Just a quick update: We’re in a hotel in The Dalles after two beautiful days in the Okanogan, three days spent with good friends, and a day of more wonderful riding through Yakima Canyon on highway 821 on our way to the Dalles and Oregon.  We’re going to try to make it all the way to Crater Lake tomorrow, but it’ll be a long day if we do.  So long for now and I’ll write a whole lot more in a few weeks.

It’s almost ten, so REI should be open by now.  I’m off to the land of “outdoor” gear and apparel.  Perhaps I can find something overpriced with no practical use outside of a backyard . . .

Josh

This was a plan that I hatched within the last month or so, and it came about when I realized that, since I’m not currently coaching any club soccer teams, I no longer have a need for a car.  The necessity of transporting soccer equipment has always provided a need for me, but now I don’t have to do that, so I don’t need a car.  Grocery store?  Long trips?  Hiking?  Commuting in the rain?  None of these constitute a need and, besides, they can all be addressed with my motorcycle, my feet, my bicycle, or $1.50 in quarters for the bus.  Most significantly, not owning a car is saving me more than $550 a month in car payment, insurance, and parking.  It’s also wiped a significant debt away.  If my life were a business, my stock would be shooting through the roof, as I’ve just more than doubled my profit and significantly reduced my debt obligations.

By now, like most people I’ve spoken with, you’re probably thinking that this sounds like a pretty good idea.  It’s certainly working well for me.  Just yesterday, I used my motorcycle for a few short errands around the area: It took a little more work to get ready with having to don my riding gear, but it was more pleasant than taking a car and, as you’ll recall from above, it saved me a ton of money.

As for the motorcycle road trip, we’re fast approaching our departure date of Tuesday the 24th.  We’re nowhere near ready, although I don’t know that there’s too much to do.  The bikes are pretty much ready to go, but we need to pack all of our stuff and sort out the food.  I’m also going to take the windshield off my bike and go without.  The one I bought, a Givi model, sucks.  It’s too wide to allow the handle bars to turn all the way, so you can’t lock the handle bars out when you park it, necessitating me putting the disc lock on every time I stop, no matter how short of a time I’ll be parked.  Plus it doesn’t really block the wind all that much.  I’ll write another post or two before we go, but for the next two days, Lindsay and I will be largely caught up in my brother’s wedding, which takes place Saturday evening.  That gives us Sunday and Monday to prepare and then we’re off.  Cheers,

Josh

I can update a few things this week: I just placed my last online order for any gear we might need; I bought a tool role, locks for the panniers, and a second pair of summer gloves from aerostich.com.  I think I’ve mentioned these guys before, but if I haven’t, I’m tellin’ ya now.  They’ve got a ton of good gear for reasonable prices.  I recently bought a pair of their Darien Light Pants and I love them!  They’re Gore-Tex, so they’re waterproof but exceptionally breathable.

I took the BMW to Vallentine Motor Works for an oil change before the trip.  As I mentioned earlier, these guys are great.  The mechanic (I forget his name, but it wasn’t Nick, the owner) also explained to me, in much more detail, why my bike was stalling earlier when I had to take it into Ridewest.  It is as I’d feared: BMW cheaped out.  They only put one sensor on the crankshaft.  It’s a four stroke engine, so the crankshaft turns to its top position twice in each full engine rotation.  Basically, if you don’t hold the starter down long enough, the sensor doesn’t have time to figure out which step the engine is currently on when the crank at the top.  It gets confused and starts stalling the bike.  The only way to fix this is to get the CPU reset.  If that’s too technical for you (it’s probably not–I barely know what I’m talking about), just know that BMW saved about $2 in manufacturing costs in order to make sure the F650GS has to be taken into the dealer every now and again for a $100 donation.  Interestingly, the owners manual is unclear about exactly how to start the bike and the guy at Ridewest was very cryptic in explaining this whole thing to me.  This really illustrates why I appreciate taking vehicles to an independent shop.

On another note, Lindsay’s loving her Ninja 250.  It’s running great and she’s getting very comfortable on it.  I’ve ridden it a few times, and it’s a pretty fun little bike.  Lindsay and I may walk down to REI this afternoon after she gets off work to pick up a few camping essentials as well.  A foam pad for Lindsay and, perhaps, a little lantern.  We may also hit up Walgreens for some first-aid supplies.  I’ve gotta start putting together our first-aid kit.  Free advice: Always put your first-aid kit in a Zip-Loc bag (don’t cheap out and use a store brand, use a proper freezer bag–they’re tough).  It’s waterproof and you can see through it, so you can more readily access exactly what you need quickly.  This is especially good for hiking, as you also save the weight of the cloth bag.

I’ve got just a week and a half of teaching left before summer break, so I’m beginning to really feel that this trip is coming.  I’m anticipating that, walking out of school on the last day, I’ll feel this relief and pressure wash over me as I realize my trip is only a week away and I’ve got all this gear to get in order and packed.  I can’t wait.

Lindsay sold her 1983 Yamaha Maxim 650 and bought a smaller bike. It was a pretty nice bike, but it had some reliability issues (that or it was possessed by an evil spirit that hated her; it always started for me), and, most importantly, it was just too heavy for her to start out on. This worked out for the better though, as Lindsay is now the proud owner of a 2006 Kawasaki Ninja 250 with less than 2000 miles on it. Some things to say about her new bike: It’s fast as hell for a 250; if you’re looking for a first bike and you’re shorter than about 5’6″, buy one of these; they’re sooo much fun! How do I know? I love riding it myself; I’m six feet tall and it’s almost too small for me, but not quite.

I took the ol’ F650GS in to Ridewest to have a stalling problem addressed. It’s under an extended warranty that apparently only covers when a part is “broken”, not when it doesn’t work right in the first place. I had to pay $100 to have the mechanic explain to me that, sometimes if it’s not started properly (wait for the dashboard lights to go off before hitting the starter switch), the computer gets all out of wack and messes up the fuel injection. He reset it for me for about $100. The only time I started it improperly was when it stalled in traffic once, which must have done it I suppose. Whatever the cause, I left with a very strong feeling that I should have bought a Japanese bike. Seriously, my bike was made in 2003 not 1983; there is no way in hell that anybody would write a computer program that would get confused by a too-fast start up and start stalling the bike. And even if they did, why not put a freakin’ button on the bike that I can push to reset the computer!? When I get some time, I’m going to peruse the forums to see if this is actually true. I have a hard time believing that BMW could be that dumb, but who knows?

Now, to the title of the post. I bought an aluminum pannier set and rear luggage rack from Happy Trails-you can find ‘em online; they’re from Idaho. The panniers arrived in the mail and looked great, however there was much work to be done and the directions were one step beyond the Lascaux cave paintings in clarity, which is to say there were indecipherable pictures and far too few words. Two weekends ago, I set about installing the tail luggage rack (note to Happy Trails, some more explicit language in the directions regarding NOT INSTALLING THE DAMN TAIL RACK WITHOUT ALSO INSTALLING THE PANNIERS would have been nice). It took me three hours and a trip to the hardware store for extra washers and bolts that were the proper length. When it was all said and done, I was very happy with myself, as it was straight and strong and just about the most difficult work I’ve ever done on a vehicle.

This past Sunday, I set about installing the panniers. Step #1: Undo 25% of the work I’d done (including the parts I’d picked up on my trip to the store) on the tail rack. Step #2: be pissed and stay pissed for 3 hours while some parts don’t fit quite right and another is damaged (my fault on that last one). I ended up pounding on one of the steel mounting bars with a hammer in order to widen it by a few millimeters so it would fit. In hindsight, and after speaking with a friend about it, I should have expected that everything wouldn’t fit quite right; it is a relatively complex design by necessity. I was almost to tears when I inadvertently stripped (re-threaded would be a nice way of putting it) one of the bolt mounts with what I felt was rather light twisting of a bolt. This brought on my verbalizing that I “should’ve bought a Japanese bike”, although I’ve now calmed down a bit and am willing to give my BMW the chance that it deserves.

Serendipity intervened as I pulled out an extra bolt from the previous week’s trip to the hardware store that was a bit shorter. I was able to power through the newly formed threads and tighten it down quite nicely. With a bit of help from Lindsay, who so perfectly held the panniers in place while I marked the holes in which to drill, it all came together in the final hour and a half and I was beaming with self-satisfaction and holding my back in pain. Stooping under a bike all afternoon can wear you out. Between the hammer beating, the pulling of steel bars, the accidental re-threading of holes, the re-doing old work, and drilling of holes to install them just right, the pannier installation is by far the most difficult piece of mechanical work I’ve ever done. Part of me is still pissed at all my struggles, but more of me is very satisfied (and secretly relieved) that I was able to do it on my own.

There is one thing I’ve learned from all of this. I can appreciate why athletes sometimes have a hard time being magnanimous in victory: I love the way the panniers look on my bike and they’re solid as hell, but I don’t think I’d have had much of anything nice to say about them in the post-match press conference.

            After a year, I didn’t like it.  I wanted to quit, but she wouldn’t let me.  This seemed unfair to me, and it was in some respect, but, then, most of life is unfair to kids that age.  Probably because adults tend to know more of what’s good for kids than “fairness” ever did—my mom certainly did.  By the second year, I settled in, neither loving nor hating it: Cub Scouts became a habit.  I met some kids that I liked, but they were the kind of friends that you never invited over to play; I only saw them at Cub Scouts, but they were cool.

            Eventually, if you stick with it, you become a Boy Scout.  I remember being a Cub Scout and thinking that the Boy Scouts seemed really grown up.  They were practically adults, and a part of me wanted to be that; another part of me was ambivalent, but I’m not sure why.  I don’t remember being all that excited with being a Boy Scout, but I continued with it out of habit and a concern that my mother wouldn’t take kindly to me insisting on quitting.

            I’m glad I didn’t quit.  I joined Troop 167 and it was fun.  Immediately.  The first thing we, the new Scouts, did was go to summer camp at Camp Parsons on the shores of Puget Sound.  I can no longer recall one trip to camp from another, but I had many fun, engaging, and formative experiences while I was there.  One that sticks out is paddling a canoe into swells that were taller than me, sitting in the bow of the boat, as we headed out to complete another requirement of our canoeing merit badge: If we paddled hard enough, we could make it up over the wave without being driven back, then we came crashing down and did it all over again.  When it was all said and done, I’m sure we all felt a little tougher and a little braver than we’d been before breakfast.

            My scouting experience was different from any other I’ve heard of.  Troop 167 went on hikes, mostly overnight, every month.  We did a 20 and a 50 miles hike every summer.  Our “meetings” consisted mostly of playing games and learning cool stuff like how to fly fish and do CPR (not at the same time).  I once spent two weeks at the National Scout Jamboree and hated it.  My troop, playing hearts around a stump in a campsite while the guys assigned to cook that night prepared dinner, trying to keep as many bugs out of the food as possible, was way more fun than hanging with 20,000 Scout nerds in Virginia.  All I wanted was to leave that place and go on an adventure with my scouting buddies back home.

            Of course, it wasn’t all fun.  Nothing’s ever all fun.  I learned a ton from facing hardships and, for the most part, overcoming them.  One that came to mind the other day, stemming from the title of this post, was my first 50 mile hike.  It was early August on the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island.  I was only 12, a bit too young by the troop’s standards, but my mom thought I was fit enough and tough enough to go.  I had my doubts and protested, but not all that vehemently.  Besides, if you read the first part of this, you know that protesting wouldn’t have helped.

            I wasn’t fit enough or tough enough, at least at first.  I was weighed down by a 60+ pound pack and some serious hiking boots.  Sidebar: When I go backpacking now, my pack weighs about eight pounds before water and food and I wear running shoes.  I thought to myself, as I stood ready to begin hiking, “I don’t know what my mother was thinking.”  I still think that.

            I was slow.  I got tired quickly and could barely keep up.  By the end of the first day, I was so far behind that Dr. Belcher, one of our adult leaders, had to hang back and hike with me.  I think he even took some of the gear out of my pack.  I needed his help and encouragement to get to camp that first day.  I needed him to give me a drink of his water, to carry my tent, and, most importantly, to tell me that I could get there.  I really felt like I was going to die, like every step could be my last and I’d collapse on the trail and have to be carried out, unable to take another step.  I can’t thank him enough for this, as I’m sure it was not the vacation he’d planned for himself.

            The second day, I awoke with a bit of soreness, but feeling more energized nonetheless.  I started off a little stronger than the day before and, leaving early in order to not hold the group up as much, I stayed out in front for a while.  They eventually caught up, hiked with me for a while and, in the afternoon, left me behind.  They figured I’d be fine and would stumble into camp eventually.  Toward the end of the day, I was knackered again.  Almost as tired as I’d been the day before if not more so, however, after my experience the day before, I didn’t feel like I needed Dr. Belcher’s help.  I did, however, desperately want Dr. Belcher’s help.  I was suffering so mightily over the last couple miles.  My legs feeling like they might give out before I got there, but still, at the moment, able to take another step; always another step.  Dr. Belcher told me the day before that if you keep putting one foot in front of the other, you’ll get there eventually.  I kept repeating this to myself in my head.

My mind was split between hoping that Dr. Belcher or someone would come bounding down the trail toward me to help me carry my pack the rest of the way to camp, and, at the same time, fearing that they would do just that.  I wanted to be capable of doing it myself.  I didn’t want them to think I couldn’t do it; that I wasn’t good enough or strong enough.  I hoped and feared for the exact same thing until, finally, Dr. Belcher came walking back toward me down the trail.  My heart was in my throat.  I was relieved and sickened all at once.  I don’t remember if he took my pack, but either way he walked with me the last mile or so to camp.  I felt bad that he’d come back, but I was also relieved.

That evening, the leaders decided that, given the trail conditions, we’d have to go back the way we came, rather than complete the through hike.  Rather than turn around right away, we took a day trip up to a lake.  The following day we hiked a short ways back and camped near the beach.  The next day we’d hike all the way back to the cars.

I was sent out early the final day, as had been the routine by now, only this time I felt great.  I kept waiting for my legs to tire but they didn’t.  I was moving!  I passed the lighthouse that I remembered was at least three or four miles from where we’d made camp.  It was still pretty early.  I was concerned that no one had caught up yet, but I figured I’d keep going and they’d catch me eventually.  I managed to stay out in front for the first five or six miles.  When they finally caught up, I was a bit relieved to see them—I was beginning to fear something had happened to them.  They couldn’t believe that they hadn’t caught up to me yet, and were concerned with where I’d gone off to as well.

I hiked with them for a long time before, one by one, they slowly pulled away.  By the final couple miles, my feet were killing me and my legs were tiring, but I refused to slow down.  I wanted to finish strong.  I sure as hell didn’t want any help.

About a mile from the car one of the much older Scouts (I can no longer remember his name, I think he was 16) came running down the trail toward me.  “Give me your pack, we’ve gotta go; we need to hurry to catch the last ferry so we can get home tonight.”

“I’m fine, I can carry it.”  I replied.

“No, really, I’ve gotta take it; we need to run.”  He paused.

I wanted to object, but before I could, he added, “Can you run?”

In hindsight, this was a fair question, but at the moment, I thought, “I’m tired as hell and I don’t give a damn!  I can do anything you can do!”

I begged off of letting him carry my pack and I hiked/jogged down the trail.  It was obvious that we were faster with him carrying the pack, so when he asked again, I gave it to him.  We ran/fast walked all the way to the car.

The reason I tell this story is that the other night, Lindsay dropped her bike at a red light.  This is no big deal; I think I’m the only person I know who hasn’t done this, and I’m sure my time will come when I’ll do this same stupid, mindless thing.  She did it on a steep hill a block from our apartment, and called me to come help her get it home.  I was disappointed and frustrated.  Not in her dropping it, but in her calling me to fix a situation that I felt she could fix on her own.  She didn’t feel confident in being able to start the bike on the hill.

Reflecting on it today, it mirrored my experience on my first 50 miler.  I’d helped Lindsay out of a jam once before when she needed it.  She’d ridden for too long in the cold and rain and was becoming hypothermic—she’s tough as hell, maybe too much for her own good at times.  She needed my help that first time.

This time around, she didn’t need my help.  The look on her face when I arrived seemed at once one of relief and of disappointment.  Relieved that I’d come to help but disappointed too.  She said later that she “needed my help.”  But I replied that she “wanted my help.”  Lindsay agreed that she had only wanted my help.  She was pretty down about it all night, but she’s over it now.  I suspect the next time this happens and I come to help, I’ll be shooed away.

All this reminiscing has me increasingly excited for our upcoming summer adventure.  I’m sure there will be adversity, difficulty, failures, and successes.  I don’t know what’s going to come, but I’m sure it will be formative.  I can hardly wait.

The problem with finding an apartment is that we have motorcycles.  Finding covered parking or, even better, an individual locking garage is not easy.  It’s essential though, as it saves about 5 minutes when you leave and have to remove a bike cover and put it inside and another 20 minutes or so when you return home and have to come inside, wait for the exhaust to cool off, then go back outside and put the cover on the bike.  Plus, covering your bike in Seattle doesn’t work nearly as well as simply parking it under cover.  As Seattle natives know, the water gets in EVERYTHING.

I feel much like the owner of a large dog, only instead of being told, “no,” we’re simply told,  “yeah we don’t have parking,  butif you’ve lived on the Hill before, you know it’s not too bad, the farthest I’ve had to park is two blocks away, but usually I can find a spot closer.  I imagine it’s even easier with a motorcycle, eh?”  Thanks for understanding.  It’s early in the process, and I’m still hopeful we’ll be able to find a place we really like with, at least, covered parking.  I’d really love my own garage where I could keep all my tools, but that may be a bit of a long shot–they exist, but they’re few and far between.

Once we move in, I’m planning on really getting down to business with planning our itinerary and everything else relating to the trip that needs planning.  It’ll be much easier to do if we’re living in the same place and have all of our maps, books, etc. in the same spot.  Wow, it just occurred to me how much my life’s changed since I first hatched this motorcycle road trip plan.  I don’t know what to say except damn.  Oh yeah, one thing I will say is that if you know of any one bedrooms opening up before May 1st on Capitol Hill, you should definitely let me know, especially if we can rent a garage space with it.

That’s all for now; I’m tentatively planning on riding my bike out to Lake Chelan on one of the first to weekends in May to help my buddy Rob clean up around his family’s cabin in anticipation of summer.  I’ll let you know when that’s for sure and if I decide to get a windshield before then.  I’m actually kind of growing to like having the wind in my face . . . we’ll see.

Josh

            At any rate, Tim rides his bike quite a bit, so it was a long time coming for us to get out on the road together.  The weather this weekend was predicted to be spotty at best, so when the clouds broke around 11 on Saturday morning, Tim called me up to see about getting out and about.  It looked like it was still raining toward the Cascades, so we headed to West Seattle, rode down Alki, around Lighthouse Point, and headed down the water toward the Fauntleroy ferry dock.  At that point, I didn’t know what was to the south, so Tim took the lead as we rode farther south, way farther south.

            Right about the time I noticed the street numbers had reached the triple digits, Tim, who was apparently almost lost himself, took a quick right turn onto a side street.  I love my BMW.  Have I said that yet?  I slammed on the brakes—FYI: NEVER slam on the brakes of a motorcycle, unless you’ve got ABS.  I love my BMW.  I went from 40 to 5 like I had glue on my tires and furiously shifted from 4^th all the way down to 1^st in order to not overrun the corner.  Tim explained that there was a house down this way that he had been the engineer on (he’s a structural engineer) and he’d like to check it out, if I didn’t mind.

            We continued down this side street for another couple blocks before turning down what looked like a long driveway.  The narrow road followed a stream through a greenbelt in a wide gully.  We rode on and on, down the road, approaching (I assumed) Puget Sound.  After more than a mile of nothing but trees, stream and rough, unlined, narrow roadway, we emerged onto a small, seaside community of expensive-ass houses.  There were only one or two dozen homes down there, most of them literally right next to the beach.  The neighbor eyed us suspiciously as we hopped off our bikes and pulled them around to park them next to Tim’s house.

            Ignoring the “Do Not Enter” signs, we slipped through the fence and Tim proceeded to explain some of the finer points of this particular project.  He pointed out the two vertical steel beams that weren’t there; they’d been forgotten by the contractor and now had to be added much later.  How you could not notice a 30 foot expanse of weight baring horizontal wood beam with no support is beyond me.  After noting the amazing view and a bit more poking around, we hopped on the bikes and headed back to Alki for a cup of coffee.

            When we parked our bikes near the Alki Bakery, I noticed a bald eagle sitting in the tree overhead.  It was stunningly large; it sat with such regal authority about it that I was instantly reminded of the blue eagle character on the Muppets.  Don’t ask me why, that’s just what came to mind.  I’ve seen Eagles up close before, but I’m still mesmerized by the size of them.  They’re beautiful creatures.

            After coffee, we headed home our separate ways.  I took the West Seattle Bridge to 99, which is completely out of the way for me.  It would’ve been much faster to take I-5 to 520 and then exit into Montlake, but by this time the sun was setting and I thought it’d be cool to see the city and the sunset from the top of the viaduct.  I further lucked out as there were no cars within a quarter mile of me in back or in front, so I could enjoy the view without fear of being killed.  The city was marvelous in the light of the setting sun.  So much so, I was compelled to exit before the tunnel and ride through downtown toward Eastlake, which I followed around to the University Bridge, then turned right and headed home.  As I approached my house, with every passing block, it dawned on me that I was growing increasingly disappointed to have my ride come to an end.

            This is what I love about motorcycle riding, or maybe it’s why I love it in the first place: In a car, the more time it take to get somewhere, the more monotonous it becomes.  On a bike, the longer the route you take, the more you see, hear, smell, and feel.  You experience the world in a whole different way that IS the difference between savoring the journey and enduring it.

This seemed like a particularly good plan after her first day of class, as she was very quick to learn and one of the more comfortable and capable students. Things were going great until the final test, which you have to pass to earn your riding endorsement. She did great with the difficult stuff, like executing a figure eight in a very small rectangular box, but when it came time to break from about 25 mph within a certain distance, she got a little too excited, locked up the front tire, and introduced both her bike and her ass to the pavement. As you’d assume, crashing during the final test results in an automatic failure. On the bright side, you get to come back and take it as many times as you want.

That’s what Lindsay did yesterday, and this time she passed. It was a bitter sweet day for me however, as my boys soccer team (the Eagles), which I’ve coached for the past four years, was eliminated from our post-season tournament, marking the end of our season and of our time together: Almost all the team are seniors in high school, so they’ll be moving on next year.

I was reflecting on how these two events stand in particular contrast to each other: As I explained to Lindsay later on yesterday, the loss of our game (or tie actually, but we’re out just the same) marked a very clear end to a period of life for my players. During senior year, you have a number of experiences that, it occurs to you, are your last time doing something or seeing someone or being somewhere or whatever. You begin to realize that your life is unfolding now, not in the future as you’d always imagined it would. Things are happening that will never happen again, doors are closing, opportunities are vanishing. All your youth, you’ve been told about your future and how you must prepare for it and how great it’ll be and how you can do anything if you put your mind to it. The world is one great big opportunity. With my guys being eliminated from the tournament, it became real to them that they’d never play together in a competitive match again–I’m sure they all saw this on the horizon, but there’s something about these events, these “lasts”, that can’t be appreciated until they’ve happened. At worst you’re sad, and at best, it can be filed away as happy and quaint memories that can never, for better or worse, be recaptured.

In contrast to this, was Lindsay passing her motorcycle riders course. We both viewed this as an assumed step, an event that would happen, but it was still very exciting to get it done. I know Lindsay was very excited, as evidenced by the little dance she’s done a few times where she jumps up and down while bobbing her head side to side and singing something like, “I passed, I passed, I passed”. As minor as it seems, it’s really the biggest and most necessary step we had to take in order for her to join me on this trip–there’s some famous quote about the first step being the biggest, which is often times BS, but in this case, it was true.

This motorcycle adventure began to really unfold on the same day my time with my boys team and their time together ended. I was very happy for Lindsay when she told me she passed, and I loved seeing the “I passed” dance, but it was hard for me to be in a good mood yesterday.

If life could be thought of as a swim, everything prior to heading off to college and leaving high school behind is the time spent on the side of the pool or dock or on shore or wherever, waiting to jump in; deciding how you’ll swim, and for how long, maybe even where to. Once you jump in, you can never return to exactly the same shore. I always liked the back stroke (not for any symbolic reasons, it was just easier for me), and I think that’s representative of the way I live my life: cognizant of where I’m going, but able to look back and appreciate where I’ve been. I always loved the feel of the water washing over my shoulders and how you didn’t have to see where you were going, just check in every once in a while. You could almost just lay there and look up at the sky and still call it swimming.

My boys team is no longer washing over me, nor will they ever again. I can only see that behind me and appreciate it. Between appreciating the water washing over my shoulders and looking into the past at where I’ve been, I can look over my shoulder at the future and this great road trip that I’ll be embarking on this summer–it seems more real now than before. Anytime big life events pass by you, it seems to bring the future into sharper and more immediate focus.

Next up, is beginning to plan the trip. My dad had orginally said he was interested in joining me for a portion of it, but this was before I decided to do it on a bike. I doubt I can talk him into getting a bike and joining us on it, but you never know. I suppose a car would work too, but it may not be quite the same for him. We’ll see . . .

Josh

PS to Bonnie

I was only kidding about the bike for Allegra (mostly), but would you be averse to me trying to talk dad into it? That “I’m too old” line’s not gonna cut it for an excuse.

I left from Seattle across 520 toward Redmond where I took 202 north into Bothell and Highway 9. The only problem is that 202 doesn’t run into 9 like my map said it did—that or I’m an idiot that needs better signs. It’s probably the latter. At any rate, I found myself by hopping on 522 and heading into Bothell. I figured I’d stop by my dad’s place and show ‘em all the new bike, but my dad Bill and step-mom Bonnie had just left. I did get to say high to my sister Allegra who was on her way to work. Perhaps I can talk her into getting one of these things one day . . . you never know.

At any rate, I took highway 9 to Arlington and then 530 east toward Darrington. Darrington’s a great town situated near the Glacier Peak Wilderness. I’ve been through there many times on hiking and climbing trips. The people are nice and the scenery is spectacular; unfortunately, I didn’t quite make it to Darrington. I did, however, verify what I’d been told by a few people who are in the know regarding the F 650 GS: I NEED A WINDSHIELD! (thanks Chris, I’ll be checking on that soon)

My God, it was cold beyond belief! I turned around about 10 miles short of Darrington with a foot of snow on the ground all around me (the road was clear and wet) and bad weather moving in—it was probably about 34 degrees, both according to my observations and the NOAA weather report for Darrington. I was absolutely freezing by the time I turned around. Not for having dressed too lightly, but the 60 mph wind in my chest and face was hard for my circulatory system to overcome—this is where the windshield comes in. I figured I was fine as long as I was shivering and that’s just what I did all the way home.

All told, it took about four and a half hours of riding and I felt miserable for much of it, but the views through the clouds where stunning and it was a ton of fun riding the BMW for a longer period of time. Did I mention that my butt fell half-asleep at one point? I think it might’ve been related to the cold as much as the seat.

At any rate, I made it home and spent the evening trying to warm up. I did eventually, after turning the heat in my apartment up past 70. I’ve got to go now . . . gotta check out some windshield options online. Cheers and have a great New Year,

Josh

PS to Justine,

You were right about the heated grips. They’re money.