Road Warrior Finds Rest in Boulder City

(Day 2, the end)

Just East of Vegas, I got some gas and set up my laptop to see where I was: nearly to Boulder City.  It was too far to Williams to make it before it was completely dark, so Boulder City would be my stop for the night.  I ate some road food: beef jerky and granola bars, then started to look for a room.

I came into Boulder City at sunset and pulled up to a motel.

I have to admit, renting a room near Vegas seemed weird.  I know that stereotypes are rarely accurate, but the idea of being in a city where rooms are regularly rented by the hour made me wonder about staying here.

As I parked the bike at the motel, there was a recumbent bicycle with a trailer parked out front.  I recognized that bike.  When I stopped for gas, I watched as a person rode that bike past the gas station.  It was being pedaled by a wiry and sun-hardened woman who might have been 50, but looked 70.  The hair was the give-away… it was still dark brown with wisps of gray beginning.  The proprietor and another man were discussing her.

“Oh yeah, she’s in trouble… no idea where she is or where she is going, or how to get there,” Said the man behind the counter.  His assessment of her was eerily close to describing me.  The man behind the counter was probably the manager.  He had the hair that was short, but sculpted up with gel.  He had a wide mouth prone to smile quirkily.

“Right, but are we just going to make her sleep outside?” said the other man who was leaning forward on the counter like a figure from an old Western, you know, the man leaning into the bar.  I think he was the grounds man, “I can watch her, she can clean for a room.”

“Alright, but just a few nights, at most.”

“Good by me.”  The groundsman smiled.

The manager turned to me and smiled, “Do you want a room?.”

“I do, as a matter of fact, how much?  I only need a bed and a shower, so your cheapest room will do.”

“My cheapest is $45.” He said.

I considered trying to argue the rate lower since it was 8:30 already and the place had plenty of open rooms, but I decided this was my best place to stop and the rate wasn’t out of line.  “Done.” I said and started filling out the form.

“Are you here to play or on a trip?” asked the groundsman.

“Actually, I am traveling.  I am on a motorcycle trip from Santa Cruz to Auburn, Alabama.”

“Geez!’ the manager looked up from his forms, “What convinced you to do that?”

I looked out at by bike parked in front of the office.  Across the parking lot was the recumbent bike with the trailer.  “I realized I was becoming predictable.”  I looked back at the manager and the groundsman.

They didn’t say anything but their faces told me that they knew exactly what I meant.  I wonder if this is a normal desire in men to not be the same as everyone else.  I wondered, then, and still do, “What is it within us that makes us want to be just outside the norm?”  We don’t want to be really weird or bazaar, but just different.

I know this is not a firm generalization.  I have known many men who want to be predictable and respectable.  I think I want to be dependable, although I fall short, and I want to be honorable, short again, but I am not attracted to the idea of the white paladin who is the knightly version of Dudley Do Right.  The ideal me, in my mind, is a good man who is a little bit of a rascal.  I would like to be a man that can do something wild and unexpected.  I kind of want people to wonder about me.

The bike I bought is outside the norm.  The way I bought the bike is unusual as well.  The trip is certainly not the way many have traveled the country.  This whole adventure is about shaking it up, but why do we need to shake it up?  Why do I need to?

I think the spirit of a man is romantic and adventurous.  We go to the same job, drive the same car, pay our bills, make sure the garbage can was not left at the curb over night and all the while we know in the depths of our mind that we have just wasted minutes of our lives by being what everyone else wants.  We need to risk and fight and possibly loose.  Too often we play it safe and predictable and have not taken any risk… by playing it safe we are killing the romantic warrior inside us.

The woman with the bike came in at that moment as we are all just standing there, deep in thought.  I had the feeling that the same spirit was on her… that sense that there was a person desperate to save the adventurer within.  I felt that there could be a kinship here in this thin and wrinkled woman.  I wanted to ask her why she was here, but then I thought I’d rather believe the best; that she was on her own quest for adventure.

I took the room and rode the bike back to the rear of the parking lot.  There was a large gardenia bush on the way back to the room.  It smelled wonderful.  It was the first smell on this trip that reminded me of the Southland.  The sun was completely behind the mountains by now and the sky was a rich red.  The rocky landscape reflected the color of the sky.  I sat there, on the back of the motel site, and watched the desert glow until the suns light faded.

The room was a 1 bed affair with a Jacuzzi completely flanked with mirrors.  Vegas.

The room was clean and quite, though and I spent a night of deep sleep.

Lost and Crazy

(Day 2, part 3)

Tonopah was on a hill and the road descended down, back to the floor of the desert.  As I road along looking left and right, I was marking the mountains which I was passing through.  They were grey and red and some were a strange bluish gray-green.  Not sure how that is possible, but there you have it.  The floor was flat and rocky and sandy with squat shrubby little plants.  If you wanted to stop and camp, there was hardly an area to put a tent.  There was an ancient utility pole line parallel to the road and it looked for all the world like one of those "spaghetti western" telegraph line poles.

The road itself was smooth and straight.  There was moderate traffic.  It seemed to me that in these desert roads, people either drove excessively slow, or ridiculously fast. Traveling 70 mph in a 65 zone, I either was routinely passed or was flying by others.  85 mph or 50 mph seemed to be the only choices.

I was planning on riding the shortest distance across Nevada and stopping in Utah, just north of the Arizona border.  I set my odometer and waited to see the next town come into view … but the town I expected didn’t come… which is strange behavior in a stationary object, like a town, to not be there.  Weird.

The road stretched on some more, 60 miles, 70, 90, at 98 miles out of Tonopah I saw an RV trailer park. As I pulled into the park, I took one look at the driveway and I pulled in real slow.  The parking area was crushed red rock. The rock was sharp and it was thinly spread with hard-packed clay beneath.  The park was sectioned off with cedar split rail and there was a tiny little office all by its own under a tree.

I put Betts, I had named the bike Betts in honor of her previous owner, in front of the door to the office and got off the bike.  I looked around the park.  There were about 10 or so trailers parked here and there.  The little office was sheathed in rough cut cedar and had a tiny window unit air conditioner mounted through the wall.  The only sound was the A/C purring along.  I looked back along the road and noticed a billboard which said “Death Valley Resort”.   Hmmmm.

Since I was riding eastward toward Utah, and Death Valley is actually southward, in California, this didn’t seem possible.  Then I realized that it was about 11:00 when I got into Tonopah, I was there 30 minutes and it was now just shy of 1:00… hard to tell direction by the sun in the desert at high noon.

A trembling realization came over me and I knew: I had taken a wrong turn… in the DESERT!  Visions of a man staggering through the desert, delirious from the heat and thirst, with vultures dogging his steps came to mind.  Funny thing: I didn’t see the first vulture in the desert… where do they come from in the movies?

Anyway, here I am, in some remote corner of the world, only miles from Death (DEATH) Valley, with no firm idea where I was… well, I knew I was lost, but lost is not a specific place on a map.  I like specifics.  As the panic rose inside me, a thin, sun-browned woman stepped around a trailer and headed straight towards me.

“Heya sugar?  You lost?”

Was it that obvious? Lost… at least not boring.  “Um, well, I was intending to be in Caliente on my way to Kanab, Utah… I take it this is Death Valley?”

“Utah, huh?”  she said Utah like "ooootah," “Almost in Death Valley… might as well call it Death Valley.  Where you coming from?” she asked.

“I rode from Santa Cruz, California, through Yosemite.” I said, “My next big stop is the Grand Canyon.  So where am I?”

“You are halfway between Tonopah and Las Vegas. Just east of Death Valley” She said Tonopah like tan-nop’-ah.

“Death Valley?  Man!” I hung my head and tried to sort out what my next step was.

“Easy now honey, fear doesn’t make anything better… it just makes everything worse.”  She smiled at me after saying that.

It is kind of unnerving because, as I am writing this down, I'm remembering the movie "Rango" which I didn't see until I got back home.  Seems like if I had looked out the window I could recall an alabaster golf cart with Oscars or Emmy’s in the back and a man strikingly like Clint Eastwood standing in the blazing sun.  This was a weird vision because she didn’t look anything like Clint Eastwood.

“well, what should I do?”  I asked.

“Here, let me take that map you have.”  She took my map and threw it in the trash.  “Take this.”  It was a map.  “Look, you are here, in Beatty.  Keep going down 95, right through Las Vegas until it hits I-40 at Kingman, Arizona, then on to Williams.  Grand canyon is North.  ‘Course, you are close to death valley… ought to see it, don’t you think?”

There is something about people who live where people shouldn’t be able to survive… they have a calm.  Its like they think “Heck, I oughta be dead already, what’s the big deal?”  She had me in a fixed stare.  “So, you gonna see the Valley?”

“Not sure.  I am trying to stay on somewhat of a schedule, but I would like to.”

So this lady… no name, no title… a pre-apparition of the 'Spirit of the West' from a movie I had yet to see, hands me a map and directions and inspiration.  I wish I could find the number to that little park.  I’m sort of afraid to search too hard… I might find out that that park was burned to the ground years ago along with a thin, sun-browned woman of calm wisdom.  Maybe she was the Spirit of the West.  Maybe that wasn’t a dust devil at all, maybe it was her.  Then again, I think she was a 50 something trailer park manager who just has a good head on her shoulders.

Back on the road heading due south on 95, I looked to my right coming into Beatty and had a mild shock.  There was a purple brothel just off the highway.  I had been stationed with the Air Force in Kunsan South Korea and had seen legal prostitution, but it is still was a jolt to see it so prominent.  It just looked like a motel, nothing really brothel-ish about it.

I stopped at a gas station/convenience store, filled up and enjoyed the A/C.  Here in the Death Valley area, unlike the area of the country dominated by SEC football, the biggest display of any commodity was water.  In the SEC it is beer, but not here.  With conditions here as they always are, water is the drink of choice.

Skirting the edge of Death Valley, the temperature rose into the upper 90’s.  I took off the windbreaker I was wearing and hit the road to Las Vegas.  As I rode, my shirtsleeves blew up on my arms leaving my wrists exposed.  By the time I felt the burn, a 3” band on each wrist was burned into my skin.  My gloves covered my hands and were the gauntlet style but the skirts on the gloves were not enough to make up for the wind brushing back my shirt.

High altitude, sun, and wind are a powerful mix.  That was not all… out west, you are able to see weather from a long, long way off.  As I was riding in the desert, I was cursing my bad luck and preparation when I noticed the rain up ahead.  Really?  Rain in the desert?  What are the odds?

Pretty good, it turns out.

I reasoned that a cool rain would do me good.  True that, unless you have a raging sun burn that you have no lotion for and the sleeves just don’t stay up.  The mix of the strong wind from the storm, the sand that the wind was whipping up off the desert floor and the torrential, pelting rain dropping at 32 feet per-second per-second, combined with the bike driving through said pelting rain at 60 mph head-on was akin to being in a hot air dryer, a sand blaster, and a car wash with pressure washers, all at the same time.  On the fresh sunburn, the sensation was exhilarating.

Soaked, shaken, frustrated and disoriented, I pulled into a gas station.  I learned my lesson from previous gas station stops and didn’t ask the attendant for directions.  The guy at the counter looked like the dude from the movie Gross Pointe Blank who worked at a convenience store.  He took in my pile of wares: Gold Bonds Powder; granola bars; beef jerky, baby wipes; sun screen; aloe vera; water and Gatorade.  I was glad I didn’t have any Vaseline in the pile.

He smiled and shook his head.  I hated him already.

“Where you headed?” he asked.

“Alabama.” I said.

“Hmmm.  Really?” he focused his laser stare on me and asked “Where you starting from?”

“Santa Cruz.” I said.

“California?”

“Yep.”

“Wow.” He said and I started to warm up to him, “that’s a crazy stupid idea.  Why in the world you doin’ that?”

I looked at him and said, “because I’m dying and thought I’d live it up.” And left with before he could get a response out.  Partially true, we are all dying right?  Feeling partly pleased with myself and more than a little guilty, I mused with the idea of going back in and setting the story straight, but the guy was already putting his ear buds back in and was drumming on the counter, unfazed.

I decided that lost and crazy might fit my nature… still, at least I wasn’t boring.  I mounted up and pulled out on 95 South.

It rained pretty much all of the way into Vegas.  I had come to terms with the sunburn and the goofy wrist bands etched into my skin as I rolled into Vegas.  I actually entertained the idea of going into a casino just to say I had.  I pulled off 95 and snaked my way through town and up to the Bellagio.  I imagined myself as 007 pulling up to the casino on my BMW.  The same model bike was in a Bond movie.  I re-assessed the effect of an oddly burned 47 year old man on a 12 year old bike with a haphazard 85 pound duffle strapped hodgepodge on the back of the bike and decided that Vegas is a silly place and would be just that much sillier with me riding up in my present state.

Leaving Sin City behind, I got back on 95 and headed out.

Into the Desert

(Cross Country Journey, Day 2, part 2)

Making my way along the north drive, I peeled off on 120 and climbed up the mountain slope.  The road was a blast to run, curvy and steep with tunnels and fantastic vistas looking south and west.  The attitude in the valley was hushed… the mood on the hillside was festive.  Lots of bikers were on the road and they were very talkative.  I met one biker named Carl who runs the road about once a week.  We sat on a rock wall at a bend in the road a few hundred yards from the first tunnel in the hillside.  He said he used to run the road fast, leaning his bike into each turn, but now he takes it slow and, in his words, “I used to take the road and make it my own… now I sorta join the road, and let it take me instead.”

You see, the rush of riding can be the danger and the need to conquer the road and to excel past the other riders.  As the art of riding sinks deeper, the connection from rider to the earth matures.  Speed enjoys the immediate connection of the road and the fear of leaving the road, but if you can open yourself up to more than pavement and gravity; if a person can do that, then light, temperature, smells, color, terrain, and other riders comes into play.  There is a great ballet which, when young and in-experienced, is dominated by the quick and powerful, but as we learn the patterns of the dance, we begin to notice those dancers who travel in the wake of the powerful… and craft the power of the dominant into something greater.

It takes talent and ambition to conquer, but to conquer, all you have to do is master your own self, and surpass all others.  To complement talent other than your own, you must master yourself, and the talent of the others with whom you share the stage, or the road.  Speed is fun, but to drink in the surroundings and become a part of the ballet of nature, you have to look at more than the road.  You have to see where the road is, where it has been, where it is going, who is on it with you, and why you are on the road.

Riding is more than transportation.


I left Carl and continued up 120.  There is an intersection at the top of the incline where you can head back West, or turn East towards Mono Lake.  There is a gas station there as well.  I gassed up, since it was an hour, at least, to the next station.  My headache was nowhere near leaving, so I went into the shop to look for some pain killer.  There was an ATM in the store whose alarm was stuck on.  A very nice attendant, whose eyes were blurring from the incessant and shrill screech, was kind enough to fill my water bottle with water so I could take my aspirin.

I met a guy from New York who used to ride, and we talked about bikes.  Another man, from Pennsylvania walked up who also rode.  I noticed that the French and Chinese and Japanese accents were gone.  This is officially off the beaten path.  We talked for about 10 minutes until their wives were sending ‘looks’ our way.  We shook hands and headed out.

120 East is a beautiful road.  It was the early part of July, but there was still snow pack under the canopy of the trees.  I put the leather work gloves away, and pulled out my winter gloves.  The air was cool and clean… it was heavily scented with pine.  As I road along, I noticed the road was not rough, but it seemed as though it was not very even.  It reminded me of the roads built in Michigan in the swamps in the 1800’s.  Those road were built by laying tree trunks down in the mud and mire across the road and sandy clay was laid over the logs.  Eventually asphalt was added and voila’ a road.  Over the years, the logs settled and the road has a wavy surface.  120 felt ‘wavy’.

The backside of Yosemite has a turn out which gives you a view of half dome and el capiton.  To get there, you have to wind through high sierra mountains.  There is a section which is bald rock all around.  Winding along the road, there are peaceful meadows, impatient mountain streams full of snow melt, vistas of grand mountain peaks, hairpin turns and graceful windings of a road seemingly in no hurry to get you anywhere, but content to unfold nature in front of you.

There is a lake called Tenaya which rests at the bottom of a descent.  It was calm and clear when I got to the lake, right about noon.  The lake was an impossible color of blue with dark green coniferous trees all about and a dark blue, high altitude sky reflected in the cold water.  I was actually disappointed that the lake is artificial, but I reasoned that we are a part of nature so it was ok.  Beautiful, none-the-less.

From 7:00am to 12:00 I had been riding in Yosemite and the green and water was all around me.  As I descended through Tioga Pass, in the span of less than a mile, it seemed, the water disappeared.  The pines gave way to scrub oak and the ground dried.  I rounded a bend and a hot, dry blast of air hit me.  I rounded the turn and the mountains gave way to the plain and a turquoise lake greeted me.  Mono Lake.  There is a gas station right there where 120 hits US 395.  I stopped for gas and some Gatorade.  There must have been 60 bikes there.

I spoke with a man who was riding a Suzuki, about a 1980’s GSX.  All of the bikes were pre-1990.  They were a part of a riding club from Fresno.  One of them came up to me and said “Man, I’ve never actually seen one of these in person… do you like it?”

“I hope I do.  I will be in this saddle all the way to Alabama.”

“Dude!” was all he said.

I pulled the BMW up into their group and we drank water and Gatorade and ate granola bars and beef jerky for about 30 minutes.  I told them they would need cool weather gear and they told me about the weather out East some and South.  Hot was the word.

I was apprehensive as I left the gas station.  A sign told me that it was 127 miles to Tonopah.  The bikers assured me that there was gas and water in Tonopah, but having never been to Tonopah, I only had faith in their word, no tangible evidence.  The movie quote “Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line”… only I needed to change it from a Sicilian, to the desert.

395 headed south out of Lee Vining, near Mono Lake, and 120 peeled off east at a right angle to 395.  As I road east, the road snaked through dry land, then a piney area.  The road twisted left and right through the trees.  I was traveling at about 60 miles an hour, but had to drop the speed since the road also has drastic vertical curves.  I rounded a bend, and, suddenly, the desert plain opened up in front of me.

I always imagined the desert to be still and quite and blinding bright with no life and no color.  It was really windy.  It was bright, but as I was riding along, I was struck by the stark lines drawn on the floor by clouds.  When a cloud passed over, it made the ground look black as coal compared to the sun-lit sands.  I looked left and right and wondered at the strange things I saw in the distance.  I stopped the bike on the side of the road to pay attention to the weird clouds or something I was seeing.

About 300 yards away, with a rocky hill as a backdrop, there was what looked like a giant striding along the desert.  It moved like a woman rolling her hips so that her legs swung out in a straight line.  Left, right, left, right.  The torso of the giant was draped in a poncho looking affair which blended in with the lands so that she appeared to come in and out of focus.  I can see where the Indians believed in spirits and other mysterious beings in the wild lands.  I stared at the ‘giant’.

As this strange thing came nearer to the road I realized that it was a dust devil.  It had formed two funnels and they were twisting around each other in a hypnotic dance.  I took my eye off of her, and scanned the desert.  As the sun heated up the floor, there were about a dozen funnels that I could see.  The desert, I decided, was realy alive, but it was life unlike what we are used to.

I drunk in the sight and was acutely aware of how out of my element I was.  No cell phone signal, limited water, no shelter.  I knew, without a reservation, that if my bike were to break down, I was in real life and death peril.  Suddenly, the romance of being like Clint Eastwood, or Frank Perkins, the lone Traveler, crossing the desert with just his grit and wit, just vanished like a dust devil.

The Yosemite captivated through its grandeur.  The desert captivates you in its stark beauty and the sheer brutal reality that it can kill you by just being who it is.

With my new respect and fear of the desert, I got back on the bike.

The roads in the desert floor have no reason to wander.  They are straight.  Roads so straight and flat that approaching vehicles appear as a shimmering dot in the heat waves coming off the pavement.  Some of the cars had head lights on.  The first sight of a traveler driving west-bound is tentative, “is that a car, a bike, a truck, or nothing?”  As they come closer, I could make out light, possibly, from driving lights. At first I thought it was another bike, but then the lights separated, and I saw it was a car.

A sign on the side of the road said “DIP”.  I wondered at what kind of dip when a pickup truck suddenly disappeared.  I counted 3 seconds and suddenly the truck popped back up.  I had just enough time to think “Wow, that was a DIP!” end then the ground dropped away beneath me and the panorama of the desert rose above my view as I sunk into the dip.

Understand, I had 85 pounds of gear strapped to the back of a 500 pound bike doing 65 miles per hour.  The telelever suspension on the BMW completely extended and the tires, while still kissing the pavement, were not really holding the pavement.  The ‘dip’ bottomed out and I thought, on my way down, of hitting the breaks, but the bottom of the dip was covered in sand and light gravel… no breaking here.  As I zoomed up out of the ‘dip’ I thought about breaking, but I was unsure of what was over the crest, so, clutch pulled in tight, I topped the crest and the bike momentarily left the ground.

There is a moment in a near death experience, that excitement and adrenaline overcomes reason. As the world came back into view and I felt the vibration of the road stop due to the fact that I was no longer touching the road.  I was thrilled at the moment.  No thought other than “YEAH!” going through my mind.

Then, a split second later, the bike touched ground and settled back into the rumble and thrum of road and engine.

“DIP”, I realized, means slow down.

The next time I saw one of those dips coming, I slowed and stopped the bike.  There was a dry wash heading to the dip and then the bottom of the dip had a light coating of sand in it.  The dip is really a place in the road where the infrequent rains would create a very temporary river.  There is no cost effective way to bridge all of these drainways, so the engineers simply follow the nape of the earth with the road and allow nature to go where it will.  Sometimes it is better to follow nature than fight it.

There is a deeper rule here: sometimes our decisions have us at a rate of speed unsafe for the road.  By the time we realize that we are in over our head, its really too late to make a change… we just have to hold on and run the consequences.  Once you are in the middle of the results of a poor decision, it is not always time to stop in your tracks, sometimes you have to follow a poor decision through.

Collecting my wits, I continued along the bleak desert.  Pretty soon a range of hills came into view.  Winding through the hills, I began a descent into a town.  Actually, there was not much in the town.  It was called Benton Hot Springs.  It had some neat old western buildings.  As I moved down through the elevations, the temperature rose quickly.  As the hot air hit my shirt and pants, pin pricks of heat, like the ones you get when your arm falls asleep, started.  I was worried that I was going into heat stroke, so I stopped and drank some water.

I really don’t think I was even slightly de-hydrated, but the stop was nice.

There were trees bunched up here and there in Benton.  I’m not sure where they got water to survive, but they seemed pretty happy to be where they were.  There was a home site with tall trees shading a dirt yard.  It looked like a homey old-timely western home… lots of out doors stuff to do and little threat from outsiders like me.  We just pass on through and, likely, never return.

120 runs right into US 6 in Benton.  Old Benton looks homier than Benton itself.  It was flatter than the old part and had a new looking highway with a post office and some sad looking buildings.  I headed North on 6 away from Benton’s irrigated fields.  Maybe it had more to see, but I was wanting to get to my planned stop in Kanab, Utah, and the day was wasting.

6 ran along the base of some impressive mountains to my right.  As I followed the mountains, I was lead into a rocky pass.  It felt good to be in the hills.  Somehow, mountains feel cooler than the flat open plain, but that was not to last.  Rounding a tight bend, the flat, brutal desert opened up again.  The road straightened out and ran level.  You could see for miles, and you can tell that all there was in front of you is desert and road… nothing else.

It seemed like the builders of the road knew there was nothing to see or avoid.  The trick was to get over this barren land as quickly as possible.  Waste no time… just get there.  I was keeping a close eye on the odometer and the 130 mile point was approaching fast.  My bike has about 200 miles in a tank, so at 150, I start to worry.  Just as the tinges of worry were rising up, I saw the signs of a town.

If ever there was a town that makes me wonder why it is there, Tonopah Nevada is one of those towns.  Silver mining got it there in the early 1900’s and it was a boom town with lots of money, but there doesn’t appear to be much silver mining going on now.  So here is this town 100 miles from anywhere.  I stopped at a shell station at the intersection of US 6 and US 95.  The people at the station who worked there were pretty business-like, but the people pumping gas were all very out-going.  There were three people on bikes heading back to Colorado.  I talked with them for about 15 minutes.  They had been in Yosemite as well and were heading back.  One of them had a GPS and checked it for me.  335 miles to Kanab Utah.  A long ride, but doable from here.  I headed back on the road, but wanted to stop at the McDonalds to check the wifi… no deal.  Either they didn’t have wifi, or it was down.  I checked a gas station beside the McDonalds for a map, but the attendant was dour looking.

Maybe it was the weather, but nobody who lived in Tonopah seemed happy.  I got out of the parking lot and turned left, following the road that had lead me into Tonopah.

Natural Beauty, and Our Problem Seeing it

Day two started at about 5:00am. I read some of the gospel of John, packed my duffle and hit the road. (Still in California)

140 runs east out of Merced. For a good ways, the road is straight with small mesas dotting the country. As the morning light rose over the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, the foothills began to glow. The grasses of the fields I was riding past turned golden, and, warmed by the sun, gave off an earthy smell.

I stopped along the road to take some pictures and the car behind me crept close as I slowed. As the driver pulled around, he blew his horn and laid heavy on the gas. I wondered how you could possibly be so impatient in a place so tranquil. I suppose that in an environment like that, a man will become used to, or immune to, the peace around him. I was taking pictures and watching the cars race by at speeds well in excess of the speed limit and wondered at them.

Then I remembered: my father grew up in northern New Jersey and never went to the stature of liberty. I live in Auburn and the only times I go see the Auburn Tigers play football is when I am working in the concession stand during the game. How many things of wonder do we miss just because we have become so accustomed to them?

Stowing the camera, I got on the bike and headed east towards the looming mountains. I rolled into Mariposa at 7:00 am. Mariposa is a homey little mountain village. It reminded me a great deal of the mountain towns nestled in the Colorado Rockies. There were little shops with balconies hanging over the sidewalks along a main street. People were beginning to open their shops and put items for sale out on the walks.

I had stowed my gloves in the bottom of my duffle which was cinched down so tightly that I opted to buy gloves instead of spend 30 minutes rooting through all my stuff. I stopped at a little hardware shop in downtown. The man in the store was still opening up and the people who ran the registers were not in yet, but I had cash, so he sold me some leather work gloves.

I had not taken any caffeine in more than 24 hours because of the fear of dehydration in the desert. As a result, I had a splendid headache. I went to a CVS, but they didn’t open for another 30 minutes… thinking I could get some aspirin later; I got on the bike and rode on.

140 was an awesome road. It was hilly and snaked its way along the edges of the mountains. At one point you could see cars winding down to the valley floor maybe 5 miles away. As I rode along, the cars became bunched up. At one point there was a rock slide which covered the road to Yosemite. There is an old railroad grade on the other side of the stream, which flows out of Yosemite Park. Engineers had built a single lane bridge to cross the stream. A temporary one way road utilized the railroad grade, then another temporary bridge which crossed back after the slide. We had to wait about 10 to 15 minutes for a traffic light to change to allow us to cross. I turned off the ignition on the bike while people got out of their cars and a small community developed. The man behind me was going into the park to climb and the couple in front was French and were touring the park for 2 weeks.

There were some young men who stayed pretty close to their car and were playing hip hop pretty loud. The sound of the heavy bass and the angry tone of the rapper seemed out of touch with the surroundings. They stayed to themselves and didn’t mix very well.

The light cleared and we got back to our rides and headed on.

As I rode along the railroad grade, I looked over at the rock slide. I am very familiar with earth moving work and I was impressed with the slide. It was probably 300 yards of buried road with the top of the slide being at least 300 feet above the road surface. The slide was all loose rock, so shoveling out from the bottom would bring a new slide down on the operator. The finality of nature is undeniable… the road was closed.

Finally, I was waiting in the line at the gate for Yosemite National Park. It felt surreal to actually be there, but anti-climatic to just buy a ticket and go in. The road slanted slightly down to the ranger hut, so I turned off the bike and let her roll to the gate and fired her up after I had a ticket in hand.

There is a parking area right inside the gates for Yosemite. They have restrooms and potable water. I pulled into the parking lot and parked in a little non-spot at the point furthest from the rest rooms right in front of a water spigot. I stretched my legs and walked out to the stream to feel the cool air coming off of the water and smell the freshness of clean mountain melt-off. I was paying attention to the people around me and was struck by the number of people who did not use English as their primary language. French seemed to be the prevalent language.

I stood there, beside the bike, and just breathed in deep. Since I left Alabama, I was struck by the pervasive smell of each area. I remember the first time I landed in Japan. My first thought was, “Woah! What is that smell?!” I got on a bus with 40 other GI’s and rode to the base I was going to be stationed at in Korea We got to the base itself and I crashed on my new bunk. A cleaning lady woke me up to warn me that I was going to be late to my first briefing. My thought, as she was leaned over me and talking to me, was that I had just met the perfect “scratch-n-sniff” candidate for the poster child of halitosis.

I know that sounds awful, but you have to have that woman’s mouth as close to your nose as I did before you judge. I actually got to know here pretty well. After we were better acquainted, I asked her about the smells. Koreans had an odor. It is the result of their diet which is heavy with fish and kimchi. Kimchi is, basically, spicey sour kraut. She told me that to her, Americans smell like sour milk.

Hmmmm

All this to say, I have become aware of the colloquial smells. At the main gate there was the smells from pine and cypress and eucalyptus trees and the stream. Yes, water has a smell. Fast moving water gives off this clean smell mixed with the odor of the wet rock and the fringe of leaf mulch along its edges. Overall, the entrance hinted of the pure nature just out of reach. It was a wonderful place to be, right on the edge of Yosemite.

I headed into the park. I stopped at the meadow, at El Capitan, Yosemite falls, the Village, and circled around to the north drive. I noticed that people were all content to listen, and smell and look. The hip hop was gone, along with all music. It was like we all knew that Nature trumps all in this place. There were the sounds of laughing, and talking, and the sound of the vehicles moving through the valley, but the honking and road rage and the bustle of the commute were gone.

Yosemite struck me as the ideal of nature. I told someone there that it’s like we have a genetic memory of Eden, and this is one of the places on Earth that still has a tenuous hold on the pure beauty of creation unspoiled. Even children seemed to know they were in a different kind of place.

Even the light is different in Yosemite. It seems cleaner, if light can be cleaner or dirtier, but there you have it, clean light. Maybe it’s because of the greens and grays all around you mixed with the yellows of wild flowers and the startlingly blue sky. Maybe it’s because the land is higher and has pushed itself up over the dust and grime of fossil fuels and what creatures have stirred up so that the light from the sun isn’t tinged with dirt. Whatever the reason, the blues of water were painfully blue. The greens of the grass and trees were so green you could feel the color touching you. I walked along the path around the meadow near Yosemite Falls and lay down just off the trail and looked straight up to a sky framed by dark green trees, the cold gray of granite and the white falls of Yosemite.

I wanted to stay and just drink it all in, but I had 2700 miles to go. I got back on “Betts” (the blue bike) and moved her across the bridge and onto the north drive.

As I was tooling through the turns on the north drive, I was following close to a car ahead. I felt bad because the driver slowed down and waved me through. I realized I was rushing him and he wanted to drink it all in. As I passed, I glanced over and we shared a moment when I recognized him as the man who blared his horn and made a dramatic turn and acceleration around me just a few hours before. We both smiled embarrassed grins, each reprimanded for our failure to drink in the greatness around us.

This little encounter brought a realization to me: how many times am I judging a person for what they have just done when either I have already done the same thing, or I am just about to do the same deed myself.

I knew a man who was a licensed professional. I had worked with him for a year or so and had known him for many years. I knew he had a drinking problem… actually he would have disagreed about the problem part, he just drank, a lot. I picked up the paper one morning and was shocked to see his picture in the news. He had been arrested for molesting a child. Turns out it was one of his daughters he had been molesting.

He lost his professional license and we bought out his company. As I was picking up equipment at his old office, his business associate was vehemently accusing this man, and I was pretty much going along, then I asked him about a printer.

“sure,” he said, “it’s a great printer. Look at this.”

He proceeded to show me the life-size centerfold print-out on the back of a door. I was about to remark that the moral distance between this man and the one in prison was not that great, but I knew it would only produce an argument with no profitable outcome.

Here is the deal, though, we are adept at setting up a moral ladder to assuage our guilt. Even in prison, the man convicted of rape is the worst offender. The one guilty of child molestation is the worst offender of the rapists. The parental molester is the worst of the molesters. A whole segment of society, known for lawlessness, enforces their own morality with, often, fatal brutality. We cannot escape morality, even in prison.

As a Christian I tend to think that I can sit proud on top of the morality heap, but deep down I know I don’t deserve to be proud at all. Read the Sermon on the Mount and see if you think you can congratulate yourself on being better than everyone else.

The Realization (How this crazy trip thing started)

A shocking realization that came to me one day: I was boring. Not boring in the sense that people were running for the door or falling asleep when I said something. Well, maybe only once when I was speaking. Really. During a sermon on the gospel of John, I was only 5 minutes into the sermon and the loudest snore I ever heard in a church roared from the back. Turns out the man was a narcoleptic… that did little to heal my ego.

That’s another story.

So, I am boring… not droning on and on boring, well, maybe somewhat droning, but my real fear is that I am predictable boring. By predictable I mean this: I work, I go to church, and I pay my taxes. I don’t really surprise anyone anymore. For a lot of people, that is a good thing. But this really, really bugged me. I didn’t want to be some automaton with no imagination… kind of like the energizer bunny who just goes and goes, but doesn’t really live. I felt like I needed to spice it up. So I did what any respectable but desperate man would do… I went shopping.

Yes, I did. I went online to cycletrader.com and I found a motorcycle. I had researched the make and model bike I wanted for months, years even. I thought about Kawasaki Nomads; Suzuki Vstroms; Honda Fury’s; Indian chiefs… I settled on the BMW R1200C. I never really thought I would buy one, but there you have it… a 40 something’s dream.

I found the bike I wanted at the price I wanted… I live near Auburn, Alabama… the bike was in Santa Cruz, California. Yes, 2700 miles away. In Ca. On the beach. Literally. Part of the allure was the bike, the other part was the journey… the challenge. I really didn’t care that much about the BMW… I was captivated by the journey.

I floated the idea past my wife. I think Trina has practiced a form of panic management that, if done well, has no visible evidence except for the fact that she stops moving. I mean everything. No breathing, eye movement, total muscular atrophy. It is a little un-nerving.

Once the panic was done, she promised that she would think and pray about it. (translated to “Not likely, bucko”) One night, she was reading a book by Don Miller called “Crossing Painted Deserts”. She closed the book and said, “Well, that is pretty clear. You have to go on your trip.”

That was that. My panic is not as hidden.

I contacted the person who was selling the bike and it was still there. After a week of working out the details, I bought a plane ticket to San Jose, California.

Friday morning the 8^th of July 2011 started at 3:00am. To tell the truth, the thought of what I was about to do had me so un-nerved that I hardly slept. 3am is terribly early, but here I am, in a car in the dark morning with my wife and 6-year-old son driving to Atlanta, Ga. It seemed wrong to be driving east to go west, but there you have it.

We got to the airport only to find that one of my flights had been cancelled and I was re-routed to Salt Lake City instead of flying through Phoenix, Az. The flight from Atlanta to Salt Lake was boring, but it was exhilarating to see the mountains again. We had lived in Colorado Springs for about 3 years, and I missed seeing the mountains.

I changed planes in Salt Lake. The flight from Salt Lake City to San Jose was fun. I sat by the window and looked at the desert below. It was intimidating to know that I was going to be riding through that desert on a motorcycle in a few hours. We flew over Mono Lake and Yosemite. I knew I would pass through those areas as well. I was looking down on that Park amazed at its size and scope. Half Dome and El Capiton were cold and gray and large, even from the plane.

I landed in San Jose, picked up my bags and met up with the shuttle service. I was the only passenger in a mini van driving from San Jose to Santa Cruz. The drivers name was Jeff. I enjoyed listening to Jeff. He was a genuine soul who really didn’t think you should spill your life story to a stranger, but by the end of the 45 minutes with him, I knew he had not been in church except for weddings and funerals; he had lived with his girlfriend off and on for years; she had betrayed him numerous times, and he had done the same; political opinions should be kept private, but I know his voting history, and that he really likes people, even though they are untrustworthy.

Jeff dropped me off at the University Inn and Conference Center. That sounds better than it was. It looked like a motel. I didn’t go in. I had called the owner of the bike and she was on her way. I sat on the curb and watched people for 20 minutes. California is really not that different from other places. True, it was cooler, the air had a salt-tang to it, there were 50-year-old men riding skateboards, but the conversation was the same, it just had a different accent.

For the sake of witness protection, the bike owner was “B”. She drove up in a little compact and we introduced ourselves. I started to get in the car.

“Um” she said, “I hope you don’t mind, but I am waiting for my escort.”

“No” I said, “Good idea… you don’t know who I am.” It was just then her friend drove up in a SUV. I can call her “M”.

There was a slightly awkward moment when we were checking each other out… me, the travel blearied, long haired middle aged man. I took in the surfer girl who was slightly pregnant and her friend who had that look that only well-seasoned moms can deliver as they size up the kid who their son or daughter has just invited into the house.

“M” said, “He looks safe. I’ll follow you in my car”

At least she didn’t say I was boring.

We drove the long route to B’s house. With B driving, it took about 2 minutes to loose M. She took me past Pleasure Point, which, according to B, and Wikipedia, has some of the choicest surfing on the west coast. It looked like a calm day in the water. Even so, there were 50 or 60 surfers out there, floating in the seaweed just waiting to ride a lazy looking wave.

B’s house was, literally, a stones throw from the beach. We got out and this was the first time I actually saw the bike with my own eyes. It had more damage from time than the pictures showed, but she looked like a friend as soon as I walked up to her.

She is clean water blue with brushed aluminum. If Apple were to make a bike, it would look like this. We looked the bike over, talked some and M drove up. We, of course, dissed her for being such a lousy escort and sat around a table and talked about waves and bikes and our children and the children to come.

It struck me that here was three people with completely different backgrounds, who could sit down at a table, share a cold drink and enjoy hearing about a life previously unknown.

Have you ever considered the reality that there are billions of dreams out there? We often don’t realize that there are billions of hurts, triumphs and failures in the world. We get so wrapped up in our life that we cannot pay attention to the fact that there is an entire ocean of humanity we will NEVER know about.,

Regardless. I hopped on the bike and we rode to the bank where we ran into a snag. I had a certified check. This means that I gave the bank the money and they certify they have the funds. Since my bank was in a time zone 3 hours further into the day, my bank was closed. The bank could not clear the check.

There was a moment of panic. B and M conferred and decided that I was the real deal and seemed honorable (boring?) and decided to sign the title over to me. That was after they took my picture, a picture of my license, and I suggested taking my finger prints… they decided that finger printing me was going a bit far.

So, at 3:45pm Cali time, I was in the saddle of a 1999 BMW R1200C and, with no real idea of where I really was, set out for Yosemite National Park without knowing where Yosemite really was. I had the sudden application of what I already knew: that I was 2700 miles from home, and I had no GPS, no map and no plan other than, “Go that way, really fast… if something gets in your way: turn.”

As I got on the bike and pulled her out onto 41^st street in Santa Cruz heading towards Highway 1, which I have never seen, I thought, “How many times have I done exactly this?” Not on a bike, per se, but how many times have I agreed to something without really knowing what it entailed?

“Can you…” stupid me says “Sure.” I have a rule I try my best to follow: never enter a fight you are unwilling to pay the consequences of loosing. That isn’t saying you never fight; it means you go into the fight with your eyes wide open, prepared to take the consequences of failure all the while reaching and scraping for success.

I guess there are good reasons to be in a place where we have no idea of how we are going to navigate a situation or task: sometimes we just have to follow God in what He tells us to do without really knowing how it is going to work out. Some folks call that the blind leap of faith. I’m not fond of that saying because it just doesn’t work. Sure, you can make one, two, even three leaps, but eventually, if they all end in tragedy, you’ll say, “You know what? That stove burned me 3 times, I’m not doing that again.”

My point is this: if you step out in what God tells you, then He WILL work it out. The next time He asks you to step out, you have the experience of God telling you to take a path into uncharted territory and having Him work it out. The second ‘leap of faith’ has the knowledge of success from the last ‘leap’. So faith is not blind trust… it is based on a relationship between the asker and the askee. We don’t always know how things will work out, but we know that the One who asks us knows what He is doing.

Faith is not blind, it is trust in one thing extended into the territory previously un-explored.

Unplanned and uncharted territory isn’t always a good thing. Sure, God said, “Do this” to Moses, and he did it… good thing. That person you really should not be around says, “Come on… do this.” Maybe not so good.

I think if we mapped out where our actions take us, we wouldn’t have had sex with him or her. We wouldn’t have bought that car, or rented that movie. If there were a map that came with oxy or heroine that charted a path to prison, sickness, murder, rape, whatever, most folk would at least consider not getting on that highway.

Sometimes the wrong path is actually a good thing, in itself, but we over extend ourselves and the other important things which we do suffers.

All this was going through my mind as I headed north on 41^st street and I wondered, “Is this one of those God paths, or a Mike path?” I realized, it really didn’t matter now… it was THE path. Asking how or why I got were I was accomplished nothing. The real question was what am I going to do. It was time to ride the road and see where it lead.

So here I am. On the road. I felt like Bilbo Baggins in “The Hobbit,”… be careful to the Road, you never know where it might take you!

I made it down Highway 1 for about 5 miles when I realized that my 75-pound duffle bag was sliding to port. Looking left, I caught the glimpse of the metal hook off the nylon ratchet strap bouncing along the highway beside me. I pulled over to find the metal hook from the nylon tie down dragging the ground. If the hook had bounced the wrong way, it would have grabbed the spokes, ripped the wheel apart and sent me skidding, sans a bike in 4-lane southern cal commuter traffic.

I fixed that. One close call.

I stopped at a gas station to get directions to Yosemite. I told the gas station attendant that I was traveling to Alabama and got a blank stare. I set my sights lower and asked how to get to Yosemite. Blank. I asked them how to get over the mountains. Nothing. One of my uncles who lived in New Jersey, Patterson, to be exact, owned a gas station. The guys who worked there could pump your gas and tell you anything about everything within a 10 mile radius. If the thing you were asking about further than 10 miles but was famous enough, like the Statue of Liberty, they could tell you the best way to get there, and where the best hot dog shop was near it. Gas station attendants these days know how to get from their apartment to the gas station. Maybe.

Based on instinct and glancing at a map which I did not buy, I made my way south to Watsonville. This is a quiet little city. It had an established, but progressive feel. There was a town square where there seemed to be a festival going on. I rode through town on Ca 152. There seemed to be a yard sale in every front lawn. I got turned around and off 152 and stopped at a corner store. I think the majority of the people there spoke Spanish as their primary language. With my poor Spanish skills, I understood I was 4 blocks over.

I got back on 152 and headed out of Watsonville. Just out of town, 152 climbs over a mountain. I am not sure if it is mount Madonna you cross, but the pass is called Hecker Pass. It was a blast on the BMW; she seemed to jump around the turns. The pack I had strapped on was a hindrance, but it really didn’t seem to matter much.

I came down out of Hecker Pass into Gilroy. This town is right against the mountain and it has a smell of onions and garlic. Apparently, they grow a lot of those crops there. I missed a turn in Gilroy and made an illegal turn. The police had me pulled over with less than two hours on the bike. I had accelerated too quickly and made an ill-advised turn. The office took my license and looked over all my papers. He was intrigued either at my panache at riding to Alabama, or my stupidity, and gave me a warning.

As it turns out, he had just visited Alabama and had been less than 150 miles from my home. He prefers it in Gilroy. That’s cool, if you like garlic and onions.

I stopped at a McDonalds. Word to the traveler… McDonalds has free wi fi, and it is pretty darn good. I checked Google maps on the laptop and, feeling more confident, got on US 101, picked up 152 again.

East of Gilroy I rode through some mountainous country. It looks dry and western, not like the Appalachians at all. I noticed the pack on the back of the bike was slipping again, so I stopped. The computer I was carrying was in a case with a shoulder strap. It straddled my legs in front of me. I set the bag down and completely redid the duffle and set out on the road again.

I rode by the San Luis Reservoir. It was blue. I mean it was REALLY blue. Stunning. There were boats out on the water and the wakes they created looked like chalk on a black board. As you ride east and descend out of the pass, the dam for the reservoir is above the road. As I rode along the dam, there was an insane cross wind. It felt like the hot mountain air was cooled by the water and pooled up on the lake. The air crested the dam and spilled over like a tsunami. It hit the bike and me from my right side and drove the bike to the left side of the pavement. Riding as if in a sharp turn, I was leaning heavily to my right just to keep the bike on the road.

I made it past the wind and into Las Banos and bought some gas. I made it another 4 miles when I realized I did not have my computer case lying across my legs. That case had my Toshiba laptop and the title to the bike in it.

Panic creeping over me, I turned the bike around and sped back along my path, through the punishing wind, and back into the mountains along the reservoir. Heading west, I saw the bag on the ground near the guardrail. I found a cross over, got east bound and rode up to the bag. What a relief to see it sitting there… what a possible disaster!

Thanking God profusely, I got back on the road, traveled through the wind… again… and started across the San Joaquin Valley.

As I rode I thought about how many times I have been so intent on what I was doing, that I lost track of what was going on around me. I was so wrapped up in the pack on the back of the bike, and the ride I had to complete that day, and the future days’ rides, that I forgot a vital piece of my luggage.

This has another life application: we get so intent on the immediate problem that we create a whole new set of crisis. I remember one of my uncles in Patterson New Jersey had a pool table. They were pretty good at pool. I tried it and made a few shots, but lost quickly. I made the remark that they were lucky because whenever it was my turn, I had no shot. My uncle Bill said, “that’s because we didn’t give you a shot. Every shot I take, I think about what the table will look like when I am done. I either leave myself a shot, or leave you in a bad spot.”

They played hard ball with a 12 year old… harsh, but a good lesson.

I wish I could like my life like my uncles played pool. I want to look at what is right in front of me, then imagine it 3 moves away. I wish my uncles could have seen life that was as well. One of my uncles ended up living homeless in Patterson, the other is working as a maintenance man in North Carolina. Between them they had owned a gas station, worked as an electrician, a cabinet builder, a TV technician… a lot of talent, but they didn’t seem to get anywhere.

I think if we all had the chance to replay our lives, we should do things differently. I wish I had taken school more seriously. I wish I had taken more chances. I wish I had invested money more wisely.

“I wish…” is like asking why something happened… moot point. The real question is this, “what are you going to do now?”

At the valley floor, on the other side of Las Banos, the land is flat and heavily farmed. The road changes from the serpentine path in the mountains, to a flat and straight shot between fields of crops. I left 152 on 59 which was a straight road. The farming here was cattle based and the humid evening air was heavy with the smell of cows.

59 ran straight into Merced. I stopped at the Slumber Motel. It was located on 16^th street. I pulled up to the office in the dark at about 9:00 and went in. There was laughing and a strong smell of curry. An Indian man, like the country India, came out and smiled.

“Hello, can I help you?” he asked.

“I would like a room… what are your rates?”

“It is $40 per night for a single.” He looked out the window and asked “ single, just you?”

“Yep, on the road alone.”

“Hmmmm.” He filled out the rest of the form and handed me the key.

I dropped the stuff in the room and headed out to look for something to eat. I got on the bike and rounded the office building. A woman jumped out in front of my bike.

“Are you a cop?!” she said.

She was tall and very thin. She had a kerchief on her head and the hair was coming out at odd angles and most of it was tangled. Her outfit consisted of jeans and a tee shirt with a shawl spread over the outfit . There was a wild look in her eyes that made me tread carefully.

“No Ma’am, I am not a cop.” I was wondering if this was going to be trouble.

She came closer and looked intently at me. I had the helmet open, so she could see most of my face. The lady looked into my eyes, then across the bike. It looked like there was an item she expected. She turned sideways and moved slightly out of my path. “No, you aren’t the cops… they are carrying rifles now.” She spun quickly around to face me again, “RIFLES, I said.” The look on her face told me she expected some reponse.

I was coming to terms with her overall appearance and when she yelled “RIFLES”, I almost dropped the bike. I looked over to the office hoping for some help, but I saw 4 heads in the window and they were staying put, it seemed.

“Wow,” I said, “why do you reckon they have rifles?” Maybe playing along will calm the situation.

She looked quickly both ways up and down the road, “Don’t know,” snapping back to me, “but I wouldn’t cross them. RIFLES, COPS ON BIKE WITH RIFLES.”

I was hoping for some cops with handguns at the time, but she took one last look at me and shook her finger at me like a school teacher reprimanding a child and headed off muttering.

The only place open was a Walgreens. There might have been other places, but I was tired from the road. I bought some Jack Links Jerky and Nature Valley granola… road food . . . and headed back to the motel. As I made my way back to the “Slumber” I saw the shawled lady. I had two impulses: 1, swerve wildly and turn on my flashers; and 2, make a u-turn and go the other way.

I resisted both and she didn’t seem to notice me.

Back at the motel, and glad for the time off the bike, I showered, wrote a blog entry and fell asleep right away.

Coming Home

" It’s when you’re safe at home that you wish you were having an adventure. When you’re having an adventure you wish your were safe at home. "
~Thorton Wilder

Day 5 of the epic.

I stayed the night in a town called Checotah, Arkansas. I first made the mistake of trying one of those rooms starting at $19.95 a night in Gallup, New Mexico. When I opened the door to that room, my first thought was, “Well, here is where someone stashed a lifetime supply of used cigarette butts.”

It got worse. A storm moved in and I woke up and looked at the door to see a sheet of water moving under the door. I moved every thing up onto something and tried to sleep. That did not work, so I started getting ready to hit the road.

I felt like a little kid, jumping from bed, to bed, to the linoleum bathroom floor, trying not to step on the now-soaked carpet. I have a thing about wall-to-wall carpet anyway… its like socks that people never change. In a public room, its like socks that the under-belly of society has worn, taken off, then you put them on. I am sorry if that disturbs you, but there it is.

In Checotah, I up-scaled. I paid $40 for a room. It smelled vaguely like only 20 years of cigarette butts, the floor was not part of the storm drainage system, and the toilet seat did not slide off the toilet when I used it (that was a shocker at 3 in the morning, let me tell you). I reasoned to myself that this is good… an awful room helps me get up and out in the morning.

I loaded the bike and sat on the curb in the humid morning air waiting for the light of the day, looking east, always looking east. As the sun started to outline the edges of the clouds I felt a renewed desire to be home… not to end the adventure, but to be in the place that I belonged.

As I rode along through Arkansas that morning, I reviewed the lands I had crossed:

• Santa Cruz smelled of sea and wild foods and the people were a weird mix of x-game junkies and gen x granola hippies (this is NOT derogatory… I like it). It had rolling hills and palm trees.
• The valley east of the coast was agrarian and smelled of farming, be that cattle, onions, whatever. The eastern edge had grasslands and rolling hills leading up to the foothills of the Sierras.
• Yosemite was primal, tranquil, majestic and alive. Its breath smelled of eucalyptus, coniferous trees, and water which had beaten its way through the rocky creek bottom.
• Right against Yosemite’s life was Mono Lake and the Nevada Desert, which looks to be the exact opposite of Yosemite. It’s like the mineral and the living fought. Yosemite’s outcome was that life won, but Nevada was clear that mineral was the boss.
• The Nevada desert was a wonder to behold… I imagine it is what I would feel near a volcano: the unfiltered presence of the power of the merciless Earth. A co-worked quoted George Carlin “ The planet… the planet… the planet isn’t going anywhere. We Are!” It seemed true to me, pitted against the planet, we are doomed. In Nevada I knew, if were my bike to fail, I was in real peril, and the earth wouldn't even have to try to destroy me. The planet will be fine, I wouldn't.
• Arizona was a transition. Nevada and the West portion of Arizona looked like God got there in creation and said, “I’ll just finish that later,” and never did. As you head East, sage and cactus appear. The smell of sage is strong in places. Rain is such a rarity; you can smell it for miles and miles.
• New Mexico added grass. There were cattle farms more often, although I cannot imagine a happy cow on that landscape. It smelled of sage and hot hay. It reminded me of the smell in the hayloft in my uncle Ken’s barn in Buck’s County Pennsylvania. The smell there came from the silage of the hay bales buried deep within the pile of hay but now exposed and heated by the air trapped up at the top of the slate-roofed barn. It was strong, and musky, and rich… like nature’s version of espresso.
• Texas added some cedar trees and more cattle, but was very like New Mexico.
• Oklahoma… was hot. Oh my word, hot. The road from Shamrock, Texas to Oklahoma City had a constant, steady, head wind from the Southeast. 3 hours of being beaten by the wind.
• Arkansas got my attention. Oaks and Pines started to reach for each other and canopied the ground. Just East of Little Rock, the basin for the Mississippi begins and the moisture in the air begins to make itself known. I crossed the muddy river and entered Tennessee and the smells were more familiar: deciduous trees, fresh-cut grass. Almost home.
• Mississippi was the same for me as Tennessee. Homey.
• As I entered Alabama, the rain was just on the horizon. As I got close to the clouds and rain, I looked at the tree-covered rolling hills. The rain had just passed through and the mist from the forest floor trailed upwards like cobwebs or cotton boles all pulled apart. They were carried upward by gentle air, but held by the limbs of the trees. I was left with the impression that the mists were the children of the clouds, trying to get into the sky. The aroma of leaf-mulch struck me and I realized I had not smelled the smell in 5 days of travel. I had missed it dearly.

As I thought about all the lands I had passed through: the almost child-like west coast; the hard-working agrarian the San Joaquin Valley east of Santa Cruz; the majesty of the Yosemite area; the brutality of Nevada and the gradual greening as I traveled eastward… it felt like my life.

Think about it.

Santa Cruz - the innocent ignorance of a child; the San Joaquin Valley - the sudden introduction to the work-life which is what school is the harbinger of; Yosemite - the discovery of the wonder of life which is the discovery of first love; Nevada Desert and Death Valley – the betrayal and loss of innocence; The Grand Canyon – perspective of scale which first tells you how really, really small you are, then assures you that huge canyon was made for you; the road from The Grand Canyon to Alabama - the long slow process of healing which doesn’t happen over night but slowly adds life; never really retuning to the innocence, or to the primal power of Yosemite, but is uniquely like the Appalachians, green, but old; lively, but wise.

I was certain of this: we will never remove the experiences of our lives. They are a part of who we are. Those moments do not have to define, nor constrain us, but they do build us into who we are. As such, we must never deny those experiences, or bow to them, but we can remember them, and stand on the shoulders of those moments to look further than we could before.

When I finally rode up to my house, with my family inside, I opened the door un-announced and walked in. There were no more towns to anticipate. No questions of rates, no room assignments, there was no odor of a lifetime supply of cigarette butts to greet me. I needed to ask nothing. The smell of slow cooked chicken and brussel sprouts, and the presence of the people I know and love was there to greet me.

I was home. It was not the innocence of the coast, of the industry of the valley, or the primal power of Yosemite, or the crushing power of the desert, or the realization that the world is quite a bit larger than I am and larger than my problems… it was a perfectly mixed and baked life-cobbler of all those things.

This is the way it is supposed to be.

Risky Business

Monday morning I woke up early, had some God time and hit the road around 4:00am. As I rode along I was finishing the conversation with God about fear. About then it occurred to me: I was running in the pitch dark at 75mph, the speed limit in Arizona which, apparently, virtually nobody obeys. This usually doesn’t worry me, but I had just passed a sign warning that elk cross the road in this area.
Some fear is good.
The fear I need to remove is the fear which doesn’t speak wisdom but simply immobilizes me. Realizing my peril on the bike, I found an exit with a truck stop, bought some gas talked with some truckers and waited for the sky to glow with morning light. The wrong fear doesn’t produce an alternative; it simply deflects us from what we are able to do.
As long as there is one shred of the wrong fear in my life, I will always default to avoiding problems and not solving them. As long as I fear, I will never dream again. As long as a fear, my ability to love is severely limited.
Why?
Because love is risky. To really love, you have to lay it ALL on the line. This is why marital intimacy is so amazing: two people reveal all there is to them, and they accept each other completely. That’s love: to know it all about a person and to choose to open yourself to them as well. That’s a risky deal.
Here is the rub: as long as I allow fear to determine my actions, I really can’t freely offer myself. The risk meets the fear and the fear stops me in my tracks. As long as I am tempted by fear I can’t love the way love is supposed to operate. Its like you drive into Yosemite and find a McDonald’s built at the base of the Bridal Veil Fall. We KNOW it is not supposed to be like that. Maybe we don’t know exactly what it should look like, but we know that positively is not the way it ought to be.
As this thought was forming in my mind, I was traveling along I-40 heading East. The sky was beginning to glow with morning light, and the desert came into view. I thought about the men and women and children who crossed this land on foot and horse and wagon. They faced the environment, the hostile Indians, the wildlife… and kept moving forward. What drove them? I would have turned around unless there was a passion and a dream. I mean, I have never seen a less hospitable place.
Just passion will make a beautiful life, but couple passion with a dream and extraordinary things happen.
Deserts get crossed. Fields get planted. Railroads and telegraph wires are run. Business and ministries started. Lives are changed. Communities are changed. Nothing stays the same. The power which drove the pioneers across the desert has the potential to rock our world. It starts this way:
1. Identify the things you fear. Make a plan and face them one at a time until they are gone.
2. Open yourself to put it all on the line for another person. Reveal anything they ask you to reveal. Hold nothing back. When they reveal themselves, explore the wonder of a landscape you previously didn’t know existed.
3. Search the horizon for the formation of the clouds… these are your dreams: those wispy things at the limits of your imagination. They must be nurtured in the environment of fearlessness and passion, allowed to coalesce, and embraced when they arrive. The dreams come only after the fear is gone and the love has grown… its only then that dreams may gather.

Saturday I set out from Merced, CA and went through Yosemite. It was breath-taking, to say the least. The access road which leads up to the park is inspiring, but when you actually enter the meadow, it seems that the worries of the world just dissolve. I think that there is a deep-planted idea, or even memory, in each person of what the world is supposed to be like. Yosemite comes as close to that ideal as I have seen.

It's truly amazing how, 2 hours before being in Yosemite, some of the same people who stand awestruck and soul-fully content, were practicing road rage. A glimpse of how the world is supposed to be can do that.

Taking the road less traveled, I went up Hwy 120 which explores the northern area of the park- winding around bald rock, snow pack, rolling and boiling streams. THe air was clean and cool and smelled of eucalyptus and pine and cedar. 120 leads to Mono Lake and the desert out to the east.

The comparison between Yosemite and the desert east of Mono Lake was jarring. THe Nevada desert is a beautiful, but brutal environment. It was hot and dry and windy. The desert almost seemed alive. As far as I could see was blasted earth and rock. As the sun warmed, dust devils began sprouting. They looked like long legged giants loping along the desert floor. The way the pillars of sand twisted around, it looked like the gait of a shapely woman swinging her legs around as she walked. One of the devils disappeared as it crossed the road. It occurred to me that this was dangerous, so I bent low over the thank on the bike.

When the wind hit, it pushed the bike right over to the edge of the road. The desert is alive - it looks dead, but it is strong, violent stunning, and terrifying. I rode into Tonopah, NV, bought gas and set off on the wrong road. I was tracking where I was with the odometer. When a town with the wrong name showed up, I stopped at an RV park bear Beatty, NV - 100 miles south on the wrong road. So here I am almost in Death Valley. The lady at the RV park who was telling me where I really was could see the fear in me.

"Fear doesn't help, sweet-heart ... it only makes it worse."

Hmmmm, the voice of God in a 65 year old RV park manager?

Yep.

I ended up riding into Las Vegas. It was raining and there were rainbows all over. Funny, God's promise that he would never destroy the world again with a flood due to sin, in the city named for it.

Heading out of Las Vegas I crossed the bridge at Hoover Dam. The cross winds were awe-inspiring. Added to that, there was a 1000 or so foot drop if the wind could lift you off the bridge. As I looked out over the valley and the mountains, I thought, "This is what Tolkien would have thought Mordor looked like." The fear in me said, "This is not where I want to die!"

The feeling of fear was palpable. I really knew death was real. It shook me again.

"Fear doesn't help, sweet-heart ... it only makes it worse."

Really? Well how do you get past it? You get to the end of who you are.

As I pressed on, I imagined engine noise, drive train issues, i even doubted the tires. It occurred to me then, who was the Lord of the tires,and the drive train, and the engine? Who is the Lord of the wind, and the desert?

The next day, Sunday, I tried something. Me and God had a talk about weather. As I approached the Grand Canyon, rain began to move in. I asked the Lord to tell me how to miss the rain. I was in a McDonald's in Window Rock talking with a biker named Steve. He said, "Dude, you gonna stay here, or move on and get wet?" I said, "I;m waiting for God to tell me when it's time to move on."

He thought I was nuts, but I missed all the rain.

All my plans and abilities mean nothing. All I can do is step out and trust. Pray and trust. I cannot complete this trek on my own ability... that is why the Lord led me to this point. He wants me away rom all my plans and duties and responsibilities, to give me a glimpse of how the world is supposed to be ... the pure and undefiled example of just how simple life really is.

Love, Dream, Fear

Here are the questions of the hour:

• What do you love?

By that I mean what is it that gets you out of bed, keeps you out of bed, gets your heart pounding? What is it that would dare you to risk everything you have to see it happen. What do you think you could die for?

• What makes you dream?

This is similar to what you love, but it goes further. It doesn’t look at what you have now that you would die for, it is what you yearn to see happen. This is the love that you plan for. A man may love a woman, but until he marries her, she is that dream, or should be.

• What makes you sweat?

What are your fears? What is it that when you think about it, cold beads of sweat form on you back? It is the nagging, persistent doubt or terror

I love the challenge. I really have to have that sense of learning and doing something that is unique to me. My wife is an outlet for my challenge. It is because of her that I constantly want to do new things. She doesn’t realize it, but her joy of life and the newness she sees in it every day compels me to run the discovery and mastery of life beside her.

As for the dream… that is why I am out here now. My dreams have become industrial, domestic, automaton. I used to have the wildest dreams which made me say really strange things in my sleep… I don’t do that any more. I can’t, with great conviction, point to a dream and say, "THAT is what I want."

Fear… that’s easy: failure, rejection, and the eventuality that the whole world will find out that I am just faking it through life. Sometimes I feel like Indiana Jones when they asked him “What are you going to do now, Indie?” and he answered “I don’t know. I’m making this up as I go.” I am, as another friend says, “One click from disaster.”

Today I continue into a landscape I don’t know, setting out on a trip I don’t know that I can complete. I am just making this up as I go… but then, aren’t we all really?

Airplanes, Passion, and the Open Road

So, I wrote what I thought was a really good opening chapter of my adventure and the computer decided it sucked…

As I was getting my tickets to fly, they cancelled one of my flights…

There is a saying I like, and often repeat, “Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean the world isn’t out to get you”. Too true.

I think maybe this is all appropriate for what I am setting about to do. My plans are a good starting point, but I need to let them go. I need passion in the deepest reaches of my soul, and passion cannot be planned.

I have been pondering passion. What is it? Can I say this, here, is passion, but that, over there, isn’t? The only way to do that is to be able to distill passion and say, “If it doesn’t have this, then it isn’t really passion.”

I think passion is a desire which is willing to risk.

This is the problem in our lives: we are programmed to avoid risk, but in order to live, I mean REALLY live, we have to risk. That is the problem with porn, it gives us what we want, without the cost and risk of another soul. Porn will never have bad breath, pass gas, grow flabby, critique your appearance or performance, or betray you. At least at first.

Problem is, porn imitates a soul connection, but with only one soul. So the person involved in porn carries all of the weight. It sucks you dry. Scary thing is, it doesn’t just relate to porn - it is all of our life. Life is a soul activity and it requires that we open ourselves up to that hard to predict and often painful soul-to-soul connection.

Which brings me to an airplane.

I would characterize myself as a wimp with aspirations to non-wimpdom. I have come to believe that I have made decisions all my life which minimized risk and limited the avenues into my soul from other people. It extends into work, friends, ministry, family, marriage, church and, finally my relationship with Jesus. So, I am on an airplane, heading from Atlanta, Ga to Santa Cruz, Ca. I am buying a motorcycle and riding it back to Alabama.

Why? Because I need the risk in my life. I need to face the bully, and live.

Huh? When I was growing up, I was tall, skinny, bookish and my dad was a pastor. For some reason, these characteristics draw bullies like a shark to blood. I ran from the bullies for a long time, then, one day I’d had enough. I took the beating, and I gave a beating. The bully did better, but I learned that the fight was not as bad as what I feared. The bullies lost interest since it wasn’t really a prize fight with me, and I was determined that they would bear the marks of starting a fight with me.

So here I am; 47, a professional in a good field, 3 kids, lots of activity and responsibility, but the only risk is somewhat laissez-faire*; the economy, crazy or texting drivers… but no real “geez, I could die” risk. So I am heading out into life with just me and God and a motorcycle and 75 pounds of gear. I don’t know the roads. I don’t know the land, people, gas stations, bathrooms… I have no idea where to eat, where to sleep or what to expect, but I need to face the grandeur of creation without the trappings of security around me. I am riding a bike from Santa Cruz, Ca, through Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and the deserts of the American Southwest, and will accept the tutorial of the open road.

I need to face life, so I can live it better.

*laissez-faire (le- say- fer’): a philosophy or practice characterized by a usually deliberate abstention from direction or interference especially with individual freedom of choice and action.

Definition from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/laissez-faire

Trina’s translation: choosing to NOT choose a course of action.