JUNE 5, 2011

SUNDAY, JUNE 5, 2011
The Participants and the Machines

Photo by Don Rosenfield

For me, The Big Motorcycle Adventure starts on the evening of June 16, when I will be leaving Vancouver, BC, heading south, with a destination of Placerville, CA (972 miles), home of long-time friend, Dale Leyse.  Along the way, I will be making stops to see my nephew, Mike Lafo, just south of Tacoma, WA, and Tom Winter, a friend from college days, and his wife Margery, who live in Ashland, Oregon, just north of the California border.  My brother, Al, will be leaving San Diego on Friday, June 17, and meeting me at Dale's place (546 miles) on  Saturday, June 18.


The following day, Sunday, June 19th, we will be riding to Reno, Nevada, to meet Al's old Army buddy, Tom Bodine.  From Reno, we will be riding west across Nevada - including the so-called "Loneliest Road in America" (Rt. 50 to Ely, Nevada) - north through Idaho, up to Seeley Lake, Montana to visit family, then further north, up to Canada and back to Vancouver.  From there, Al and Tom will head back to their respective homes.

While I typically get around in my Kevlar Man Power Suit (see above), on this trip, given my mortal companions, I will be resigned to traveling via the primitive mode of Motorcycle, with two veterans of the road (last summer, Al and Tom rode together on a trip around California, a bit of Arizona, through Nevada, "Utah, Utah Utah," back to Nevada for Tom and California for Al.  The trip for Al was around 2,200 miles and for Tom, a "gruelling" 1,900 miles.  "And that's the unvarnished truth," says Tom).


At the moment, we are each getting our preparations in order, going through the list of items to take along, and then figure out how, exactly, it's all going to fit.  Unlike the wilderness horseback trip that Dale and I went on in 1999, we won't have additional horses and mules, onto whom we can load a gigantic pile of goods (half of which, on the wilderness trip, was beer).  Similar to that trip, however, I fully expect that a certain part of my anatomy will suffer unmercifully.

THE PARTICIPANTS

Joe, Vancouver, BC

Tom, Reno, Nevada

Al, Spring Valley, California

We each have our story of how we ended up on these endlessly fascinating transporters of pleasure and, perhaps, in the telling of the tale of The Big Motorcycle Adventure, we'll regale you with the details of our inner Marlon Brando (The Wild One), Steve McQueen (The Great Escape), Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider) or even Robert M. Pirsig (author, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).  Or not.


Although anyone on a motorcycle harbors a bit of the romantic view of a road as part of the world's connective tissue that could - any day now - send us off around the world (a la Carl Stearns Clancy, thought to be the first to do so, in 1912), confronting wild animals, bandits, treacherous roads, and fast food restaurants, we'll settle for a somewhat shorter trip: around 2,900 miles for me, approximately the same for Tom and around 4,000 for Al.  Al and Tom haven't completed their planning for the leg after reaching Vancouver, BC and dropping me off, so we'll have to wait and see what milage they will, ultimately, compile.  I expect varnished truth.

THE MACHINES

Joe's 2004 BMW R1150R

Tom's 2009 Suzuki V-Strom DL 1000

Al's 2007 Yamaha FJR 1300

Prior to the trip, I won't be posting every day, but will update with information pertinent to anyone following the trip, or considering a similar trip themselves.  Once underway, we will, occasionally, be in areas with limited connectivity to the Internet, so we are likely to miss a day here and there; more than two days missed, we are likely lost.  Anyone following The Big Motorcycle Adventure can certainly request information as well.


Next up: a Route Map.