Recently, Road Dirt’s owner, senior editor, chief cook and bottle washer Rob Brooks flew 3,000 miles from his Georgia home to Wenatchee, Washington to join me and eight others on our annual seven day, 1,500+ mile tour of the upper left. I promised him blue Pacific Northwest skies, great food and a memorable experience. One out of three isn’t bad.
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Disclaimer: I am not my father.
It was inevitable that one day I would end up on a motorcycle like my brother, our father, and his father before him. We’ve always been more comfortable on wheels than in houses. Structures are fixed, and they eliminate the possibility that something exhilarating lies just beyond the next hill crest. Fate works in funny ways; from it you may run, but you can never hide.
Close your eyes and visualize Oregon. What does your mind see? Picturesque lighthouses standing watch on jagged coastlines? Liberal urbanites of Portland? Westward expansion along the Oregon Trail? Tall timber forests full of battling loggers and protesters?No matter what your mind’s eye sees, you are both right and wrong. True, Oregon is all of those things but there is, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story.
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The world has morphed into a strange place. A few weeks ago, I could take an after-work ride on my Honda SuperHawk, park at my local cafe, tip the barista, drink coffee on the sidewalk, do some caffeine fueled writing, shake hands with the regulars and even hug a few close friends. Now I can do none of those things.
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Awake with the morning sunrise blush
The road my canvas, my bike the brush
My opus begins as I depart
I am the painter, riding my art.
Proper spring trip planning begins with a dream, visions of lands unexplored, of mountains never seen, roads never ridden, fantasies about different places, different climates, different people.
Where does your motorcycle mind go when it dreams? What unexplored lands haunt your imagination? When your mind wanders, what uncharted lands does it see? When you know the answer to these questions, start planning. There is a science and an art to trip planning that makes the process as pleasurable as the trip. Here is how.
Klim has come a long way from its origins when founder Justin Summers was making uniforms for ski resort workers. In the 1990s, snowmaking crews at Brighton Ski Resort were going through six uniforms a year as the brutal and metallic nature of their work tore their uniforms to pieces. Justin stepped in and interwove Kevlar fabric with stainless steel, creating uniforms that lasted up to three years instead of just over a month.
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With a flood of helmets on the market ranging from under $50 to over $1,000, it is tempting to save money by buying a cheap lid. Beginning and veteran riders often ask: What’s the difference? Why do some helmets cost under a hundred bucks and others almost a thousand? Don’t they all have a DOT sticker? Won’t they all protect your head the same?
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Today’s world is overwhelming: too many people, too much news, too much access to information, too much of everything. In a world that thinks life is improved by giving us instant access to everyone and everything, I object. I want less. Less of everything. Less information, less people, less of the news telling me to panic about what just happened. But how? How to take arms against this sea of troubles and by opposing, end it?
Run away from it all. Run from the clatter, the clamor, the commotion and cacophony of a world gone mad and shove the pressures of society back into its proper place. Leave the noise behind.
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