When The Road Is Good

by | Jun 30, 2022 | Pics & Bits

America is beautiful thing…

Yesterday morning at Waffle House, Inez was my waitress. I told her I liked her name, she smiled and told me it was her grandmother’s name. She had a gold tooth.

Once in a while, when the road is good and the air temperature and humidity and the thrum of intake, ignition and exhaust are just so, motorcycling creates its own ethereality. Yesterday was like that.

Last night I walked from my motel down the hill to the Chevron station and bought a can of Corona. I handed the kid at the counter some bills and change and he noticed that one of my coins wasn’t a quarter, it wasn’t a US coin. He offered me a quarter for it. I told him that it’s probably worth fifty cents some place, but he could have it for a quarter. He’s gotten a lot of wheat pennies and a couple of silver certificate dollars over the years. The beer was cold.

An Odd and Fitting Talisman

by | Jun 25, 2022 | Pics & Bits

America is a beautiful thing…

In the Army, I was a reconnaissance specialist assigned to the 1/1 Cavalry Squadron at O’Brien Barracks in Schwabach, West Germany. We spent several months of the year in the field and I needed a knife, a heavy, general purpose knife for all the cutting, prying, slicing, scraping, tasks living in the field and sleeping on the ground and in jeeps and tracks and eating out of a mess kit required. I bought one at the PX, probably in 1976.

From the PX at O’Brien Barracks

I got out of the Army in Europe and hitchhiked south; I used that knife to slice cheese and bread in small towns in France and shuck oysters on a dock in Spain (of course I cut myself, have you ever tried to shuck oysters?).

It was on my belt when I was attacked on a beach in Morocco (I used a rock from our fire pit to crush a man’s shoulder, it didn’t occur to me to reach for the knife). Later I used it to slice and crumble hashish as I wandered through the markets of Tangier, Fez, Rabat and Casablanca with stitches and a broken arm.

I used it to scrape the head gasket off my brother’s Triumph Bonneville in a campground in San Luis Obispo, cut choke cable housings to make a throttle cable for a Moto Guzzi Eldorado in Daytona Beach.

It was in my luggage when I moved to Tokyo and on my hip every day for 13 months as I rode a Honda XL250 through 21 countries across three continents; a sailors tool on a rented sailboat in Thailand, a camping tool in Australia, a backpacking tool in Nepal, a tool for cleaning chickens bought live in Zaire markets.

It was there when Eli (my son) and I rode to Prudhoe Bay and when Coco (my daughter) and I camped at the Grand Canyon and when Jane (my wife ) and I stared in amazement at the VLA (Very Large Array, a radio telescope in New Mexico). It opens freeze-dried packets and baked beans in a can with equal facility.

It’s here with me now, an odd and fitting talisman for my wondering, wandering life. And it’s sharp. 

A Damn Nice Way To End The Day

by | Jun 22, 2022 | Pics & Bits

America is a beautiful thing…

Riding a motorcycle in 103 degree weather across Iowa and Missouri, north to south, is not a story, no matter how sweaty your t-shirt.

Chatting it up with a bearded, long-haired local in a camo-schemed 70’s Chevy 4×4 pickup idling along a gravel track in a secluded State Recreation Area is not a story, it’s a movie. And you know what happens. Except nothing happened, there were five kids in the back of the truck and they’d been swimming ‘dahn tuh crick’. They waved as they idled away.

Riding a motorcycle through St. Louis in 80 mph rush hour traffic, hot and tired, could be a story, but only if you don’t make it. Close calls don’t count.

An abandoned Red Crown gas station with Premium still priced at $0.299 is cool but without characters or narrative it’s not a story. But it was great background for the Revival.

Having breakfast for dinner at Waffle House is not a story. It’s breakfast (scrambled eggs and a waffle). The young waiter was curious and chatty and bad at his job and he wanted my story. For himself. (I love Waffle House)

The wisps of cool as I rode into the evening, the temperature on the dash gauge dropping in little fits below 100 degrees for the first time in hours and then below ninety so that the feel of the wind became cool, refreshing, ethereal. Not a story, but a damn nice way to end the day.

That’s the story.

I’m in Poplar Bluff, Missouri.

Premium still priced at $0.299