I'd rather......

...live my life in the wide open, crossing at my will the high, cloud-draped mountains and the long deserts that fade off into blue, than to live forever in a palace of granite and gold strewn with pearls....

I'd rather live with my wife, she with her eyes and cheeks bursting with health and laughter, than with any slender, high fashion model with nothing but a deadness behind her eyes....

I'd rather be a "patch of sunshine fading on the grass," and disappear forever, with my ashes dancing away in the wind, than a centuries old, tight-wrapped mummy hidden deep in dark vaults of limestone.... with only the silence of cold stones above my dead bones.....

A quality motorcycle, an uncrowded road, and the freedom to ride it... and my gentle, brave and always smiling partner on the back.... a quiet place to pitch our tent at night.... That's all I need; and that's all I want.

And I have it in abundance....

We go fast and free and far.....

saying words to each other through our headsets that only we, and God, can hear.....

I grew up pretty much alone....not much adult supervision. It's because of that, I believe, that I can only endure many people around me for only so long... then I must be alone for while, or only with my beloved wife, to recharge my "social" batteries. Motorcycles are good for this...... a bike allows you to flow through the world without much impediment .... or so at least it seems. Probably why so many loners are bikers.....

Anybody can ski downhill.....

Here's old CJ "skinning up to the Bump Shack at Summit at Snoqualmie ski area, Washington State, with his cherished one and only close behind snapping her pictures..... Great three shift weekend wearing the red jacket... at two different ski areas...did two backboards, two knees, and taught some rescue tobogganing skills to some eager-eyed young recruits.... I have a full life. With something important to do, the winter flies by, and I'm as happy in my life as I have ever been, even at seventy long years. I believe more than ever that we must find something important to do, something that is seen by others to be important, to maximize both the length and quality of our lives. For you flatlanders ............... (A bump shack at a ski area is at the top of the hill, where the toboggans, trauma packs, traction splints, and spine boards are kept, along with a patroller ready to be dispatched to any area of injury.....the term evolved from the time when the ski patroller simply stood at the top, and would be "bumped" off by another patroller coming up the lift. After about a half century, somebody got the bright idea that a shack in which to keep out of the weather might be nice! "Skins" are long pieces of nylon with a one-way nap that are applied to the bottom of the skis in order to allow climbing up rather than sliding down. Red and I try to climb up the hill at least once during my shifts, to give the heart and lungs a therapeutic workout.... Thus ends my mini-ski patrol lesson........! ) I love skiing and I love ski patrolling, but Friday I spent some time with my motorcycles, both of them silent, still, hooked up to their battery monitor IVs, and the Great Plains of America are beginning to call me again..... "Come! Come, my child-man! My flowers will soon be blooming, my grasses swaying... Come! Come and let us once again visit the prayer wheels of the Northern Cheyenne!" Soon I will be longing for summer, and for the plains of North America, plains once crossed over in covered wagons by my ancestors... I believe

I can do one more crossing! At least one!

Spirits....

Last night, as they do often now, in the cold hours before dawn, two spirits steal through our open bedroom window. Silently, like smoke, they drift over and settle with me on the bed, one on each side. Red, sleeping gently and warmly and conscience-free beside me, doesn't even stir, her sweet breath ebbing and flowing like celestial tides.

One wrathful spirit, the Spirit of The South, the Spirit of Tierra Del Fuego, her eyes filled with raging sea mist, whispers to me..... "When are you coming, you cowardly Gringo, you white eye with the silly machine? The bones of better men than you roll in my deep straits and bleach in my high mountain passes! Much better men than you! Come! Come if you dare, Gringo! The white ships are just over the horizon...they are coming for you. Hurry, hurry to me before it's too late!"

The other spirit, more gentle but even more terrible, spindrift snow swirling in her ice blue eyes, is The Spirit Of The East, The Spirit of Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of The Earth...... "When are you coming, you poor little man with the silly machine? You cannot climb me; you are too weak and too old and too meaningless.... but you could ride your machine to me, and worship prostrate at my feet like so many others, like all the others. The bones of better men than you lie buried deep in my endless snowdrifts! Much better men than you! Come! Come if you dare, Little Man! The white ships are just over the horizon...they are coming for you. Hurry, hurry to me before it's too late!"

Just at dawn, the red sun floods and warms the room, and Red stirs and nestles closer....and the spirits steal away.... they only like the cold hours before dawn. Whenever Red is awake and smiling, they never show....but they will come back, night after night..... calling me..... calling for me....

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....