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.