Lester's Harley.....

(dedicated to old friends: Dale Boomgaarden and Ronnie Vocht)


When I was still in high school – and still being forced by my mother to wear corduroy pants – there was a boy in our small town on the Snake River named Lester Curtis. Lester was small, almost dwarfish, and had long ago dropped out of school. He worked as a laborer in a big grain elevator that loomed over that bleak, wind-swept town like a huge metal watchtower. He had no parents that we knew of, no siblings, very few friends... and he moved among us wearing greasy jeans and a padded welder’s cap that he jammed down backwards on his oversized head. He lived alone in a battered house trailer with weeds and packed earth surrounding it, and every son's mother's lips grew tight when Lester was near....

There was little reported crime in that miserable village, but when one was, within moments old Deputy Gray would park his war surplus jeep with the red spotlight at Lester’s trailer, and remain inside for hours, doing what and saying what we could only imagine. Of course, we were all banned by our parents from associating with Lester.


One summer afternoon, in 1959, little Ritchie Campbell came running into my back yard.

“Holy Shit,” yelled Ritchie. “Lester’s went and done got him a Harley! Come see!”


We both then ran to the only service station in town... and there sat Lester on a glaring red and chrome Harley-Davidson Sportster... the first any of us had ever seen. Lester was actually smiling, grinning, his strong teeth yellow, as a crowd of hot and excited teenagers milled around begging him for rides. I stood thunderstruck, unable to speak. I can remember to this day how the hot metal of the bike smelled, and how it ticked and popped like something alive when it cooled.. I couldn’t imagine how he’d gotten enough money. He must have starved and saved for years.

Suddenly, I was overcome with the most bitter sense of envy I've ever experienced...ever.


For a time, Lester’s life was cream. Suddenly popular, he wore his motorcycle jacket like a Roman Legionaire's tunic. It was not uncommon to see Lester roaring through town, a gasping teenage girl clinging to his back like a spider monkey, her pony tail flying, her voluminous skirts hiked above her knees. But the responsible adults were less than charmed, and storm clouds gathered ... and peaked in the fall when Lester and his date were refused entry into the high school’s Homecoming Dance. “Undesirable Element” was the only explanation offered to us. In a fantastic scene, Lester in his leather jacket and our Principal in his usual three piece suit – with the polished elk tooth on the gold watch chain dangling -- actually locked arms and scuffled in the doorway of the gym, knocking over floral and crepe paper displays. African elephants wandering free and unattended in the streets of our town would have generated less excitement, less delicious drama. Our teenage hearts were on fire.


The Monday following the dance scene, sitting in Algebra class, I heard a gathering roar outside and ran to a classroom window, as did everyone else in school. There, on the gravel street fronting the school building, Lester Curtis roared back and forth on his straight pipe Harley. Occasionally he would brake to a sliding stop, ferociously gunning his well-tuned engine and saluting us all with an outstretched left hand, middle finger held high and proud. Once, twice, maybe five times Lester made his run. On his final trip, he flawlessly executed the first motorcycle wheelie I’d ever seen! I was mad with excitement and joy. The roar of that engine... my fellow students screaming like demons... the Principal shouting through his phone to Officer Gray... it was the most memorable moment of my life up to then.


Lester Curtis left us that day, never to return. I know he’s not...but I like to think he’s out there yet, his engine roaring, his exhausts spitting fire, his middle finger up and proud! There’s a place in the human story for leather-faced Harley riders... the real ones. They remind us how invincible we are and how free we could be, and how we can always have some effect on the things around us--even against crushing odds – if only we can summon the courage.

Social Work......

When I was a much, much younger man, and trying to break into social work, the county prosecutor came to my work-release office at the county jail one morning.

“Come with me. I have a challenge for you, “ he said.

We walked together to a large common holding cell called the “Drunk Tank,” where sat a thin, solitary old man with untied shoes. He glared at us with blood-red eyes, his thin straight hair springing up from his flaking pink scalp like prairie grass.

“Let me out! Lemme outa here, you two. No cause for keeping me.....”

The Prosecutor grinned at him. “They found him late last night sleeping in Pioneer Park, wrapped in an old piece of canvas. Got him a rusty old bicycle, a can of pumpkin pie filling, and 38 cents.....no identification and he won’t tell us his name.”

I looked at the old man, who plucked at the sleeve of an old wool coat slick with dirt and grime, his skeletal fingers never still. I tried my social work smile: “Can you tell us your name, sir? The quicker you do, the quicker we can maybe get you out of here.”

The old man glared. “Tom. Dick. Harry,” he snarled. “You pick one. I ain’t drunk...I ain’t no drunk. Turn me loose!”

I turned and looked at the prosecutor. “Can’t we just do that? Just cut him loose?”

He grimaced, and replied, “no... they’ll just pick him up sleeping in the park again. If he gets jailed again for vagrancy, he might do thirty days in the county.... and would that do anyone any good? Hear that?”

I nodded, hearing the mute hubbub of the awakening county cell block on the other side of the wall. Inmates shouted and screamed, steel doors clanged.

The prosecutor leaned against the bars. “Judge Rabideau thinks this would be a good challenge for you and your new department. Find the man a job, any old job, find him a place to stay, any old place, and we’ll cut him loose.... since he won’t give us a name, a family, a place of residence, I think I can hold him in here for some while.”

“Don’t need a job, “ the old man muttered. “Had one of them. I ain’t done nuthin,’ I ain’t no drug fiend... take me n’ my bicycle to Highway 14. Cut me loose.”

“Highway 14,” muttered the prosecutor. “He keeps goin’ on about Highway 14. What’s with Highway 14?”

“Highway 14,” I said, looking again at the wild hair on the old man’s scalp. “Scenic drive... Washington side of the Columbia River gorge... .ride it all the time on my motorcycle. Helluva road... he’s got good taste in roads!”

I leaned forward, social work smile pasted on. “Do you live along the river, sir? Lyle, Bingen, White Salmon, Hood River....any of those towns? Have you got family on the river?”

“I ain’t done nuthin’ to nobody....no call to hold me.... Highway 14.... turn me loose!”

We turned to go.

“Was he drunk when he was arrested,” I asked the prosecutor.

“No... he wasn’t.”

“Well,” I muttered. “Guess I'll see what I can do......”

On the way back to my office I stopped to talk to Old Tuffy, our booking deputy.

“Anything turn up on the old man in the tank, “ I asked.

“Nope. Nothing. We damned near had to break his fingers last night when we printed him..... wouldn’t straighten them out... Took three of us! He went to bite me, the goddamn old nut case, and I told him if he bit me I’d break his head open...... didn’t bite me none, then, nossir.”

I stifled a grin, entertained by a picture of the skeletal old man sinking his few fangs into the fat deputy, and Tuffy moving fast enough to break open anyone’s head.

“Well, no criminal record, then, at least?”

“No,” Tuffy sighed regretfully. “Nothing yet... prints might not be any good, though.... had to mash his fingers down on the print card.”

Three days later we still had no information on our strange old man, but I thought I had the problem solved. I had finally begged him a job from an old friend who ran a potato storage shed, a job sweeping the cutting floor for minimum wage, and a shared room at a recovering alcoholic facility. When I explained my solution to the prosecutor, he readily assented. “Yeah, get the old bastard out of there... he’s even driving the drunks nuts!”

I had Tuffy unlock the drunk tank door and waved the old fellow to his feet. “Let’s go, sir! I got you a job and a place to stay and we are outa here!”

“Don’t need a job, “ muttered the hard old man. “Give me my bike back.....”

“Well, you have to have the job.... where’s his bike, Tuffy?”

“Maintenance shed..... dissolving into rust.......”

We booked him out, and tried to have him sign for his possessions -- a piece of dirty canvas, a can of pumpkin pie filling, and 38 cents -- but he wouldn’t sign. I shrugged and gave him the stuff anyway. I opened the maintenance shed and wheeled out his machine, an old Raleigh three speed crusted with rust....... “Nice wheels, “ I said in my social work voice.

“You never had no cause to hold me.... none a’tall,” the old man said, spitting on the county floor. “No cause a’tall.”

I signed out a county van, put the old man and his bike in it and drove him to the alcohol center. I introduced him as best I could to the staff, who rolled their eyes at each other. I gave the old man written instructions to the potato shed, and held out my hand. He didn’t take it, of course, much to the great delight of the alcohol people.

“Well,” I said to him. “I got one favor to ask of you.... will you tell me your name, now?”

“Tom. Dick. Harry,” snarled the old man. “Pick one!” The staff of the alcohol center dissolved in laughter.

The next morning my phone rang; it was my friend at the potato shed.

“It’s probably a big surprise, but your ol’ No Name didn’t show up for work.”

“Yeah, that is a surprise.”

He laughed over the wire. “Just for fun, I called the alcohol center..... he missed bedcheck and breakfast this morning, too.”

After thanking him and hanging up, I sat there for a moment, a wide grin splitting my face. I got up and went to my supervisor, the undersheriff. “Gotta have some time, okay?” He looked up, uninterested, “ yeah... just sign out, make it up when you can.”

Picking up my helmet from the coat rack, I borrowed a pair of binoculars from a line deputy and then went out and started up my Honda 305 Scrambler. I left the town and crossed the Columbia River over the old Kennewick bridge, the waters swift and cold far below. Across the river, the road over the Horse Heaven Hills curved away to the Oregon border forty miles south. I ran the old familiar curves easily and smoothly, the bike purring beneath me like the well-tuned, smooth twin it was. As the sun broke through high, thin clouds, my joy steadily rose and I soundlessly sang a Credence Clearwater Song behind my helmet shield. “Proud Mary keep on turning.....!”

At the crest of the Horse Heavens, the Columbia River Gorge opened up below me, the river now a silver thread far below, Highway 14 another thinner silver thread running alongside....and the purple and gold fields of eastern Oregon spread like a huge blanket beyond the far bank of the river, and to the west, the soaring volcanoes – Mt Adams, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Hood, the great peaks that had mesmerized Lewis and Clark and so many of the early pioneers – sat in timeless and regal splendor in the morning sunshine.

I swung the bike into a turnout, and pulled from my coat the field glasses I had borrowed. It took a few minutes of slow sweeping, but then ... there he was, an almost unrecognizable dot, an old man on a bicycle, slowly pedaling west, slowly making his way along one of the most beautiful highways in the world. I was suffused with joy. “I’ll be damned,” I said softly. “You old bastard! You must have ridden all night to get down there!” I slapped the tank of the Honda lightly with both hands. “He’s loose,” I laughed softly. “The man is loose and gone! Damn .. I wonder what his name was! I’m gonna wonder that forever!”

I laughed some more, and sat savoring the lovely scene before me. And then I put away the glasses, started the bike, and turned around. It was time to go back and do some more social work.

The Everlasting Debt.....

I am thankful for all the students with whom I once worked.... Over the years their laughter and smiles and tears and everlasting, unquenchable spirit and courage seeped through my skin, percolated through my soul, and burnished and finished me into something better than I once was, something better than I had ever hoped to be.... They think I gave them a lot; what they don't realize, not even yet, is that they always gave me more than what they got from me. What they did, in fact, was to give me a life and a purpose.... they have validated every breath I've ever taken, and I will never be able to repay that debt... never.

Ishpeming....

Rain threatened in Ishpeming, Michigan, and we stood holding our helmets under an eave at the still shuttered American Ski Hall of Fame. We'd just ridden through the mining district of Houghton, Michigan, and the rusty iron and brick ruins of the old mines had turned me introspective.

"My Grandfather was born here, in the 1880's," I said.

"Do you remember him," Red asked, leaning against the glass doors.

"He bit me once," I said. "I was doing my four year old strut on the keyboard of a piano and he came over to lift me off. I bit him, and he bit me back! Good guy, though....."

Red looked at me with that puzzled look she gets when she isn't sure of what I'm trying to say.

"I remember my Grandmother more," I said, squatting on my helmet. "You know those pasty shops we've been passing? She'd make those, and I'd watch..... they were good! Baked meat and vegetable pies. Delicious. She was always laughing, too... had a great head of white, braided hair...."

The rain began in earnest, hammering down on the streets.

"Don't suppose he saw rain much, my Grandfather. He went into the mines early.... like all the others. Cornishmen. Thousands of them came over here to dig these mines. Spent nearly all their lives under ground or deep down in some great ditch... but now, now I get to ride my motorcycles in the free air and falling rain, and one of my grandfather’s great-grandsons just graduated from Princeton. Three generations from a mine shaft to a Princeton University library....the American story! We owe them... we owe them so very much."

She smiled and touched my shoulder.

"Got an old clipping off the web, my Grandfather and his dad were inducted near here into the Order of St George... a fraternal and protective club for miners.”

A smiling gentleman arrived to unlock the Ski Hall of Fame doors, and we visited the modest hall for a half hour. They had a great exhibit of the army's Tenth Mountain Division, but nothing about the National Ski Patrol from which the Tenth was spawned. The small omission irritated me... irritated me greatly.

Later we geared up and started the bike. "Did the Cornish ski?" Red asked over the intercom. "They didn't," I replied. "Finns came here, too. They built the ski jumps and ski trails."

As we idled down the main street, I saw the entrance to an old cemetery and, on impulse, turned into it. We crawled along the single lane, looking at the elegant, weathered stones. I pulled over and shut the bike off.

"They're here, some of 'em, I know they are......"

Red hugged me. "Do you want to look for them?”

"Nah," I said, starting the bike. "It's Saturday, the office is probably closed..... and we have a long way to go......"

We got back on the highway, heading west, toward Montana, just as they had once done....

Frank and the trip not taken......

"Are you really going up the Alaskan Highway? With your sidecar, kid, and all?"

Frank stood in my office door. He was our ninth grade science teacher, and not a particularly good one. He had begun teaching at age 22; had taught in the same room for nearly thirty years; had no interests outside his job; and lived with a nagging wife and a daughter with problems. He was deathly afraid of retirement. He also rode a little 350 Kawasaki belt-drive twin to school. I was surprised, both by the fact that he was standing in my doorway, and by the question he'd just asked.

"Yessir! Sure are! Next spring.... why?"

He gazed out my window. "I've always wanted to go up there....ever since high school. Be a great trip......"

A sudden compulsion came over me.

"Frank, why don't you go with us? Your little Kawi will handle those roads....with Josh and Red and the sidecar, I probably won't be going much over 50 miles an hour.... Hell, buddy, just tie a tent on the back of that thing and let's go!"

"Really? Your family wouldn't mind?"

"Hell, no!" I laughed. "The more the merrier I always say! Trip like that would do you good.... won't recognize yourself when you get back!"

That night over dinner I told Red. "Hey, guess what! Frank is coming with us to Alaska!"

Red stared at me thoughtfully. "No, no, he isn't. He'll never go....."

"Yes, he will." I said, slightly irritated. "He told me so!"

"No," she said again. "He won't go."

For the rest of the school year, Frank and I studied maps, camping gear catalogs, and ride reports. We had the trip planned to the mile, and Frank began accumulating the camping equipment that I had already owned for years. He was very excited, and could talk of nothing else but Alaska. "I'm so grateful you invited me," he would say, over and over.

But Red kept saying, over and over, "no.... he won't go."

I really should learn to trust my wife's instincts regarding people. She's never wrong. Days before we were to leave, Frank was standing in my door again.

"Hey, Frankie! What's up?"

"Well, I'm not going."

I was shocked to the core. "Not going! What do you mean, not going?"

"Well," he said reluctantly. "My wife doesn't think I should spend the summer in a tent." And that was it. No argument, no discussion... no further story. Frank got a job teaching summer school that year to angry, unhappy adolescents -- while my wife and child and I rode up to Alaska.... Rain, mud, bears, mosquitoes, and some of the most awe-inspiring scenery we had ever experienced were characteristics of a tour we talked about for years.

"I told you Frank wouldn't go," grinned my wife. "Yeah...how'd you know that about him, anyway?" She just smiled.

When we returned, however, Frank was openly hostile and went out of his way to ridicule me and our trip, and to constantly try to make my wife and me out as irresponsible parents and very foolish people. It got so bad I had to admonish him publicly during a faculty meeting. Never close friends, we grew further apart.

Several years after I retired, a colleague ran into me in the street and said, "have you heard about Frank?" I slowly shook my head. "Cancer... prostrate....but they think they can get it all....."

One morning several weeks later my wife woke me up and said gently. "Hey, Hun ... Frank died Thursday night, 65 years old.... his obit's in the Yakima paper." I went on to take a morning shower, where unaccountably.... I wept for old Frank, who wasn't a good teacher, who never became my friend, and who never went up to Alaska. I hope he rests in peace.... but I have my doubts.

All of them.......

For thousands and thousands of years, most men and women lived lives of true desperation. Most lived on just a few square yards of earth, scraping at it from first light to dark, wringing a poor sustenance from the reluctant dirt that more often than not was then stolen from them by the stronger, the better armed. Most people lived and died within a few miles from their birthplace, never seeing what was over the nearest hill.... and most lived lives that could be best described as wretched......

Think about them the next time you swing your leg over your truly marvelous motorcycle, think of them as you change your horizons effortlessly, seeing wonders that none of them ever dreamed of, think of them when you stop at a clean, bright restaurant and imbibe enough calories in an hour that would have kept them alive for a week......

All my rides are haunted... haunted by those who came before, upon whose blood and sweat and labor and misery are my joys based.... in some way, I try and ride for all of them...all of them.

Homecoming.....

He kept coming back to it, the sleek gray bike with the high chrome pipes and black vinyl bench seat. For three days in a row now he had come and stood mutely before it. He reached out and touched the shining rubber grips with his finger tips, gently, like a lover tracing the palm lines of a woman’s hand. The fuel tank was narrow and angular and paneled with rubber. He could smell the acrid, fresh rubber of the tires.

“How much again,” he asked.

The irritable salesman brought the front legs of his tipped chair down smartly and squinted at the boy through a cloud of tobacco smoke. He sighed, bored with the question.

“$895 plus tax and license. Out the door.”

“Is the insurance gonna be much,” asked the boy, his faded army jacket had the outlines of corporal stripes and a combat patch.

The salesman shrugged. He drew hard on his cigarette and then stared at the boy.

“Glad to be back, glad to be home?”

The boy didn’t look at him.

“Home where,” the boy asked.

And then.

“How’s the gears work?”

The salesman got up, walked over, pointed down.

“See that lever down there? Push it with your toe. One down for first, all the rest up…..just like a car. This here’s the clutch lever…… it’s easy, really.”

The boy nodded, almost imperceptibly. He then walked to the salesman’s desk and dug from a cargo pocket a thick roll of currency. One by one, two by two, he smoothed the wrinkled and torn twenty dollar bills, which he stacked on the gray desk. As they both watched, the stack grew.

The salesman stood perplexed.

“Is this gonna be cash,” he asked, scarcely daring to hope.

“Yeah,” said the boy. “All cash. How long’s the paperwork, can you do it tonight?”

“Hell, yeah! You’ll be riding it outa that door right over there!”

Twenty minutes later, the motorcycle idled smoothly in the wide doorway of the bike shop…. outside the door, acres of city lights were now sparkling in the summer dusk, gleaming against a lilac-hued sky. The boy released the clutch lever with a jerk, and the bike bucked and stalled.

The salesman grabbed his arm.

“Nah, man! You gotta let it out easy, let out the clutch easy and twist the gas easier! Gotta be smooth on that throttle, man, smooth.”

The boy smiled, and restarted the bike. He gunned the throttle a couple of times, and then looked up at the salesman.

“You know that question you asked, about being home?”

The salesman nodded.

“Well, I’m not any smarter than when I went over there….so…I don’t know, man, not a clue really…….”

The boy let out the clutch, and the bike wobbled off into the street. He made a shift, then another, and then his taillight faded into traffic.

The salesman stood for a moment, and then he lit another cigarette…. and walked back inside.

Misperception.......

Still awake in the tent and listening to the Alaska rain drum down on the fly, I heard the big twins come rumbling in. Trying not to wake my wife and child, I rolled to the tent door, unzipped a little bit of flap, and looked out. The sun doesn’t set much in Alaska, and in the half-light I could easily see the three big Harleys and the hard-looking, patch-wearing men riding them. They picked a spot and parked the bikes not far from us, and then crawled off, open bottles of beer appearing in their hands like magic . Ugly fellows, all three of them... their stringy long hair plastered flat against their scalps, their beards scraggly, the rain coursing unheeded down their gaunt cheeks... big, mean looking men.

I sighed, and zipped the flap back up. Usually when riders like these appear, we break camp... we pack up, and move on down the road. Staying in proximity to them is just not worth the risk, especially when your pretty wife is on the pillion and your child in the sidecar -but we had just finished a five hundred mile day and I was very reluctant to wake them. I touched the cool metal of the loaded 870 Remington by my side, and decide it’s worth the minimal risk. We are close enough to the highway that the possibility of “social” trouble is probably remote. Besides, I’m very familiar with the pump gun... very familiar with it, and while I hope to never have to use it for self-defense, I would – in a heartbeat. “Turning the other cheek” only works in those societies that harbor a respect for the well-being of other people.

When I awake, the sun burns through the green tent fabric, and my wife still snores gently beside me, but my kid is gone -- his sleeping bag a limp, empty testament to his early rising. Hurriedly, I pull on jeans and boots. grap the gun by the barrel, and crawl from the tent. There in the bright northern sunlight, his uncombed hair spiky and his rubber boots on the wrong feet (again), my young son sat on a log in rapt conversation with three hard core bikers.

“Hi Dad,” he yells. “Look here, this man’s name is ’Pig!” Ha ha, Dad... a man named ‘Pig!’ Ha ha ha!’”

The three men looked at the shotgun at my hands and then at each other. Pig then grinned and said to me, “Josh here has been telling us about his life in a sidecar. Nice kid you got.......”

“Thanks,” I said, walking over and leaning the shotgun inside the sidecar well. I didn’t move far from it. “Hope he hasn’t been bothering ya....”

“Nope, he ain’t.........”

Josh stirred the muddy dirt at his feet with a stick, and turned to Pig. “So... tell me again, Pig, why dontcha take baths?”

Pig looked up at the sky. “Well, ya know.... I don’t go to school, got no pretty lady, and baths, well, baths just make me itch! All over!”

“Yeah, “ my six-year-old laughed. “Itchy all over! Me, too.”

“C’mon, son, “ I smiled. “Time to fix breakfast.”

While water heated on our camp stove, the three patch wearers broke their camp, striking their cheap discount store tent. Pig stuffed his old army sleeping bag into a black garbage bag, and then carried it and two similar bags to his shovelhead Harley and dropped all three of them on the muddy ground by his rear wheel. He grinned at Josh and me.

“Matched luggage!” He shouted.

Josh laughed and I grinned.

In moments, the three were ready to go. The sky had suddenly clouded over and the omnipresent rain had begun again, but the patch wearers paid absolutely no attention to it. Josh and I walked over and huddled under a small tarp I had stretched the night before. Pig hesitated, staring at his bike, and then walked over to us, rain streaking his forehead.....

“Well, good bye little bud!” He grinned at Josh. “Hope you get your own bike someday.... but you know, you gotta be thankful for your sidecar, now, you gotta be thankful that your mommy and daddy care enough about you to take you with ‘em. That ain’t no little thing!”

“Okay, Pig, “ Josh laughed. “ I will...See ya later! Keep your rubber down!”

Pig laughed and then turned to me. “And you take care, ol’ son, that that there pump gun don’t go rust in this rain.” His voice was soft, level, his eyes direct.

“Yup, “ I said. “And...well.... thanks... thanks for what you said to him.”

Pig bowed his head, just once, and then turned and walked to his machine. Within a few minutes, the Harleys had all been started, and the three men headed out onto the highway, going south, the thunder of the their exhausts rolling up against the roadside peaks. I put the gun deeper into the sidecar away from the rain, and, while Joshie played with his hot cocoa, I carried a cup of coffee to Red, still asleep – and still safe – in the tent.

A Ride On Halloween Eve.......

The storm cells had lashed down from the crest of the Cascade Mountains all day long. The white, swiftly moving clouds carried high winds and swirling snow, but they hadn’t dampened my enjoyment of the ride, a ride I had rather daringly decided to take on Halloween Eve. On the contrary, I was laughing inside my helmet like a being demented when I swung into the White Pass gas station for fuel and a coffee.

As I rocked the Nighthawk 750 back onto its center-stand, someone behind me said, “a good road, what?”

I turned to find a small man with a long face and penetrating eyes. He was dressed in old fashioned trousers and high boots, and his worn jacket appeared to be of waxed cotton.

“Hell of a road,” I enthused. “Love this route! Are you Canadian?” His accent was rich and obvious.

“Welsh,” he replied. “Will she do the ton?”

“Pardon me,” I asked.

“Will she make 100 an hour?”

“Oh, hell, yes! I think the top-end is somewhere around 120.... but I’m too old for that! She’s not one of the new super-bikes, but she was cheap and she is smooth.... just right for these curly roads.”

He squatted to look closer at the engine, nodding. “Four cylinders,” he mused.

“I also have a Wing, for the wife and me, “ I said, pulling my helmet off. “But, damned if I don’t like to get out here alone occasionally on something, well, smaller....no, not just smaller... something more...well.... more responsive.”

He rose up and smiled at me. “Something with a ‘touch of blood’, hey? You must have a motorbike income!”

I thought that a strange comment but let it pass.

I looked around. “Where’s your bike?”

“Around back, “ he replied. “I needed a spot of air, and the hose is there. It’s an old thing, not like yours at all.”

“Want some coffee?”

He hesitated, staring at me with those penetrating eyes. “Well, I suppose so.”

“My name is Gough,” I said, offering my hand. He shook it fleetingly, ignoring my introduction. Uncharacteristically, I took no offense at that.

Inside, the waitress smiled at us and gestured at a coffee urn surrounded by thick mugs.

“Coffee, “ I asked the man in the cotton jacket.

“Umm, no, rather...., “ he looked at the waitress. “Have you tea?”

After the waitress had brought him a pot of hot water and a bag, he sat looking at the bag with a puzzled look on his face..

“Tear it open, dip it in.”

He did so, and we sat down at a small table. Over us, a small color TV on a shelf blasted out CNN.

He gestured at it with his mug.

“You Yanks have fallen into that, hey?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Freakin’ Arabs.... can’t predict what they’re gonna do.”

“Your main problem isn’t the Arabs, it’s the Mesopotamians and the Persians – that and your inability to understand any of them.”

“Well, trying to put the damn country together is all we’re trying to do.”

He sipped his tea, grimaced.

“It’s not a country, not by far,” he said. “It’s three.... Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd. It’ll never go together. And to be effective with the Arabs, you must adopt their kit. Americans are quite useless with other people’s kit, aren’t they?”

He saw the look on my face and visibly softened. “No offense, old boy.... when we Brits were in there the Colonial office wouldn’t listen, either!”

He stood, clasped his hands behind his back. “Matter of fact, we were the ones who created Iraq... height of stupidity, really..... three old men.”

I looked at him. “Were you a soldier?”

He looked out into the white storm. “Rather..... RAF..... and you?”

“Tanker,” I replied. “And armor scout.... but maybe we’ll get ‘er done over there, yet.”

He turned and looked at me with a strange smile, and then back out at sunlight suddenly streaming through the clouds. “All men dream, but not equally.....mountains are strange,” he said. “I prefer deserts myself.”

“The roads are too straight in deserts......”

“Perhaps, but the destinations are not at all apparent.” He pulled on long gauntlets of thick leather.. “Must be off, ta for now.......” And without another word he put some bills on the table and went out the door.

I sat sipping my coffee, and thinking of the strange Welshman. The waitress sang softly to herself and CNN blared in the background. Suddenly, there was a rich, syncopated thunder and an impossibly long, black and nickel-plated apparition passed by the window, its dual fishtail exhausts gleaming in the watery sunlight. I stumbled to my feet and ran to the window, my blood as cold as the ice pelting down from the white clouds above.

“Jesus Christ!” My voice cracked, “Holy Mother of God!”

The rider sat forward on the long bike, wearing goggles and an old pilot’s cap backwards on his head. He waved once with a casual, leather-gloved hand, and then he was gone, the bike snarling in the wind.

The waitress was beside me. “What was that,” she asked.

I swallowed, and spoke with a dry, halting voice. “It was a Brough Superior,” I said. “I’ve never seen one before, but, as sure as the God above, that was a Brough.......”

I turned to the girl. “The fellow just here, the Welshman, did he give his name?”

“No,” she said. But then she smiled. “I got the air hose out for him when he first came....he did call his bike a name, though.... Bo-journey..Bo-jarney, somethin’ like that......”

“Boanerges,” I said, my breath ragged in my throat.

“That’s it, I think....,” she said. “What’s it mean?”

“Sons of Thunder,” I replied. “Have you ever heard of TE Lawrence? Lawrence of Arabia? That’s what he named his Broughs....Sons of Thunder......”

The waitress stared at me like I was truly the madman that I was acting like, and moved carefully back to her counter. I then paid her and went out to my bike on wooden legs, while above me the white clouds, like desert Arabs on camels, raged across a tortured sky.

Dues.....

Several years ago, I was skiing “off the jacket,” (not on ski patrol duty), and riding up a chairlift on Snoqualmie Pass-- when I noticed a group of striking elderly men, still straight and graceful, all skiing in single file, all dressed totally in white, all carving nicely linked, expert turns one right after the other....

“What the devil,” I muttered, turning around to watch them as they passed under me.

They were headed for a sort of flat area, where I noticed several tables being set up and a small crowd of people milling around. I got off the chair and dropped quickly down off the main face to get to the flat area, to see what was going on. I soon discovered that the men in white were survivors of the U.S. Army’s WWII 10th Mountain Division! Put together by Minnie Dole, the founder of the National Ski Patrol, The storied 10th Mountain – an infantry unit made up of ski patrollers, ski instructors, mountain guides, and lumberjacks – passed into history for its brilliant and valiant efforts in the Italian campaign during WW II, and is still in existence today – based in Ft. Drum, New York, and carrying the brunt of the burden in Afghanistan. I was thrilled to the core.

As I rode up the chair with one of the 10th Mountain veterans, a lean fellow from Colorado with a full head of white hair, I turned and said to him:

“This is great! You guys have been my heroes forever!”

“Well,” he said, fastening his clear blue eyes on me, “I don’t know about being a hero, but I’m just so, so grateful to be here, to just be able to come up here and still ski! Just so grateful that I can still do it.” He then told me that he was eighty years old.

“Damn,” I said, glancing around. “All you 10th guys look pretty good! In shape and solid!”

“Yes,” he said. “Skiing is something an old fellow like me can do for a long, long time...almost forever...long as he’s willing to pay his dues!”

“Dues? What are the dues?”

The old warrior grinned at me. “Constant exercise and constant smart living... only way to pay your dues up here, son.....only way.”

I’ve never forgotten that conversation with that brave old warrior. I am sixty seven now, and have already had a full and good life. But I am not ready to be done, not just yet, not just yet, and I am ready and willing to pay and keep paying my dues, pay them to that inevitable last, breathtaking ride, to the inevitable last, heart-hammering ski run, to the day that someone bends down and closes my eyelids for me. And I hope that when he does, I will have a smile on my parted lips, with the flush of life and blood still in my cheeks.... God, I love living! It won’t last forever, but I plan to wring every last drop of joy and love and adventure out of every passing moment!

Here are my dues:
-Twice a week, I climb, winter or summer, a 1700' mountain trail here near my home.... I have two or three routes to choose from
-Three times a week (when not climbing), I walk 3 miles to meet my wife at her school, and then three miles back with her...
-Two times a week, I lift weights, with light weight and slow, high repetitions, according to the following menu:
- Squats (3X10 plus); leg extensions (3X10 plus)
- Bench Press (3X10 plus)
- Bent-over Dumbbell rows (3X10 plus)
- Elastic tube pull across and pull aways, for my rotator cuffs, (3X20plus)
-During the weekends, in the summer I go for a long hike; in winter, I ski Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday......
- I quit smoking before 1970, and quit all alcohol in 1989...

With this regimen, I hope to be skiing and riding a motorcycle, and more importantly, loving my wife, my son, and all our friends and family, until I’m eighty or more. It may not pay off that much, I may die in my sleep tonight, or be hit by another deer and die tomorrow.....but then again, pay off it might! In the meantime, I’ll pay my dues and drink deep of everything life offers!

Lightning.....

I hate lightning... hate it beyond reason and logic. Lightning is like a mortar barrage: malevolent and impersonal and yet deeply and horribly intimate when it builds and strikes, when it seems to threaten you personally, when it seems to threaten you above all other living things on earth-- and it seems that that every road that Red and I ride in lightning weather will lead directly toward the area of most danger, the area of the darkest and dirtiest cloud and storm. The road never seems to lead away from the storm, but instead leads right toward it.

And the threat is real. Unlike auto drivers, motorcyclists are not protected by a comforting cocoon of metal running on rubber tires to redirect and harmlessly channel that terrible violence around you. No sir! Get hit by lightning while riding your bike and you are dead, dead, dead....a bolt through your face shield and out the heel of your favorite riding boot leaves no room for argument, no question unanswered, no appeal... you are simply deep-fried and cooked at your handlebars... ticket punched... time expired... dead.

Once, early in our riding career, Red and I were in Greybull, Wyoming, and trying to leave it (not an uncommon impulse in Greybull); we were trying to get out of town and go east over the beautiful Big Horn Mountains. Often in the U.S., the summer jet stream will dip down and stake out a parabolic line clear across the country, a line of battle where cold fronts and warm fronts square off, where the great towering anvil-shaped storm clouds gather, where the deadly lightning lurks.... They call such events “Summers of Fire.” It was during one of these “Summers of Fire” when we tried to leave Greybull one afternoon.

“It doesn’t look too bad,” said Red. “Does it?”

Red is by nature much braver than I.

I looked at the Big Horn mountains, at the masses of vapor and the gathering, boiling, angry energy above them. “Uuuuuhhhhhhh,” I said.

I hate to say no to Red.

“Why don’t we give it a try?” Red was patient, cajoling. “If it gets bad, we can always turn back!”

“Uuuuuuhhhhh,” I said again. “Well, uuuhhh, okay..........I guess.....!”

I started our old Wing and we pulled out on Highway 14, a beautiful two lane road heading almost directly into the heart of the developing monster. Everything went well...for about 45 seconds ...and then...

KaaChuunk!

A bright blue bolt of incredible beauty, as straight as a ruler, full of energy and horror, came ripping down from the heavens, ripping straight down on Highway 14, straight down right on the center line! No more than 300 meters ahead of us! The centerline! 300 meters!

I immediately wheeled the Wing into a tight, 180 degree turn -- one of the tightest I have ever made, by the way -- and we headed straight back to Greybull and to the nearest cheap motel.

“That’s it, “ I yelled. “I get the message! That’s my Higher Power’s way of saying, ‘This road closed until further notice!’ Not even a night in Greybull could be more threatening than this!”

Red hung on tightly and said nothing......

The next morning we rode over the wonderful Big Horns in bright, calm sunshine, and at the summit, we could see The Great Plains of America spreading before us, an immense patchwork quilt of farms and prairies... stretching east as far as human eyes can see.

You deal with lightning on nature's terms, not yours.

On another trip, again during another “Summer of Fire,” we were returning home through Montana and wanted to ride Highway 43 along the Wisdom River. It’s a ride of haunting beauty, along a penultimate Rocky mountain river, complete with the sad historical site of the Big Hole Battlefield, where the U.S. Army attacked an unsuspecting camp of the Nez Perce Indians. Firing at first light through buffalo skin lodges and killing many women and children, the Army initially drove the Nez Perce to flight, but the warriors quickly regrouped and one by one and two by two, fighting from bush to bush, pushed the U.S. troops back to the top of a high knoll, where the soldiers hung on for their lives. It was definitely not one of the Army’s finest moments. The last stand trenches scraped out by the frantic troopers with mess tins, cups, and bayonets are still there -- silent, overgrown hollows in the ground, still filled with a faint aura of desperation and horror.

Highway 43 at it’s eastern terminus near Dillon runs between the high walls of a deep canyon. And that’s where Red and I found ourselves when the first bolts rained down several years ago.... I could actually see the strikes hitting on the ridge tops, the impact areas marked by great balls of orange fire. It was the most dramatic electrical storm I had ever witnessed with strikes coming 2, 3, and even 4 times per minute. The wind was also screaming, with rain and hail flying sideways.

I stopped the bike and turned and yelled at Red. “Should I turn around?”

“And do what, go where” yelled Red back. “It’s as bad behind us as it is in front!”

And so we went on, our hearts in our throats and in genuine fear for our lives, although we were actually in little danger since the strikes seemed confined to the ridge tops. Eventually we stumbled across a five-star restaurant catering to rich fly fishermen and took refuge in it, dawdling over an expansive and expensive meal that we couldn’t afford, while the storm played itself out among the ridges and the sun broke through again.

You deal with lightning on nature’s terms, not yours.

This year was another of the “Summer of Fires” with storms plaguing us throughout the season. In September, Red and I rode to Colorado and back for an international motorcycle rally. We rolled out of Utah on Highway 40, and then took Highway 139 south toward Montrose, Colorado, our ultimate destination. Highway 139! Occasionally, the motorcyclist will get very lucky and stumble upon a road like 139. Deserted, well-paved, winding through lovely, interesting country – Highway 139 was our discovery of the year. We were absolutely loving it; roads like these are the reason we ride; but the hour was growing late, and in the west, over our right shoulders, still miles away but coming our way, towered one of those building, rising, anvil-shaped clouds. And in the back of my throat I felt that old metallic taste, the taste I remember from the Vietnam of my youth and of all the other thunderstorms I’ve ever seen.

“Damn,” I muttered to Red. “I hope we get in before that sucker gets here....looks ugly!”

“We will,” smiled Red. “Don’t worry, we’ll be alright.....!”

Red is by nature more optimistic than I. Much.

But the storm marched down upon us steadily, and great bolts of powerful lightning were beginning to streak down from it’s ugly, roiling mass. I kept stealing anxious looks over my shoulder, and it was getting dark now, getting dark fast. And we had sixty miles to go...

Suddenly, my whole cockpit lit up in a blinding flash.

“Holy Crap,” I yelled to Red. “How close was that thing?!!?”

“How close was what,” she yelled back.

“The lightning bolt! It was close, didn’t you see it?”

“No,” she replied. “I didn’t see anything!”

We rode a little more, and, suddenly, another blinding flash reflected off of my windscreen, instrument panel, and mirrors.

“Holy Damn,” I screamed. “How close was that one?”

“How close was what,” asked Red. “I’m not seeing anything!”

“You have to be!” I yelled at Red, exasperated beyond measure. “I have to know how close they are, which way they’re coming from.....!”

“I’m not seeing them,” said Red, equally exasperated.

Another blinding flash.... And I was by this time absolutely terrified...

“Jesus!” I yelled “Look for a building, a barn, something! We gotta get under cover!”

“I don’t understand it, “ muttered Red. “I’m just not seeing anything.......!”

And then I got a glimpse of her moving around in my mirror.

“Hey,” I yelled. “What are you doing back there?”

“Nothing...taking a few pictures is all.......”

“And is the camera flash going off,” I asked.

There was a moment of silence from the rear seat, and then we both burst into wild laughter. Red often takes photos off the rear seat, and the lightning flashes that were terrifying me so were coming from her camera.

We barreled into Montrose minutes ahead of the powerful storm, still safe, still minutes ahead of the real lightning. Laughing like demons, we quickly unloaded the bike and tumbled into the warmth and security of our cheap motel, where we ordered up delivery pizza, and ate it sitting on the bed while enjoying the flashes outside our motel window.

You have to deal with even non-existent lightning on nature’s terms, not yours!

Pillion.....

Pillion

1. A pad or cushion for an extra rider behind the saddle on a horse or motorcycle.
2. A bicycle or motorcycle saddle.
3. One who rides on a pillion.
[Probably from Scottish Gaelic pillean, diminutive of peall, rug, or Irish Gaelic pillín, diminutive of pell, rug, both from Old Irish pell, from Latin pellis, animal skin.]




She climbed on the back of my 1978 Suzuki 750 GS nearly twenty years ago, and has
been back there since. She’s survived a major, life-threatening accident, and has gone through four bikes, 41 states, and two continents. She’s camped in the rain, the snow, and the dust, and has eaten everything from cold spaghetti straight from a can to fresh caught salmon in a five star restaurant without a whimper or a whine.

She’s ridden through rainstorms, windstorms, hailstorms, snowstorms, dust storms, and lightning storms. She’s helped me pitch a tent and make camp on gravel, mud, sod, concrete, and, on one occasion, in a Pennsylvania campground alongside the Susquehanna River, a campground so deserted, weird, and spooky that we thought we had ridden into a Steven King novel! She’s seen Paris, France, and Paris, Tennessee. She’s stayed in luxurious hotels and in hovels worthy of the third world..... and nothing seems to bother her.... nothing... nothing except perhaps me getting seriously upset about some piddling, insignificant issue – and that she doesn’t like, doesn’t like it at all.

She’s ridden in heat that almost stifled us, and in cold that rendered her speechless. Only once, high on the frosty summit of Lost Trail Past in Idaho, during a 29 degree, icy morning, did she run inside a heated building and refuse to come out and get back on the bike. She had an accomplice, though, my laughing elf of a son. Both of them wrapped their hands around cups of steaming hot chocolate and sat and laughed at me from behind the plate glass window, laughing merrily at my frantic gestures for them to come back out.... Sometimes at night, when she sleeps, I remember how they both looked behind that window, and I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud, to keep from waking her.

Countless times we have run into problems on our trips that she solved, that she fixed, and she was often the reason we got home. She is almost unconsciously competent, and once she applies her steady mind and steady outlook, things get better....really better...and really fast. She's amazingly adaptable, amazingly flexible....

Once, we were all packed up on the bike and ready to set out on our second trip to Alaska. For some unaccountable reason, I didn’t want to go up there that year.... didn’t know why....just felt we shouldn’t go....no reason that I could identify, and we had been planning the trip for months. I just had this overwhelming sense of impending dread that I could not overcome. And it was no joke. She finished locking up our house and came down our steps, smiling, as usual...

“Honey,” I said. “I know you’re not going to believe this, but... I’ve changed my mind. We’re going to Arkansas instead of Alaska!”

She blinked at me...just once...just one blink, and then she smiled and said, “well, okay, sure, but I better go back in and let my mother know!"

A year ago this summer, she almost lost her left hand in our first major accident, and I wasn’t sure she would ever ride again. But ten months after we were released from the hospital, she climbed back on the back of our new bike that we had bought with the insurance money, and said cheerfully, “whenever you’re ready!” We started it up and rode across the country again, from Washington State to North Carolina, and then out along the beautiful Blue Ridge, and if she was nervous at all during the trip, I never knew it.

Occasionally, I’ll catch a glance of her in my rearview mirrors, her lovely hair and soft smile
hidden by plastic and fiberglass, and I ask the gods: What did I ever do to deserve her, my life’s
partner, my wonderful pillion! She puts the sun in my skies .... and I’ll love her forever.

A Very Good Run......

It had been a good run -- over Lolo Pass into Montana, then over Beartooth Pass into
Wyoming, and then over the Bighorns onto the High Plains. The bike, with the cylinder heads I had to have rebuilt because I had screwed up and timed them 180 out, ran sweet and cool – but in a campground at Springfield, Missouri, I hurried an oil change and stripped out the threads for the oil filter basket.

“Damn, “ I said to the Redhead, who sat on a picnic table watching me.

“What happened,” she asked gently.

“Ah, hell.” I looked at her and rubbed grease off my fingers. “Stripped it! Can’t believe I did that! I’ll try and borrow a big wrench somewhere and put the damn thing in anyway. I just hope it lasts the trip!”

I borrowed a big crescent wrench off a drunk in a Chevy and slowly and carefully
tapped the cross-threaded nut into the soft aluminum of the engine case. I tightened it
as much as I dared, and then I started the old Wing up and we both watched the gravel underneath
for new oil drips, our hearts in our mouths.

After a moment, the Redhead looked at me.

“It’s not leaking, huh?”

“Nope. And that’s good. That’s real good!”

The rest of the Missouri Ozarks went well, and then we dropped into velvety Arkansas,
with its twisty roads and heavy, muggy air. And then we were in Louisiana, where the red eyes of
alligators gleamed in the Cypress swamps at night, and New Orleans, our destination this trip,
lay less than 100 miles ahead.

We stopped at a convenience store to refuel. Black and white youths milled around the
pumps, both speaking a beautiful, soft and lilting dialect that we could barely understand. A black
man, drinking from a wine bottle in a paper sack, looked at our license plate.

“G’lawd, man,” he sang out.. “You is a long way gone, now, hain’tcha?”

I grinned at him, “Yessir.. A long way gone is a good way of putting it!”

“Washin’ton,” he said. “Nevah been thar.... no, I hain’t!”

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Just like this place!”

He grinned at me.

I went inside to pay for our gas.. At a formica-topped table drinking a coke, sat the oldest
black woman I had ever seen. Her face was corrugated and lined and weathered, like pine
wood boards that have been in the wind for fifty winters. ‘Over a hundred years old’, I thought to myself, ‘she’s at least a hundred years old.’ She watched me as I put my helmet down on the counter and dug for my wallet.

“Y’all wear that big thang to protect yore brain?”

Her voice was vibrant, surprisingly youthful, and she stared steadily at me with gleaming
eyes that I could barely see. And then, somehow, I sensed the merriment in those ancient eyes..

I grinned at her and said, “ You are telling me that is hardly worth the bother, huh?”

She laughed gently. Her laugh, like her voice, was youthful, gentle, compelling.

“Why’y’all ride them thangs, anyhow? Doncha get wet when it rains?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “We get wet sometimes..... but it’s cheap this way. And fun. We feel free when we ride.”

The old lady took a deep swallow of her coke. She stared at me for a moment.

“Wahhl...,” she said. “That’s awright, Ah guess. All freedom ...even the middlin’ kind ... is
worth havin’.”

The young black girl waiting for my card said to the old woman gently, “ leave him be,
now, Auntie, he’s got somwhar to go....”

Outside my wife stood by the bike talking to man with the bottle in the bag.

“Who were you talking to,” she asked.

“Some ol’ lady that knows more ‘n me,” I answered.

“Quite a few of them around!” She grinned.

“That’d be ol’ Auntie,” laughed the man with the bag.

We geared up and pulled out, accelerating gently in the dusk, watching for the shining eyes of deer on the road and for the first glow of New Orleans. So far, it had been a very good run.

1992, The Peace River Valley

In 1992 and in the middle of the Peace River Valley, British Columbia, we pulled our 81' Goldwing and sidecar off of the highway to refuel at a small gas station and convenience store. My six year old son, his motorcycling patience evidently exhausted, shot up and out of his sidecar like a being possessed. My wife Red got off, pulled off her helmet, stretched, and smiled at me.

“Oh, damn,” she said, and tore off after the boy, who was already making the lives of some ducks on a small pond miserable by flinging stones at them. I cracked open the gas cap and refueled, and then went to pay.

Inside stood the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. About nineteen or twenty, she wore her short blonde hair in a page boy crop; her skin was as smooth as cream; her eyes were a deep water blue. She stood with unconscious grace, her lean figure slouched against the counter she tended. I could smell the soap in her freshly laundered shirt and jeans, and some sort of perfume in her hair. I swallowed hard.

“Pump four,” I said.

She glanced at her machine. “Nine forty seven,” she said. “Canadian.”
I handed her a ten, and received the change from her cool, delicate fingers.

“Going far,” she asked, her voice controlled, and low and slightly husky.

“Alaska,” I replied.

“That far, hey?”

She leaned over the counter to look outside at the Goldwing, her hair like silk in the filtered sunlight streaming through the grimy windows.

“Take me with you?” She asked with only a slight smile. “I am hard-working and clean.... won’t be any trouble. Can I go, please?”

I swallowed again.

“Well, huh, I’ve got two people already.... not enough room, you see.”

She smiled into my eyes. “Bad timing, hey?”

“At least that,” I said.

I went outside and beckoned to my crew. Red and I got the boy settled back into the sidecar, his hands full of toy soldiers, and then we put on our helmets, started the bike, and pulled out onto the highway heading north. I squeezed Red’s knee and looked into my mirrors, where the girl from the station leaned against a gasoline pump watching us go. I watched her figure grow ever smaller, and squeezed Red’s knee again.

“She was pretty, wasn’t she,” said Red, over the bike’s intercom.

“Yeah, very much so. But not as pretty as you......”

I could feel her smile through the back of my helmet.

Budget European Motorcycle Tour

After 28 years of caring for other people’s sons and daughters, after turning 62, and after having pre-paid my son’s college tuition with a state program, I felt the need for change.

“I think I’ll retire. And... oh, what the hell! Let’s go tour Europe by motorcycle,” I said to Red, my unflappable red-headed wife.

She smiled at me. “Let’s go tour Europe by camper van instead, “ she said.

She had a point. There were places in Europe I wanted to see -- Paris, Venice, Rome – in which I didn’t want to ride a bike. And a camping van would take care of the two most pressing and most complicated travel concerns for unsophisticated Americans: where to sleep and how to travel.

“Okay,” I smiled at her. “Let’s do it!”

And so we did; and, after a false start or two, it proved remarkably easy. We bought the van sight unseen over the internet from a 300 lb, dope-smoking, expatriate American hippy in Utrecht, who operated out of a 300 year old townhouse filled with bad artwork, dogs and cats, and the strong smell of marijuana and cat pee. After her chief mechanic, a jolly and affable Turk, tried to spike my coffee with vodka at 9:00am, I turned to Red and whispered, “Damn! Hope we didn’t buy a pig in a poke! Hope we don’t get burned on this damn van!”

But the hippy and her staff proved as honest as the day is long, and the ‘86 VW diesel conversion ran sweet and true for the eight weeks we owned it. With Red driving and me navigating from a portfolio of good Michelin maps, we drove to Rome, back up to Denmark, and back to Utrecht, without trouble and without difficulty. Amsterdam, Brugge, Paris, Normandy, Alsace-Lorraine, Colmar, Spolito, Rome, Cinque Terra, Venice, Innsbruck, Rothenburg Aum Der Tauber, Geneva, Interlaken.....Europe had been everything we’d hoped it would be – a rich tapestry of life and culture flowing past the windscreen of our camping van like a non-ending travel show. We learned early to camp outside of cultural areas and cities and then to take commercial transport into the heart of them. We experienced nothing but kindness and authentic interest from all the people we met . For two Yanks raised in small, humble, and dusty towns in western America, it had been a life-altering, life-enriching experience. Our camping costs had averaged around $20 a night, and had often been free.

As we stood outside the van in the spacious and beautiful Alpenblicke campground in Interlaken, Switzerland, looking up at the towering peaks of the Berner Oberland, I turned to Red and said:

“I wanna rent a bike! There’s gotta be some hellacious roads up there.”

“I know,” she said dubiously. “But we’re dangerously short of cash.”

“I want a bike,” I insisted, digging up a cherished copy of John Herman’s Motorcycle Tours in the Alps and Corsica from the bottom of my rucksack.

“Mmmmmmm,” said she.

The next morning we drove alongside a clear blue lake to Thune, where we had heard there was a very good motorcycle shop.

“Do you know how to find it,” Red asked.

“Naw,” I replied casually. “We’ll just drive around until we find it. How big can Thune be?”

Well, damn big, as it turned out. After hours of fruitless searching and some true frustration later, we finally pulled into the parking lot of one of the biggest, most modern motorcycle dealerships I’ve ever seen, Moto-Centre, Thune. The place was staffed by young, healthy, and athletic youngsters, most of whom spoke impeccable English.

“Many, many bikes to rent we have,” said one of the young and healthy athletes. Red and I strolled around the impressive selection of Beemer R machines and Honda Viffers and Pans, mentally counting up our cash and our wants – the Beemer GS 1150 I had my eye on rented for the equivalent of 1500 USD a week.

“Not enough, huh,” I asked Red, scarcely daring to hope.

“Well, “ said Red. “Let me put it this way; if we rent that GS, or any other bike for that matter, we don’t eat for the rest of the summer!”

“Damn it!” I turned away and started walking toward the van, knowing that she was right but angry about it anyway.

“What’s that,” I heard Red ask.. I turned and saw Red and the staffer bent over a low, sculpted shape. “Honda Silverwing scooter. 600cc. Ver,’ ver’ practical,” replied the young man.

“How much,” Red asked.

“That’s a motor scooter,” I said.

“$500 – for a week,” said the young man.

“I’m not touring the Alps on a ridiculous motor scooter, “ I yelled.

Minutes later I was doing practice figure eights in the parking lot on the Silverwing. Aside from the fact that I threw myself into the windscreen several times while trying to pull in the non-existent clutch, which is really a brake, and made myself look like an idiot waving my left foot around trying to find a non-existent shift lever, it wasn’t too bad.

And by the time we had reached our campground again, she in the van and me on the bike, after twenty miles of twisting lakeside road, I was literally enthralled.

“This damn thing rocks,” I yelled. “It corners faster than a cat on fire!”

Red just grinned.

For the next eight days, we experienced an Alpine vacation that surpassed all expectations. Every morning early, we’d crawl from our sleeping bags in the van, load the cargo area under the Silverwing’s comfortable seat with our rain gear and some bread, cheese, and water, and then head for Andermatt, the place John Hermann refers to as the center of “all thing motorcycling.” One by one some of the major alpine passes fell under our spinning scooter wheels: Susten, Firka, Grimsel, Oberalp, Lukmanier, St Gotthard, Brunig, Schallenberg, Glaubenbuelen. We visited Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald, ate lunch in Swiss restaurants that were half cow barns, and drank $4 cups of coffee over a deep rocky gorge in which Napoleon had annihilated a entire Russian Army. We were, in fact, doing what we’d dreamed of for years. Without guides, without any money really, without much preplanning, we were doing it!

“I love you, “ I told my wise and precious wife. “How’d ya know this scooter thing would pan out so well?”

She smiled at me. “I have an advantage, “she said. “To me, a motorcycle, a scooter, whatever – they are all the same... just the means to an end. The shape, the size, doesn’t matter....”

I marveled again over how someone could be so gentle, so sweet, so strong, and so wise all at the same time.

And when we finally took and turned the scooter back in to the young staffers, I almost grieved for the damn thing.

“We gotta come back here, “ I said to Red. “Gotta come back someday. And soon!”

She smiled at me. “Why not,” she said.

The Jacket In My Closet

Hanging always in my closet is a roughly made rubber jacket, cut and sewn from a U.S. Army poncho and lined with camo parachute silk. I have owned the thing for forty three years. It is the oldest personal possession I have.

As a young soldier in the U.S. Army Security Agency forty three years ago, I and others in my outfit took our issued army ponchos to a Chinese tailor in Nha Trang, Vietnam, and had the ponchos made into jackets. It only cost a few dollars and we thought we could clamber in and out of our 3/4 ton truck- mounted commo vans easier that way. We also thought the jackets and their camo linings looked pretty damned cool. And, at that time and place, maybe they did. The army let me bring the altered poncho home, but, if I remember right, and since I showed them the jacket rather than claim it as a combat loss, they charged me for it. A tour in Vietnam and the U.S. government charged me for the poncho. $11, I think. A grateful government’s thanks.......

I don’t love the jacket; and I don’t hate it, but I’ve never been able to throw it away. Someone somewhere once said, “Be careful what you do when young, for you are stuck with it for the rest of your life.” That rough jacket and I are bound together forever with bands stronger than iron and steel. Twice a year, Veterans Day and Memorial Day, I pull it off the closet hanger, pin on my meager two rows of ribbons, put it and my VFW hat on, and march in a parade, or stand an Honor Guard. I am not a “professional veteran,” and I don’t know why – twice a year – I still wear the damn thing.

But I think it’s because I yet hear in my heart their youthful voices of nearly a half century ago, coming to me out of the murky ether of years and distance, laughing and yelling in the morning twilight between restless sleep and fretful wakefulness.

“You dinky-dao numbah ten mutha-fuh......!”
“What the hell are they gonna do, draft us and send us to Vietnam?”
“It don’t mean a thing, troop, it don’t mean a thing.....”
“When I get on that freedom bird, man, when I get on that old bird......”
“Back in the world, man, back in the world.....”

Yes, I can still hear their young voices, some long dead now and forever silent except in the dark orchestra pit of my mind... I also hear the thunderous beat of 58,000 pairs of combat boots marching between the dream only worlds, never to rest, never to stop, and, most importantly, never to matter.... and never to be banished from the desolate, empty parade ground of my soul. I only knew three of them personally, one well and the other two briefly, but because of them I am bound forever to that cursed ghost army, the American dead of Vietnam. I cannot ever leave them; I can never quite catch up with them; I am never of them or free of them.... It’s like I got somehow separated from them and can never get back....I will never be with them; and yet I will never be without them.

And the quick hot tears come again as they always do when I first run my hand over the jacket, over the peeling, flaking rubber and the moldy silk. “I’m sorry,” I mumble to an benevolent, unlistening universe, “I am so sorry.....”

Magic Chariot

The motorcycle has been many things during the century of its development: cheap transportation for the masses, military vehicle, sporting vehicle, image builder, and for some, like my wife and I, the motorcycle has been a pure life-enhancing machine.

When Red and I first got together in 1991, I had already gone through a mid-career divorce and had nothing but a job and an ‘87 Honda Magna to show for it. As a low-paid public school employee, I was not going to have much of anything else very soon, either.... I had two and a half months vacation every summer, but no money to spare – absolutely none.

As we sat facing each other on the only two living room chairs I owned (thrift shop, $5), in the tiny house ($37,500) that I had somehow managed to purchase with the help of a sympathetic -- maybe even pitying -- bank manager, I looked at Red and said, “Aw, the hell with it, wanna ride to Texas and get married? I got a brother down there.....”

She grinned and said. “Sure, why not?”

Several days later, I looked up at her grinning face from the pile of newly purchased camping gear scattered around me and said, “ I can’t strap enough of this crap on the Magna to make it work!”

“Maybe we need another kind of bike,” she speculated.

So we went down to Ellensburg Honda “just to look” and there found our first Goldwing, a battered and beaten ‘81 Interstate with many, many miles on its clock. The handwritten sticker read $2495. “This damn thing will barely get us out of town,” I said.

“This baby is barely broken in, “ gushed the hot-eyed salesman, his glance, incidentally, roving all over Red. “These babies run for ever.... change the oil, change the timing belts.... they just run forever.”

I looked at Red. “Let’s give it a go,” I said. “If we head for Texas and the bike coughs it up, we’ll part it out and take a bus home!”

The bike made it to Texas, and then to Alaska, and then back and forth across the states four or five times. We saw the California coast, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Canadian Maritimes, the whole spine of the Rocky Mountains...... we rode in awe-inspiring thunderstorms, in mountain snows, in desert heat so fierce it melted the adhesive holding on our boot soles. We were able to meet with Maine Lobsterman, Texas Ranchers, New Orleans Blues Musicians, Alaska Fisherman and Iowa Corn Farmers. We camped in nearly all the states, on the shores of both oceans, and on mountains so high and cold we would shiver in our precious sleeping bags, and often had to take our butane camping stove in to bed with us so it would operate in the morning. We saw bear, deer, elk, moose, buffalo, snakes, soaring hawks, and giant pelicans flying in formations of military-type precision from the saddle of our old and faithful bike. When my son was old enough, we bolted on an second-hand sidecar and took him with us. When we ran out of U.S. roads, we started looking overseas, and spent a wondrous summer touring the Swiss Alps on a rented scooter -- and then, eight years later when we could afford it again, spent another glorious summer touring the Dolomites of Northern Italy.

That battered old bike carried us more than 160,000 miles. And when I did have to part it out for real, we bought another one and kept on going, and we had nearly 80,000 miles on it before we wrecked it against the side of a deer. We promptly took the insurance money and bought another. And these low budget bikes have taught us an essential truth: the quality of one’s life depends not upon money, or net worth, or anything else other than the joy of simple existence, a loving partner, freedom, good friends, and the crisp, achingly lovely mornings on the road. The day we bought our old Wing is the day we were blessed, the day we were reborn.

We still live in that $37,500 house, but it’s now paid off and we have built a wing on to it, and we love every board, every nail, every stick of furniture in it..... That small house became our Palace of Joy, and the bike our Magic Chariot. The bike taught us how to live small, to use and love what we had, and not to pine for what we had not... We don’t live on a hill, and we don’t have a view, but we’ve seen things together most people never will. The bike, in a sense, salvaged the quality in our lives, and opened up a world of love and enchantment and adventure to us. Even after one serious accident, my wife still rides with me, whispering words to me over our intercom that only we can hear, and my son rides his own bike on his own roads. Outside of my wife and son, our family and our friends, my motorcycle has been the most quality-producing thing in my life. I will never stop riding a motorcycle, never...

Prairie Lunch Stop

Sometimes, when Red and I are out on the prairie, we'll stop at some greasy spoon and walk in, helmets dangling from sodden gloves, rain still streaming from our jackets, and most of the people inside will look away, and will try not to notice us.......will try to get back to where they were before we arrived.... before we came in, we two all free and wet and alive...... But, also, sometimes... I'll look across the tense dining room, and some old boy will slowly raise his head from his Senior Special bowl of soup. He'll look out the foggy window at our loaded bike, at my smiling partner, and the fire will begin to rise again in his rheumy eyes, and he will begin to nod to us.... At first barely perceptively, and then with increasing vigor, and we can see him sitting straighter, and breathing faster... calling on us to talk to him, to notice him and this joy rising in him like something long dead but rediscovered...... and so we do."G'day, Sir!" I'll say, sitting as close to him as possible. "Kinda wet out there!"And then he and maybe another one or two old boys, will come and talk to us. Really talk to us. They will speak of the bikes they had after the war, the Harleys, the Indians, the BSA Goldstars....the saddlebags of Mexican tooled leather, the shaved and ported cylinder heads, the Great Hillclimbs, the Saturday night flat track racing...."I loved that damned BSA! Loved it so much I was always afraid of it!"And they will talk of touring from sea to sea, from border to border, when the roads were all lumpy, coated with gravel and nearly impassable, and when the sleeping bags were always wet and cold, their girls' mothers always so terrified of the young them and their bikes. They speak of great bonfires on prairies and in woodlands, and of the cheap beer, and of the joy of being young and free, free from war and alive .... and the misery now of having lost it all. And I listen to them with all my heart, for I am them, and they me. And when we finally leave, waving to those who still have the fire, those with eyes still gleaming, we feel alive and reborn......and blessed. And the prairie calls to us anew...."Ride, ride, my children. It will not be forever, ride, ride.... my laughing children. Ride!"

Stella And The Motorcycle

Stella noticed him almost at once. On the crest of the hill between her house and Kolb’s cornfield, there first appeared a bobbing head, and then a round headlight. It was a man pushing a motorcycle. As she switched off her morning radio show and wiped her hands dry on her apron, the man with the motorcycle took a respite on the top of the hill, leaning against the bike, his labored breathing obvious even from Stella’s kitchen window. Outside, the Iowa midday sun beat down ferociously, and even from the window she could see that the man’s white tee shirt was dark with sweat.

After a moment, the man ran a few steps pushing his machine, and then jumped aboard, coasting silently downhill, all the way down into a deep pool of shade cast by the giant oak tree outside of Stella’s front fence. He stopped the bike, got off, swung down the center stand, and heaved the machine up with obvious relief. He then stepped away to a roadside ditch, where he sat down, his sun browned arms draped over his knees. After a moment he hung down his head, his hair rich and dark and glossy.

Stella stood for a moment, and then from the icebox removed a pitcher of fresh lemonade and took down a glass from the cupboard. She walked to her screen door, hesitated, and then pushed it open.

“G’mawning,” she sang out, coming down the flag-stoned walk, and pushing open the front gate with a hip. “You’ve got trouble?”

The man raised his head and stared at her. He was younger than she thought, about her age actually, with deep-set blue eyes, and high cheekbones. She was suddenly conscious of her faded dress, her everyday apron, her hair wrapped in a tight bun.

He stared openly at her for a moment, and then said, laughing, “yeah... a little trouble, maybe... She died dead under me just before the lip of that hill.... just shy enough of it that I had to jump off and push! Didn’t think I’d get her to the top without fallin’ it over, but I did. Saw your nice shade tree here and jus’ couldn’t resist.... hope you don’t mind?”

“No, of course not. Can you fix it, you think,” she asked as she poured the glass full and handed it to him.

The man laughed. “Hope so! It’s a long walk to Cedar Rapids! I always have fixed her before.... it’s always kinda been ‘ride and fix, ride and fix, and then fix and ride’ some more on this ol’ thing!” He laughed again as he accepted the glass. He raised the glass in salute to her. “I thank you, ma’am,” he said. “Durned hot day!” He then drained the glass in steady, eager swallows. “Mmm, good,” he said. “Thank you again,” and he extended it toward her.

She didn’t take it, but stepped forward and refilled it.

“Well, “ she said. “If you need anything, tools or such, I’ll do the best for you.” She turned and looked at the fields behind her house, shading her eyes with her hands. “My husband, Henry, is out on the tractor. He’s pretty good workin’ with tractors, and he’ll be comin’ in soon..... he could help you if you like.....”

The man stared at her again, his blue eyes locked on her face. He stared just a moment longer than she was used to, and she was aware of her hand holding the half-empty pitcher beginning to shake. Her eyes fell toward the ground.

The man laughed, and pulled free an old leather jacket tied behind the bike’s saddle. He went down on one knee and spread the jacket at the side of the engine. “Well, you’re most kind, but I think I can get it! Only two things to look for...... spark and fuel. It’s gotta be one or the other, no spark or no fuel! I learned that as a dispatch rider in the army...... spark or fuel, one or th’ other!”

Her eyes raised up to him. “You were a soldier,” she murmured. “In the war?”
He didn’t look at her. “Yes.”
“You were in France,” she asked, still murmuring.
“Yes.”
“My cousin’s husband was in France,” she said. “Artillery.”
He knodded, but didn’t say anything. He unwrapped a piece of oilcloth. Inside were a score of tools, shiny with oil and use, and he laid them out side by side on the leather jacket. For some reason, she liked how he handled the tools, gently, with long fingers, the nails rimmed with grease.

“Well,” she said. “If there’s anything we can do..... Henry and I.... please come up and knock.”

The man, his hands already deep in the engine, turned his head and smiled up at her, his teeth as clean and white as pearls. She was aware of a unbidden, sharp intake of her breath, and she turned in confusion and walked toward the house.

“I’ll remember your offer of help, sure... “ said the man behind her. “Thank you so much.”

Stella stood in front of the mirror the cool gloom of her bedroom in the old house, her hands pressed to her burning cheeks. “Oh, Lord.... please,” she murmured. And then, she pulled the pins from her hair, and the thick tresses fell and spilled over her slender shoulders like a silk shaw... She sat, and pulled a soft brush through her hair, fifty times on each side. Standing and reaching behind her, she unzipped her old dress and let it fall down around her ankles and stepped out of it. Outside, the motorcycle engine barked... and then barked again.... She held her breath. And then the engine barked again, and ran unsteadily for several seconds, and died. She let out her breath, and went to the open closet. Taking down her new dress, she hurriedly put it on, smoothing it in front, smoothing it over her flat stomach and rounded hips.

Outside, the engine barked again, and again died away.....

Stella went to her kitchen. She took from the icebox a plate of cold ham and a large round of cheddar cheese. She quickly made two sandwiches on homemade bread, and pulled another pitcher from the box, tea this time. She took an ice pick from a hook on the wall and chipped shards from the block ice into two glasses.

She balanced it all on an old tray and carried it outside. He was standing by the motorcycle, an oily part in his hand, jabbing gently at it with a piece of bent wire.

“You must be hungry.... and I’ve made us sandwiches. Not much, but.....” She smiled at him.

“It’ll do just fine, and I thank you..... huh......?”

“Stella,” she replied softly. “Stella Worthington.”

“Well,” he said softly. “Thank you....I’m Dan O’Reilly..... I can pay a little.”

“No need.....well, what is it, Dan? Fuel or spark?”

He laughed as he picked up a sandwich with just his fingertips. “Durned if I know! I thought the carburetor was plugged up with dirt or somethin,’ but I can’t get her clear........at least not yet, I can’t!”

He had pulled from somewhere off the bike an old army hat, with a wide brim and a crown girded by a faded blue cord The hat suited his sharpish face, but it cast his blue eyes in deep shadow.

“Tell me,” she said softly, almost whispering. “What was France like?”

He was silent long enough for her to believe that he wasn’t going to answer, but then he said, “France? The country? Beautiful, with big stone churches and good-farmed fields.... very lovely, in fact. They have seen so much there, they know so much more than we....”

He drank some tea and then turned to stare at her, his eyes burning into her even under the shadow of the hat brim. “If it’s about the war you are asking, well..... I’ll beg your pardon and forgo that... I won’t talk about it, and you shouldn’t ask. That war was like all wars before and those to come... People dying and nobody knowin’ why..... It was an abomination. An unanswerable abomination... an unanswerable horror.....”

Scarcely daring to breathe, she whispered, “I’m sorry....”

He pushed the hat brim up and smiled at her, deep lines at his eyes crinkling, lines she hadn’t noticed before. “Not your fault, Stella. It’s a normal question.... the problem is that there ain’t any normal answers...... it’s a misery. And I ain’t gonna talk about it....no use....”

After awhile she left him, and went inside and stretched out upon her bed, the sun lowering behind the drawn shades. The daily heat had reached a zenith, and her skin felt inflamed, her dress damp. Insects thudded against the bedroom window. Stella felt again her great sorrow, and she almost wept, but slept instead.

She awoke suddenly in the late afternoon, and outside the machine was running again – but strong and steady now, with a regular thumping rhythm. She rose and ran to the kitchen, where she wet a cloth and held it against her eyes. She then ran outside and down the front walk.

“You did it!”

Dan smiled at her. The hat was gone, and a pair of leather rimmed glass goggles hung around his neck. “Yeah...it was the carb,sure.... intake tube plugged up good! I finally blew it out.”

She stared up at him. “Are you from around here, Dan....from Iowa?”

He shrugged into the leather jacket. “Yes, ma’am .... from around Dubuque.” He looked around at the fields surrounding them. “Raised on a farm...very much like this one... corn and cows!”

She waited a moment, and then said, “and do you live there now?”

He pulled on a pair of long gloves. “Tried to.... after France....but it wasn’t no good. Couldn’t sleep there, anymore.” He stared toward a lowering sun. “Funny, before the army, I never thought I could leave Iowa...but now I don’t think I can ever stay.”

She held her breath.

He looked at her and smiled, and said. “Gonna, gotta, keep on going.... to the Rocky Mountains, maybe even to California.....to the Pacific Ocean! Been across the Atlantic, maybe find a boat....”

She couldn’t speak

“Stella,” he spoke very softly. “Would you like to go? Come with me? To see snowy mountains higher than the sky, and then to see what’s past them.....?”

Her eyes swam with tears, and she spun and ran up the walk.....

“Stella......,” he said behind her.....

She ran to her bedroom, and picked up the wrinkled and torn newspaper notice of Henry’s funeral service from the dresser, and threw herself upon the big empty bed, her face buried deep in the pillow, the paper clutched to her chest. Outside the motorcycle engine changed tone, and then grew steadily fainter as he rode away. She could hear the rhythmic beat of his motorcycle for a long time, until it faded among the cornfields in the darkening evening, and then the great sorrow came upon her and she wept her endless tears. The sorrow was as vast, as deep, as the heaving of a great dark ocean sea, always oncoming to the very end of time, sweeping all before it.