In the beginning there was rain

The top photo was taken this in my driveway moments before I left for my trip. The middle photo shows the rainy coastline of Southport Island on the coast of Maine...my first stop. The last photo was taken this morning in the far north of Wisconsin. The common thread....it's raining in all of them.

This post is being written a week after two of these photos were taken. My route took me from Cape Cod, to Maine, and from there to Vermont (Burlington) and then on to Ontario (Brockville on the St. Lawrence, North Bay, and Sault Ste. Marie). From there it was over to the US edition of the "Soo" and along the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to Ironwood. Today was a relatively short leg from Ironwood to Madison, WI.

I have had rain each and every day. Most of it persistent, some of it heavy. Saw some impressive thunder and lightning storms too. The temperatues fluctuated wildly. At the beginning of the week, the rainy spells/days were consistently in the 60's. When the sun came out the temperature would shoot into the 80's. The first and second day in Canada were on/off affairs with numerous stops to put on and take of layers. Annoying doesn't quite describe it. On the last day in Canada (for this leg of the trip) as I approached the Soo, the temperature was dropping steadily. I was using my heated jacket and glad for it. The morning I left Ontario and headed toward the UP the temperature was in the very low 50's. It stayed that way all day...and it stayed rainy all day. This morning when I got up in Ironwood, preparing to leave for Madison, it was 47 degrees and still raining.

The weather experts say there is/was some kind of blocked front over northern Ontario that was causing it all. Whatever the cause, it was not pleasant. Aside from a few hours of sunshine on the second and third days I have had only rain and cold. Yuk.

A bright spot (psychologically, not physically) came yesterday morning as I was riding through the rain in very isolated part of the UP. A good-sized black bear loped (yup) across the road in front of me. At first I thought it was a very large dog, or a very small pony, but the shape and the gait was all wrong for either of those... At only 20 or 30 yards (and me closing at 60mph) I got a pretty good look at it. Brightened up a very unbright day.

For those of you who knew of my planned itinerary, you have noticed that I did not go north into Ontario and come down through Thunder Bay into Duluth where I was to have met Shane. The weather was even worse farther north, so my re-routing was a modest attempt at some self-preservation.

The bike has performed well except that my left HID driving light only works when it feels like it. I also had to replace the low beam headlight bulb, but that was a small thing.

And today, against all odds, Shane (clocking almost 2,500 miles from San Francisco) and I (at around 1500 miles from Cape Cod) arrived at the same motel within ten minutes of each other. It was great to see him. I got to meet and ride Chaim (his new bike, Honda Hornet 599). Seems tiny after riding mine...but a lot of fun. Tomorrow is mostly unplanned. Some time around Madison and then off to the north for our adventure. The weather gods suggest things should be drier for the next little while. I can only hope.

Two days and counting

D-day minus three.
This is an attempt to explore the state of mind that seems to precede each of my long motorcycle trips. It’s never quite the same, but there are similarities that beg for thoughtful cogitation (…is all cogitation thoughtful, by definition?)

The bike itself is pretty much tweaked…although I will be installing a set of lower engine crashbars in the next day or two. Packing is following its predictable course. That course is an anxiety about getting the list right and a reluctance to finish the job. Several lists and ever-changing piles of stuff are the result. Day by day it gets closer to done, but honestly it could be finished in an hour.

The first half of the route is pretty much set. More could be done on that, but there again there seems to be a psychological reluctance to get things too refined. Maybe it’s a way of allowing for spontaneity or maybe it all has to do with some fear about the trip.

These trips have become a major focal point of my life. They have had a variety of “raisons” but it devolves into a combination of taking on a challenge and getting out into the country and out of my usual life….retired, 67 years old.

The challenge part is not much of an issue any more. In just the last two years I’ve put about 20,000 (mostly) cross-country miles on. Much of that was done on “blue highways.” Although it’s a bit unusual for a person of my age to be making these long motorcycle trips, it’s not unheard of. I’ve really come to love the trips. My love of the trips and of motorcycling in general is based on several things.

First, riding a motorcycle calls for a level of engagement and attention that is totally unfamiliar to anyone who has traveled only by car. You really have to attend (and respond) to everything you can see…and what you can see changes second to second. Road conditions (surface, wet, oil, unevenness, debris, construction work), weather (wind, rain, fog, ice, approaching storms), other vehicles, curves, dogs, deer, birds, pedestrians, shadows, turning vehicles…the list is almost never-ending. A rider has to constantly calculate the potential impact of all of these variables, alone and in combinations, on her well being and make corrections as required. It never stops. That level of required attention is exhausting and exhilarating. Add to that the fact that riding a motorcycle is a much more physically demanding process than driving a car. On a motorcycle turns involve leaning and countersteering, not simply turning a wheel. One has to calculate lean angles, trajectories, and traction for every curve. The bike behaves differently under acceleration than it does while decelerating. One brakes separately with front and rear brakes.

Secondly, riding a motorcycle puts one IN the terrain being traveled. You have the smells, the weather and the visual aspects forced upon you. As trite as it sounds, when on a bike you are a part of the territory in which you are riding. That is totally different from an in-car transit. Most of us have had the experience of driving a car and suddenly wondering how we got where we are at that moment. We have zoned out…been on autopilot. That’s not even a possibility on a motorcycle. Zoning out is closely correlated with fatal accidents.

Beyond those two major aspects of riding, there is for me the pleasant change of reducing my engagement in the world to a very few things. Aside from the stuff discussed above I only have to consider, gas stops, food stops, where to spend the night, whether to take a photo, what route to take…. I can engage, or not, with the people I meet casually on the trip. I generally do, but for the most part I’ll never see them again. It’s like people you meet on a train or plane. Interesting conversations often occur, but the transitoriness of the experience is understood and colors the whole thing.

So it' time to go fool with the piles some more. Refining the refined.

Long time no blog

Been a while. But I haven't been idle since last entry.

There's been a Spring break-out ride to Florida to see my family down there. Highlight of the trip was giving my grandkids a ride on the bike (see photos). And of course, the ongoing effort at setting the bike up to my specs. I've rebuilt some parts (tank bag) and purchased some new things (cylinder protection bars)...and as a result of the trip to Florida, put on some barbacks (Rox Risers).

I'm up to about 7K miles on the bike now and I've done the 6K service. And here it is less than three weeks from departure on the long ride of the summer. My attitude about the trip is different this year. I don't seem to be as anxious as I have often been. Of course, seeing as how these long trips have become an annual event, it's not unreasonable that they should get easier to prepare for. On the other hand, the preparation has a large mental component...and that somehow seldom gets easier.

I'll be posting more in the coming days about the details of the trip and adding to this as the trip goes along.

Crash/2006

A warm September Saturday afternoon and I was mid-project and needed to make yet another trip to the hardware store for some critical gizmo. I broke the rules (my rules) and took off on my bike without putting on a riding jacket. You know the drill...short ride, hot weather...

The exact sequence of events is unclear and disputed but the outcome was that I collided with the rear end of a car that had stopped short in front of me. I summersaulted over the bike and the car and ended up (briefly) unconscious in the middle of the road. I was later to find out that my bike had ended up upside down (balanced on the seat and handlebars) at the side of the road. The picture at the left doesn't do justice to the damage.

The bike was totaled. I had only minor injuries including some modest road rash, a broken finger and two badly jammed shoulders. I was taken to the hospital by ambulance and released several hours later after extensive xrays and a lot of tsk-ing.

In Massachusetts (as in many states) if you hit someone from behind, you are automatically at fault. My side of the story is that I was following this car at a safe distance and traveling within the speed limit when I noticed it was slowing. I glanced over my right shoulder to see if I could safely pass on the right. When I looked back the car was dead stopped in front of me. Collision inevitable. When I later talked to the police who attended the scene they suggested that the car that I hit was shopping yard sales and had stopped when it spotted one on the left side of the road we were traveling along. I suspect that his sighting of the yard sale was last minute and he stopped rather quickly...I don't know if he had turn signals on or not. It hardly matters except that my insurance premiums jumped significantly because I was technically at fault.

The fallout from the event was that my shoulders and neck were junk for the better part of a year. I had a hard time looking over my shoulder and when I did, it was painful. I was also afraid of traveling in either car or on a bike. Since I didn't have a bike at the moment, that was no problem. The fear of riding in a car took months to abate.

About month after the accident I decided it was time to get another bike and located a good used bike in Florida. I had my son Jason check it out (it was close to where he lived). I haggled with the seller and ultimately hopped a plane to Florida for a short visit with my family and to pick up the bike.

Riding an unfamiliar bike 2000+miles so soon after the crash might not have been a good idea, but it seemed okay to me at the time. All that "get back on the horse after you've been thrown" bullshit seemed compelling to me then. My body was quite sore from the accident and I was eating ibuprofin for the entire trip. There was some bad weather along the way, but essentially the trip was uneventful and I got back to Cape Cod none the worse for wear.

I rode relatively little that fall and winter. I spent time tweaking the bike with a new seat and a better windscreen. Come spring I rode some more, but every time on the bike I had to deal with my lack of confidence...even fear about being on the bike. I rode very, very cautiously and was more hyper-vigilant than usual about all kinds of road hazards. Slowly, slowly the confidence returned and the fear abated. I think it's safe to say that even though I've put on about 20,000 miles since the accident, it is never forgotten completely. At this point (almost three years later) I feel that I'm a better rider because of the accident. It's an awful way to get to be a better rider, but the reality of motorcycling is that there are a lot of ways to get into trouble on a bike. The more you really, really understand that, the safer you are likely to be.

All of this is prelude to my next series of posts which chronicle my 6,992 mile trip during the summer of 2007. Stay tuned.

Musings on Motorcyling

I started long distance motorcycle touring about 13 years ago. I was not a youngster, and I'm less of a youngster now. Neither the motivation for buying that (used) R100RT, nor for the first 4,000+ mile trip I took on it about three months after buying has ever been clear to me. I'm sure the bike represented a kind of freedom and a response to being in my 50's...middle-aged angst and all that. The trip was a kind of challenge to myself, maybe a test to see if I could do a long solo ride. And since I had to go to Santa Fe for a meeting anyway, there was some sort of logical/rational aspect to the ride.

In hindsight it was a somewhat foolhardy thing to do. I'd owned the bike only a few months. My riding skills were scanty...I was a careful rider, but had very little experience on this bike. The trip would provide quite a lot of that experience and it would also infect me permanently with an itch for more long rides. Out of foolish beginnings can come great passions I guess.

In outline the trip took me from Massachusetts to Santa Fe using almost only "blue highways." I went west to Pennsylvania and then s/w across mid-Atlantic states...through Arkansas, a piece of Oklahoma, and across the Texas panhandle, New Mexico...and into Santa Fe...about 2,700 miles.

A lot of the details of the trip have faded, but some aspects are still clear...
-the actual departure (leaving, cutting loose, accepting the unknown)
-settling into the bike and the fact that everything you need for the duration (you hope) is somewhere on or in the bike.
-recognizing that after the first day of the trip every mile created a new personal record for miles ridden
-the first torrential downpour near Lancaster, PA. I pulled under an underpass to get my rain gear on and got totally drenched by the water thrown up by passing cars and trucks...nothing quite cements your sense of solo riding like bad weather.
-the feeling of tremendous movement/change and a complete absorption in the moment's landscape and the road under your tires. There is really nothing except what is within your view that matters (and it matters very much because you have to attend to it closely to stay safe)..
-the endless sameness to the landscape in west Texas...miles and miles of flat/fence/cows/grassland...the King Ranch.
-arriving at my destination in Santa Fe and finding my colleagues and being rather taken aback at their amazement at the trip I had just undertaken.
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Then it was on the Washington, DC to meet my wife for a short vacation in the nation's capital. About another 2000 miles of mostly back roads and then three or four days of museums and good restaurants.
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And then only another 400 miles or so back home.
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The residue? My first long solo trip took me around 5000 miles 3/4 of the way across the country and back. I had a wonderful time. I was hooked. All I could think about was what a blast it was to travel this way. It was so different from car (cage) travel. Within a few months I was planning more trips........and some of those trips (or snippets of them) will be the subjects of future posts.

Wintertime

It's been a very long and rather harder than usual winter here on Cape Cod. This area of Massachusetts has already had about 50" of snow (as compared to about 19" on average) so far this winter. Here on the Cape a lot of this has been in the form of snow/rain/sleet...and repeated cycles of freezing and thawing have created enormous ice sheets that make walking dangerous...never mind riding. Winter in the northeast is never wonderful motorcycle time. There are a lot of days simply colder than I want to put up with and freezing temps and precip make things even dicier. So what does one do? (Photo to left shows new bike hibernating unhappily in the garage.)

Well, for my part, some of the down time is spent planning trips for the better weather months coming up. And since my bike is new to me ... bought it used last August ... it's not quite set up exactly the way I would like it to be. So tweaking various parts of the bike and buying and installing some things helps to make the dark months go by a little faster. This latter activity is called "farkling" by some hard bitten moto riders. Check around a bit with sites like ADVrider.com and you will find that farkling a bike is somewhere between an obsession and sickness. It is especially prevalent during the off season. Some people prefer to manufacture their modifications (pennytech) and some simply go the mercantile route. Even if you're buying there's a ton of stuff available second hand and an amazing number of web sites that cater to that particular need.

So what changes have I spent time on this winter?

• A new windscreen was one of the first changes. The OEM screen was too minimalist for my riding style...the buffeting at highway speeds was not comfortable. A Wunderlich taller screen with greater adjustability was the fix for that.
  
• The second thing needing attention was the seat. For some reason, BMW is practically infamous for their uncomfortable seats. I purchased a Sargent seat because I'd used one on my previous bike and liked it. This one fit perfectly and so far is extraordinarily comfortable.
  
• The bike came with a pair of HID lights (Hella) but the previous owner had had them wired into the high beams. I like to have auxilliary lights on a separate switch...so another change had to be made.
  
• I also needed my GPS adapted for the new bike. This required a new mounting system and wiring the unit's power cord into the bike's battery.
  
• The bike also came with slightly knobby tires...I go on dirt roads, but don't plan on really gnarly off-road stuff, so road tires were a better idea.
• I have a Touratech tank bag that fit my previous bike that has served me very well. It didn't fit the shape of the new bike's gas tank. After some studying I devised a way to alter the shape of the base of the system. It now fits perfectly...no cost. This tank bag also accomodates panniers that are a wonderful way to pack items fairly low on the bike.
• The taller windscreen didn't quite fix the buffeting, so I'm trying a pair of "winglets" or wind deflectors which a number of people have suggested make a lot of difference. They're on, but not really tested yet.

And so far (Groundhog day) that's all there is for now on the farkling front. There will probably only be modest changes from here out. I've tweaked my cold weather gear a bit and bought a new pair of riding gloves...but those are minor things. I'm still considering engine/cylinder guards for the bike.

The other winter footle (look it up) I mentioned was planning trips. I'll save that for a later post.

25 January, 2009...family moto leanings

Last post was about my son Shane and his motorcycle and our ride last summer. I'd like to look at motorcycling from a family-wide perspective. I don't know what it says about anything, but perhaps there are some things worth finding out via this route.

I’ve not ridden all my life. I rode a Cushman Eagle (picture on the left) in high school. I loved it. I could ride two up (read: me and my girlfriend or best buddy) at highway speeds. Very cool. Looking back: maybe not so cool…maybe dorky even then. The Eagle is a collectable now. They sell from around 2 grand to over eight thousand dollars. But they operated with an engine that produced 8 hp. Top highway speed was 50 mph. But that was the fifties. Everything was smaller and slower then.

I didn’t ride a two-wheeled motorized vehicle again for almost forty years. My second oldest son, Jason, was selling his motorcycle (Honda Shadow) and suggested I buy it from him. I took it as a joke. But his suggestion started an internal conversation that I couldn’t ignore. Why not? I was 53. I felt the need of some adventure. Maybe it was a kind of mid-life crisis. I began shopping. I explored brands, models. Eventually, in 1995 I bought a used BMW R100RT. That was the beginning of my obsession with motorcycles...esp BMW's and long distance, solo touring.

Jason did sell his Honda and later on bought an RS model BMW (don't know the year). He had it while he was living in Arizona and seemed (along with his then girlfriend, now wife Dana) to enjoy it pretty much year round. Jason now lives in Florida and has not had a bike since. We talk from time to time about taking a long ride together. I hope we manage it some time.

My son Michael was a rider for a short while. Michael bought something of a crotch rocket as his first bike. It would turn out that it was also his last bike...at least to date. His experience was not good. He dumped the bike twice...once clearly due to sand and leaves on a decreasing radius curve...and the second time probably just not negotiating another curve well enough to avoid losing control. Oddly both disasters occurred less than a mile apart and within a mile of our house. He claims the experience convinced him that motorcycles are not for him.

My other son, Chris...my eldest...has never had a bike, and as far as I know has never lusted after one. If pressed I expect Chris probably would admit to thinking me crazy for my love of long solo motorcycle trips. Many people would agree with him.

And then there's my wife. Susan has never owned a motorcycle, but about a year ago she and a friend took a "course" that was billed as a lead-in to the MSF course offered all over the country. They had some instruction on how to ride and shift and steer and then were turned loose on 250cc bikes. She loved it. Her rationale for taking the course was to learn enough about bikes so that if, when she was riding pillion, something happened to me, she could jump on the bike and go for help...or something like that. She went on after the course and actually studied for the learners permit. Unfortunately, hubris interfered with her common sense and she didn't prepare well for the test. The residue is that her motorcycle fling came to an abrupt end at the RMV office that day. She still enjoys riding pillion. We need to (and will) do more of that.

And that's the family snapshot. Three out of four kids ride or rode. My wife gave it a shot. Shane and I are the only one's currently riding. Shane's riding is largely commuting in San Francisco. Having ridden in that lovely city I have the utmost respect for someone who learned to ride on the hills of SF. They are steep and learning to ride a bike under those conditions makes for some outstanding skills. Our trip last year seems to have awakened an interest in more long, back country rides. More on all that later.

Thanks for all the feedback...or...here's another pic and story

The picture is of my son Shane. Shane accompanied me on a long portion of the trip last summer. We rode together from SF to Washington state along the coast and then criss-crossed Washington twice on an errand of mercy (perhaps more on that later). It was Shane's first long mc trip and her venerable ride, "Eddy" did him proud. Eddy was a little long of tooth, but was Shane's first bike and he more than loved him/it.

We had a wonderful time and many, many adventures. We saw beautiful coastal scenery...went around and practically through a few of the many wildfires burning out West last summer..and had an amazing couple of days on Orca Island (San Juan Islands).

Eddy suffered a terminal mechanical problem after Shane and I parted company. A great bike and a bad ending. But within a matter of months Shane was up on two wheels again. Way to go.

This summer we are planning on another longish trip. Looks like this one will be up in northern Canada...details to come.

the end of January...2009

Last summer I made a 10,000+ mile circumnavigation of the continental (lower) 48 states on my motorcycle. This photo was taken in eastern Arizona in late June ('08). The trip was (as all motorcycle trips are) a wonderful exploration of the country and some of the nooks and crannies of my soul.

Motorcycling is moving meditation. All attention is on the road and the conditions. Constantly changing scenery and circumstances are your medium. Despite the amount of information you have to process just to stay safe, after a day or two of riding, you find that more and more of what you ride through registers and sticks with you...or at least I do.

This blog will be my way of staving off the winter crazies. There is snow on the ground and ice on the driveway and I can't get out on the bike at all. I will explore some of the things that have lead me to my current fascination with two-wheel travel and share some of my experiences. Although I don't expect anyone to respond to this (I've blogged before and only my family ever caught on)...it would be wonderful if people did. I know there are a lot of people out there who are just as crazy about motorcycling as I am. Interestingly, not only are there a lot of folks who travel this way, but they are unbelievably diverse in their reasons for doing it and their style of doing it.

My current ride is a BMW R1200GS. The trip that the photo is from (and from which other photos will show up in subsequent posts) was an older R1150GS.

So here's to new beginnings. Whether this will be mental masturbation...me talking to me...or a conversation is currently unknowable. But right now, right here, in the dead of the New England winter that doesn't seem like a very important question. If you stumble upon this blog, please post a comment. Whether you are a fan of motorcycles, or solo travel, or almost anything else doesn't matter. A little communication here in the dark season would be a good thing...and if I have to carry it on with myself...okay.