FINAL ENTRY
Brent (my son-in-law) wisely chose the Space Needle in Seattle as our meeting place for an escort on this final leg of a very long trip. Given the inherent difficulties I have in managing my way around cities with big freeways, finding a landmark that sticks way up in the air was relatively simple.
Brent (my son-in-law) wisely chose the Space Needle in Seattle as our meeting place for an escort on this final leg of a very long trip. Given the inherent difficulties I have in managing my way around cities with big freeways, finding a landmark that sticks way up in the air was relatively simple.
We boarded the ferry from downtown Seattle
to Bremerton across the Hood Canal
and made our way up the east side of the Olympic Peninsula to Port Townsend. We
pitched at a State Park and wound up the Pacific Highway to bask in warmth and
greenery and sweeping curves for a most pleasant ride home.
Thank you, Brent, for the escort on this final and
significant stretch!
And now, I find myself home. 10,300 miles of tarmac have rolled under my wheels in these seven weeks. A great many things are
spinning around in my road weary skull, and as I compose my final post for the little blog that has been the outlet for my need for reflection and conversation
there are a cascade of memories, sensations and retrospectives to sort through.
It has been quite a journey, I must say, and it tested me. It really tested me.
What would be an appropriate title for this trek? “Gone With
The Wind” has a truthful ring to it. Or given that I started out on my Mother’s
birthday and returned on Mothers’ Day, perhaps “The Mother of all Bike Trips”.
I am open to suggestions.
I return to a world where I no longer have to eat
standing up, there are more than two recognized food groups, you can’t buy beer
at a gas station, seasons progress in a logical and traditional order, and I
will meet people during the day that I have met before and who understand
hockey. I look forward to windshield wipers, mattresses that don’t change into
placemats overnight, adjustable climate control, and readily obtained hot water.
There are far fewer flying insects on the continent than
there were at the end of March. To this I can attest. A long and narrow
bug-free swath has been cleared to the Mississippi delta and back.
I have learned about creative spelling from signs proclaiming
the essential elements of the consumer world as tastee, quik, ezee and
delitefull. (I think it is the second ‘l’ that troubles me most).
People have been friendly, gracious, and eager to help. South Texas and Idaho freeways notwithstanding. Warm
greetings with a smile, a hello or a wave have been standard. Kids and people
in small towns often waved as I passed. Conversations are easily initiated when one is on a fully loaded
motorcycle that is not a Harley Davidson and bears license plates from a distant land. Typically
these have been restricted to topics of travel, motorcycles, and weather, but occasionally explored issues of the economy, war overseas, the energy crisis,
or the need for spare change.
Serendipity, irony and chance events have been recurring
themes. Whether a road is followed this way or that, or a choice is made now or
moments from now, changes the outcome unpredictably and irreversibly. However, my optimism and faith in the eventual outcomes have never
wavered. Never have I been fearful, or felt defeated. Nor, curiously, have I
ever felt alone. Someone once said that solitude is the cure for loneliness,
and I believe I have come to understand the meaning of that.
This blog and many emails have kept me in touch with people
important to me, and I feel that I carried you all in my pocket. I greatly
appreciate the support and encouragement that I have received as I embarked on
an adventure as ambitious and foolish as this. Thank you for allowing me to
share with you my experiences, personal interpretations and quirky perspectives
as I think out loud and occasionally pontificate about bigger issues on life,
living, suffering and celebration that have stirred within me as I ride and
write. “Living out loud” as I have come to think of this, turned out to be surprisingly enriching. Living an experience with an intention of writing about it at the
end of the day provokes one to think about the experience differently. What do I think about that? What is the
broader meaning of it and how would I put it into words? It forces one to
pay attention and to truly live in the moment--features of life and living that
I have come to appreciate.
I am grateful for having the health, opportunity and
wherewithal (!), and the verve I must have inherited from someone to be able to
pull this off. Good fortune, whatever that may mean, has certainly been in my
favour as well. Surprises greeted me around every corner, and although some of
them were not particularly welcome I survived them and probably grew from them.
Evidently my guardian angels were turbocharged, enabling them to keep up with
The Bruiser and I as we sped along, and for that we are most thankful. Being
completely alone--although as I once pointed out we are never completely
independent from the support of others--means that one is reliant upon one’s
own decisions and choices and have faith in the soundness of self-counsel, and
sometimes the mercy of the gods!
And of course I am intensely grateful to the Suzuki
Corporation for their excellence in engineering and craftsmanship, and from
whose industrial loins were born The Bruiser. No finer a vehicle or mechanical
companion has ever there been, with as much character as could possibly be
bestowed upon an assemblage of metal and rubber. Bruiser, you have been
magnificent, suffering wind, freeways, deluge, gravel, pot holes, bug storms,
bad gas (me too!), heat, cold and pestilence without complaint or hesitation. I
thank you.
What more can be said about the things I have seen and
experienced! Replaying it all is quite overwhelming. Ever-changing backdrops to
my small and mobile world were often astonishing in their beauty and startling
in their significance. Geology and biology and history have an ongoing
collaboration in all that surround us, commanding our attention and provoking
our spirit in both their beauty and tragedy.
All along I have been mindful of the metaphor of Life as a Journey.
(Or sometimes a bottle of wine). I will leave it to the Reader to identify or
construct the parallels which are particularly relevant or meaningful to them. In the
end, they are our own.
Perhaps the pithy observation offered by the waiter/philosopher
of the Timber Wolf Restaurant in Fossil, Oregon
captures it best:
“The best thing about ridin’ is enjoyin’ where you’re at”.
There you go.
There you go.