The Motorcycle Ties That Bind

If we only knew.  If the portal existed to look forward in time, allowing us to foretell what events in life that we consider tragic would turn out to be beneficial in life’s long yard then maybe, just maybe, we could be more resilient in the present.  If we had hope that what we suffer though now would make sense later, that today’s pain could bring future fruit, then how much more bearable present suffering would be.

But we don’t know.  No one does.  Sometimes present miseries resist making sense until years, even decades later.  However, some of life’s bad threads can be woven into our tapestry to make a wonderful blanket.  Some clouds do have a silver lining.  Others are just dark, pissy clouds, misery’s rain drowning us with no apologies.  We just never know.  Neither did he.

His brain was a dichotomy, two opposing stereotypes that by all measures should never have been contained in one.  Two halves of a man have never been more opposite.  One of his worlds revolved around money, banking, mortgages and the cold, calculated practice of lending.  No emotion, no feeling, no room for that in an industry ruled by bottom line, just a pressed suit, a neatly done tie, a clean desk and acres of stoic spreadsheets filled with numbers painted red and black.  Passion and daring could be checked at the door.  You either got your money, or you didn’t.  Have a nice day.

My father Don Edwards (left), his brother Ken (middle) and youngest brother Gary (right) pose in front of the family Suburban.

Yet there was his other world, the one I knew, a life of passion for two wheeled machines, talent for speed and love of adventure.  He raced motorcycles in his youth, toured when he got older and was one of the fastest sport bike riders we all tried in vain to catch.  How he could be the cold professional in one realm and the treacherous risk taker in the other I never understood.  It made no sense.  Still doesn’t.  Such was the paradox of my uncle Gary Edwards.

If I showed you a picture of my uncle Gary’s motorcycle you would conjure up the image of the stereotypical risk-taking sport bike rider.  You know them: road rashed leathers, surgical scars, pointy collarbones punctuated from fractures, two bum knees and an endless list of speeding tickets from multiple states stapled to stories of hooliganism.  You would not picture Gary Edwards, a tall, athletic basketball player with a high IQ and a closet of neat suits.  But oh how he loved his machines.  Most of all, his 2001 Honda VFR.

Future hooligans, all three brothers rode motorcycles. My father and I still do.

Men with mechanical minds are defined by their machines, linked to their iron, born together.  Their metal partner, whether car, motorcycle or airplane, becomes an evolutionary extension of their innermost being, channeling their thoughts into mechanical reflexes that break down physical barriers until no one can discern where flesh ends and metal begins.  Coexistence deepens until eventually we cannot think of one without the other: Carrol Shelby and his Shelby Cobra, Nicky Hayden and Honda’s RC51, Chuck Yeager and his P51D Mustang, my uncle Gary and his Honda VFR.

I first saw them together in fall of 2001.  Gary rode up to a family get-together, all smiles on his brand new Honda, a steed rightfully dripped in blood red paint as all good sporting bikes should be.  Adorned with a single sided swingarm and singing gear-driven cam whine, backed by a low V-four burble, it was the perfect extension of Gary’s personality, equal parts meticulously engineered perfection and barely chained orchestra of chaos.

Separation between man and machine was properly blurred.

Gary was tall and slender and the red Honda fit him perfectly.  His long arms made an easy reach to the clip-ons, knees fell into the cutouts of the tank and long legs folded nicely to the pegs.  The two even sounded the same.  Gary’s frequent off cadence laugh was always punctuated by a burbling chuckle, much like the off cadence exhaust note of the V-four.  Separation between man and machine were properly blurred.

Gary played that VFR like Eric Clapton playing his black Fender Stratocaster.  With a deft touch on the controls he would trail the brakes, lean with authority, pick it up quickly, pin the throttle then rev it to the moon and let that bike sing, sing, sing.  My God, what a beautiful sight.  What ripping music.  Some men are just born to ride a motorcycle.

My grandmother Dorothy was the rock of the family and somehow managed to keep (L to R) my father Don, Ken and Gary in line. Mostly.

Miles accumulated quickly for the pair.  Over the next decade the VFR was Gary’s instrument of exploration for touring everywhere across the west, including an unplanned Iron Butt as he and my cousin Dave Wensveen got storm chased from the Grand Canyon all the way back to Washington State in a day.  He and the VFR were linked for life, that red Honda the extension of my uncle Gary’s hands, feet and brain.  We didn’t know it at the time, but that brilliant brain, that wonderful organ that housed his contradiction of worlds, would become his undoing.

What a short life it is, our party here a brief flash, a small blip in drawn out time.  God never guarantees us any tomorrows, yet how easy it is for us to take our days for granted and assume that we have endless tomorrows to pile up like our yesterdays.  Reminders of the brevity of life are all around us but how resistant we are to take heed, so we become complacent and deny that the hard hand of fate will soon deal us its wicked punch.  We always think it’s going to happen to someone else.  Sometimes the suffering makes sense in the end.  Sometimes not.  We just never know.

To write this story, my father Don (right) and I spent much time pouring over old photos.  I had seen this photo before, but this time my dad said something I had never known.  “This photo was taken just two weeks after our dad died,” he said, referring to my grandfather Donald Edwards Sr. who died on his 25th wedding anniversary in an accident at Boeing. “This picture was the first time since his death that any of us smiled.”  Gary is at center, pulling down his hat.

Gary woke up that particular morning years ago like he always did.  He rose from bed, got ready for work with his pressed suit and neat tie, went to his bank where one part of his brain thrived.  He probably joked with his coworkers, maybe even laughed with his typical V-four burbling chuckle while he sat down at his desk of pens, calculators and spreadsheets filled with numbers in red and black.  Then in the afternoon, without warning, Gary slumped over his desk.  His coworkers found him face down on his computer, unresponsive, and called an ambulance.  The ticking time bomb buried inside Gary’s brain had gone off.

Doctors call it glioblastoma.  Normal people call it a brain tumor.  We called it the long goodbye.  Over the next year as the tumor preyed on my uncle, he declined from a vibrant, laughing, bad ass sport bike rider to a shell resembling his former self.  My father Don was by his brother’s side the whole time and I tried to visit Gary in his care facility at least once a week.  Sometimes more. Sometimes less.  At first he and I could make it through watching a whole movie, then maybe a half hour TV show.  Eventually it became hard for him to leave his room.  Then, on September 20, 2014, he left us.

Uncle Gary pointing out the canyon he and his VFR had just ridden through on a journey to Mt. Rainier.

It devastated the family.  It crushed my dad.  My Uncle Gary’s death made no sense.  I still miss him.  We all do.  Thinking about it all these years later one would think the anguish would get easier, but it doesn’t.  It still hurts.  I am in tears again as I write this.  Cancer is an evil that takes more than its victim to the grave. It also buries the hopes and dreams of those that love them.  Cancer didn’t just kill Gary, it killed all of us.  But one part of Gary’s contradictory world still remained, one critical piece of his enigmatic soul was left behind like a gift from beyond.

His VFR.  That blood red machine was still in his garage, sitting there still, like waiting to move, begging to resume its mission, to get back on the road and take up the journey that my uncle started with it in 2001.  Gary was gone, but his blood red steed was far from done.

Uncle Gary (R) and his trusty VFR, with my dad (behind) on one of their early 2000s tours.

Someone needed to take possession of that beloved motorcycle, pick up the torch and ride the ever loving hell out of that Honda just like it’s former owner, a triple digit tribute to the speedy bastard that left us all.  Mothballing the bike would be one tragedy piled on another.  Something had to be done.  Yet what came next no one could have predicted.  It changed the life of it’s new owner, it changed my life, the life of Road Dirt editor-in-chief Rob Brooks and the lives of everyone who reads this publication.

Dave Wensveen, my cousin, took possession of that VFR. 

Dave had been Uncle Gary’s riding partner for so many years that it seemed poetic that he take the bike, destined even.  Finally, something in this ugly tragedy was beginning to make sense.  No motorcycle is meant to sit still and Dave did not wish for the bike to be a dusty, cobweb woven monument to its former owner.  The best and only way to honor Gary’s memory was to ride it, and not just ride it, but to ride the wheels off the thing, pin the throttle to the redline and flog it until the pistons became a liquid metal blur aimed for the far horizon.  This is exactly the point in time when my phone rang.  Dave was calling me because, in another ironic twist, I had the same model motorbike.

My VFR (L) and Gary’s at the top of Rowena Curves in Oregon.

Years ago on that day when I saw Uncle Gary roll up to our family gathering on his new VFR, a switch in my brain was thrown.  I beheld the color, the single sided swingarm, heard the exhaust note and whiny cams and resolved then and there that I too would own one.  One day, somehow, I would put one in my garage.  It would happen.  A little over a decade past that day I bought my own VFR and began touring.  Better late than never.

After Dave’s call we agreed to tour on our twin VFRs, mine a 1998 alongside Gary’s 2001.  At first we kept the tours small by my standards because whereas I regularly camped off the bike for weeks, Dave had yet to push that far.

I broke Dave in slowly at first with a brief overnight excursion across the North Cascades Pass. Then more days were added as we dove deeper into the Cascade Mountain Range.  Trips became increasingly frequent, longer, and more adventuresome as I slowly stretched Dave’s finite patience and limited sense of adventure.  Years and miles accumulated in our lives like the flowing pages of a marvelous adventure.  There were road miles, dirt miles, snowy miles, desert miles, beach miles, rainy miles and countless encounters sublime and bizarre.  Epic stories accumulated as we watched life disappear in our rearview mirrors.

Dave and I are fast friends in every sense. Our trip planning involves many Butler maps and much floor space.

One night, on a Cascade Mountain camping trip near Mt. Rainier, Dave emerged from his camp shower and came nose-to-nose with a bull elk with the size and attitude of a diesel locomotive.  Dave was wearing nothing but a towel and a smile.  Both froze, then stared at each other in a bizarre Pacific Northwest staring contest.  Dave’s left hand kept a firm grip on his towel, thank God, until eventually he slowly turned away.  It’s always a good idea to purposely lose a staring contest with a bull elk when your only defense is a thin cotton towel.

Then there was the Laguna Seca trip where we came to a landslide blocking the road forcing us to do an 8 mile gravel trail detour that took us deep in the Oregon forest.  Temperatures were pushing past 100 degrees, we had no water, had been on the road for two weeks and Dave was losing energy, patience and the ability to be a rational human.  I heard him whining through my Cardo helmet communicator for miles, like a toddler in the backseat of a minivan complaining about a long car ride.  How much longer Ted?  Are we there yet?  Does this road even go anywhere?  He promised to me that if we ever found tarmac again, he would kiss it.

Miles later, when we finally got to pavement, he killed the engine, dropped the kickstand, slowly dismounted Gary’s bike, got on his knees and kissed the ground.  As he smooched the tacky hot asphalt I shot a hastily framed photo with an unplanned solar flare whose rainbow perfectly frames Dave’s genuflecting figure as if the heavens were blessing the moment.  That photo sums up the story of our lives together.  It is one of my favorite pictures, and favorite moments of all time.  Present suffering can indeed bring about tomorrow’s great joy.

If a singular photo could sum up our miles and years, this is it. After what we went through, I understood his love of pavement. Our VFRs have more dirt miles than some ADV bikes.

I celebrated that night by swimming in the river by our campsite, wearing nothing except flip-flops and a smile.  Even though there was a road nearby, I didn’t care.  People in proximity may have cared.  Dave definitely cared.  Gary would have laughed.  Even in the death of summer heat the water was Northwest frigid and it took until the next morning for certain anatomical bits to return to their normal state of being.  These events along with millions of others funny and bizarre are what Cousin Dave and I reminisce about when we are together.  As we recall our adventures, people around us just listen in awe at all we have done.  All because of Gary’s posthumous gift to Dave.

Sweet relief. Photo carefully taken from the knees down.

Adventures like these became fodder for Road Dirt: volcanic tours, trips down the Pacific Coast Highway, pandemic tours of Montana, sprints to Canada, slogs to Colorado.  So many stories on these pages came from Dave taking possession of Gary’s VFR that my moto-journalism career would not be what it is today without that motorcycle.

Then one day, in a flash of inspiration, I challenged Dave to put the same tires on both bikes as we toured to test how different tires on the same bike behave from start to finish.  We spooned different rubber on both bikes at the same time in the spring, followed each other nose to tail all riding season, drank coffee, took notes, swapped bikes endlessly and continued to ride down the west coast, to Colorado, and pretty much every state in between.

We seem to find cattle drives about everywhere we ride. Endless adventure.

Both of our readers loved it.  We loved doing it.  Some tire manufacturers loved the results.  Others not so much.  We are the only moto-journalists I know of crazy (stupid?) enough to attempt such a thing.  Who else is lucky (stupid?) enough to have two identical bikes ridden by identical blood relative riders, following each other in formation, pounding out 10,000 miles in 4-6 months touring the country through all sorts of conditions, and telling the story of sport touring tires as they go from shiny whisker rubber to shredded center cord?  The stories benefitted our readers, the trips molded our lives and as the miles grew, cemented the bond with my cousin.  A bond, in my mind, summed up by one precious event.

Tire testing and a sense of adventure takes us everywhere, including Colorado’s Cottonwood pass, elevation 12,126 feet.  At this point in the continental divide it is 45 degrees and raining.  In late August.  Dave’s soaking wet glove hand rightly questions whether we are brave or stupid.  Silly question.

Every once in a while, life gives you a golden moment.  They are hard to define, but we know when they happen.  It could be a proposal, a birth, a gentle touch, a first kiss or a last goodbye.  We revisit those highlight reel moments in our minds because they sum up what matters to us, and are turning points in our lives by which our personal history hinges.  The golden moment for me: Dave on Gary’s VFR came on our first tour down the Pacific Coast Highway to Laguna Seca.

Dave and I were camping by the ocean, leaning over a wooden railing watching the sunset over the Pacific as kite surfers swarmed above the waters like aerial acrobats.  The Pacific Ocean was an endless sheet of denim blue that summer night, wind slight and perfectly chilled.  Trees swayed gently behind us.  Waves talked from beyond.  Sunset burned the distant horizon purple.  Kids laughed around us while their dogs fetched frisbees.  Our twin VFRs, mine and Uncle Gary’s, rested behind us by our tents, leaning and asleep on their kickstands, smiling at us after another hard day’s work.

Pacific Ocean, kite surfers, sunset- all reminders that there is no destination, only the journey.

Over cigars and questionably labeled vodka he magically pulled from his saddlebags, Dave, the ever gabby one, suddenly fell silent.  Surprised, I turned over my shoulder and stared at my cousin like that bull elk, waiting patiently for his gift of gab to resume.  He was thinking before he spoke.  Dave never thinks before he speaks.  Ever.  He was pensive in thought.  This was weird.  I stayed quiet.

Time dragged on.  Kite surfers in front of us hollered and flew.  Waves crashed around.  Trees moaned in the breeze.  Sunset burned lower and hotter.  Kids giggled.  Frisbees got fetched.  I waited some more.  Eternity passed.  Finally, Dave spoke.

“I have dreamt of this moment since I was a kid,” he said softly. I remained silent, making room for his words.  Another long pause.  The sun was almost gone now.  He continued. “When I was in high school I would daydream of riding a motorcycle down the Pacific Coast Highway.  I wanted to camp along the surf, see the ocean and ride my bike along the cliffs.  Don’t we all dream of that?  Doesn’t everyone dream of that?  I know I did.  It’s on everyone’s bucket list.  But it was just a dream.  Only a dream.  I never thought it would actually happen.  Who does things like that anyway?  But now, here I am.  I am here.  I am actually here.  I am doing it.  I have dreamt of this moment my whole life and I can’t believe I am really doing it.”

The sun vanished into the beyond as God drew His black curtain across the infinite sea. Kids were quiet now.  Frisbees laid in the grass.  Exhausted dogs slept.  Trees were still.  I silently raised my plastic cup full of mysterious Vodka and toasted my friend/cousin.  Everything made sense now.

Thank you Uncle Gary.

In one last twist to the story, Dave sold that VFR at the end of this summer. My son Matt now owns the beloved bike. Matt and I ride together regularly. Thanks again, Gary.

It is truly strange how life works.  What we consider bad threads can be artfully woven into life’s beautiful blanket if we just pause, take perspective and back away from the tapestry.  Evil colors that seem tragic in the minutiae of the moment can, over time, become yarns of a beautiful story, the crucial strands that weave our lives into a gorgeous work of art if only we would stop and look at the entirety of the cloth.  Painful in the moment they are, but in hindsight they color our days into something more lovely and precious than we could have ever woven.

If only there was another way.

Ted