The Good Ones You Meet

Day 11-14 – Portland, OR, USA to Seattle, WA – 2,736 km

When we arrived in Seattle in the early afternoon after a drizzly morning slog from Portland on Interstate 5, Tim met us at the 7-Eleven up the block from Megan and Marshall’s condo building.

Tim is a friend of Marshall’s from university days and he lives nearby in the Ballard neighborhood. Megan and Marshall are the couple I met in Belize several years ago during my first motorcycle trip. They were on motorcycles and we – along with Chris whom I had met a few days earlier in Yucatán – went for drinks and rode together over two or three days between San Ignacio, Belize and Tikal, Guatemala. When Jess agreed to do this trip with me, Megan and Marshall were immediately who I thought of and Marshall was the first person I contacted for advice – motorcycle and relationship – during the preparation.

‘Make sure you always have snacks,’ was the first and most important recommendation in Marshall’s email. ‘We realized afterwards that most of our arguments on the road were because we were both just hungry.’

I had contacted Marshall again a few days earlier to see if they were in town for a visit on our way through, knowing that their business has them on the road during half the year. They were on the other side of the country but quite matter-of-factly Marshall suggested that we stay in their place, use the car, and even take his bike out for a spin, and he connected me with Tim who let us in with the spare keys.

         ‘How long did you know them for on the trip,’ Jess had asked after she read Marshall’s email.

         ‘Just two or three days,’ I said.

         ‘Wow, that’s really nice. Say yes!’ she said.

         After Tim let us in and showed us around and we had arranged to meet up for dinner one of the next couple evenings, we changed into street clothes and took a walk through the neighborhood. The Ballard is a trendy section of Seattle with lots of nice restaurants, bars, and live music clubs. We got into the scene by going for tapas and wine. Then we took the bikes and met Nick and Katya for a late dinner. Nick is Jessica’s ex whom she hadn’t seen for some years and it was a very nice reunion and not at all awkward, I thought.

         ‘You never know how these things will go,’ I said as we mounted our bikes after dinner.

View from Megan and Marshall's condo

         ‘No, because Nick is a really nice guy just like I told you,’ she said.

         It was a cold ride back to Megan and Marshall’s and our GPS seemed to take us from one wrong turn to another until we turned it off and navigated by what we remembered from coming into town earlier in the day.

‘It’s like Google Maps is against us,’ Jess said when we were pulled over and deciding to figure it out on our own.

Back at the condo it felt great to have our own private space that was a home and not a motel room. Through the large window in the living room we could see the lights and the dwindling activity across the city.

Seattle Great Wheel and harbor from Pike Place Market

The next day we rode two up on my bike to Pike Place Market, which is near the harbor piers. We visited the first Starbuck’s, which didn’t make much impression on us, and then we strolled through the market. We tasted almost everything there was on offer: jams, cheeses, and such a variety of infused oils until one was practically indistinguishable from another.

         ‘My taste buds are rubbish,’ I said after the first wave of tasting. ‘I can’t really tell the difference between all these subtle flavors.’

         ‘I know, love, that’s why I don’t let you get the good things,’ Jess said. ‘My mom does the same to my father. Like how she won’t buy the good juice because he’ll chug it down just the same as the bad juice. It’s the same with you.’

I just love these hanging chili pepper decorations

It was the same when I tried the hot sauces. I could detect that the flavors were different but I had no ability to articulate them or distinguish the flavor’s origin. But I did appreciate the burn they made in my mouth, maybe because the burn is a blunt taste and requires no refined detectors. I tasted the sauces up to the second hottest and, with my dander up, I would have gone all the way but the vendor, who thought he was setting the hook, scared it right out of my mouth.

         ‘This is the true badass, right here,’ the vendor said pointing to the smallest bottle. ‘It has a Scoville rating of 2 million. That is liquid fire. I mean it doesn’t get any hotter than this. One-sixteenth of drop and you’ll be feeling it for more than an hour.’

         At this description my belly went cold. I deferred from the final taste and excused us away from the booth.

On the second pass through the market we bought peppered beef jerky for Jess, who is uncompromisingly carnivore, and various locally grown fruits for me because I had hit my lowest weight in years a few months before in Liberia and have been trying unsuccessfully to get back to it ever since. Later, when Jess saw the Swiss sausages called Landjäger hanging in a display, she was suddenly very excited.

‘We used to eat these all the time when we visited family in Switzerland,’ she said as she fished in her wallet for the dollar-fifty she needed to buy one.

After the market, we went down to the pier and we rode the Seattle Great Wheel to see what the city looks like on a beautiful, clear day. Then we were tired and we walked back to the parking lot to get the bike and ride back to the condo. At the bike we pulled our gloves and helmets on and then mounted and I slowly pulled out of the space. As we inched forward, the bike suddenly seized and then began to pitch uncontrollably to the ground, spitting us off as it keeled. The bike struck the ground on the right side crash bar and the rubberized corner of the pannier so that it was as gentle and nondestructive a fall as there could be. Shocked into action, we were immediately back on our feet and I righted the bike without difficulty. When the immediate jolt had passed, Jess started laughing.

View from the Seattle Great Wheel

‘What happened?’ she said.

I looked up and down the bike feeling very confused and – I don’t know why – thinking that someone had played a joke. Then I remembered that I had put the disc lock on when we had parked and, turning my scan the front wheel I saw that I had never removed it before we started off. A disc lock secures to the disc brake so that any attempt to turn the wheel to which the disc is fastened will eventually collide the lock with the brake caliper and prevent the wheel from turning further. This is meant to make it more difficult for a would-be robber to simply roll the bike away.

I explained to Jess why the fall had happened and I told her how very foolish I felt. She tried to console me that it was her fault also for forgetting about the disc lock but that didn’t help because we were riding my bike and right now I was the pilot.

‘The same thing happened to me during my first trip,’ I said as I checked for damage to the disc and the brake caliper once my frustration and embarrassment had subsided somewhat. ‘Only then I was in a crowded plaza in a small town in Mexico and I had started off very fast because I was feeling like a badass for being a foreign gringo – you know – wearing a leather jacket and doing a motorcycle trip and that. I went over just like that only more so and in full view. That bike was much harder to right when it fell because of the way the weight was distributed so there I was like a jackass struggling and struggling and being defeated by it.’

She laughed and laughed and then asked what had happened.

‘Eventually someone came to help me,’ I said. ‘Someone always came to help.’

As we rode back to the condo, Jess pointed from behind me at another motorcycle that was parked.

‘What’s that?’ she shouted over the drumming of the motor and the silencing of the earplugs.

I look to where she pointed and saw a bright neon cord that connected the handlebar to the wheel of the motorcycle.

‘It’s so you don’t forget to remove the disc lock and drive off!’ I shouted in reply, knowing that this would set her off on a new wave of laugher.

As she laughed, I made a show of slinked in my seat as a sign of defeat and then I rebounded and waved her off with a sharp hand gesture as if to say, ‘Ok! Ok! Quite enough of that!’

After the market we visited the REI flagship store but we discovered that we were both completely saturated after all the shopping during the preparation for the trip. We slogged around the enormous store as if going through the motions and then flopped ourselves down on a bench beside the outdoors-inspired jungle gym in the kids play area.

‘This trip has ripped the love of REI out of me!’ I said.

 ‘I’m sure it’s just temporary,’ Jess said. ‘It’s not as fun when you have everything you need.’

The next day I set out to perform an oil change on Jess’s bike. It was her bike so Jess felt compelled to supervise – my word – or participate – her word – in the process and she was – I can honestly admit in hindsight – actually very patient with me. She helped where she could but mostly she ‘kept company’.

‘Here!’ I said at one frustrated moment, offering her the greasy Allen wrench in my hand, ‘You show me.’

Her face took on an expression of disgust as though the tool that I offered her smelled very foul and she said, ‘No, no, love. You’re doing very well.’

I returned to the task at hand, thinking that I had silenced my commentator at least temporarily, but within moments the observations continued.

‘You know your version of helping and keeping company is not the same as mine,’ I said at length.

‘It was the same when I used to help my father with things,’ she said. ‘But at least my father used to work a lot faster!’

I grunted and she laughed and we continued on as we had for the rest of the afternoon.

In the evening, when I had finished and had cleaned the spills, bottled the used oil, and disposed of the old filter and sundry waste, I realized in hindsight just how easy the process had really been and how pathetically I had second-guessed my way through it. It was the first oil change I had done on either bike because I was not smart enough to do it just for the practice before we started the trip. During my first motorcycle trip, I had pulled apart my Yamaha cruiser – by necessity and far more often than I cared to – without much concern about doing more harm than good or being able to piece it back together. But the few intervening years in Africa had been surprisingly non-mechanical and, more importantly to my mind, this was a brand new BMW and so certainly – I had convinced myself – it was beyond my basic mechanical knowhow. Fortunately, there was plenty of quiet in the parking garage of Megan and Marshall’s condo so that I could struggle and agonize – in the peace and quiet that Jessica allowed me – over each and every step of the process.

In the evening, after we had showered and made friends again, we met Tim and his girlfriend Carey for dinner in the neighborhood. At first Carey seemed decidedly unenthusiastic about being out for dinner with these strangers that were crashing at Megan and Marshall’s place. She explained that it had been a frustrating day of collaborating on a project, but she quickly put work behind her and turned out to be very charming. They are both photojournalists and described very interesting projects that they had been working on. She described one of the projects that had taken her to Papua New Guinea to investigate issues connected to gender based violence. On a whim I asked if she had met my friend Miranda who was there at the same time working for an NGO. It turned out that she knew Miranda quite well and they still kept in touch.

‘Miranda was great,’ Carey said and then hesitated before suggesting, ‘I think she was maybe a bit burned out.’

‘You should see how I am after just a year in a place and she was there for three,’ I said. ‘Also she’s quite dry.’

It was a very engaging dinner conversation, made longer but never dull because of the slow service and because I was the last one to receive my meal.

‘Greg eats so slowly,’ Jess explained quit unnecessarily. ‘He chews each bite fifty times.’

‘She used to count,’ I said, making the best of it now that the unflattering subject was breeched. ‘She would stare at me and I would see her lips moving and when I swallowed she would announce a number. It was like she was dealing roulette.’

After dinner, Tim and Carey pointed us in a direction to see the nightlife in the neighborhood and we said goodbye.

‘Those are the kind of people we could be friends with,’ Jess said. ‘They have interesting things going on and it was better talking to them than most of the people we meet doing aid work.’

‘Yeah, and the good ones you meet are always either coming or going or you’re coming or going.’

I thought about this as we walked.

‘I used to think that I would travel and live in all these places and have friends all over the world. But I’m absolutely rubbish at keeping in touch no matter what I try.’

‘I know. Me too,’ Jess said.

‘So it’s like I go place to place making friends and then losing them,’ I said. ‘What a depressing thought.’

‘We’ll do better,’ she said. ‘We’ll help each other.’

It sounded good the way all vague, sweeping declarations do, and it was even better because she said it with much conviction.
‘Ok, let’s do,’ I said and I decided to feel better about it as we walked into the area where the bars and music clubs and the sidewalks were alive with so many people.

Your First Impression Is The Truest

Day 5-11 – Clearlake, CA, USA to Seattle, WA – 2,752 km

A few miles past the park entrance Jess signaled and then pulled off at the turnout. I followed and pulled off alongside her.

         ‘It’s getting too cold,’ she shouted over the sound of the idling motorcycles and through the muffling of the earphones and the crash helmets. ‘There’s frost on the road and look at the snow on the cars coming back this way.’

         ‘Ok, you turn back. It’s only a few more miles. I’m going to go on as far as I can and if it gets too bad, I’ll turn back. Otherwise, I’ll meet you at the lodge that we passed just before the entrance to the park,’ I said.

         She considered this and, although she did not like for me to go on, she relented. I watched her make a U-turn across the highway and return the way we came. Then I pulled onto the highway and continue the ascent towards Rim Village, which is the first access to Crater Lake from the south entrance to the national park.

         As I rode further into the elevation I noticed that the temperature reading on my onboard computer display had begun to flash. At first I thought something was wrong with the computer but then I remembered the tutorial I had received from the dealership two months before.

‘It’s programmed to flash when the temperature drops to three Celsius degrees above freezing to warn the rider of possible hazardous road conditions,’ Bob from BMW of Ventura County had explained.

‘Let’s hope we’re never riding in cold enough weather to test that,’ I had replied, figuring that the trip would take us into the cold but to freezing.

Now it was flashing as he had said it would and the flashing made me more nervous about the rode conditions up ahead.

Since we had left Clearlake – a couple hours north of San Francisco – a few days before, I noticed that the conditions were changing noticeably from the still warm weather of Southern and Central California. After Clearlake we had gone north and east away from the coast and back into the Sierra Nevada mountains where we stopped for the night at a motel along Highway 89 just outside Lassen Volcanic National Park. The next day, as we followed 89 through the national park, we saw patches of snow alongside the highway and the temperature reached down to the mid forties. This was cold enough for me to break out my winter riding gloves for the first time but otherwise I wore only a thin base layer and a sweater under my riding jacket. Despite the cold, Lassen was our favorite national park so far on the trip because the cold air made the rock and lakes feel somehow crystalline and it felt very serene because there were few visitors on the road.

After Lassen, we connected with the I-5 at Mt Shasta town and we continued to Weed where we intended to take the 97 north into Oregon and to Crater Lake. While stopped at a filling station in Weed, we spoke with another BMW rider who was coming from Eugene in the general direction we were headed.

‘It’s really windy between here and Yreka. I was riding like this the whole way,’ he said, demonstrating a steep lean with his hand. ‘I was really getting knocked around from the gusts.’

Jess stared at the angle of the rider’s hand and she listen to his description with rapt attention. After she had learned from him what she could, she began searching her iPhone for information about the wind conditions ahead on the 97.

‘There is a wind advisory until tomorrow night,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should stay here.’

‘I’d rather stay in Klamath Falls, otherwise it’s too short of a riding day,’ I said. ‘Let’s go forward and we can always turn back if it gets bad.’

She looked at me with a dubious expression.

‘He was coming down the interstate. Maybe it’s less windy on the 97,’ I said.

It turned out that it was no less windy on the 97 because a storm was sweeping across the entire northeast. As we entered the town, we noticed the wind was considerably stronger than it had been south on the interstate and heading north the winds were probably 30 to 40 mph with gusts maybe half again as strong. Out on the highway, there was a sign that warned of ‘Gusty area next 1 mile’ but we quickly discovered that the high winds extended far beyond the stated limit. After a few miles and several strong gusts that jolted her from the line she was riding, Jess pulled over to the shoulder.

‘I’m not doing this,’ she said. ‘Let’s go back.’

We turned around and rode slowly back to the town, stopping at the first motel along the main street. It was kind of a dump but at least it was cheap and we had a beautiful view of Mt Shasta from our room on the second floor. It was forecasted to rain during that evening and the day that followed and the winds would get stronger before they abated late the next night. When we woke up the next morning and it was still raining and the wind was blowing in strong gusts, it was an easy decision to stay in Weed for a proper rest day. The weather followed the forecast and the winds were so strong throughout the day that sometimes, after a particularly strong gust, I glanced out the window to make sure our motorbikes were still upright even though they were sheltered by the motel, which acted as a good wind break.

The windstorm broke early the next morning so that it was much calmer and only drizzled intermittently as we loaded the gear onto our bikes and lubed the chains. It was very cold all that morning and, after a blueberry scone and a hot chocolate, we changed into all our remaining layers of clothes in the parking lot of a bakery in Klamath Falls just over the Oregon border. Back on the highway the winds were strong again at Upper Klamath Lake and then the temperature began to plunge even lower after we turned onto the 62 and began to ascend towards Crater Lake.

Now as Jess was heading back to the lodge and I was ascending to Rim Village at Crater Lake, my bike’s display was showing the temperature getting closer and closer to freezing and the snow I was seeing on the hillsides above the road was creeping closer and closer onto the shoulders. After a couple more miles the snow was stacked along the sides and center lane divider but the tarmac remained clear where the vehicle tires cut parallel tracks. A mile or so from Rim Village everything was snowed over but I continued ascending because the signs showed that I was so close to this goal, which had suddenly become important to me beyond all reasonable proportion. Also, I decided, my traction felt surprisingly good as long as I controlled my speed and stayed in the trail of the car ahead of me.

Coming around a final tight bend, the hillside opened to a bleach white parking lot of snow-covered cars and a few groups of people walking briskly with hands deeply planted into jacket pockets. I maneuvered through the parking lot avoiding the piled snow and patches of slush as best as I could and then I parked beside a truck in a space with quick access out of the lot. The display showed that the temperature was several degrees below freezing before I turned off the bike and began to walk to the path where there was a lookout. Through the haze I could see the lake and Wizard Island in the middle of it. The clearing held just long enough to snap a photograph and then the fog thickened and the island disappeared.

As the fog thickened, the snow that had been falling lightly now began to fall much more heavily and this made me nervous about the road conditions for my descent back to the lodge. Growing increasingly nervous, I hurried back to my bike and hit the ignition. The first mile or two of the descent I rode mostly in first gear, feeling more confident about my traction at higher engine speeds. At lower elevation it was not quite as cold but the snow was falling there too. Despite the bike’s heated grips set to high, my fingertips were tingling from the cold. When I approached the lodge just outside the park, I saw Jess standing outside waving to me.

‘I’m so glad you turned around when you did!’ I said. ‘I really got myself into a fix up there.’

Inside the lodge as we ate a cup of hot soup I told her about the cold and the snow and the winding road up to Rim Village and back down again.

‘It’s still snowing down here,’ she said after I finished, ‘so we should probably go in case it’s going to get worse.’

The road that skirts the crater and connects Highway 62 at the south entrance to 138 at the north was closed past Rim Village and, besides, we wouldn’t have had any intention of going back up through the snow. So we returned the way we came, taking the 62 back to Chiloquin where we reconnected with the 97 and then went north to Bend. At Bend we found a nice motel, which felt disproportionately luxurious for the poor quality of our accommodations in Weed. After a hot shower and a rest, we went to the very lovely downtown for our first evening of nice dinning out. Back at the motel, warmed from the glass of wine but then chilled again from the ride, Jessica set the thermostat so that now I was properly broiling.

‘Babe, why are you all clammy?’ she said.

‘Maybe because you’ve made it like an oven in here,’ I said.

We bickered back and forth about the temperature until we reached a stalemate and then I changed the subject.

‘I really like what I’ve seen of it here,’ I said.

‘You mean Bend?’ she said. ‘Yeah it’s nice but what would we do here?’

‘I don’t know but we should think more about where we would be happy to live,’ I said. ‘Otherwise, we might as well go back to Africa where we can easily get work but will probably not enjoy where we are living.’

‘Yeah, maybe so,’ she said and, after considering it for a moment longer, ‘Let’s don’t think more about it right now. I’m not ready to think about what we’ll do after the trip.’

The next day we rode 40 miles north to Madras where we took Highway 26 northeast past Mt Hood on the way to Portland. All morning it was cold and rainy weather riding and we wore all the layers of clothing we had to stay warm and comfortable on the bikes. At the closest stretch of highway near Mt Hood where the road ascended to it’s highest elevation the temperature dropped to freezing and the raining became snow. At Government Camp we pulled over at a filling station for a cup of hot coffee and we asked the attendant about the conditions up ahead.

‘It’s like this for another two miles or so and then you go down and it’s only raining,’ he said.

‘So better to press on forward than turn back?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, you’re better off going forward,’ he said. ‘You’re most of the way through it now.’

We stayed in the filling station for a few more minutes, sipping at our coffees, until we noticed that the snow was coming down more heavily and blanketing the road more quickly than the highway traffic could clear it away.

‘Let’s go now before it get’s worse,’ Jess said emphatically.

Back outside, we found that in the ten minutes we had been away the bikes had been thickly covered in snow. The sight of the snow-covered bikes was a least as nerve-wracking as the snowy highway beside which they stood. As we put on our gloves and helmets, three motorcyclists that we had passed and been passed by at several points throughout the day pulled into the filling station and parked alongside us.

‘It’s really bad out there,’ the one who pulled up nearest to me said.

‘The guy inside said it goes back to raining a couple miles further on from here,’ I said. ‘He said from here you start to descend.’

‘Yeah but can we make it that far?’ he said as though deferring the decision to me.

‘We’re going to try to push through it because it’s only getting worse here,’ I said.

The biker repeated what I had said to his mates and after a moments discussion they were back on their bikes and turning onto the highway. Now Jess was on her bike with the engine on and waiting for me but I was having trouble with one of my riding gloves. My hand had gotten wet while fixing the strap of my helmet and, when I tried to slip it into the glove, the wetness had seeped into the lining. Somehow this made the lining stick against my skin so that my fingers could not settle into place. After a few more tries, I looked back and saw that Jess was in earnest. So with my hand deep enough into the glove to wrap around the grip and clutch lever, I pressed the electric starter and followed her out onto the highway.

The ground was slushy around the filling station but the traction was better on the highway because the traffic was helping to keep the snow from turning to ice inside the lane. Even worse than the conditions on the road, the snow came down like a blasting flurry traveling at 50 mph and, with the ice that collected on the windshield and helmet visor, the visibility was extremely low. The several miles of gradual descent away from Government Camp seemed to stretch over a very long time for the snow and the cold and the poor visibility. Then suddenly we were out of the snow and back in the cold, drenching, wonderful rain and we were very relieved. A few kilometers ahead at the town of Zigzag I signaled to pull over so that I could adjust my gloved hand to fit like something better than a flipper. The rain, which was at first a relief, and the cold followed us the 45 miles into Portland so that once we had found a motel and were off our bikes, we were decidedly against going back out for dinner and assertively for staying in and ordering a pizza.

That evening, as we stuffed the pizza into our hungry, exhausted faces, I thought about how incredibly Jess had held up and kept high spirits throughout the day and especially during the most precarious moments in through the snow.

‘When we pulled into the filling station at Government Camp, I was petrified to pull alongside you because I thought you’d be pissed because I was the one who wanted to take the route past Mt Hood,’ I said.

‘No, that’s when I’m very good – in those situations,’ she said. ‘That’s why I thought to keep going to more and more dangerous places.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure you were great that time when you were caught in the fighting in South Sudan,’ I said. ‘Anyway, as we were coming down I kept thinking how great it was that you were smiling and that you weren’t pissed because then I could just worry about riding my own motorcycle through it.’

We were fully prepared to fall in love with Portland because we had heard good things about it from a variety of people. We decided to stay over the next day to visit downtown and to drop in on my former employer in Liberia, which is headquartered here. But all through the next day it was overcast and rained and, when we tried to ride downtown, it poured so heavily on us that we had to turn back because there would have been no way and nothing to sightsee once we were there.

‘It’s so dependent on timing and circumstance when you’re traveling like this, isn’t it?’ I said when we were back in our motel, hanging up our sopping jeans and blow-drying our iPhones, which had been caught in our jeans during the downpour. ‘I mean if we had come a day or two earlier or later, maybe we would have loved it here.’

We turned out the lights to this thought and for a while I lay awake thinking about it. At first I felt unsettled with the idea that maybe the glimpse you would get of a place would be very far off the mark and that you would leave carrying away a misconception. Then I thought that maybe this misconception would somehow taint the trip – like maybe how passing Mt Hood when it was too cloudy or snowy to see it would take something away from the experience of the trip. But then I thought about how I had read that often your first impression is the truest because it forms before your conscious mind can make a confusion of it. Also – and what impressed me more so that after I passed into a comfortable sleep – I decided that the glimpses that you get and the impressions they form are what make the places you pass uniquely yours and not what someone who came before tells you it is. The glimpses form a string of impressions and together they are what make the trip yours and no one else’s – uniquely and independently and very specially yours – even when so many other motorcyclists have come before you.

The next morning we detoured through the downtown of Portland before we connected with the I-5 north. It was still overcast and it looked rather dreary even though it was no longer raining. I didn’t love it as I was prepared to but I liked what I saw – maybe, I thought, the same way but no more or less than I would have liked it had I visited it under any other weather conditions or circumstances. After this briefest glimpse of Portland, we made a beeline for Seattle, reluctantly but decidedly bypassing Mt St Helens and Mt Rainier because the weather conditions were still unfavorable and we had had enough of traveling winding mountain highways through heavy rain and snow – at least for now.

If It's Important Enough That It Sticks With You

Day 3-4 – Fresno, CA, USA to Clearlake – 878 km

‘Greg, are you speaking to yourself?’ Jess called out from inside the motel room.

         ‘No, I’m taking a video,’ I said panning from myself, standing in front of the bikes, over to Jess. ‘Anyway, how often do I speak to myself? Do I?’

         ‘This thing is in wrong,’ Jess said, disregarding my question and focusing entirely on trying to secure the wind liner inside her mesh riding jacket.

         ‘OK so this is what we are doing. She is stressed this morning. Jess gets stressed any time I am ready before her,’ I said to the camera and then to her I added, ‘I’ve been ready forever. What have you been doing?’

         She let the question linger unanswered as she continued to struggle with the clasp that secures the liner to the inside of the jacket sleeve.

         ‘OK, so this is quality television,’ I said before I end the recording.

         In ten minutes Jess emerged victorious from the battle with her riding jacket, we greased the bike chains, double-checked the rigging of our luggage, and checked out of the motel. Sixty km after that we were in Coursegold, which is a few minutes drive outside Yosemite National Park on Highway 41. We stopped here so that Jess could put her riding camera on her helmet. Going into her left pannier to retrieve an additional layer of clothing for the coolness at our new, higher elevation, she discovered that the pannier was not holding securely to the metal rack. When I inspected it, I found that one of the plastic braces that fastens the pannier to the rack had cracked so that the case was only securely fixed to the motorcycle at two points.

         ‘What happened?’ she asked as my head emerged from inspecting between the rear wheel and the underside of the bike.

‘So remember that little collision we had yesterday,’ I said, trailing off at the end.

Immediately I recognized that this could easily be patched with duct tape and immediately after that I realize that, among all my tools and spare parts, there is no duct tape.

‘Damn fool, how can you forget duct tape,’ I berated myself.

We found duct tape in a nearby general store and within ten minutes I had the pannier taped firmly to the rack so that, after subjecting both panniers to the jiggle test, I determined that the damaged one was more secure than the other.

Back on the road we continued on Highway 41 into the national park. We rode through the mountains again as we did the day before in Sequoia but here there was more congestion so that you are either pressing up behind someone or someone is pressing up behind you. After a long tunnel we came to a popular turnout that gives a view of El Capitan and Half Dome and the other gray granite peaks that surround Yosemite Valley. We parked our bikes and retrieved the small cooler bag from one of Jess’s panniers and found a place to sit a little away from the crowd of visitors that descended in waves from the tour busses.

         After a snack and an effort to explain in French how to use my camera to a tourist who had offered to take our photograph, we were back on the bikes and following the line of vehicles on the descent into Yosemite Valley. No matter how many times you visit Yosemite you will always be struck by the beauty of the place, but, after several visits, you will probably be less inclined to hang about because of the heavy congestion of tourists.

Still, even if you do not linger about, somehow just by riding through a place, you will feel strongly connected to it. This is another reason why I love to travel by motorcycle. Maybe it’s because you put more than ordinary effort into getting there or because riding through it you were more exposed to its elements or because for you the means was at least as important as the ends.

After riding through Yosemite Valley and stopping and doubling back for a few choice photographs, we left going northwest out of the park on highway 120. Leaving, I felt a bit downhearted for not having spent more time or stayed over to hike to the top of one of the peaks. Then I remembered something I had learned from my first motorcycle trip and I repeated this to myself (yes, I do sometimes speak to myself as Jess had earlier asserted), ‘There will be a lot more of what you don’t than what you do. It has to be that way otherwise you wouldn’t get anywhere.’ This made me feel better and also the knowing that, if you miss something and it’s important enough that it sticks with you, you’ll have a good reason to come back and make there be a next time for it.

We continued on the 120 past Manteca and changed onto Interstate 205 where we stopped at Tracy for the night. It was 100 kilometers further to San Francisco, which was our next destination, so we decided to tackle the Bay Bridge and the city’s hills and its congestion when we were fresh the next morning. In the evening, outside our motel room in Tracy I pulled the covers over our motorcycles after earlier unloading the luggage and making a trip to the grocery store for provisions. Doing this, which should have been the last thing I wanted to deal with after a long day of riding, I realized how I really appreciate this act as some kind of small demonstration of my affection for our motorcycles.

The next morning we took Interstate 580 west past San Leandro and Oakland across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco. Once past the toll, we caught our first great view of the city and, although we were surrounded by so many people for whom this was an ordinary commute, riding in on motorcycles and doing it carrying with you everything you really needed in the world, the enormity of it struck me very deeply.

Inside the city we first visited the Castro District and from there we went to Haight-Ashbury where we stopped at a bistro.

After we ordered fish and chips for her and a French roast for me, Jess mused, ‘You know this is the first proper restaurant we have gone to alone since coming back from Liberia?’

‘No,’ I said and then, ‘Can that be?’

‘Name one,’ she challenged.

‘I guess you’re right. It’s been all fast food or going out with others,’ I said.

Jess had decided she wanted to visit Alcatraz so during this early lunch we researched it to discover that even this late in the season tickets sell out several days in advance.

‘That’s what I don’t like about this – we go place to place but don’t get to do anything,’ Jess said.

‘It’s only the planning ahead for touristy things that’s going to be a problem because we never know when we will be somewhere,’ I said. Then I offered, ‘We could go there and see if there was a cancellation or something.’

‘No let’s continue on,’ Jess said. ‘I don’t like the hills to just be riding all over the place.’

Back on the bikes we connected with the 101 and took the Golden Gate Bridge north out of the city. At Petaluma we took the 116 east through Sonoma and then the 121 to the 29 north into Napa. In Napa we took a small walk through the town and tasted varieties of the local olive oils. We decided this was a better choice for us than the wines because we were not committed to staying the night.

After Napa we continued north on Highway 29 through St Helena, which seemed to be a charming offshoot of Napa, and then past Calistoga where the congestion freed up and the highway became a pleasant twisting mountain road. At Lower Lake we took the 53 and came to a stop for the day a few kilometers north at Clearlake. After finding a motel and unloading the bikes, we bought a liter of beer for me at the local grocery and excellent takeaway Mexican food from just up the road. Back in the motel, stuffing the food into our hungry faces like feeding jackals, Jess took a pause to say, ‘I think I would have liked to visit Alcatraz.’

‘Well,’ I said, assuming this manner I have of sounding more Zen about things than I really am, ‘if you miss something and it’s important enough that it sticks with you, you’ll have a good reason to come back a make there be a next time.’

‘Well then next time we won’t ride there,’ she said definitively. ‘I did not like those hills at all.’

‘You handled them beautifully,’ I said and then reminded her that I had stalled on three separate occasions and she hadn’t once.

‘Yeah, well, more than once I thought my bike was going to topple over forward when I was braking downhill.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said, ‘but what I noticed was how going uphill at red lights you stopped into the pedestrian walk where it was more level.’

‘Yes,’ she admitted freely. ‘I cheated.’

A Day of Hitting Things

Days 1-2 - Los Angeles, CA, USA to Fresno - 595 km

A line of vehicles forms behind the kiosk at the entrance to the national park. When the RV ahead of us finishes and it is our turn, I pull ahead of Jess and come to a stop beside the open window.

         ‘We’d like a couple of annual passes,’ I tell the park ranger inside the kiosk.

         ‘Sure. Will you be riding together? If you will be riding together, you can get one pass for both motorcycles,’ she explains.

         ‘Yes, that would be great,’ I say.

         ‘OK, that will be eighty dollars,’ she says, ‘ and I will need her to sign the other space on the access card.’

         I give the park ranger my credit card and, while she goes about processing the eighty-dollar payment, I turn back to Jess and wave her to come alongside me. Then I turn back to the kiosk where the park ranger has finished with the payment and I take back my credit card from her. I As I replace the credit card into my wallet and the wallet into my riding jacket, I hear the heavy thud of Jess’s bike go into gear and then the growing thump-thump-thump sound of her engine as it engages with the gears. As I close the pocket of the riding jacket and turn my attention back to the kiosk where the park ranger awaits the approval of my credit card, I feel the solid thud of Jess’s bike hit mine from behind. I look behind and beside me and I see Jess looking at me with a sheepish grin and then I looked down and see that she had misjudged the added width of the panniers on our two bikes so that her left pannier has thumped against my right one. I meet her smile to tell her there is no harm done and then I turn back to the kiosk. But now I feel that the change in the force of her bike against mine has caused me to lose balance of my heavily loaded bike, which is cradled between my legs. The bike begins to keel to the side and, as the park ranger turns back to pass me the credit card receipt for my signature, she catches me in the desperate act of struggling to keep my bike upright.

         ‘It’s our first collision of the trip!’ I exclaim to Jess when we have pulled over.

         She is smiling and keeping good humor but I can tell that she is a little frazzled and, once she is over the shock, will probably be upset with herself for ruining her record of no falls or crashes on her new bike.

         ‘It’s good,’ I say, ‘because a crash is certain to happen so better that it happens early and that it’s a small one so that we don’t have to have the anticipation looming over us anymore.’

         We check the panniers and find that they are both perfectly fine with only a faint smudge to prove that the incident ever happened. I give Jess a rub on the shoulder and she takes a deep breath and then we remount our bikes and merge onto Generals Highway.

         It is our second day of the trip and it is cool but sunny and now we are ascending a beautiful winding road towards high ground. I am listening to an audiobook over my headphones and running down the battery of my helmet camera by indiscriminately videoing Jess glide through each and every hairpin turn. She is ahead of me because she prefers to set the pace and I prefer to follow to keep others from riding up too close and to not have to worry that I am setting too quick a pace. Certainly she thinks she is going too slowly and she is stressing about it, I think, because she always believes she is riding more slowly than she is and she believes she is holding other people up. I wish she wouldn’t worry so much about it but I can’t blame her because I remember how I used to worry about it just the same until my skill and confidence and cynicism were greater.

         We are in Sequoia National Park on our way to visit General Sherman Tree, which is purported to be the largest in the world by volume. Our trip began the preceding day when we left Los Angeles shortly before noon after a long morning of loading the bikes, packing away things we hadn’t space to take, and tidying the house so that my mother would not return from her holiday to have a conniption.

         ‘It’s not fitting!’ Jess had said the evening before our departure, slumped over her waterproof duffle bag, which seemed fit to burst as she tried to fasten down the roll-top. She had been at it a while now and had already drawn down her clothing and toiletries several times trying to achieve her 89 liter capacity limit.

         ‘Leave it for tomorrow,’ I said. ‘You’ll be fresh then and maybe you’ll have a new idea about it.’

         She frowned and then decided that she liked the suggestion and went about finding something to watch on Netflix.

         I was a good idea except I didn’t consider that, when we had finally succeeded in packing our bags and loading our bikes and tidying the house the next morning, neither of us would have any energy left for the actual riding. By the early evening of the first day, we had made it only as far as Visalia about 350 km from our starting place in Los Angeles and we decided to leave it there for the day, partly because we were tired and partly because we calculated that the additional 45 km gained by pressing on to Three Rivers just outside the national park was not worth the 40 to 60 more dollars that a motel would cost there.

         In the evening we watched TV and bickered playfully and did other normal at-home things and late at night, as I lay awake sleepless for the excitement of having finally started the trip and the anticipation of more riding tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, I thought about the solitude of having traveled alone during my first motorcycle trip. The evenings were often very lonely, I remembered, so that even exhausted after a long day of hard riding and brutal weather, most evenings I found myself out walking the streets or going for an unneeded drink just to avoid the long evening hours when solitude can feel a lot like loneliness. It had been good for me at the time and something I thought I wanted to do again but now, looking over at Jess purring lightly in her delirious exhausted sleep beside me, I was very glad to be doing it this way and with this person.

         The next morning we faced similar challenges to get our duffle bags repacked and loaded onto our bikes but we were off well before lunchtime and I counted that as a success. Now we were on our way and we had entered the first national park on the northern leg of our trip. We had had our first crash and we were both fine and our bikes were both fine and the sky was clear and sunny and we were riding beautiful twisties in a tight formation.

About 30 minutes into the park I signal to Jess to pull over at Amphitheater Point so that I can enjoy the view and take a photograph. As I bring my bike to a stop, I look to my left and see Jess slowing her bike but not quickly enough to avoid hitting the curb at the front of the parking space. After the small jolt she looks to me to see if I saw it and, seeing that I did, she makes a gesture of slumping her whole body in exhaustion.

 ‘It’s like you were so desperate to get off the bike – you just rammed it into the curb and jumped off!’ I said some minutes later when our gloves and helmets were off. We were both laughing and we sat lounging on the stone parapet of the lookout.

‘The parking was uphill and after all the twisties – I misjudged it!’ she said.

‘Yeah, and as soon as you hit it you were like, “I’m done!” and you practically jumped off your bike,’ I said.

She laughed because when she has done a hard stretch of twisties and has done it very well as she just had, she is less critical of herself and will laugh at her small mistakes.

‘And did you see I hit that rock after that turn back there?’ she says.

‘Yeah. I saw it and it left a big smudge on your tire,’ I say.

‘It did?’

‘For several miles after I kept seeing it go round and round. It was hypnotizing me,’ I said.

I went to look for the smudge on her rear tire but it was gone now and I came back to where she sat and shrugged.

‘Anyway it’s been a day of hitting things,’ I said, ‘me and the rock and the curb.’

Back on our bikes, we do 15 long minutes more through hairpin turns and another 15 at higher speed as the highway straightens out until we reach the parking for General Sherman Tree. After parking our bikes and securing the helmets and riding jackets by running the steel cable of the PacSafe through them, we walk to the notice board.

‘Oh, it’s not right here. You have to walk to it,’ Jess says, tracing the foot trail on the map. ‘It’s half a mile downhill, which means it’s half a mile uphill coming back.’

‘You can manage it,’ I say.

‘Ok, but I get to complain and I get to take breaks whenever I want,’ she says.

We follow the path, our stiff riding boots clopping on the hard-packed trail and my thick Cordura riding pants swish-swishing with each step.

‘You sound like you’re wearing snow pants!’ Jess says.

‘Let it be,’ I say back. ‘This is the sound you’re going to hear everywhere we go for the next six months.

Further along the trail I begin to record a video, explaining where we are as we near the destination.

‘We’re going to George Sherman Tree,’ I say, ‘which is what Jess has taken to calling it.’

‘I heard George Foreman instead of General Sherman and I got confused,’ she says. ‘Don’t defame me! Whatever, all you will hear on the video is the sound of your pants!’

At the end of the trail, we visit the tree and we take photographs. On the way back Jess tries to stop us at each bench that the Park Service had placed along the half-mile. When we return to the bikes we have a brief conversation with a retired RAF officer on holiday with his wife who stopped to admired our bikes.

‘You know, it used to be on my last trip that I didn’t want to be noticed so I would downplay what I was doing,’ I say after the British vacationer returned to his wife.

‘And now?’ Jess says as though to concede me the opportunity to say what she already knows.

‘I love that people are envious of our bikes and of what we are doing,’ I say.

‘Of course you do,’ she says.

 Back on our bikes, we follow Generals Highway east to Highway 180, catching a glimpse of Kings Canyon National Park on our way out of the Sierra Nevada mountains and on to Fresno where we will stay the night.