Motorcycles Bartenders F-Bombs

 

East on 40 out of Steamboat, over Rabbit Ears Pass, and route 14, an hour to Walden, CO, remote.  Went over Cameron Pass (10,276'), and down along the river: Cache La Poudre, and the Fort Collins area; route 14 stretched out over the plains for a hundred miles to the next real town.  We watched a threatening dark to the east, dead ahead, loom, darken, and splatter us with big drops, just as we pulled into Sterling.  Refuge in a gas station, then a nearby Wal-Mart.  When we got a motel room, there were warning signs at the desk about high nitrates in the water.  Warning signs at the hotel desk. The girl there said it was from fertilizer seeping into the ground water.  Another girl warned us about the uranium from the mines.  They all had a nice glow.  Chernobyl Glow.  We watched the weather channel and it didn't look good:  half-dollar sized hail was falling nearby.  So we drank beer. Interstate 76 in Colorado runs smack into Interst...

    Eastport is about as far east as you can get in the continental United States, and is just across a narrow channel from Canada, and our phones didn't know where we were;  GPS confusal. Mine made weird noises, then shut off. Rose's said she was being charged a $2.00 "global fee" for every text she made in Bar Harbor. Bought some cheap US gasoline before getting into the line of cars waiting to cross the border into Canada. The female Canadian border officer asked us questions like, "…where are you going?”(that was easy) "…how long are you going to be in Canada?", and "…what is your license plate?" Rose and I answered pretty much simultaneously, and gave somewhat different answers. But it was enough to arouse Canadian Border Officer suspicion, and the lady, who seemed so nice, then gave us a yellow slip of paper, and told us to pull to the side for an "immigration check." We waited in line while customs officers pulled bottles of l...

4 AM sound of thunder. Lightening flashed through the spaces in the thick motel drapes. There was the hissing of a hard rain. I fell back asleep and dreamed: three girls from my high school, wearing tight capri pants, so tight, I was singing, and I had my old motorcycle, the leaky Triumph. Those pants! When I woke, I put on the weather channel. It was a deluge, flashes of lightening, rumbling thunderclaps. We sat there, drank coffee, and watched the radar, looking for a break in the storm. We saw a break and made a run for it. Rode through the last remnants of the storm on route 36. Raining hard, I couldn't see a damned thing, just put the flashers on and hoped for the best. Trucks. Lotta trucks. Came up out of the storm, and rode 36 into Hannibal, and crossed the Mississippi River. Stayed on 36 in Illinois, and poured on the coal, 70-80 mph, right into Springfield, where we picked up I-55 north. We got onto route 24 in Chenoa, and continued east at an easy 60 mph. Smooth, except f...

 “Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive”  ― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values “In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.  “The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn't any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it's right. If it disturbs you it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.”  ― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values “The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.”  ― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Exit 20 into Laconia, THE BIG EVENT, CLUSTERFUCK, the three T’s:  TOURISTS, TEE SHIRTS, AND TRAFFIC. Spent close to A HALF HOUR OF STOP AND GO, between Weirs Beach, and Meredith. Can’t split lanes, cause there’s cops everywhere. Bikes are running hot. Get me the fuck out of here! Went north on I 93 to Lincoln; made eye contact with a black bear that was running on the side of the highway. And I found my way to Mount Washington, where I paid my $15 admission for a rare opportunity: THE MOUNTAIN WAS MOTORCYCLES ONLY. NO CARS, NO TRUCKS…MOTORCYCLES ONLY. This is a spectacular and dangerous mountain road, and the weather was beautiful and clear. The road is narrow and partially dirt above the tree line. There were steep drop offs, narrow, tight curves, and no guard rail. It was first and second gear all the way up. So I took a few pictures at the top and I rode back down, testing my bike on the sharp curves, testing the brakes, whipping her a little hard, downshifting, until I got behi...

In the middle of the day the big doe exploded into my path and things began to happen very quickly. It was a sunny day, mild for November. My wife and I were out for an afternoon on the blue Super glide, tooling along on a straight stretch of two lane at about 50 mph. Warm brown weed fields bordered the highway, the same warm brown as the hide of a deer. The thick trunk of a massive roadside maple hid the furry blur until we were almost upon it, and then it was there in front of me, eyeballs wide with fear, hooves slipping on the asphalt, instinctively, my brakes, front and rear, were locked up tight, and my wife and I were screeching into the unavoidable collision. The front wheel banged her squarely in the left hind quarter and she spun off and brushed my leg as we passed. I managed to control the wobbling front end and scrubbed off the remaining speed to stop in my lane. In my left mirror I saw her skid awkwardly across the road and go down hard in the ditch on the opposite side, al...

                                                                           Memphis As I write this, my boots are stuffed with newspapers, hopefully, they will dry. I was going to visit Graceland until I saw the forecast. I'd rather get some miles, than look at Elvis' junk. Leaving Memphis this morning, I said "Rose…that's route 64, right outside our hotel." So we followed 64 through the city. A bad lane change in commuter traffic, quickly funneled us onto a bridge over the Mississippi River, and into Arkansas. So we came back over the river, and promptly got lost in Memphis. Yeah, they got some rough neighborhoods. But we found I 40, and blasted through all the construction zones, and out of the city. We found the confusing route 64, and then 100, in Whiteville. Eastbound. Somewhere out near Perryvil...

 Everybody knows the Johnny Cash song about Winnemucca, but I rode into town looking for gas, hot off Interstate 80. I'd just filled up and was drinking bottled water with Rose at an outdoor table overlooking the campers and cars clogging around the pumps. Young miss big swinging hips sways on past, and puts something in through the open window of her old crappy car, then sits down at our table with a bottle of iced tea. Nice cleavage. Sweaty. Rose gets up and walks away.  "Is it gonna rain?" I ask.  There were clouds, there were. And she proceeds to tell me how she hopes not, because she's moving to Carson City, and she's lived all her life in Winnemucca.  And she's not gonna drive in Carson City, (she'll make her boyfriend do it), because of the traffic.  The Boyfriend has family there, but "we're not gonna live together," oh no.  And her daddy has a lot of junk cars on the property, and that embarrasses her, and she's gonna get a new j...

 Route 666. The number of "the beast," so famous, in fact, that New Mexico, Utah and Colorado changed the road's designation to an unoffensive, politically correct 491. People used to steal the signs…there were accidents, folks saw apparitions, packs of wild dogs, and flaming trucks doing 130 MPH, down the center line. Florida might have one, Texas and Ohio might also, and I just recently saw a sign for "666 Hogback Road," in Virginia, off Interstate 81. But  Pennsylvania has a beautiful stretch of road, designated ROUTE 666. It's rural and runs through the Allegheny Forest, in the western section of the state. Some of the signs, I noticed, were mounted pretty high on the pole, probably to deter thievery, and I didn't see any flaming trucks or roving packs of dogs. Get there before they steal the signs.