Nothing But Tarmac And Sky

Days 22-27 – Mackay, ID, USA to Mesquite, NV – 6,497 km

It was much worse than it looks - honestly!

It started out as a manicured dirt road when it left the tarmac parking lot at the end of the scenic drive. As I rode along, I felt the small pebbles kick out from under my surefooted tires and heard the metallic resounds as they struck the aluminum skid plate that shields the underside of the engine block. Even as it descended deeper into the canyon, the road meandered through dips and rises and sudden hairpin turns. Arriving at the pinnacle of each rise – which is simultaneously my most and least favorite – I felt the breathless anticipation just before the next stretch of road was revealed to me.

Several kilometers in, the ride become complicated by intermittently rocky and rippling sandy patches where flash flooding had worn away the hard, dry earth and had strewn the rocky debris. Gaining the next rise, my heart went into my stomach as I saw that the road was a very sudden dip into a sharp, sandy turn. I downshifted to control my speed while keeping my rpms up and I felt my grip tense even as I told myself to stay loose and relaxed. Coming out of the dip and into the turn, I felt my front tire slip both ways beneath me, which made me instinctively grip tighter, but I managed to control the rear tire through the turn by shifting my body weight.

Maybe you should have left this road alone, I thought, but then I rebuked myself for thinking it because this is exactly what I had bought this kind of motorbike for. You’re just running the wrong tires for the sandy shit, I decided, and, besides, it doesn’t make it easier that you’re loaded down like a pack mule.

At this thought, I pulled over for a drink of water and a photograph, and, after removing a few layers of clothing, I remounted and was back on the trail. It turned out that I had pulled over only about a kilometer from the end of the road where there was a sandy parking lot and a trail that led deeper into the canyon. I steered towards a paved area that was connected to the small bridge over the wash and dismounted the bike.

it’s a damn good thing she didn’t follow you into this or she’d sure give you hell for it, I thought as I removed my riding gloves and unthreaded my helmet strap. Turning back as I did this, I was shocked to see Jessica pull up behind me covered in dust but otherwise smiling through her helmet.

‘What are you doing here?’ I said in complete surprise.

She smiled because she was proud of herself despite her inherent modesty and then she said, ‘I really didn’t like that sand!’

            ‘You didn’t go down though?’ I said.

She shook her head and then she said, ‘But I still have to make it back.’

Over the last several days of riding the countryside had changed very dramatically. After the forested mountains of Bitterroot National Forest, the land gradually became drier and the vegetation was sparser. After Mackay, we made a quick visit to Craters of the Moon National Monument, which we were mostly able to see from the highway but was closed for deeper exploration as a result of the government shutdown. After returning the way we came for a short stretch on the 93, we took Highway 26 to Blackfoot and then the I-15 south past Pocatello. After a little less than a hundred kilometers on the interstate, we leaped at the chance to deviate onto Highway 91 in the direction of Preston and from there across the border into Utah. We spent that night in downtown Salt Lake City and stayed there the next day for a rest.

Entering Arches National Park

            After Salt Lake City we had a several days of beautiful riding and new challenges as a couple. We took the interstate south and then we transferred to Highway 6 at Spanish Fork. The 6 gradually meandered southeast through dry canyons and the temperature improved as we came out of the elevation. That night we stayed in Moab, which is a bustling tourist town because it is the starting point for day excursions into Arches and Canyonlands National Parks.

            The next morning we tackled both – Arches in the morning and Canyonlands in the afternoon. The scenery through the parks was beautiful and the temperature was warm enough that we shed layers and opened the vents in our riding suits. The strange thing is, this combination of beautiful weather and scenery indirectly lead to our first big fight of the trip.

Sometimes you feel like your flying

Throughout the day I neurotically pulled us over at one turnoff after another to take in the view and occasionally to follow a short trail for a closer look at one of the highlights. Jess enjoyed the riding but she was less enthusiastic about the frequent stopping and even less so about the short hikes – and particularly doing so in the heavy riding gear. I appreciated the effort she made to participate in the hiking because she knows I love it but, to my mind, it was overshadowed by the evident lack of enthusiasm. To her mind, she was making a major effort, doing what she didn’t much enjoy, and I was only nagging at her to hurry along and to get into it. After the two national parks, the resentment had gradually heated to a boil on both sides but we were not quite able or ready to put or fingers on exactly what was individually angering us. That night in Green River went by without much exchange of words and, going to bed unresolved, we both awoke spoiling for a fight.

Scruffy Greg at Canyonlands

            ‘I almost wrote you a text message that said “I’ll see you in Vegas” when you left me in the morning,’ Jess said later that morning after a long ride had given us each the time we needed to brood over it and make sense of what we were angry about.

            ‘I told you I was going just up the road to look for the sunglasses that I lost last night,’ I said and then after a pause, ‘but I did wonder if you would still be there when I pulled back into the motel parking lot.’

Stylish Jess at Canyonlands

            What we resolved that morning at a rest stop along Highway 24 was that it was ok to go through certain stretches like national parks at our paces and then to meet up at a designated location afterwards. In the past this had not been an option because Jess had not felt comfortable enough with the riding to strike out on her own and so we had been unavoidably tethered 24-7. Now, either due to time and practice or to her impatience at my snail’s pace through the national park doubleheader, she decided she was perfectly comfortable to go off on her own whenever I was enticed by a hiking trail.

Jess opens it up on Highway 12

            By late morning we were feeling much better with each other when we reached Capitol Reef National Park. Remembering our talk about taking things at our own pace, I signaled to Jess and then I pull ahead and stretch out my engine. After taking a few sharp turns at speed, I glanced at my rearview mirror and discovered that she was keeping equal pace with me. Damn, I thought, I haven’t much longer to be Top Dog if this keeps up. At the end of the 15-km scenic road into the national park we reached the parking lot beside where the tarmac ended and the graded dirt road continued into the gorge.

            ‘You’re riding like a devil, Bean!’ I said to Jess over the idle of our engine when she pulled alongside me in the parking lot (Bean is my nickname for her because she is tall and gracefully lanky like a beanstalk)

            ‘I’m a bit nauseas from the turns and the up and downs,’ she said.

            ‘Ok, you rest here and I’ll go do the dirt road and come back,’ I said.

            She nodded and that’s when I had started off down what had looked to be a nicely manicured dirt road.

After a brief stroll into the gorge, we return to the bikes and got ready to tackle the same dirt road back out to the tarmac. Jess started off first and I followed a few minutes behind after changing my helmet camera battery. After a few minutes of riding, I caught up to her as she seemed to be momentarily stopped alongside a white SUV. I thought it was strange that I had caught up with her so quickly, especially when I saw how quickly she bolted off after what seemed to have been only a pause alongside the other vehicle. Back at the parking lot beside the tarmac road, she explained what the pause had been about.

Jess rides off tarmac

            ‘I saw that there was a deep sandy patch on my side of the road. I wanted to go to the other side where it was less sandy but I saw the SUV was coming so I tried to stop to let them pass and I went right over in the sand,’ she said.

            ‘You mean you went down?’ I asked.

            She had a big smile on her face as she nodded.

            ‘The man saw it and came right out of the car to help. He said, “Yeah we know a lot about sand!’ He tried to pull the bike up while I pushed it but we couldn’t get it. Then his wife came out and said, “He’s got a bad back. Let me help,” and she helped pull on his side. At first we still couldn’t get it and I told them, “It’s ok. My boyfriend’s just a few minutes behind and he’ll help me when he gets here,’ but eventually the three of us got it back up.’

            ‘I’m so glad you’re alright,’ I said after she finished telling her story, ‘and I’m so glad you were the first to go down on the trip.’

            She smiled sheepishly.

            ‘There were several times that I thought I might take a spill but the only thing that kept me upright was the will not to be the first to go down,’ I said. ‘Now that you have gone down, I can stop pussyfooting through the off-road sections. Now I feel like I have license to go down without any shame. You’re ok though, right?’

            ‘Yeah, it was a soft fall in the sand but I think my pannier knocked loose,’ she said.

            ‘Damn, and the way you got right back on and bolted off like nothing ever happened,’ I said still marveling at her as I began to review her bike.

‘Actually, at first I couldn’t get the engine started and I kept trying and look for what was wrong until I finally realized that I was still in first gear from when I went down. Then, after I got it started, I immediately stall because I still had to get through the sand patch. After the sand I hurried off to so that the people in the SUV wouldn’t see if I went down again!’ she said.

‘Oh, bean, I’m definitely not going to be Top Dog here for long,’ I said.

            As we continued to discuss Jess’s fall and remark on each of the challenges of our first, difficult dirt road of the trip, I found that a screw was missing from the pannier rack and that the rack had been bent so that the pannier no long sat snuggly upon it. I replaced the screw with one from my bag of sundries and we found a stick to occupy the space in the bracket where the pannier fastens to the rack.

            ‘It was only this morning that I was really miserable and now I’m quite giddy with joy,’ I said as we laid a few strips of duct tape as an additional security for the pannier on the low side of the fall.

Greg in Capitol Reef National Park

            ‘Yes, love, it’s because you’re doing just what you love now,’ she said.

            I was and, as we replaced our riding gear and drove off to return to the main highway, I thought about how quickly your mood can swing on a trip like this.

‘It’s an emotional rollercoaster,’ I said mockingly to myself inside my helmet as I concluded the thought and pressed the button to resume my audiobook.

            We stopped for lunch at the small town of Torrey, which sits at the junction between the 24 and the 12. Here we met a middle aged man and his wife on a BMW R1200GS who had separated from their group after a difficult previous day of muddy off-road riding and we met a Quebecois who had ridden down on his Kawasaki and was destined for California. This provided us ample interaction because we are both thoroughly introverts at heart, but we enjoyed the biker babble and talking about the road before remounting to tackle Highway 12.

Jess rides into the sky on Highway 12

            Departing from Torrey, the 12 gained elevation rather quickly and the temperature dropped so that before long we were seeing patches of snow on the hillsides along the highway. For 100 incredible and at moments even breathtaking kilometers, the 12 weaved through the mountains and canyons before we reached the town of Escalante where it felt more like we were making a landing rather than pulling in for the night.

            ‘Did you see the part where the highway dropped down on both sides and there was no railing and nothing but tarmac and sky?’ Jess said as soon as her helmet was removed and the audiobook piping in over her earphones was switched off.

            ‘Absolutely incredible!’ I said. ‘I really gave myself a scare because I sped way up to get you in the pictures and then I realized how narrow and winding and unbound the road was.’

We spent that night in Escalante and the next morning we visited the hardware store to come up with a more permanent fix to Jess's bent pannier rack.
'The place where the canyon narrows to only the width of the highway and you can only see sky around you - we call that the Hogsback,' the hardware store clerk explained. 'Not long ago a woman stopped her car in the middle to take pictures. She left it in neutral and forgot to engage the parking brake and it rolled right off the edge.'

The hoodoos at Bryce Canyon

After setting a metal rod bought from the hardware store to reinforce the pannier rack, we set off for another long, grueling day that took us through Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks and then out of Utah, across the tip of Arizona, and finally to a stop in Mesquite, Nevada late in the afternoon. In Mesquite we discovered that the hotel-casinos that offered the cheap rooms were all booked because it was a Saturday night and, not wanting to spend too much, we settled on a miserable, dumpy motel, which left both of us a bit down after another phenomenal day of beautiful weather, scenery, and riding.

‘It’s an emotional rollercoaster,’ I said to myself in a tone that was less mocking this time as we unloaded the gear from our bikes.

‘Yes, love, it certainly is,’ Jess replied as she carried her bags into the motel room.

Your Memory In Segments

Day 18-21 – Kelowna, BC, Canada to Mackay, ID, USA – 4,981 km

If you have ever undertaken a trip like ours – one that spans many days and a range of country – you will have experienced how the route takes shape in your memory in segments rather than a flow. Maybe this is simply you recognizing the Universe’s ordered narrative, or maybe it is just a byproduct of your mind trying to sort disjointed pieces into an organized catalogue. Either way, I have found each segment is marked in my memory by some particular place or situation or person. There would be nothing extraordinary about this except that on reflection I often find that what marks the memory doesn’t seem particularly memorable for any reason except that it is what stands out in my memory. I don’t know why I think of this now except that, among the many miles of tarmac meandering among rivers and through colorful, autumn countryside, reflecting on this latest segment draws to mind a friendly man, two dogs, and a wagon wheel.

We arrived at Kelowna in the early evening after a long, pleasant stretch along the two-lane road that runs the west side of Okanagan Lake. The principle Highway 97, which runs a similar north-south line only a short ways to the east beside Lake Kalamalka, takes on most of the commuter traffic, while our road traced a mostly quiet, meandering course along the lakeshore. About halfway down the narrow, snaking Okanagan Lake, we crossed William R. Bennett Bridge into Kelowna. The small city is picturesquely nestled between the lakeshore and the surrounding hill country. On these hills are many of the vineyards that make Kelowna the Napa of British Columbia.

Merging onto the bridge, we connected with a rider evidently on his way home from an afternoon jaunt. He was on a BMW R1200GS, which is like the big brother to our smaller BMW enduros. Whenever I see someone on one of these bikes, my first instinct is still to ease back on the throttle in a momentary act of deference. But then, this time, I remembered that we are the ones with the foreign plates and luggage-loaded bikes and thousands of kilometers on our odometers. This made me feel every bit the equal of this rider even though he was on the bigger motorcycle, and, returning his wave, I enjoyed thinking of him as our escort into town.

It was too late for wine tasting when we arrived in Kelowna and, waking the next morning still eager to press on, it resulted that our experience of the British Columbia wine country was visual rather than viticultural. We spent that next day winding south through the mountains on the 33 until eventually we reached the junction with Highway 3 just a few kilometers from the US border. Here we went east and followed the 3 as it snakes among the Rockies in long, isolated stretched punctuated by an occasional town nestled beautifully in a valley by a river. This was how we passed Grand Forks, Castlegar, and Salmo until we finally came to halt for the night in Creston. Creston was another town nestled in a valley among the mountains beside a river and surrounded by farms and fruit orchards. It was a beautiful town and in some ways it seemed the embodiment of everything beautiful that we had seen in British Columbia. In this way, it was an ideal place for our last overnight before crossing back into the United States and beginning the long sweep southward.

The next morning at the border, Jess was first to advance to the booth to speak with the immigration official. I watched as she put her bike into neutral, pressed the engine kill switch, and removed her riding gloves. She handed her documents to the official inside the booth and waited. Then after a pause I watched her head and her hands move in animated fashion as, I assumed, she began to explain our travel situation. This went on for several minutes and I began to grow nervous because we had read a lot about U.S. immigration officials who did not like foreigners entering without an onward or return ticket. Eventually the official returned her documents, waved her through, and I pulled forward.

‘Ok, let’s see if your story matches hers,’ the border official said with a terse smile that was polite but certainly not friendly.

        After crossing the border we were in Idaho riding southeast and skipping from Route 1 to Highway 95 and then to Highway 2 until we had slipped across the northeast corner of Idaho and into Montana. Some half hour from the state line we stopped in Libby, Montana for a warm drink and a mid morning snack. I chose the place and it was quickly evident that I chose poorly because it was very cold and I had brought us to a halt at a drive-through café. But we were stopped and cold and plenty ready for a break, so after some grumbling we sat down at a picnic bench and rested outside in the cold, drinking hot chocolate and eating apple muffin tops.

       ‘Not now,’ Jess said disapprovingly when she saw me holding the camera. ‘It’s cold and you stopped us at a drive-through when we’re on motorcycles! This is why people think I’m always unhappy in the videos – you always film at the wrong times!’

       After Libby, we continued weaving southeast on Highway 2, slowing only for a stretch where the road seemed to give way beneath us. It was an area of roadwork where the tarmac was being repaved and the gravel was piled deep so that it was rather like riding through sand. This was our first slog through gravel on the trip and it was good to feel that my bike was mostly surefooted even though we were running road tires that are entirely unsuited for anything but tarmac. Jess skimmed ably through the gravel, occasionally extending her legs to either side when she felt unsteady, but mostly sitting upright and focusing her eyes far ahead to follow a good line.

       At Kalispell we merged onto Highway 93 south and then we crossed the Flathead River and continued south on the 35 along the east shore of Flathead Lake. Below the lake we reconnected with Highway 93 and continued until we reached Missoula at the junction of the 93 and the I-90. The next day, after a brief tour through Missoula’s historic downtown, we continued on the 93 as it follows the upstream course of the Bitterroot River. Most of the morning it was a lackluster slog because the highway follows a straight course through a valley between two sections of the Bitterroot National Forest. But shortly before the junction with the 43, the highway enters the mountain country of the national forest and winds along the Lewis and Clark Trail.

In the middle of this lovely, meandering stretch of highway just across the state line into Idaho, we took a break, which, in retrospect, might have been the paragon for all the rest stops we had taken during the trek through cold weather country. We pulled over at a gravelly turnoff overlooking the river and I dismounted. After I removed my gloves, helmet, and earphones, I turned to see that Jessica had dismounted but hadn’t removed any of her riding gear.

‘It’s too much hassle to take the helmet on and off and then replace the earphones and tuck the balaclava and the sunglasses and all that,’ she explained when I asked why she hadn’t made herself more comfortable.

‘Ok, but you know this is a rest stop and we’re gonna stay a while, right?’

‘Sure, love, I’m fine and we’ll rest a while,’ she said. ‘But really it’s too cold even to take off my gloves.’

I stood gazing down at the river, snacking on a granola bar, as I searched for the distinctive form of a trout.

‘I think this is the river from the Robert Redford movie, except it took place downstream near Missoula,’ I said without breaking my scan of the river.

After a few minutes I heard a rustling and then a crunching coming from behind me. I turned around to see Jessica working a granola bar out of its wrapper with her hands still in her riding gloves. Then I watched somewhat in awe as she raised the pieces of granola to where the raised visor allowed access to her face inside the helmet. She brought the granola close to her face at around her nose and then dropped it in small pieces between her face and the helmet and caught it – mostly – in her mouth.

‘I don’t know what’s funnier,’ I said after watching her carry out several rounds of this bizarre feeding process, ‘that you can’t be bothered to remove your helmet to eat or that you’ve concocted such a precise, intricate way to shovel food into your face without taking the helmet off.’

‘It’s cold and I’m hungry,’ she said dismissing my laughter with a sharp hand gesture, ‘and my way is working just fine!’

‘You know you have crumbs all over the cheek pads of your helmet, right?’ I said.

As she was finishing her granola bar, I set off walking into the bushes.

‘Where are you going?’ she called out after me.

‘To pee,’ I said.

‘No,’ she said.

‘What no?’ I said.

‘No, don’t pee,’ she said.

‘Why not? It doesn’t matter if someone sees me,’ I said.

‘No, you’re not allowed,’ she said.

‘Why not?’ I said.

‘Because I have to pee too,’ she said.

‘I’ll get the toilet paper out of my pannier,’ I said, starting back toward my bike.

‘No, it’s too cold to do it here,’ she said.

‘Ok, well then I’m going to go,’ I said.

‘No, just wait and we’ll both go when we get to the next town,’ she said.

‘Wait, so because you won’t go pee, I can’t go either?’ I said.

‘Yes, that’s it,’ she said.

‘So, we have to be miserable and uncomfortable not peeing together?’ I said.

‘It’s the only fair way,’ she said.

       After relieving my bladder, we were back on the highway and continuing through the mountains and then back into a valley and then into another meandering stretch through the mountains. In the afternoon we began ascending until suddenly we were surrounded by snow and the temperature reading on my display indicated that the temperature was near freezing. Here we reached Willow Creek Summit where the highway exceeds 2,100 meters in elevation and passes near Borah Peak, which is Idaho’s highest mountain. After the summit we descended out of the extreme cold but by the time we reached the small town of Mackay about 50 kilometers south we were chilled to the bone, hungry, and completely exhausted.

       Mackay ran the length of just a few blocks along the highway and, when we reached the end of the town and looked out on another long stretch of tarmac through the fading daylight, we doubled back and pulled into the Wagon Wheel Motel. Two enthusiastic dog greeted us at the motel office and, excited by this, Jess knelt down to be smothered in slobbery kisses. The man who owned the motel with his wife chatted amiably as we completed the registration and payment. He was very friendly without being overbearing and I would have liked to continue talking with him because he struck me as someone you wanted to ask about themselves and how they came to be where they were. But be were just too cold, hungry, and exhausted to hang about for a chat. So we took the room key, quickly unloaded our luggage from the bikes, and then scurried over to the only restaurant in town that stayed open on a Sunday evening.

Us Two Strangers Of The Tribe

Day 15-18 – Seattle, WA, USA to Kelowna, BC, Canada – 3,720 km

More than the motorcycle or anything else, I first noticed his tall, tanned boots like what you imagined a lumberjack wore. Then I noticed his Alaska plate as he pulled his Harley alongside the pump adjacent to ours and dismounted with more agility than you expected from someone so tall and hulking. He was probably a head taller than six feet and when he approached it hurt my neck to look upward at so steep an angle. He looked worn and grizzly and he wore leathers and thick canvas pants tucked into his lumberjack boots. He withdrew his skullcap helmet and sunglasses and rested them securely and just precisely on his bike the way all practiced motorcyclists do. He had the look of someone who lives on his motorcycle and felt comfortable on his bike like how you imagined the cowboys used be on their horse.

         ‘Cold day for a ride,’ he said. ‘Where are you coming from?’

         We replied and this began a conversation that went on as we each filled our bikes with petrol and fidgeted with the luggage rigging. We told him where we had been and where we were going and he asked how it had gone so far and we said it had gone very well but for the weather.

         ‘It feels like an early winter this year,’ he said. ‘Most years I can wander all about but right now a lot of the passes are snowed out.’

         ‘We hit snow back at Mt Hood and we’re not eager for more, so we probably won’t make it much further north,’ I said.

         ‘It’s a good plan,’ he said as he added an octane booster into his fuel tank. ‘I find these big V-twins ride better with a bit of this.’

Then he asked about our bikes because he saw that they were BMW and that they looked like were enduro but that he thought  BMW only made bikes with horizontal cylinder heads.

‘The big ones are like that but ours are smaller,’ I said. ‘Hers is 650 and mine is 800.’

‘That’s good for what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you get great fuel economy.’

I said that it was pretty good before you added the cases and duffle bag and then, as he replaced his gloves and skullcap, he named a few routes that he said were good riding and would take us south and east towards where we wanted to go. After we discussed the routes, he ignited his engine and said a farewell before he rode off.

         ‘Nice guy,’ I said, ‘though you wouldn’t think it to look at him.’

         ‘It’s like we have a tribe,’ Jess said.

It was something she had mentioned on a few occasions over the past few weeks after meeting other bikers. She had read about this camaraderie on the discussion forums and blogs while learning to ride in Liberia and I had tried to explain it, but she hadn’t experienced it until she came home and especially now that we were on our bikes so much of the time. In Liberia, motorcycling is mostly an inexpensive mode of transportation and most of those who ride are cabbies, not bikers. Now riding back home, she had seen how many riders salute you with a wave of the left hand as they pass you during a ride and how often another biker will strike up a conversation when they learn that you ride. Also, recently I had observed her return the salute.

‘Did you see them wave to me?’ she had said a few days back during a break for lunch. ‘I wanted to wave back but I couldn’t because my hand was on the clutch!’

I thought this was a very good sign because I remembered how long it took me to feel confident enough to remove my hand from the handlebar during a ride and especially at speed or through twisties as we had been doing during that particular morning’s ride.

Now we were at a filling station in Cache Creek along highway 97 in British Columbia, Canada. After leaving Seattle a few days before we had taken the secondary highways through northern Washington state to the Canadian border crossing at Abbotsford. There we bought a Canadian SIM card for Jessica’s iPhone because she had left hers back in Los Angeles.

‘I’m just not as neurotically organized as you,’ she shot back to my ribbing over the expense and particularly over the inconvenience because it was a cold, gray, drizzly day.

‘Fine, I’ll give you that,’ I said. ‘But maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad in this case.’

We were in McDonalds to use the free Wi-Fi so we could activate the SIM without paying the service provider 35 dollars to activate it for us. With our mobile data service activated, we quickly found a cheap motel and covered the 60 km to Vancouver to arrive just before dark that evening. We dropped our luggage at the motel but we hadn’t time to change into street clothes before riding downtown to meet Kristen at the Korean restaurant.

Kristen is a few years older than Jess and was a friend from down the street when they were growing up.

‘Jess was a terror when she was younger,’ Kristen said immediately before the conversation had really begun.

‘Nothing has changed,’ I assured her.

Jess shot us both a disapproving look and then she conceded, ‘Yeah, I was quite a shit disturber.’

Kristen told us about her plans to visit Iguazu Falls and a bunch of other places in Argentina and there was a flicker of hope that we might meet up but we determined that we would still be in Central America when she was there in November. She also satisfied my confusion for why Jess and her sister Lillian pronounce her name with a hard ‘e’ at the end as though it were spelled Christine.

‘Everyone from home calls me that because of how they pronounced it with their Filipino accent,’ she said, ‘but it was always a problem in school like when a substitute would come so as soon as I moved away, I told people to pronounce it the way it’s spelled.’

The next day was a rest day so that I could perform an oil change on my bike. I had intended to do it in Seattle with Jess’s but I discovered that it required a specialized tool to remove the oil filter without which things could get messy.

‘It says here that you can jam a screwdriver into the filter and use it to twist it but that’s the redneck way,’ Jess said after researching it on the discussion forums.

I felt stupid for not checking on this when preparing for this trip but I soon let it go because by now I had accepted that my pre-trip mechanical preparations were far less than exhaustive. The BMW dealership in Seattle did not have the tool I needed but the one in Vancouver did, so I decided to do Jess’s bike then and there and haul the extra motor oil in my luggage and do my bike once I had the tool. Now in Vancouver I bought the tool and set up to do the oil change in the motel parking lot but, before I got too far along, I discovered that the oil pan drain plug requires a 10 mm Allen wrench and my set only went as large as 8 mm. In total there were three visits to the Canadian Tire automotive store before I was equipped with everything I needed. This time the oil change went more smoothly than Jess’s had a few days before but it was still my first time on my bike and I belabored each step before and while it was made.

When I finished, Jess helped me to pour the used oil from the pan into the new oil containers. It was late afternoon now and most of the day had been spent shopping for tools and performing this routine procedure.

‘I thought it would go quicker,’ I said, apologizing because we hadn’t done any site seeing during this day off in Vancouver.

‘It’s fine, love,’ Jess said. ‘I expected it would take all day.’

I frowned at this and she clarified, ‘It’s your first time. You’ll do it faster next time.’

I washed up and, still smelling distinctively of used motor oil, we went two up on my bike to catch the sunset from Prospect Point where there is a beautiful view of Lions Gate Bridge over the harbor and of English Bay between the northern and southern portion of the city.

The next day we left and I felt bad for not having seen more of the city but Jess reminded me that we had actually seen quite a lot while running the errands for the oil change and also that the only thing we had to do was enjoy what we were doing. Leaving the city we followed Highway 99 north along the rocky, jagged coastline until the coast ended at Squamish and the Sea-to-Sky Highway continued inland rolling north through the mountains to Daisy Lake where it turned subtly eastward to Whistler. It was very cold but the sky was mostly clear and, as we ascended into the highlands, the air smelled alpine fresh so that you felt it was a great cleansing act to breathe in deeply.

At Whistler we took a hot lunch and we watched and commented on the young people with long, tangled hair and designer clothes made to look careless and torn.

‘But tell me this,’ I said when Jess pointed out a group that fit just this description, ‘how is that one wearing just a t-shirt when I’m sitting inside and shivering under three layers?’

From Whistler we continued north on the 99 but soon we discovered that the smooth, rolling tarmac that brought us here from Vancouver was now rougher and potholed.

‘They must not have repaved it here like I imagine they did below for the 2010 Olympics,’ I said when Jessica mentioned the difference during a rest break along the highway.

‘I was riding really fast through the twisties coming up to Whistler,’ Jess said, obviously very proud of herself. ‘Did you notice?’

‘Absolutely, I did,’ I said. ‘Partly it’s the good tarmac but also I think you’ve improved and now you’re noticing it.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said, uncompromisingly dismissive of her growing ability as a rider in case allowing even a gleam of confidence should invite tragedy. ‘It’s that the road is very good here.’

We continued through the mountain country, progressing more slowly now because the rough surface was also dotted with sections where gravel was strewn across the tarmac just at the pinnacle of a turn. In the afternoon we reached the town of Lillooet where we found an inexpensive hotel in the middle of the several blocks of downtown and where the youth at the counter invited us to pull the girls – our motorcycles – into the storage room in the back.

‘It has a population of 2,321 and is one of the southernmost cities in North America where indigenous people form the majority,’ Jess read from Wikipedia during dinner that night as had become our custom to inject some elementary facts into our otherwise purely sensory form of tourism.

The next morning we continued northeast on the twisting, uneven Highway 99 until we reached Cache Creek, which is where we had pulled over at the town’s lone filling station and met the tall, hulking, grizzly Harley rider who was clearly a ‘high roller’ – for the mileage he had obviously covered on his bike – and where he had inadvertently brightened our day by reconfirming our status as members of the tribe.

From Cache Creek we took Highway 97 to Kamloops. This was one of the lesser scenic routes that the burly Harley rider had recommended but we eager to reach what we decided would be our northernmost highlight and begin the sweep south towards warmer weather. In Kamloops we got turned around looking for the downtown and, deciding that we were not particularly loving what we saw, we decided to buy food for lunch at the Safeway and then make a go for Kelowna, which is the heart of the British Columbia wine country.

After lunch in the parking lot outside the Safeway a motorcyclist pulled up and on a new-looking V-Strom, which is an adventure touring motorcycle made by Suzuki. He wore a very high end touring jacket in high viz neon accenting. It was, incidentally, the jacket that I had originally planned to get when reviewing riding gear for hours on the Internet in Liberia.

‘Where are you coming from then?’ he said after he had dismounted, removed his helmet, and scrutinized our bikes and the rigging through a squint.

I told him that we had started in Los Angeles and this made him quite excited.

‘I just got back from a ride down to LA,’ he said. ‘It was a fantastic trip. The riding was excellent,’ he said and then he recited each leg of the route, which was more than I had asked for, and anyway sounded a bit too practiced.

‘Sounds like you hit a lot of good roads,’ I said when he took a pause.

‘Yeah, we did twisty roads the whole way there and back,’ he said with much satisfaction. ‘We probably didn’t do more than 100 miles on the interstate.’

He looked our bikes over again and then he said, ‘So where are you headed then?’

‘We’re going as far north as we can manage, which is probably not much further than here,’ Jess said, ‘and then we are going south all the way to Argentina.’

She said it through her helmet because she already had it on when he had pulled up and she hated taking her helmet on and off in the cold weather because of all the tucking and adjusting it required of collars, headphones, pony tail, and balaclava. Even through her helmet, she said it very well, I thought. I had noticed before how well she always said it because I paid very close attention each time. She said it in a way that that made you feel that she was more surprised and amazed by what we were doing than you could be so that you couldn’t possibly find any conceit in it.

I thought I always said it very badly because I tried to say so that I wouldn’t sound full of myself but somehow I thought this produced a nonchalance that seemed to come out full of self-conceit. So, when I had first noticed how well she said it, I had waited until we were alone again and I told her that she would always be the one to say it from then on when people asked about the trip.

She had balked that she shouldn’t always be the one to say it but, when I explained it in context, she eventually agreed.

‘It’s important that we say it well when we meet people because it might influence what follows – like if they will be friendly to us or offer us help or accommodations or whatever,’ I explained with much seriousness. ‘I do the mechanics and pitching the tent and all that. You do this best so it’s a contribution you should make to our trip.’

‘Ok,’ she said, laughing at me. ‘You do say it very awkwardly so I will do it and make this contribution to our trip.’

‘Hey! Actually I did a trip down to Argentina last year!’ he said after Jess had recited our destination.

We were surprise at the coincidence and, as he began to recite the details of his trip, we expressed the requisite interest to be polite.

‘We brought the bikes down to Baja where we met up,’ he said. ‘There were three of us to start but we met a fourth who wanted to do it but only he had three months. I wanted to take a little more time for getting to know places but I don’t mind a motivated ride if that’s what the situation calls for. So we did it in three months and we really did a good hauled through it.’

Then he described the route they had taken and the several can’t miss highlights they had visited along the way: Machu Picchu, Iguazu Falls, and the like. When he finished describing the trip he looked very satisfied with himself and I noticed there was a sort of glimmer in his eye for the pleasure he must of felt to relive it here, momentarily, with us two strangers of the tribe in the parking lot of the Safeway.

 ‘He sounded very full of himself, didn’t he?’ Jess said after he had wished us well and disappeared into the supermarket.

I thought he did too, though I didn’t think he had intended to present himself as he had, and I said so.

‘Well I liked the Harley guy from this morning much more,’ Jess said.

I said I did too and, as we rode off to reach Kelowna before sunset, I thought about the difference in the two riders we had met that day. Each acknowledged us as part of ‘the tribe’ but in very different ways and with very different results of what we thought of them. How do you talk about what you love and what you’ve accomplished without sounding full of conceit for it? I thought to myself because this was a question that had been nagging me long before today but had never been answered. How do you establish your credentials so that others who do and love what you love know who you are and that you belong but without them taking it the as conceit the way Jess had I had?

Surely there is an answer to this in the comparison of these two who we met today, I decided, and, as we merged back onto the highway and accelerated away from Kamloops, I was trying to recall the differences between the riders. I was certainly on the verge of an answer, I thought, but soon we were deep into the twisties and mountain scenery of Highway 97 and I lost my focus to the drum of the engine and the pitch and lean of the bike so that the answer slipped away and, at least for now, I left the unanswered question far, far behind.

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.