The Awakening....

Years ago, on the trailing edge of a failing marriage, and before the blessing of Red, my current wife, I sought solace in speed and became a "reentry" rider..... with a well-tuned 1978 Suzuki GS 750. Paid all of $600 for it...and the guy threw in a helmet.... which almost fit.

I was flat afraid of the damn thing, but I grew a pair and decided to ride it about 500 miles from Ellensburg, Washington, to Gowan Field, Boise, Idaho, to attend a two-week Tank Commander's course. I had also recently re-entered the Army on some sort of whim, or rather, in some sort of desperation... the Army National Guard, that is.... as a 42 year old corporal in the 1/303rd Armor, WANG. All kinds of things were changing for me, and not necessarily in the right direction.

The trip out has been blurred by the years, but it was a pretty good start, and I especially remember the sense of mastery I eventually achieved when the clutch coughed it up in Kennewick, Washington, 130 miles from home. I talked to a Suzuki "shop manager," who quoted me a let-me-help-you-out price of $275 for a new clutch... I sat on the curb for awhile, contemplating the ruin of my life, and then I remembered the old Clymer or Haynes manual with a taped-together cover which had come with the bike, and which at the last moment I had stuffed into the army duffle bag strapped sideways on the rear seat.... I pulled it out and looked up "Clutch." The instructions for adjusting the linkage didn't look too complicated, and so I adjusted it as best I could with an crescent wrench and a pair of pliers while the Suzuki guy glared out of the window at me. Finished, I started the bike up, stuffed the tools and manual back into my duffle bag, and wheeled out of the lot, my clutch working perfectly, my smile wide and growing wider, waving at that damn Suzuki "shop manager."

I don't remember much of the tank school either, just that I wanted it to be over so I could get back to the bike and ride it home through the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. I almost "no-goed" the school because I was thinking of my bike and that siren of a road to come. But eventually, it was over, and my class celebrated in the usual Army style -- beer and party, party and beer, too much party and too much beer....

I woke up too hung over, almost, to function, and definitely not in shape for the ride home... I had been having trouble with alcohol for some time. Not a surprise, since I had come from generations of accomplished, practicing alcoholics; and there was no doubt that I was genetically predisposed to the disease. But that morning was different; for the first time, I was disgusted with my behavior, not for what I had done, but for the ride that it had ruined, for the potential it had robbed me of... for the degradation of what should have been an enriching experience. From that morning on, I knew that someday soon I would go clean and sober. I also knew, in a sub-cognitive way, that my first marriage was over, and that sooner or later, I'd again leave the army.

So I snuck away, parked the bike, and slept it off in an abandoned barracks for most of that day, and the following night. But when the morning of the following day dawned in a wash of glowing, striated clouds of blue and gold, the crisp air delicious in my lungs, my hands shaking with anticipation...the bike was ready .... and so was I. The ride home was an unqualified joy, ripping along the twisting, old, paved-over wagon roads, a shining corridor between silent pine forests and gurgling mountain waters, the constant, comforting hum of the smooth running old bike, the horizons changing before me almost as if some unseen hand worked a celestial control.... and for the first time that I could remember, pure and uncomplicated joy surged unchecked through my heart and soul and mind..... I could see nothing but high mountains and clear roads ahead..... I had awakened......

Since I first threw a leg over that first Honda Scrambler, a lifetime ago, in 1966..... people have asked me why I would willingly take on the risks of riding a motorcycle. And I've never known exactly what to tell them, but I'm getting closer..... I ride because: it's like having the inexplicable wonders of the earth presented to you on a moving tapestry, the clean air and wind and sun and sweet rain, to watch mountainous horizons rush to you with certainty and speed, to be able to change those horizons completely in a day, to be faster, more powerful, than you could ever naturally be, to fly and soar like a great bird without leaving the earth...... And if I die in a bloody ditch somewhere that will be okay.... it will be a promise freely given for a bargain received....to be able to roam the earth, at least temporarily, as an eagle does, free and fast and far, and only at the risk of pain and death..... this was a good bargain when I first made it in 1966; and it still is today... God forgive me, but I do love riding so....

‎"Shoot tight, ride hard, ski the deep, and love much......"

A biker's New Year wish.......

I've ridden over many tall mountains now, and along the shores of crashing oceans, and across a heaving sea of grass with the ghost of a Lakota warrior crouching behind every knoll..... I've ridden free and fast for almost a lifetime.

And through all of it, I have ridden with a woman that loves me... a woman I love. I've watched our son grow tall and straight, into a true man, a builder, and a rider at that!

I am a happy man, and I hope you are too, wherever you are, and whatever you ride. Happy New Year, my friends, and I wish you a thousand more! May your fuel tanks always be full, your roads curly, your women and children happy and free.... peace and freedom, my friends, my brothers and sisters, peace and freedom!

Rivers......

"River." I love the very word. There's a murmur to it, a melody, the word "river" sounds like it is, sounds like what it does...

In days past, I'd been a riverman, a boatsman.....long boats down the Ohio, steamboats up and down the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Yellowstone, the Columbia, the Snake.... Rivers are the life force -- the veins and arteries of any continent, any nation. And the names of rivers and river towns! The Mississippi, the Missouri, the Rappahannock , the Susquehanna, the Arkansas, the Tennessee, the Colorado, the Snake, the Columbia, the Lochsa, the Clearwater... Cairo, Memphis, Knoxville, Hannibal, New Orleans...Great Falls, Missoula, Kettle Falls, Walla Walla, Umatilla, the Dalles, Bridge of the Gods, Hood River, Portland.... I love rivers and I love river towns, and I love riding my motorcycles on the river roads alongside them. Many, many good motorcycle roads follow rivers: Highway 14 (the Columbia), Highway 12 (The Clearwater, the Lochsa), Highway 30 (the Platte), Highway 200 (Clark's Fork), and on and on..... it's spring; the rivers are awakening and beginning to move, and so am I... again, it's time to go....

I was there.....

I was with the Captains Lewis and Clark, and their chief guide, Saca-ja-weah; I was at the battles of Adobe Walls, the Custer fight, the Fetterman Massacre; I was at South Pass, and almost all along the Oregon Trail, the gateway to our modern nation; I was at Antietam, Gettysburg, Pea Ridge, Chicamaugwa, Shiloh........

Shiloh! Yeah, I was at Shiloh.....such a beautiful place name, and such a sad, haunted place. Sit down near Bloody Pond, near dusk....sit quietly and listen to the faint sobbing and cries in the gentle night air..... if you can't hear them, if you aren't moved by where you are, you don't deserve to be there..... Nossir, and those old boys's sacrifices were wasted on you....

Yeah, Bloody Pond, to which the wounded of the battle would crawl to try and slake their dreadful thirst.... The wounded -- some blue, some grey -- made their way there.... and then the muddy pond went red. Blue and Grey, but the same red mud, the same red blood.....

I've been where the Comanche rode, and the early Texas Rangers, with Walker Colts and rawhide bags of cold flour, riding just as hard, hunting their mortal enemies, the 'Comanch'..... Cynthia Ann, Quanah Parker, Charles Goodnight, John Coffee Hayes.... I've ridden where giants rode.....

And I've done it on my touring motorcycles.... Many of us ride bikes for pleasure, for distraction, for show, but I rode my bike because I loved it, and then, mile by mile, the motorcycle gave to me my whole nation, showed its history to me, mile by mile, county by county, state by state....... It was the best thing, next to Red, that has ever happened to me....that first, mutiple day tour, so long ago..... Thank God we took it!

Compromises....

I don't own a house on a hill, but I've climbed many a hill, and slept upon some in a whispering tent, among the flowers and the stars.... I don't own a Porsche or Aston-Martin sports car, but I've rambled through high mountain ranges on a powerful motorcycle, the thrum of its engine in tune with the rushing of blood in my veins....I don't live in a mansion, but I have lived for a near lifetime in a small house warmed by a woman's love, a house that has rung for years with laughter.... and I don't sit on corporate boards of high power or prestige, but I've seen the joy in a child's face over something I've done, and I've had young mothers bring their babies to me, just so I could see them....

Yeah, I've made compromises in life, not a damn one of which I've ever regretted....ever.....