Until There Are No More Roads To Follow

The planning started for me four years ago as I neared the end of my first motorcycle trip, which took me from Los Angeles to the end of the Pan-American Highway in Panama. By the end of the six tumultuous months of that trip I was exhausted of breakdowns, completely out of money, and inspired as never before at discovering my true passion and the knowledge that so much of North America and all of South America and many places besides were left to me to explore by motorcycle.

The plan was to do the next trip alone as I had done the first one and this time to have the right bike and the appropriate gear and the knowledge and experience to do it ‘better’ (whatever that I understood that to mean at the time). Then I met Jessica in South Sudan and we moved together to Liberia and one day she said she would learn to ride a motorcycle and do the trip with me if I invited her. So, of course, I invited her and the new plan became to do the trip together. This new plan started about a year ago when in Liberia I was struggling to engage with my new job and we were both feeling ready to leave Africa for a while and wanting to try something different than aid work. Then we grabbed hold of the idea of the trip and the researching and planning for it became as important as anything else to help get us through that difficult year.

At first the plan was to buy the motorcycles in Los Angeles and ride north to Alaska, perhaps as far as Anchorage or Fairbanks, and then south to Tierra del Fuego at the bottom of South America. Later, when we discovered from our very detailed projections that a couple more months of savings would better place us for a soft landing after the trip, we adjusted the plan to go as far north as Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory of western Canada if the weather and snow conditions allowed it.

I already knew which bikes we would get and I decided from the beginning that I would brainwash Jessica to make her see it my way. This turned out to be easier than I expected since she had a natural proclivity towards enduros – my preferred type of motorcycle – and crotch rockets – that is, sport bikes – and also because the Swiss in her blood gives her an innate appreciation for things that are well made. I decided that we should get BMWs because they are known to be the ideal adventure touring bikes and, after completely bucking the trend in choosing the motorcycle for my first trip, I had no qualms about conformity this time around. Also, on my previous motorcycle trip I had met a young couple from Seattle who let me ride one of their BMWs and I loved how it handled off road compared to my top-heavy and less agile cruiser. Incidentally, in meeting Megan and Marshall, this was the first time I had dared to dream that maybe I could meet a woman willing, able, and wanting to do a motorcycle trip with me. I also should confess to being terribly envious of Marshall then and for long afterwards for having found his Megan.

So, for Jess we got a G650GS, which is, but for a few changes to the aesthetics, that same motorbike that Megan and Marshall had introduced me to when we met in a small town in Belize several years before. It is an on road-offroad bike, which is classified as an enduro, with a 650cc single-cylinder engine nicknamed a ‘thumper’ for the drumming sound the lone piston makes. This bike as been made mostly the same for more than 10 years and, for performance and reliability, it’s among the best and most popular for round-the-world trips even more extreme than ours is like to be. Her bike is sunset yellow and black and she named it Moxie because for her preparing to do this trip has been all about summoning the ‘chutzpah’.

For me we got the slightly larger F700GS, which is also an enduro and has an 800cc twin cylinder engine slightly detuned but otherwise the same as the F800GS, which is every bit as beautiful but a bit too tall and expensive, and probably more geared for offroad than I need. My bike is silver and black and she, Penelope, is second only to Jess in beauty and dearness to my heart.

For those who care to know about more than just the make and model of our motorcycles, here is the rest of the gear-talk. We accessorized our bikes with a skid plate and crash bars – the former to protect the underside when bottoming out and the latter to protect the engine and side covers in case of a fall. We got hand guards to keep the projectiles and cold wind off our hand and a tall windscreen for better endurance on longer rides and at high speed. To Jess’s bike we also added fork guards to prevent rocks and other projectiles from doing damage to the front suspension. To my bike I also added a clear guard to protect the headlight assembly from those same rocks and projectiles that Jess might kick up when I am trailing behind her.

We each strapped a small, waterproof case on the part that serves as gas tank on most motorcycles – on ours the gas tank is under the seat to lower the center of gravity. The tank bag puts a few small necessities near at hand and places a square foot or so of map in view through a clear plastic slip over the top. We also added side cases called panniers to both our bikes to carry a part of our gear. Jess’s were the hard plastic type made by BMW to be adjustable so to extend for greater capacity. Mine were aluminum from Touratech with rounded, rubberized corners to better endure hard falls. In the panniers we planned to carry our clothing and toiletries, and in Jess’s our food and in mine our tools and spare parts.

We strapped a large, waterproof duffle bag across the passenger section of the seat and over the panniers on either side. In this we planned to carry our sleeping bags and sleeping pads, kitchenware, tent, camp chairs, and a few other necessities. The duffle bags would be enveloped in a PacSafe, which is a web made of steel cable that can be secured around the duffle and locked to the bike’s frame to make it harder to cut into or to steal. For our immediate protection, we got armored riding jackets and trousers, both with vents to unzip when it is hot, space to layer for when it is cold, and a waterproof membrane for when it rains. We also got riding boots with armed shins, and cold and warm weather gloves, and fullface crash helmets with vents that open to allow air to flow around and cool the head.

After the many months of planning while we earned the money to make it come true, Jess left Liberia in June and went back to Toronto to get her motorcycle license. I left a month later and, when we met in Los Angeles, we made our first visit to a BMW dealership the very next day. Within a week we had struck what we thought was a fair deal and a few days after our bikes arrived at the BMW dealership in Thousand Oaks. Thirty minutes into the ride home from the dealership on my new motorbike with my dad and Jess following behind in the car it suddenly felt like all the long months had gone by very fast and that I had really gotten myself into it now. Realizing that I was into it and it was all happening now, I welled up and became very excited.

Jess’s excitement grew much more gradually because she was very nervous about what she had suddenly over long months gotten herself into. Her new bike was much larger, heavier, and more powerful than the small one she had learned on in Liberia. Also now the thinking about it was giving way to the much harder doing it and she was practically faced with the demands of growing herself to endure long days of riding on freeways and windy highways and through twisty mountain roads. Jess is very sensible when counseling others and considering things outside herself but when she is part of the equation she is an obstinate pessimist. She found a thousand half-truths to convince herself why her experience riding in Liberia was insufficient, inconsistent with, or inapplicable to the riding she would have to do on this new bike and for the trip. Thinking about the need to adapt to this new bike and the effort required to grow her riding skill to meet the demands of the trip brought her a great deal of stress. Anyone who knows Jess knows that, when she gets stressed, she gets fussy. So you can guess she was quite fussy for the first several weeks and this was difficult for us at the same time as I was becoming so enthusiastic in my excitement.

Yes, Jess handles a motorcycle better than she does a baby

For the first 1000 km we rode around town and stayed off of the freeways. Common knowledge says that to break in a new motorcycle engine you should maintain low RPMs and change engine speeds often. This is best done on surface streets and particularly on twisty mountain roads.  We also took this time to collect our gear and to do other important things like take a course on first aid and CPR. After the first servicing, we broke onto the freeway, which Jess had long feared and almost instantly mastered. A week later we took the first of two practice trips, which were intended to allow us to adapt to the weight and balance of the loaded bikes and determine if we had packed appropriately before leaving for the real thing.

For the first practice trip we went north up the cliff-lined California coast along the twisting Pacific Coast Highway to Monterey and then back south inland past the farms and sun-bleached meadowlands. This went very well despite the long stretches of twisting highways that had given Jess so much anxiety when tracing them on Google Maps and had made her as fussy as ever before.

For the second practice trip we went north again but this time we took Highway 395 through the dusty plains on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range to Rock Creek Lake just below the better known Mammoth Lakes. My dad followed us up in his car and we camped for three nights and fished for two days before returning the same way. Jess caught a small one and my dad an even smaller one and I only had a fish take the fly off my line. On the third night the wind brought the clouds in and it was so cold that the rain fell as hail.

After these two trips we took a final week to make adjustments to the bikes to accommodate the new taller windscreens, to buy a few more items to round out our cache, and to install and test the video cameras on our crash helmets. This was also much needed time to rest up and to say our goodbyes, and to trace a route onto our maps that would takes us through as many of the highlights as possible during the trip. The day before we left to begin the trip was a Sunday and we rode Mulholland Highway to the Rock Store, which is where all the bikers in the area go to show off their rides. Riding there that day on our beautiful new bikes in our riding gear and feeling every bit as much a motorcyclist as the mostly older hands that haunt the place, I experienced an important moment of growth after years of never having the stones to go there.

The new plan had been to leave at the end of August but with everything there was to buy and return and modify and learn to use and modify again this proved overly ambitious. By the time we and our bikes were fully equipped to begin, it was the third week in September and the dog days of summer were growing further and further in the rearview. So, setting off on Monday, 23 September, we decided that the new new plan is to go as far north as snowed in passes and our tolerance for cold weather riding will allow us and then, when we cannot hold out any longer, to swing back south and from there make a dash for Mexico and Central America and then chase the summer into the Southern Hemisphere until there are no more roads to follow.

My White Whale

‘We’ll go when we come back,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to go riding now when we’re leaving for a six-month motorcycle trip tomorrow.’

         ‘The riding season will be over when we come back this way and besides this is my white whale,’ I said.

         ‘It’s your white whale?’ she said.

         ‘Yeah, you know, like Moby Dick.’

         ‘Yes, I know Moby Dick,’ she said.

         ‘The Rock Store is the big place where motorcyclists go on the weekends around here. I’ve never gone because I’ve always been nervous because I didn’t have a nice bike or the right riding gear or I don’t know the biker lingo. All these years it’s been out there mocking me like my white whale. And now it’s a Sunday and maybe the last nice day of the riding season and I have an awesome bike and a tall, blonde girlfriend who rides and has her own awesome bike, and we’ve added all the good accessories so that our bikes look serious and I have good riding gear and I know how to talk about bikes and tomorrow we’re leaving to start a six-month trip.’

         After a bit more back and forth, some more urging, and several additional references to my ‘white whale’ she gave in and we suited up to ride Mulholland Highway through the canyon to the Rock Store. On the way we passed many bikers in singles and pairs and larger groups and when they acknowledged us with a left hand held out below the handlebar, I felt good and confident returning the salute because I knew that finally I was a proper motorcyclist with a gorgeous bike and solid riding gear and that I could biker-babble with the best of them.

         Jess rode in front as she normally does because she feels more comfortable to set the pace instead of feeling like she has to keep up. By now she had done enough riding that she could handle almost any situation if she had to but she still held an intense anxiety about parking. When we neared the Rock Store, she signaled me to pass her with her left hand. Passing ahead of Jess as she slowed slightly and steered to the right side of the lane, I felt a surge of anxiety as though I was about to experience one of those singularly important life moments.

Nearing the Rock Store I thought about how my first foray into motorcycling had ended less than one week after I bought my first bike eight years before. I was stopped at a light about two miles from home when I was rear-ended by a breathtakingly beautiful girl who did not see stopped at the intersection. She hit me so hard that her car crumpled around the back of my motorbike and this kept my motorbike upright and me still seated on it, still holding the clutch in, after watching the spit leave my mouth and splatter on the face shield of my helmet during the elongated moments of the collision. Some landscapers working nearby helped me to extract my bike from her fender and roll it off to the side of the road. When we exchanged information she explained that the car was a rental and she was not authorized to drive it, and that she did not have a valid license, and that she had no phone number to be contacted, and she was without insurance, and could she pay me directly for damage if I would agree not to report it to the insurance company, and could I give her some time because she didn’t have the all the money just now.

I thought about this and then I thought about how it was four years later before I got back on a motorcycle. This was in Honduras while traveling after I finished my doctorate and deciding I needed to be alone and do something amazing. So I rented a 125cc motorbike a road 100 km in one direction before I got a puncture and was grossly extorted by a cab driver and a mechanic respectively for a lift and a patch job. Then I decided I had to ride a motorcycle through Latin America. So, I flew home to Los Angeles and with what savings I had left I bought a motorcycle – not based on what could handle the demands of a long distance trip but on what I thought looked good. It was a 500cc 1993 Yamaha Virago, rusty on the inside from lack of use, and with a few hundred dollars in saddlebags and a top case and some invaluable help from a friend with power tools and the knowhow to use them, I set off naïve, unprepared, and scared shitless. Somehow I lived and had the experience of my life and finished the trip six months and many breakdowns later in Panama at the end of the Pan-American Highway.

I thought about that and how before that trip I never went to the Rock Store because I felt like a joker for what I was planning to do and for planning to do it no knowledge and no gear and that particular motorcycle. I also thought about how after the trip I never went because I now I understood just ridiculous the trip I had done really was and besides I no longer had a motorcycle.

As I thought about this, we rode through a bend into a clearing and then another bend and then the parking area of the Rock Store stretched out in front of us. The lot was mostly full but not the way you see pictures of it when it is the middle of the riding season. The sun glared off the chrome of the parked Harleys and the Harley-like cruisers and gleamed off the plastic fairings of the sport and enduro and tour bikes parked in nice formations in the lot. I pulled in at the end of the lot and then maneuvered past one line of cruisers and into a gap between two Harleys. I walked the bike back and forth bying time as I nervously tried to determine if I was too close to the closer of the two Harleys or if I was leaving too much space that would better be conserved to admit another bike in the line. When I looked back to Jess she gestured to ask if she was parked ok and I felt just a little better to think that maybe she was more nervous to be there than I was.

         ‘We’re here,’ I said after we had parked and removed our gloves and helmets and began to walk to the patio of the Rock Store.

         ‘Yes, love, we’re here,’ she said.

         ‘It’s my white whale,’ I said.

         ‘Yes, love, like Moby Dick,’ she said.

         We sat at a table in the patio of the Rock Store and we ordered a couple sodas and then I ordered a corn dog because I saw someone else had one and it looked good and appropriate for the place and how long had it been since I had last had a corn dog. Jess ate the French fries and we covered our sodas so that the bees wouldn’t get in and we watched a grizzly biker ask out the most attractive of the several blonde waitresses.

         ‘Are we going to talk to anyone?’ Jess asked.

         ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not unless someone talks to us first.’

         ‘Then why are we here?’ she asked.

         ‘Because it’s my white whale,’ I said.

         Half an hour passed and we paid for our drinks and got up from our table. We put on our riding jackets and our gloves and helmets. We mounted our bikes and maneuvered out of the line and I followed Jess out of the parking lot. As we pulled away along Mulholland Highway without looking back, I suddenly felt both very accomplished and very underwhelmed and I thought, ok, now you’re ready to start this trip.

Our Life in Her Poses

Her flight arrived on Saturday evening. Somehow I was able to get in to the terminal between the arrival gate and the baggage claim. I waited for some minutes until I saw her walking amidst a small group. Then I gathered the gifts in my hands and walked towards her. At first she seemed very focused on where she was going and did not recognize me. When I came closer, she saw it was me and she smiled and turned towards me. Then she saw the gifts in my hands and she became suddenly very embarrassed. She hurried her pace and, when we met in the middle of the wide corridor, she did not stop. She took my arm and shuttled me off to the side before she received the flowers and chocolate and other things I had brought for her.

            ‘I made this incredibly romantic gesture and you just shove me off out of view!’ I complained later that evening when we sat down to dinner on Melrose Ave.

            ‘I just don’t like making a scene,’ she said. ‘I don’t like being the center of attention.’

            ‘Didn’t you ever learn you’re supposed to like that your boyfriend makes a big deal of you?’ I said. ‘Other – normal – women find it very romantic, I’m told.’

‘I know, I’m horrible!’ she said.

‘Well don’t worry about it,’ I said, ‘next time I’m staying in the car and I’ll slow down just long enough for you to jump in.’

‘No!’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. It was a really romantic gesture.’

‘Just drink your drink, will you?’ I said.

After dinner we walked back to Eric’s apartment where we were staying the night.

‘Where did they go?’ she said.

‘To Keren’s parents’ house,’ I said. ‘He said they are staying there for the night.’

She poured water into a vase and then mixed in the nutrient powder. She put the flowers in and then set it down and arranged them. Then we went into the bedroom. It was becoming very good because we had not seen each other for a few weeks but it was over very suddenly when we heard Eric’s voice.

‘I said we were having dinner over there but we would be home around 10,’ he said a few minutes later after we had collected ourselves and joined them in the living room.

‘I heard it differently,’ I said.

‘Anyway, here we are,’ he said. ‘At least you took the guest room.’

‘Drink?’ I said.

We had a drink and then the girls went to bed and then we had another drink.

‘What are they going to think of me?’ she asked a couple hours later when I came to bed after the drinks.

‘That I’m irresistible maybe?’ I said. ‘Anyway, if he was a real friend he’d have kept quiet for just five more minutes.’

Jessica on the beach

She grunted and I turned out the light. In the morning we left Eric’s place and we went to Bobby’s for breakfast. After breakfast, we drove out to Venice Beach so that she could experience something unique. We walked passed the canals and the skateboarders and the people on beach cruiser bicycles, and we passed the tattoo artists and the street performers and the people selling free medical exams. Then we went out onto the sand and down to the water. I stood on the dry sand because my shoes were on but she walked out until she was just close enough to put a foot in the water. She stood where the surf reached the end of its journey. She put her foot out so that the big toe felt the foam and then the water and then it receded back into the surf. As she watched her toe and the surf, she held her sandals in one hand and rested her other hand on her hip. I watched her there absorbed by what I saw: the slenderness of her arm and the angle that it made going out from her shoulder and then back to her hip. I watched the way she stood and it felt very good as though I could see our life in her pose.

A few days later we drove to Palm Springs where my grandmother has a house that was vacant since she had moved into a home. The house is one of many identical units with a uniform color scheme and well-manicured lawn that borders an artificial lake in a gated community. In the lake there was a flock of ducks that dove for fish and sometimes an electric motorboat puttered past very slowly, making ripples in the mirror surface. My grandmother’s house beside the small lake was very nice with high ceilings and tall windows but it had the musty, neglected smell of something that has been used a lot and then suddenly not at all.

Jessica on a chair

When we settled in and I was arranging things inside, she went outside to see the lake. It was the late afternoon and the desert was just beginning to cool after a scorching day in July. When I came to the sliding glass door sometime later she was sitting on a chair on the porch with her feet up. As I watched her, I thought about how I had never managed to be comfortable at my grandparents’ house because they only cared how the furniture looked when they bought it. But she looked very comfortable with her feet on a cushion and a book in her hands instead of the ereader. She was all legs and no cares and it was a wonder to me that she could look so comfortable on that chair.

The next morning we drove to the Salton Sea, which was a popular resort in the Rat Pack days until the water became brackish and then the Yacht Club closed down. The lake looked like an ocean but there was a foul smell and thousands of fish skeletons lined every part of the shore.

‘They are tilapia,’ I said as we stood there. ‘They were introduced and they’re not native. They die en masse based on the weather.’

Then we drove past the Salton Sea to the far end where there was a strange trailer park and Salvation Mountain.

            ‘He was crazy maybe,’ I said a few steps from where we parked the car. ‘Anyway he decided to build a monument to God.’

‘I don’t understand it,’ she said.

            ‘God is love,’ she said, reading the giant words that were molded and painted on the hillside.

            It was midweek and it was deserted now but there were fresh footsteps in the sand and I knew visitors came occasionally. It had a very low profile for a mountain but it was very noticeable for the gaudy colors and bizarre formations and short religious phrases all over it.           

FOR GOD SO LOVED THEM

            YOU ARE LOVED BY GOD

            JESUS LOVES

            FAITH LOVE JOY GOODNESS MEEKNESS PEACE TEMPERANCE LONGSUFFERING GENTLENESS

            Also, the word ‘REPENT’ was written in many places, usually as the first part of a phrase without punctuation:

            REPENT JESUS I’M A SINNER PLEASE COME UPON MY BODY AND INTO MY HEART

Jessica on a swing

            The only object in the place that was not painted in gaudy colors was an ancient cot that was covered in a old blanket and hung from a swing set under a trellis roof of destroyed cloth. She sat and swung back and forth gently, not lifting her feet from the ground because she did not trust it. When she saw me focusing with my camera, she looked away as though it would make the photography stop. Looking away from me like she could not be bothered, she was perfect in that place in that moment. It was a pose that told you ‘God is love’ and ‘Repent sinner’ and ‘come upon my body and into my heart’ as much as if you had never known Salvation Mountain.

That afternoon we drove into Joshua Tree and, when we arrived at the campground, we made a circuit to know the layout and what was available. After surveying several good campsites, we selected one that we liked. It was backed against a sloping crag and surrounded by scraggly bushes so that it was secluded from the car park and passersby.

‘We’re sure that we’re sure?’ I said.

Jessica on a rock

She did not give another glance around. She had decided. I unloaded the car and then I drove back to the entrance to place the payment envelope in the collection box. When I returned I saw that she was gone and that she had left the things where they were. I looked up and saw that she had scrambled up the crag beside the campsite. It was past sunset and the fading light was behind her from where I looked up so that she was entirely in silhouette. She stood there atop the crag tall and slender and entirely motionless against a blue and violet sky. Her pose was perfect for where she was and she was perfectly made to make that pose.

‘It’s really small,’ she said after she had descended from the crag and I had erected the tent.

‘It’s made for one person,’ I said.

‘It really is,’ she said.

‘I warned you,’ I said.

‘Yeah, we’ll make it work,’ she said.

We prepared dinner in the twilight and we ate by the glow of a headlamp that she set out like a lantern. After, we scrambled up the crag to near where she had stood before and laid our sleeping mats on the cool granite. It was nighttime and the desert was very cold now so that we had to lay very close to keep warm. For a long time we lay beside each other – at first talking about many things and then becoming silent as it began to feel – though it was actually not – very late. Soon she fell asleep and I was awake looking at the stars.

When she roused, we descended with our things and we readied for bed. Then, we stuffed our mats and sleeping bags into the tent and then we stuffed ourselves in afterwards. It was very nice to be so close but soon that moment came when sleep is more attractive than your partner. Then we turned away and we fell asleep. In the middle of the night I woke and adjusted and then fell back asleep. Early in the morning, I woke again and this time she woke also.

‘You have nothing to worry about,’ I remembered she had said when we talked about her moods, ‘except for when I am tired or hungry or thirsty or hot or cold…or when I need to be alone.’

‘So only those situations?’ I had said.

‘Yeah, only those,’ she said, ‘or when I’m cycling or when something else is going on with me.’

Now, it was very early and the space was very tight and she was very tired and I could see she was very miserable.

‘I’m getting out,’ she announced suddenly.

She fumbled to unzip her mummy bag from inside and then bolted upright.

‘I’m going to sleep outside,’ she said. ‘It’s too cramped in here and I’m feeling claustrophobic.’

Jessica the next morning

‘It’s ok. I’ll go,’ I said.

‘No, I’m going,’ she said impatiently.

‘Better that I go,’ I said, ‘or I’ll hear about it tomorrow.’

‘You’ll hear about it anyway,’ she said. ‘Just hope I don’t get bitten by a snake.’

Secluded and Completely Exposed

I feed the line in with my left hand so that it hangs slack from the rod just above the reel and begins to coil at my feet. I pinch the line above the slack part with the trigger finger of my right hand so that I will feel if there is a strike and the line will be taut when I jerk the rod to set the hook. It is the late morning and there is a high, warm sun and a sharp, cool breeze. There are no sounds except the river and the birds and the rustling of leaves. Where I stand in the river the water comes to just below my knees. It is cool and slow moving here where it pools shallowly beside the main channel. When I have fed in enough line, I retrieve the fly from where it battles the current and, with a few swift flicks of my wrist and forearm, I dry the fly in the air and then cast it back upstream to where I think there might be trout.

         ‘If there are fish, this is where they will be,’ I have told her, pointing to a similar section of river some ways upstream. She is there now where I left her after I set her rig and saw from the first cast that she knew what she was doing.

         ‘I’m going a ways downstream,’ I said.

         ‘OK. When I catch one, you’ll have to come back to take it off the hook,’ she said.

         ‘When you catch one,’ I said, ‘I’ll show you how to take it off the hook yourself.’

         ‘OK but I don’t want to touch it,’ she said.

         The fly runs quickly down the channel passing through all the good holes as I intend it to. As the current takes it, I feed the line in to keep it taut. When the fly has passed through the good section and is dragging in the current, I jerk it free, sweep it dry through the air, and send it back to the top of the run as I have done several times now.

         As the fly runs downstream and I begin to feed the line in, I think about how quickly the time has run passed. It is our last full day in the mountains outside Telluride where we have spent the last week. We only just got here, I think, only it feels like we have been together a very long time. Then I think about how this is our third week since leaving South Sudan and how far away that feels and how it has all happened very quickly and quite unexpectedly.

Something happened around the New Year, I think as I watch the fly float passed, because we had mostly ignored each other before that and then after we began slowly to be friends. After the New Year, we met a couple times in Juba when one was coming and the other was going and once when there was a coordination meeting for several days at the head office. After that we began to exchange text messages in the evenings as we lie in bed before turning the lights out. I suppose it was a way to get to know someone slowly without the pressure of a proper telephone conversation. It was a fun thing and it helped to make the time pass and it gave you just enough to get you through the lonely nights.

‘So why did it take us a year of knowing each other?’ she asked when we reminisced about it a long time after.

‘I think we were both getting ready for something,’ I said. ‘It’s like our orbits needed time to synchronize.’

‘It sounds nice when you say it that way,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to write it down so I’ll remember it that way.’

Then it happened that we gave notice around the same time so that we would both be passing through Juba at the end of the month on our way out of the country. She drove up a few days early from where she was working in the south to help them in the head office to do payroll and a few days later I flew down from the north. The office had held a party for me the night before and afterwards some of us drank and I drank quite a lot. So in the morning I felt very bad in my head and my stomach but it helped that I was looking forward to seeing her and I did not feel so nostalgic for leaving.

‘I’m a bit hung over this morning,’ I wrote her in a text message as I waited to board the flight.

‘So I don’t get the sharp you?’ she responded.

‘Just the mild cheddar version,’ I wrote back.

When I arrived, she was having lunch at the Indian restaurant where those who worked at the head office went for lunch because it was the best thing within walking distance and not too expensive. When I arrived she smiled and said hello and then went back to her conversation. She mostly ignored me during the lunch and most of the walk back to the office so that I started to wonder if I had read the situation wrongly. Then she caught up with me at the end of the walk and she was very friendly now as if the ignoring me before made the being friendly with me now more seemly.

‘I felt like people were watching!’ she said a long time later when I asked her about the ignoring.

‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but, if they were, it was only because it looked like you had a grudge against me.’

We spent the rest of that day in the common office and we chatted very easily as we completed the last pieces of our work. Then, in the evening we arranged for one of the drivers to take us to a restaurant. Giorgio who was the new director sat in the front passenger seat and, when we got in, he announced that he was going out for dinner.

‘What kind of food is it where you are going?’ he said in his very strong but understandable accent.

         ‘It’s a Thai restaurant,’ she said in a tone that might have been meant to make it sound less appetizing.

         ‘Thai?’ he said as though it was a lot to consider. ‘Yes, that sounds good. Can I join you then?’

         He saw that we both hesitated and then he quickly added, ‘Unless it is private or something.’

         Neither of us knew what to say but eventually I managed to speak.

‘No, of course not,’ I said.

At dinner Giorgio did most of the talking. I expected to be very annoyed that he had come along and at myself for not telling him to find his own restaurant. But, I decided later, it was actually for the better.

‘I think it let us just be there together and, since he did all the talking, we did not have to put any work into it,’ I said a long time later when we were reminiscing on it.

         After dinner the driver took Giorgio to the residence and then dropped us at the staff house. Her room was the one beside mine in the block of concrete units outside the main house. In the night, she came over in her pajamas and we put on a movie and we watched some of it together. We watched on my laptop under the green mosquito net that we tucked under the mattress on all sides after we got under. As I think about it, standing in the cold river holding the rod and the fishing line, I remember how the strange green net made the bed feel like an island or a ship at sea and anyway it felt very private and much more romantic than a concrete room with bare walls and a drab curtain had a right to be.

         During the movie, we lay beside each other and I was terribly nervous. I was more nervous than I could ever remember being. Also, the nerves had gone to my stomach, which was already bad from the excessive drinking after the going away party the night before, so that I felt very bad and very nervous and very awkward. Each time when we looked at each other and spoke during the movie I hesitated because I was nervous and, missing my opportunity, I became more nervous.

What’s wrong with you, I thought, lying there not watching the movie and being very nervous. You’ve done this before, haven’t you? Why does this one suddenly have you so inside out?

Finally, when the nervousness was so bad that more of the nervousness would be worse than any possible alternative, I turned and I kissed her on the mouth. It was very sudden and very awkward, but she managed not to be too surprised by it.

‘Very bold,’ she said after that first long kiss.

‘I couldn’t wait any longer,’ I replied.

A long time later when we reminisced about it, she was rather more critical of my first performance.

‘Wooosh! You just came out of nowhere!’ she said. ‘It’s like all of a sudden there was this face in my face and you were attacking me!’ she said, laughing at the memory and being very amused to hold it over me.

‘I know! I was horrible!’ I conceded. ‘My nerves were shot and I was just glad that I didn’t bash your forehead or teeth or something!’

         In the morning we took one of the vehicles into work. She was supposed to leave that day but she decided to miss her flight so that we could have one more day together. So, in the afternoon we had the driver take us to the airline office after she had already missed the flight. She smiled and chatted with the clerks and made them feel that she was very grateful to them.

‘Of course they changed your booking for free!’ I said when we walked out of the office and she carried a new ticket. ‘You have this thing that you do that’s like a Jedi mind trick or something.’

‘I’m just very friendly,’ she said more innocently than was genuine.

‘I think that’s why I was so standoffish with you at first,’ I said when we were remembering it a long time later. ‘I thought that you would use your mind trick to take advantage of me somehow. I can’t stand how it feels to be taken advantage of, especially by a woman, so I guess I was too cautious.’

‘Really? And I always thought you were very intimidating,’ she said.

         That was our last day together in Juba. We had planned to go out for dinner alone that evening but when two colleagues invited us out we decided it was easiest to accept than make excuses. We went to the nice place that is opposite the pumping station where they make the Greek pizza that was very good the first time I had it and never quite measured up after that. We sat in the outside courtyard and had drinks and waited a very long time for our dinner. Mostly we talked to each other while our colleagues talked about work between themselves. I was still nervous but I felt very good and I noticed that she and the courtyard and the drinks and even my pizza were very perfect that night.

After dinner she came to my room in her pajamas.

‘You are utterly incapable of staying properly dressed when you come home,’ I observed a long time after.

‘I know! It just feels wrong to be at home in your outdoor clothes,’ she said.

‘It was that way right from the beginning!’ I said.

We went under the green mosquito net and we began to watch another movie. In the night I lay awake with the nervousness bad in my stomach and I thought how I liked everything about her and there was nothing that I did not like.

She has you turned all inside out and very quickly, I thought later in the night when I slipped outside while she slept soundly under the bed net. I stood outside in the warm, still air with my stomach clenched in knots from the nerves and I thought how it felt different than too much to drink or bad digestion.

‘What did it feel like?’ she asked when we spoke about that night a long time after.

‘Well, not like how you’d imagine butterflies!’ I said.

I left the next day. Her flight was scheduled for later in the day so she spent the morning with me as I packed and, when the driver arrived, she came with me to the airport. Outside the airport, the awkwardness came back and I said goodbye and left her very suddenly.

‘I thought it might have just been a fling for you,’ I said a long time after when she asked about the abrupt goodbye.

‘No!’ she said. ‘I liked you and it was much more than that.’

‘Well, I know that now,’ I said, ‘but at the time I didn’t want to be the guy who gets all sappy outside an airport.’

Inside the airport as I stood in line with all my things about me, sweating profusely in the crowdedness and the heat of the terminal, I received a message on my phone.

‘Damn, I’m gonna miss you…’ it said.

I like you very much, I thought after I read the message, and I hope we are not through yet. Then I thought about the nervousness and the awkwardness that was in how I had kissed her and how I had said goodbye and in almost everything else I had done. It’s either how you’d ruin it or how you’d win her over, I thought, or maybe she just didn’t notice.

Some days later, when we were both gone from South Sudan and that life immediately felt very far away, we were speaking by telephone and I said, ‘We could meet somewhere between LA and Toronto.’

Then I remembered how one night in Juba I had asked her preference on holidaying: ‘Would you rather a condo on the beach or a cabin in the mountains?’

‘What about Montana or Colorado?’ she said over the phone, remembering that same conversation.

So we decided on Telluride and I found a beautiful cabin in the mountains above the town. It was rustic and modern and secluded and completely exposed to the mountains for miles around. It had high ceilings and walls that were mostly windows and the bedroom was a loft. It got the sunrise in the morning and the sunset in the evening and a view of everything all throughout the day.

Some mornings we went running or went for a hike but most days we stayed inside and we did not come out until late in the afternoon when we were desperate for food. Then we drove into town and found a restaurant, and we ate well and drank beer or wine and we never had a shortage of things to say to each other.

On the third day we drove through the national forest and into Durango and back again in a circuit. We listened to music as we drove and she read trivia questions and the country was very beautiful. The next evening we ate pizza and drank beer at a restaurant in town. I was beginning to realize that I could find nothing wrong with her and that made me very nervous again. Also, the being together was only getting better and I was not needing any alone time from her as I had always needed before. I realized that I liked her a lot more than I had been prepared for and that made the awkwardness come back.

‘You’re not finished?’ she said.

‘I think I am for now,’ I said.

‘But you’ve barely eaten anything,’ she said, ‘and this is our first meal of the day!’

‘I know!’ I said with exasperation. ‘I don’t eat enough when I’m with you. You make me lose my appetite!’

The next day, I went for a hike and she spent the afternoon at the spa and in the evening the awkwardness continued when we met for dinner. We sat at the bar and we ordered drinks and then she ordered a steak. I went to the restroom and when I came back I had reached a decision.

‘So I was standing at the urinal and I got some thinking done,’ I said.

She nodded and smiled and did nothing to stop me from barreling into it.

‘I was thinking that I don’t want this to end,’ I said. ‘I want you to come to Liberia with me.’

She looked very happy and she waited a moment to answer while she enjoyed the feeling of it.

‘Yes, I’d like that,’ she said.

‘Good,’ I said and I must have looked very happy also.

‘That’s what you thought while you were peeing?’ she said.

         That was only last night, I think as I stand in the shallow pool in the river and watch the fly float past. Then I hear a noise in the bushes upstream beside the river and I turn to see her coming. She emerges from the bushes and then stops beside a low tree to untangle the tip of her rod from one of the branches. It seems like we’ve lived a long time together but it has been almost no time at all, I think, and it’s all been so very good and unbelievable. I feed in more line until the slack part coils in the water at my knees. Then I whip the fly out, swing it overhead, and cast it back upstream. She comes alongside me and she looks for the fly in the river.

         ‘Did you get any strikes?’ I ask.

         ‘Not one,’ she says. ‘Did you?’

         ‘One good one that took my fly but nothing since then,’ I say.

I feed in line as the fly passes downstream and, when it drags at the end of the line, I reel it in. Then we stand there with our feet in the water, saying nothing and just being there with each other.

‘Are you getting hungry?’ I say eventually.

‘Very hungry,’ she says.

‘Where should we go?’ I ask.

‘The Blue Grass Festival started today so probably the parking will be impossible,’ she says.

‘So let’s drive up past where we turn off to the cabin and see if there’s someplace to eat out that way,’ I say.