Motion Withdrawals

Greetings,

It has been three weeks since we have been back from our circumnavigation of these United States with an Easterly leg through Southern Canada.
For many days I felt like I was still moving down the road like a sailer from the sea trying to get his land legs under him.
It took forever to empty the Airstream of stuff and the truck still has vestiges of plastic bins in its bed. They both sit there covered with a light drift of NW snow looking forlorn and in need of purpose.
In spite of the re-shuffleing and re-stuffing of stuff back into the house and garage things are getting back to normal such as it is.
Where will we go next?  Well stay tuned for a 45' catamaran trip to St. Maartens in the Caribbean this coming February.
In the mean time, often during my road blogs I  spoke of motorcycles and trips around the Western regions.  It sometimes seems unreal to me that I could have been riding for more than 40 years, most of it alone on the asphalt and concrete ribbons, with all that unforgiving hardness 6" away from the bottom of my boots and still be in one piece.

So let us start back in 1977.  I had already been riding for a couple of years then and had moved up very quickly from a Suzuki 250 to a Yamaha 750 triple.  In those days 750 was about as large as they were making.  Perhaps an imprudent choice for my limited experience but I knew even then that I wanted something that would go far with long and comfortable legs.  Triumph had its 750 Bonneville, Harley its 900 but with a worthless peanut shaped gas tank, Honda just came out with its huge Gold Wing and I believe Moto Guzzi also had a large displacement twin. and the Kawasakis had their 900.  But that was about it.
And certainly motorcycle touring was not very discovered or popular amongst the boomers during this period.  So with my Yamaha three cylinder with a full fairing and soft bags and a dozen bungee (also a fairly recent invention at the time) cords for strapping everything on I was off whenever possible.

These are excerpts from my motorcycle journals born in Washington State.  hope you enjoy.

June 21, 1977

North Eastern Oregon 1:30PM.  Blue skies, hot sun and a breeze that makes it bearable.  Kim, Hugh and I left Seattle at 5:30 AM for Idaho and Montana on two motorcycles.  It rained at Snoqualmie Pass soaking our legs.  Half an hour beyond the Pass blue skies and sun dried us off.  We are having lunch at Dead Man's Pass.  Miles of open rolling countryside, crickets, birds and dry whispering grass.
Engines running well.
6:10 pacific daylight arrived at Weiser Idaho, 12 hours total.  Stocking up on beer and fruit and heading for the reservoir outside of town, up in the hills.  Water is down 30-40 feet.  Pitched camp.  Thoughts of my wife Lana and daughter 3 1/2 year young Lisa and brother Mike and everyone else.

June 22, 1977  "The Reservoir"

8:00AM and already the sun is hot.  Time to roll out of the bag and take a cold shower.  It's a little cooler outside the tent with the breeze.  Crashed last night without going into town for the fiddle music.  Too tired from 12 hours on the bike.  Tightened bolts and checked oils.  Still not much going on in town.  Called Lana and Lisa.  It's so hot.  Bought a cooler and tied it back on the bike and headed back to the reservoir.
The clouds are so stark white against the deepest of blues. Spaced evenly across the upper hemispheres tight dense elongated and stacked balls of solid gas.  It's like a Rene Magritte painting come to life.  We spend the afternoon following the moving shade cast by our tents to avoid the direct sun and drink our beers and eat our fruits just silently looking at the skies and the drying reservoir below.

June 23,1977

At 7:30 AM the sun forces us out of the tents like ants jumping off a hot plate.  We have decided to leave Weiser and head north to Missoula,  Montana.  It seems to take much longer getting ready to go on the bikes.  Much packing and lashing.  God its hot, in the 90s at 7:30 in the morning! Must bee the heat trapped in the hills.
2:25 PM Just made a very hot 61 mile leg most of it at 70 MPH with a 5 mile stretch at 90MPH.  An amazing sensation of speed coupled with the heat.  The blasts of hot air from trapped and isolated pockets of sink is consuming.  There is no chance of cooling sweat as it evaporates just before it comes.  We consume vast amounts of liquid and take a heat break at Riggins, Idaho.
5:30 PM We struck camp at Clearwater Park 767 miles from Seattle.
The last afternoon leg was incredibly beautiful.  Wide sweeping, curving descending valleys with the wide shallow Salmon River following the road.  Isolated pockets of white sandy beach and sparkling rippled river surfaces pull the eyes to these flashing vignettes you somehow feel will stay with you for a long time.
We camped along and I bathed in the Lochsa River.

June 24,1977
8:15 AM left camp with Kim as a passenger.  Covered 72 miles from camp to Lolo Pass elevation 5200 feet and into Montana.  Beautiful road up through the firs and pines but cold in the mountain air beside the wide running river. My Yamaha though over loaded is running well.
10:35 AM 114 miles from camp we arrive at Missoula, Montana.  Three and a half hours later we arrive at Butte.  The temperature is climbing.
6:00PM Set up camp at the base of the Lewis and Clark Caverns.  Took the tour.  Very interesting.  Scenery finally picked up after Butte.  More of what I expected, big shouldered rolling hills, wide valleys and plateaus.  Crisply, whispering quaking aspens.  I took a solo ride to the Mountain View service station and store for supplies.  Soft golden light washing upthrust layers of reddish Montana rock.  The Mountain View Inn had no activity.  Two dogs lay by the gas pumps in the shade of the cover wait until I stop my engine before getting up and slowly loping over.  Old ceiling fans are turning everywhere in the Inn.  A young boy gets up from TV.  Not much to buy but the kid was friendly.  His parents are eating dinner in the other room his Dad still wearing his baseball cap at the table struck me as odd.
Next door I pick up beers and chat with the tender.  60 cents for a cold draft of Coors.
Its an incredibly beautiful ride back to camp in the sunset.
I'm the only one on the road.  Its as if this sunset were mine alone.

June 25, 1997  Saturday

5:30 AM,  Gorgeous "Big Sky" morning with birds calling across the fields.  After my cold wash cloth Hugh is the net to awake.  We race our stoves to boil the first quart of water.
As I enter my ledger Kim, Hugh, Scott and Norma talk about their earliest memories.  Scott, Kim and Hugh are brothers and Scott with his wife Norma came by car to join us at this camp.

8:00AM.
 It's time for the group to split up.  I have felt a suppressed current of excitement and apprehension at taking off by myself.  Yet I know it is something I must do.  Kim has been very quiet the past couple of days while Hugh has been his usual irrepressible and vocal self.  I think Kim does not want this trip to end as he and Hugh will turn back to Seattle and work.  I am finally packed and strapped and ready.  Kim gives me a hug and we say all the things we are not sure we are saying.  A few more words of advice from Hugh and we all swing out on the road,  As I turn south on 287E and they north we wave and I watch them disappear.  All of a sudden I am alone and I feel like I felt when I took my first airplane solo.  As I reach the crest of the campsite's plateau the road shoots away from me into the distance and dips and climbs  in a straight line rolling over the landscape to vanish in a point of light beyond the distant horizon.  Velvet green new alfalfa sprinkled with yellow daisies carpets away to the far knolls  on each side of this empty road.  Again I am the only one in this heavenly amphitheater  so I stop on the center line of the two lane and turn my engine off with no fear of anything intruding.   As all noise drifts away I gaze down the long quiet expanse.  This is the Montana I have dreamt about since childhood.  Much rushes through my mind.  I wish so many others could know this and were here to share this visage.  In my mind I speak with and thank Kim and Hugh as their parting waves still remain in my eye.  I thank my family and all those I have known for bringing me to and giving me this moment.
 The morning is cool, the sun bright, the sky clear and blue and I enter the Montana experience and it is grand.