a hundred miles of sky blue ocean and pine topped islands that look like god just spilled them out of his pocket on a walk through the joint, like so many bread crumbs. We drink too much hard cider, getting slightly drunk and everything gets way too important and funny.

Somehow we straggle back up the road and past the K house to the little beach at the end of the street. We walk through a neighborhood that looks like a subdivision --only it's on the corner of heaven and paradise, and suddenly get burped onto the tiny rocky beach. It is just sunset. Down the beach to the left is a long dock about a football field away, and on the dock is a black Labrador running up and down and silhouetted against the sky. The sky has suddenly turned into a bad Hawaiian post card and it's streaked with pink and purple and yellow and the clouds down low look like lavender pillows against the water. I can't believe it. I'm sitting on this log, slightly high and it's turned into a cheap romance novel when I wasn't looking. I look over at him and think, I guess I should just get this out of the way, so I kiss him.

It is awful. We are both so out of practice after so many years in broken impersonal marriages. He is one of those fishbowl kissers-- like falling face first into a fish bowl with lips. I sit back, open my eyes and relay the information to him that he is a truly terrible kisser. I am appalled at my sudden need for honesty. Does this mean we are going to be just friends because no electric sparks snap into the sunset and it isn't wonderful the first time? Poor guy, what has he ever done to deserve me? We try again, half laughing, not wonderful but definitely better. We straggle back to the B and B in the dark and fell asleep until the fat guy lets loose, all the fresh air and stress of the dance between us wear us out and we finally fall asleep together, snuggled up, not a fence post in sight.

Sunday, we hop on the bike and spin around the island, me leaning on him with my hands in his pockets, We stop and walk around, holding hands and just loving being together on the bike. We ride the twisty tight steep road up to Mt Constitution,. At the end it spits you out on top of the island. You can climb the WPA built tower and see half of forever including Canada, America and at least three volcanoes on a good day. I am amazed to see Mr and Mrs America stopping us at every turn to ask about the bike and talk about riding. I didn't know until then that there were bikers that weren't bad boys, and everyone loves a Harley. A lady stops to talk to me while I sit on the Dynaglide, waiting for him to come down the hill. She tells me she envies me and as soon as her kids are gone, she is going to hit the road too. I hope she doesn't wait until then; life somehow gets away from us when we aren't looking.

We roll back to the ferry docks, Sunday afternoon, sad to be going back to reality again. We sit on the boat and talk. I tell him something has changed in me and I will never settle for anything less than exactly what I want again. It's like the scene from Pretty Woman when she tells him what she wants. He takes in my list, looks at me and says, "That's all doable." He understands that for me the sexual side of this relationship will be the icing on the cake and I'm not in a hurry. It's like riding on that big fast motorcycle, it's all about the journey, not the destination.

I'm really sad and feeling lost when we part, I have trouble taking my arms back and putting them and me in the car and heading back south. But something has begun on that bike, something special and good and I'll sing along to Aida all the way home. And when I'm there and it's late in the afternoon and I'm all alone, I'll listen for his bike to go roaring past the house on the way to wherever it is he goes, knowing it won't be long until I'm up behind him again waiting to go wherever the road takes us.

Flying through Oklahoma

 A lot of my journal back then was dedicated to a new universe, motorcyles and motorcyle pieces and the world I saw when I joined the pack

MOTORCYLE THINKINGS  Summer 2004 

How do I explain about the 7-11's? I never thought when I climbed aboard the Flying Dragon and rode 5000 miles that convenience stores would become oases that I looked forward to seeing. I have always had a personal antipathy bordering on loathing for 'convenience stores'. I must have been frightened by a potato chip bag and a six pack as an infant, but I generally tend to dislike the clientele and the content equally.

In a junk food heaven there would be rows of these stores, all staffed by industrious families of newly arrived immigrants living out the American dream, and speaking marginal English--even in the wilds of nowhere North Dakota, the template is the same. Shining rows of cellophane bags and wrappers full of chemicals and sugar with a higher fat content than a hog farm, all jammed into a 12 X 12 building. Not a piece of fruit or a vegetable in sight--with the possible exception of a can of V-8 with the vegetables safely trapped and hermetically sealed in a can. Strangely, there are always a few loungers around, regulars in greasy jeans, chatting and shopping. Who ARE these people? What do they do all day? The anthropologist in me is fascinated.

Don't get me wrong--I'm an all American girl and I love junk food too, but when I've been riding and riding and riding, I want to reach and touch more than sugar in 2000 shapes. On a bike you can't exactly carry around a tomato or two, I discovered within two days of a long trip on my bike that carrying food on a motorcycle is problematic. A) you can never find it when you want it B) you can't eat really well with a 70 mph wind attempting to grab everything out of your hand on its way to your mouth--and C) you can't really let go of the throttle long enough to snack in a meaningful fashion.

And while I'm whining--the scenery around a 7-11 isn't exactly dedicated to visual pleasure. Ah, yes, a gum spattered curb to sit on and gasoline fumes and miles of hot smelly asphalt, bonanza days when there was a bench next to the garbage can.

BUT these stores do have vast supplies of ice cold Gatorade and other sports drinks. Riding across Idaho in 110 degree heat, Gatorade became my staple drink. I discovered I could jam a bottle into the area between my handlebars and windshield and if it had one of those little pull up tops, I could actually drink it as I went instead of wearing the fluid as an accessory. I also found on chilly afternoons if I emptied a bag of M and M's into my sweatshirt pouch I could haul them out a few at a time and get most of them in my mouth. I am sure there are happy little furry rodents all the way through Wyoming who found the ones that flew off into the bushes and they experienced the thrill of chocolate for the first and last time--until I pass through there again.

These stores often feature an aisle or a row of Made in China tacky artifacts that purport to be created by the nearest tribe of Native Americans, working this week in the best of plastic leather and plastic glass beads. I stood in more than one of these stores staring in just plain stunned silence at the sculptures; artfully carved in plastic wood with plastic wolves and plastic bears cavorting in loving families on little flowered plastic bases. I never saw anyone buy the stuff although I always watched to see, someone must or it wouldn't be there, right? Convenience stores are the best place to find really tacky post cards to send home, the ones that make your family wonder about your declining taste and judgement and perhaps think you've been out there on the road way too long.

There is something to be said about these stores as experienced from a bike saddle, when your butt is burning and you cannot find one single position to sit in for more than 3 minutes without howling into the wind. It's pretty wonderful to haul into a hot, stinky, greasy, plastic wrapped gas station-convenience store parking lot and crawl off the bike. Stepping inside the air conditioning is enough to make you weep with joy and there is nothing like a bottle of 7-11 water poured over your head just before you get back on and ride when it's so hot the tar is bubbling. That ice cold Gatorade tastes better than beer right about then and you forgive them everything in that rosy moment.

Excavated Writing. Looking from November to February, written in 2003

The season comes on slowly; all the leaves have dropped but the last few that cling with gray tenacity to the viney fingers of the pear tree. The season grows wetter each day, piles of late raked leaves stick together like bits of wet brown paper.

My garden has become old. The wrinkled bag lady heads of the last rough sunflowers and mums are brown and twisted, their stems sticking up like bony arms. It is tempting to go out into the garden and tidy, to pull and clip and prune. But the blowsy dead foliage warms and protects the living garden, all the little secret hearths hoarding next year's treasures under the ground.

I love seeing the birds the cold weather has brought. Seedpods sway like lumpy lollipops under the tiny nuthatches and chickadees weight. Raucous Jays pounce on the sunflower heads. Spent Sunflowers look like drunks lined up in the garden ; still standing but leaning to the side more every day. The Jays quarrel and wrestle constantly scattering more seeds on the ground than they manage to take. Juncos on the ground busily clean house and nothing is wasted.

The rain and fog have set in earnest, green moss grows on the concrete pavers in the garden and with every freeze more chips spall from the rosemary pot to the path.

It’s only November but already I look forward to late February when I will be in barn boots in the wet, poking around anxiously to see whose nose is appearing; who has made it through and who has not. I will be making mental lists of chores and hatching plans drinking tea in the kitchen overlooking the garden. Outside the white sky turns itself inside out again.

"Searching for the great white bargain, but finding only the whale of discontent."