Fort Collins Trip

Last night I was sitting at the bar talking to Andy, who over the last few years has become a valued good friend, about the challenges I've been facing with riding. If I try to go any distance there are neck and back muscles that will spasm so painfully that for moments I go blind. The muscles will lock but I won't notice until I try to move my head at which point I'm greeted with a searing 10 out of 10 unbearable lightning strike of pain that interrupts my vision and overwhelms my being and makes being on the bike dangerous.

"Pain is not much a of deterrent for you, is it?" she had once asked. I thought it was a compliment at the time but have grown to understand that it was not. Pain is a signal. It informs. However, most of us who know pain for too long adapt and our baseline changes and we no longer notice pain in the same way. When it is not severe enough, it no longer informs. It gets lost in the noise. As a result, we do not take it into account. We don't pay attention to the signal. We do not adjust especially in those cases where a simple adjustment or change in behavior could make the signal stop. "Pain is weakness leaving the body." is one of those military slogans one hears. 

But there is pain that comes from weakness, weak muscles straining under a load, and a different pain that informs of structural problems that can lead to malfunction and disability. The problem with those who have become too comfortable with pain is they are no longer able to differentiate between the two. 

"I hurt. Pain is a thing of the mind. The mind can be controlled." to paraphrase Spock. 

A guy at the bar who had been listening in on the conversation chimed in, "Getting old sucks."

This has been a frequent refrain of late. More than one person has mentioned to me that maybe I am too old to be doing the things that I do. "You are no longer a young man." they will say. 

For quite a while now I've had a hypothesis. Maybe it is not being old that's the problem. Maybe because of having lived for longer and having developed certain habits over a longer period, the cumulative effect of those habits is the actual problem, not the "being old". Time since last movement in a particular way, not time being alive.

In a "state of nature" we would move much more than we do in this modern world. We would use the full range of  our musculature on a daily basis. But now, especially for us knowledge workers, we spend our days sitting hunched over machines or phones, our necks bent forward, slouching, and otherwise not using the full range of our joints and muscles. Slowly muscles get weak, other muscles get tight, the skeleton gets pulled out of alignment, and when it gets bad enough nerves start getting pushed against and Bad Things Happen(tm).

So maybe it's not being "old". Maybe it's just "time since last mobility". 

And then I realize it's been a couple of years since Duncan and I rode. We used to ride almost every weekend. At our height we would click off nearly 500 miles on a day ride, on a few occasions doing nearly 1000 miles in a weekend. But as his cancer became more a problem, he was no longer able to ride as far and then for the last two years not at all. Breaks my heart. Out of guilt and missing my friend, I wouldn't ride either. The bikes sat. We focused on doing things we could do together which turned out to be the sailboat, physical in its own right but not nearly the frequency.  I only got him out on the boat maybe 6 times if that. Guts me. I tell non-riders that motorcycling is strangely physical. After a long ride I'll often be sore. Not riding is not good for me. 

I was in the North Atlantic on a sailboat in a squall where, freezing and tight, I fell down some stairs while the boat was pitching. My arm got stuck on the handrail as the rest of my body went down. My right shoulder was not ok for some years afterwards. After it didn't improve for longer than I should have waited, I went to physical therapy and they worked on me a bit,  and gave me some exercises but I didn't gain any deeper understanding as to why they were prescribing the given exercises or what they suspected was the underlying problem.. The thing that struck me the most and that I had to adapt to was that the exercises were too easy. 1 pound weights. "If it hurts even the slightest bit, stop."  Wait, what?

Putting my ego aside is fairly easy for me so I did as I was told and I found myself amazed at how much even smallest effort could improve things. Also, it became clear to me that I was ignoring little signals, twinges of pain, that could have informed me of bigger problems to come. 

So did these exercises, but of course, once the pain wasn't there any more, I stopped. It's what humans do. 

And as one can predict, the problems recurred. I went on a 2000 mile earlier this year and things were sort of ok until they were not. It got so bad it took me most of a week to go 500 miles. 

So out of curiosity and with a desire to learn more about the reasons behind given recommendations, I've been following a few doctors of physical therapy on Instagram and that has provided me, over time, with a much better understanding. 

Did I do anything with this understanding? Did I actually put in the effort? 

No, of course not. 

A couple weeks ago, after a short 200 mile ride where I was in serious pain again I realized if I can't address this I'm not going to make it on my upcoming Colorado trip. I pondered not riding out. Facing that level of pain made me dread it and I wondered if maybe my days of long distance motorcycling were over. 

Then I remember this is not the first time that I've faced something like this. Back in the late 90's at the height of my illness, my joints hurt so much, I just didn't ride. There were several years there where I hardly rode at all. My mom would try to get me to give up motorcycling completely. Then I discovered The Diet to address my auto-immune disorder and I found I was able to ride again. Not too many years after that I went on my longest trip, 15,600 miles to Deadhorse, Alaska and back. 

So as a harbinger of doom, my back locked up on me during my day to day life. I was sitting at the bar talking to Andy about it realizing that if I was hurting that much just in my day to day life sitting there talking to Any, things on the road were not going to go well. 

So I decided to "just do". I had a list of physical therapy exercises designed to address my issues, at least as far as I understood them, but I knew that I had not given them the full attention they required in previous attempts. So each morning now I go through the list. But it's not just enough to do a given exercise or stretch, I find I have to be curious about it and probe the muscle and joint. For example there's a scalene stretch where while sitting on a chair you grab the seat with one hand and stretch your neck in the opposite direction. So I've tried this many times and have found it useless.

However, approaching it differently, clearly the developers of this stretch have some reason for it, or so I imagine, maybe there's some small detail that I am not getting. So as I tilt my head to the side for the stretch I tried adjusting the angle forward and back just a few degrees and noted a difference in pain. I'd stop at a given pain point making certain I wasn't pulling too hard and wait. And interestingly, over days, I've noticed every so slight increases in range of motion. 

After four days of going through various neck, shoulder, and arm exercises, I was no longer in day to day pain. 

"I guess this is just what you're going to have to do for the rest of your life." Andy said. 

"I suppose so." I replied. 

The other day, he messaged me, "Have you done your exercises?". 

A good friend.

Sleep had been elusive for the last few days. My departure was delayed by 24 hours as I tried to get the bike and everything else ready for this trip. 

But at the crack of 14:30 I left. 

 

I needed to stop at Bob's BMW (now Bob's Motorcycles because they are now a Ducati dealership as well) for an oil filter. I figure I'll change the oil when I'm in New Mexico. It'll be due. 

I stood at the empty counter for a while when Drew walked up. It had been ages since I've seen him. I didn't recognize him at first since it has been so long. He offered his condolences about Duncan and we got to talking about bikes, injuries, lost friends. I felt the pull of the road but decided, no, these are the moments that matter. I hadn't known it but Drew had been in a horrible deer collision accident. A deer ran out in front of his bike as he was doing about 80 ... ouch. He told me that he had contacts across the country and if I needed anything to contact him. 

He talked about his best friend, Paul, who coincidentally sold me my bike back in 1992. 

I walked out to my bike when a guy walked up, Todd, who I did not know. I think he works in the service department. He asked if I had had the bike painted so I told him the story of the engine-ectomy and how Duncan was the driving for behind getting this bike back on the road. We talked for a bit about my trip and he suggested that I try tandem base jumping in Moab. "Ummm. No. That's like jumping out of a perfectly good airplane." Apparently, that's something he's done 1300 times. Damn. 

I told him that I was planning to ride South to Arizona and then New Mexico.

"A real adventurer!" he said. 

After much longer than I had intended, I hit the road. My plan to manage pain is to stop every 60 minutes, which is surprisingly challenging. The desire is to always go. Over the next hill. Through the next pass. Stopping always always always feels wrong. 

But honestly, it's in the stopping where the memories are made. 

I stopped at a rest stop on I70 and as if it couldn't get hit home more clearly, I was surrounded by half a dozen people morbidly overweight and so mobility constrained they were having trouble stepping up from the pavement to the sidewalk. The curb was higher than they could manage. I saw one guy spend a good five minutes trying to get back into his truck clearly in so much pain hardly able to walk. 

I pondered helping but I did not know how. 

There are an endless array of conditions people can have over which they can have precious little influence. And maybe these people were suffering from some of those. Without knowing their back stories there's no way of knowing, but there are probably a wider set of conditions that we do have at least some influence over. 

"Motion is medicine." they say. 

I decided to take a detour once I reached Breezewood and headed North instead of Northwest.

As I left the Sheetz parking lot the sun was perfectly aligned on the hill I approaching. It was blinding.

I'm in Altoona now. Weird town. 

The skies on the way up here were dramatic.

 

I rode 181 miles this afternoon, the majority of it interstate, a.k.a. SuperSlab. I haven't  been able to ride slab for that long in years now. My back, neck, shoulders hurt but they didn't lock up. 

From here I only have 431 miles to go to meet Jay in Michigan. I may have challenged him to a game of pool that I am sure to lose. 

"Why are you going to Michigan?"

"Pool"

"Makes sense". 

 

Many many years ago, by human standards, my sister had a friend who had an Alaskan Timber Wolf, which was explained to me was illegal. Her friend had claimed on paperwork it was something like 2% Husky and as a result was allowed to keep it as a pet. I don't know the circumstances under which she came to "own" this wolf but I think she had it from when it was very little. 

She visited my sister in Maryland. I forget the year but I got to meet the wolf who she had brought with her to my parents house, apparently because it could not be left alone. This is all a very long time ago and my memory of these events and the stories behind them are imperfect. I remember how struck I was upon meeting the wolf how tall and lean it was with nasty nasty teeth. It was honestly scary looking and I was quite concerned about the safety of all involved, but to my surprise it was so very very timid. My sister's Basset hound, Faust, would dominate it repeatedly which amused my sister to no end. 

I remembered thinking, "This is not ok." to have this wild animal in this context. I thought it seemed afraid. I was fascinated by how it did not behave like a dog at all. When it smelled something it would raise its nose up not down to the ground. Unlike a dog, it did not seem to understand hand motions or facial expressions at all. I felt it was endlessly confused and out of sorts. I wish I could remember her name, but she showed us that any smell the wolf encountered that was unfamiliar would prompt it to become one with the smell. It was in the living room with us and she sprayed some Lysol on the carpet and the wolf immediately started rolling around in it. 

This animal was wild. Despite its timid demeanor one could feel this animal was not in a context that was anything like it had evolved in. I remember my sister telling me how much work it took to keep this wolf and how it would howl so much that it became a problem for her friend. One could just feel that this animal had not evolved to be around humans. I felt for the critter but knew so much less back then than I do now. There was a part of me that thought it was really cool to have met a wolf as I had, as a little kid, pondered that an old wolf was my "spirit animal", after having been introduced to that concept. 

In contrast I remember a dog that a friend of mine, Megan, had encountered in the woods on one of her hikes, a hound that had apparently been abandoned some while ago. It approached her and as I remember her describing it it was clear the hound was in bad shape and looking for help. The hound saw her and approached the human clearly looking for for help.

Interesting.

She tried her best to find the owner, most likely a hunter, but to no avail so after quite a bit of effort she adopted the dog. If I remember correctly she named her Maybe. In contrast to the wolf, Maybe was a socialized animal who knew how to be around humans and had clearly grown up around them, and for some reason that is true of "domesticated" dogs and not wild animals, knew how to fit in. Maybe was a wonderful dog that I met a few times.  

I ponder the behavior of the wolf in contrast to the abandoned dog. Dogs have been around humans long enough that one can argue they have evolved traits that cause them to be able to live comfortably, as far as we can tell, with humans and humans have also developed an affinity for dogs as evidenced by research that says that losing a dog evokes many of the same brain circuitry as losing an offspring. 

There is, however, an in-between class of canine. There are canines that have all the physical evolved characteristics of domesticated dogs but have not grown up in that context, but instead have grown up in the wild, more in the context of the wolf. 

Feral dogs. Unsocialized but evolved to be with humans. Well, at least that is a story we tell ourselves. 

There is a story of a particular feral dog that has occupied my mind for some years now. A good Facebook friend who I have never met in person, Samantha, took in a feral dog, and for years has been telling this captivating story of slowly, not taming, but befriending this feral dog meeting her where she was, with the patience and compassion of a saint or Zen master, accepting that this was dangerous and managing the danger. 

And even though this feral dog developed in the context of the wolf, I can tell from the stories, that wolf behavior is not learned. There are vestiges, echoes, hints of a life with humans the dog would have been better suited to. Yes, it adapted as many critters can adapt, but the infrastructure for something different, maybe better, was built in. And with Samantha's work befriending this dog and showing her nervous system a safety she has never known, more doglike behaviors have started to show, sometimes dramatically.

I hope to visit with Samantha and her husband Ron on this trip in Moab and meet the dog that has been the subject of so many stories I have read and has fueled my thinking. 

How is any of this in any way related to a cross country motorcycle trip? 

Many people talk about the reason "why they ride". They tell stories of freedom, individuality, etc. Some talk about "wind therapy". 

I have often pondered the question, "Why do I ride?" The original motivation for riding to Colorado was because Kaitlyn, Bruce's oldest, is getting married and I was told she wanted me there. I didn't even ponder for an instant flying out. I knew, as if it was a memory of a decision already made, that I was going to ride. 

It's a bad time of year to ride. Colorado is going to be cold. It's dangerous. Two wheels. Out in the elements. Heat. Cold. Dust. Bugs. Blinding Western setting sun. Traffic. Deer. Potholes. 

It would make so much more "sense" to fly out, go to the wedding and then fly back. 

But instead I ride despite the fact that I am in a great deal of pain. It costs ridiculously more in time, money, and effort than flying, but nevertheless I ride. 

Why?

When I was a little kid I was always drawn to wandering. As soon as I was allowed to, I would walk as far as I could. When I got my first bicycle I would explore every trail I could find. And then when I got my first motorcycle, at the ripe old age of 7, I would ponder going farther. As I was permitted to go a bit farther, I would explore. Occasionally I'd encounter other kids on their proper dirt bikes, I had been given a Harley X90 two stroke street bike which I rode on trails with. Other kids had the cool thin knobby tired proper dirt bike. But they always wanted to ride so fast and irresponsibly. I wanted to go slowly but far. 

And when I got my first real street bike, it was a foregone conclusion I was going to use it to go somewhere. 

And that's how it's always been. I see a vehicle and I think of going. I never understood this at the time but see it clearly now in retrospect. 

On the Great 2010 Alaska trip of 2010 I began to understand that being Out There (Out Here?) brought me a calm that I did not know in my day to day life. On many trips after that, I found the same calm and would ask myself time and time again, "Why can't I feel at home the way I do on the road?" 

No other thing I did brought the same feeling. So I would tell myself, "I ride because it brings me a peace I have not known anywhere else."  It makes no sense. A two wheeled contraption hurtling me through time and space at dangerous velocities death constantly milliseconds away. 

Why? 

I ponder the feral dog evolved to live in a different context. 

Humans, as evidenced by the fact that they are now all over the planet, are a traveling species. While there are those of us who feel compelled to live in one spot there are others who are compelled to wander. 

Why does a dog chase a stick? Why does a dog want to go for walks and never get tired of it? 

Why do humans like language and stories? 

Why do I ride? 

Maybe the answer is simply I have inherited some recessive traits handed down that evoke the traveler and that somehow riding evokes enough of whatever it is. Maybe that's all there is to it. 

Interestingly, the only other thing I have found the evokes the same sense of peace, is sailing far. 

So much has happened over the last few days. So many stories to tell. So little time to tell them.

Dana sent me a message, "Why are you in Michigan. I thought you were going to Colorado?"

"I am. But I challenged a friend of a game of pool. Priorities!"

I rode up to Michigan because I challenged Jay to a game of pool. Meeting his family and the impressions, insights, and conversations and what they evoked could occupy a tome. There are just some humans you meet where you think, "More of these, please." 

There is so much to say, but it has gotten quite late. 

So I leave you with a some photos:

 

On the 2010 Epic Deadhorse, Alaska ride, I knew who I was writing for. There were all these new moms who were very very concerned about my untimely demise when I told them that I was riding my street bike, the bike I am on now, up the haul road of Ice Road Truckers fame all the way to Deadhorse and, oh by the way, those 424 miles are mostly unpaved they universally responded with, "You're going to die! You have to send me a text message or email every day to let me know you're ok!" After it got to be about 20 of them, I confided in one of them that there was no way I was going to be able to do this so she suggested, "Why don't you write a blog? That way we can all stalk you and when the updates stop we'll know roughly where you bit it?" 

This made sense to me. The rest is history. 

Since then, however, I've tried to write. I tried on the 2016 Trans-America Trail trip. I've tried again sporadically but the problem now is that I don't know who I am writing for. I have those who have asked me to write, but with no particular concerns. I now have a friends list here that spans so many domains. There are so many professional motorcyclists, world travelers, journalists, real adventurers, and others ... The vast majority of the moms that used to be concerned about my untimely demise have moved on away from social media. The thing about the moms was that I could ask myself the question, "What is it about this experience of traveling by motorcycle across this vast expanse that they would not know?" And that led me to see things from a different perspective and see what I was doing at the time through beginner eyes. And I wrote from that perspective not knowing anything about writing. 

But now I find myself a bit adrift. There are so many thoughts, ideas, and views on these trips, even through the "boring" sections, that I don't know what to capture and what to let slip into oblivion. There's something about being on a motorcycle out in the air alone over so many miles that opens the mind and calms the soul. There is time to think in a way I just seem to be unable to in the limiting walls of that cage I call my house. 

I remember years ago, Yun tried to convince me to try a helmet communicator, a Sena. I was skeptical about having some voice in my helmet. He convinced me by saying,"It'd be great for training." Duncan had similar reservations. Interestingly, the communicators changed everything for the better. There were years where Duncan and I would ride almost every weekend, and while over the decades we had known each other we would have good conversations, /NOTHING/ compared the conversations we would have while on our separate bikes most often riding twisty mountain roads. 

At one point he said, "So much of my being is focused on simple survival right now that the loud cacophony of voices I usually hear are silent and there's just enough focus left to have this conversation."

Megan said, referencing Buddhist thought, "It quiets the monkey voices."

There's a quiet Out Here. 

This trip is different than any of the longer motorcycle trips I've ever taken. Usually, I leave with a general idea of what direction I would like to go and then let circumstances dictate what happens. Adventure begins where the plan ends and I love those moments where things are redirected because of some unexpected event .... like that moment at a dusty automated gas station out in the Big and Flat when I first met Robert and after some conversation and questions he invited me to a saloon in Dodge City .... and suddenly I found myself on the Cannonball Centennial Ride.

However, for this trip I am doing something very different. I have a number of planned stops. Michigan was the first stop where I got resoundingly beaten in a 40+ games of pool. (There will be a rematch!) Now I am moving onto Fort Collins, Colorado to attend a wedding but following Route 34 based on a number of suggestions which is turning out to be a much nicer alternative to the super slab.

From there I have a very carefully curated week of routes to ride and specific places to see on specific dates thanks to Samantha who used to run a motorcycle touring company. She has generously provided me with an itinerary of amazing roads, stops, and experiences along the way I would never have been able to even consider let alone have access to. To say I am grateful for this would be an understatement. After laying out the initial plan (which if you are interested in you can see if you click on the Plan tab above, click Open Interactive Map, and zoom into the blue part on the left side of the map) she suggested she could tweak it based on the kinds of things I like and whatever my preferences are. 

I responded, "I would like to see this land through your eyes, through a perspective that is not my own." 

To a large degree I ride to get away from myself. If I ride fast enough, it takes a while for my demons to catch up and I have a moments peace.

However travelling like this means I am on a schedule and  I have an aversion to schedules because, well, I am sick and I never know how I am going to feel tomorrow and how far I might be able to go although in the last many years that has become somewhat less of a problem. 

So far so good, however. Today I rode 340 miles and while yesterday was a bit painful and involved 30 minute stops every hour, for some reason today suddenly the pain was a fraction of what it has been and for the first time in years I rode 194 miles non-stop and was fine. I was riding slower that I usually do. I have discovered that the pressure from the wind at 75 to 80 mph (all the officers in my friends list .. my speedometer is clearly inaccurate) stressed my neck. If I putt along at 65 mph it's much more tolerable so I am able to go further. 

And, as a result, for the first time in my life, I am spending a lot of time in the right lane getting passed like I'm standing still ... by Harleys. 

How the mighty have fallen. But then again, what makes humans the dominate species on planet? Adaptability. 

So now I am that slow geezer puttin along in the right lane. But today I was /fine/ and could have easily done at least another hundred if not more. So the possibility is raised if I continue to do what I'm doing, maybe I can get back to the long days at higher speed. 

We'll see.

Today was different than yesterday. Getting out of Michigan involved a lot of slab. I had a number of Facebook users suggested I should avoid that section of slab South of Chicago because it's always a parking lot. I initially disregarded this until I was at a gas station when a woman asked a man within ear shot why so many cars were getting off the Interstate. I looked at Google and saw gridlock. I thanked her profusely and proceeded on back country roads around the blockage and promptly decided to head South to avoid further nastiness. 

Looking at the map there was what looked like one good East West road, Route 30, which if I had a working memory I would have remembered as the Lincoln Highway. 

I got off the interstate before yet another backup and was deceived by nice country roads when I turned onto Route 30 and found ...

Route 30 West from 421 should be avoided at all costs. The land has been overtaken by a cancer of consumerism that has metastasized that has engulfed the distinctiveness of the land and turned it into a monotony of strip malls, gas stations, vape shops, etc for longer than one can imagine possible. It feeds on the souls of the unwary who wander in, the husks of which can be seen ambling about under the oppressive sky. I barely managed to escape. At one point, there was a mirage of a Starbucks but I knew it was just trying to lure me in to my demise, like sirens on the rocks. 

Just avoid. Put skull and crossbones markers on it. 

"Just say no." 

In contrast today was so much better. 

A number of people  on Facebook suggested I ride route 34. One user laid out a route from Ottawa Southwest which turned out to be a much nicer alternative to the Interstate.

At one point I came across an Army Corp of Engineers Dam and Lock, "Starved Rock Lock and Dam". 

There was this huge tug boat behind these long barges filled with coal and benzene covered in explosion hazard signs. 

For some reason I have always been drawn to big industrial and architectural sites. 

One of the things I miss about cross country travel in the Before Times was that things were different. Each new area you went into had a different feel, a slightly different culture, and one got to see ever so slightly into the lives of the people that lived there.

However, these days things are so homogeneous that everything looks the same. The old places are dying off and slowly the consumerist cancer is turning us all the same bleaching away the distinctiveness of varied populations.

There are, however, remnants remaining if you wander far enough away from the common routes. 

I have never seen a gas station sign like this before. I would say it was false advertising. 

It was neither a bar, nor a grill, but they did have gas, 87 octane. The credit card slots on the pumps had long since failed. Inside, they had your basic convenience store wares with a shockingly large selection of liquor.  

 

The miles clicked by. Hours felt much less. This i.s a thing that happens to me on the motorcycle. I notice I experience time differently. In a car, a day feels like agony. On a motorcycle, the hours click by as if my relationship with the passing of time has changed. I wonder if this is how early man felt crossing long expanses ever so slowly. I swear motorcycling invokes some primordial genetic memory and long hidden features of the human critter.

There was a dramatic sky.

I had not noticed that the routing algorithm I use had routed me along a section of Interstate when I thought I had routed over Route 34. That's one of the time consuming details of curating a route. One has to really take the time to examine the route in detail which is so time consuming.  

 There was a train. These things are crazy long.

And it has been quite a long while, but I have found myself once again in the land of the Open Sky Above the Flatness. 

And today, I crossed the Mississippi River and entered Iowa. 

As one traverses this land, one encounters huge industrial infrastructure.  

But mostly it looks like this for hours on end. 

The clouds set in and at one point I noticed this dramatic demarcation line in the clouds in the distance. 

It had been quite hot all day. Mid to upper 80's. The sun was oppressive. Then more clouds moved in and it started to rain and the temperature plummeted 25 degrees. The thermometer on the bike always reads high because of the heat off the engine. 

I decided not to put on the electric vest. I wanted to see what my shoulders and back would do. For decades now once it gets under about 55 deg F my back and shoulders would lock up hoorribly. This has been happening since I was a teenager. What has been different over the last few years is that it now happens in the heat as well. 

To my surprise, while the pain increased a bit, I did not lose any range of motion and at no point did the muscles spasm uncontrollably locking up my neck. We'll see if this a durable change but my intention is to continue what I doing. 

At one point the sun tried to break through the clouds, but failed. 

After much flatness I was surprised to see hills.  

I am now near Osceola, Iowa. I do not recommend it. This was the 340 mile mark and when I looked at the beginning of the day there are a number of name brand motels and it looked like a good selection of restaurants.

The restaurants are all closed. and there's no way I'm doing fast food. 

So I found a bar and grill next to a hotel with vacancies not far away only to realize it's a casino. 

This place is weird. 

If I continue this pace I might be in Fort Collins a whole two days early. 

With the exception of the last couple hours, the last two days have been overwhelmingly just super slab.

Yesterday, I woke to a damp and chilly motorcycle. It had rained all night. There was a steady wind and temperatures were not predicted to get much warmer. 

The Beloved Blue Oil Burner has been running incredibly well. The fact that it is back together is 100% due to Duncan motivating me to finish the hard part of the project. He sacrificed so many of his weekends to help me methodically try to piece the bike carefully back together.

I told him, "If we do this, I'm going to want to do it my way, which is going to suck and I'm sorry. No shortcuts. Slowly, carefully. If we have to take it all back apart again because of a mistake, then that's just what we'll have to do." 

He agreed and, being a man of his word, he was there with me through the entirety of the project. The results when the two of us worked together were always so much better than either of us would accomplish alone. He would watch while I tackled some problem and would often stop me before I made a critical error, or provide a better easier way of doing things. We'd almost always discuss a task carefully before attempting to tackle it. He had such a wealth of knowledge. The two of us together were much greater than the sum of the parts.

During the 2010 trip to Alaska, I became aware that if I did not think about how far I was going but instead just focused on the next hill, I would travel farther more easily than I could have imagined possible. I traveled on that trip ready to turn around at any moment when "it got too hard". 

In the intervening years, I've "tried" to build things and whenever I focus on the goal, on some distant point that I feel compelled to get to as quickly as possible, things go awry. It is true in software development where the stress of not having gotten anywhere near what I feel I need to done creates a stress that then leads to short cuts that leads to technical debt (the shortcuts you know you have to go back and fix later) .. that leads to failure. 

I feared that would happen with this project.

So, with Duncan's acceptance, I coined a phrase that I have repeated to myself like a mantra, "I'm not trying to get it done. I'm just doing it." 

I'm putting my motorcycle back together. I'm not trying to get it completed. Each moment, each individual task. That bolt that doesn't want to come loose? If I'm trying to get it done, that's an impediment, a block, and that leads to short cuts that tends to result it broken or stripped bolts and as a result the desire to get it done postpones it being done. 

The frozen bolt requires its own time. Maybe it will take months. Maybe the project will stop there. But all that remains is doing it. Slowly. Carefully. Breaking loose the frozen bolt. Maybe it means soaking it in penetrating oil for days. Applying heat. Slowly. The frozen bolt is the next task to do. No thoughts beyond it. Just doing it. No trying to get it done. 

Counter-intuitively, whenever I approach a project in this mindset, it gets done quicker and the result is of higher quality. Pause. Be curious about the thing in front of you. Forget the future. Forget the past. 

I fully expected that after all the wires, hoses, connections, electronics, nuts, bolts, and other fasteners, the rear main seal, the clutch, and all the myriad of other things that we took apart and reassembled not to mention some of the attempted improvements that we would most definitely have to take it all apart again and do the whole project over.

I didn't document the project as well as I would have liked. I was asked to write it up for a magazine at one point. 

I remember when I replaced the front main frame on the R1100S I missed one ground connection that prevented the bike from starting and I just couldn't figure it out. So I towed it up to Bob's and Steve there after some hours figured out my mistake. I had connected the ground to a post that was, in fact, insulated in a bushing. 

Oops. 

So I figured we'd make some similar mistake. Or for ages we'd be tracking down performance, stalling, overheating, electrical or other issues. I never imagined that it would just work, the first time, flawlessly. 

And moreover, I never even considered that the improvements which included an aftermarket ECU (fuel injection) chip matched to the exhaust I have and some new piping and an EGR valve to deal with some oil vapor issues, that the thing would run /so much better/. But it's true. The bike now runs and handles far better than new. And now I've put close to 8000 miles on it since putting it back on the road it continues to perform flawlessly with the only exception that the gear indicator display goes flaky after it rains. 

Not getting it done. Just doing it.

I will forever be grateful to Duncan for gently nudging me to put the bike back together. "I know you'll feel better." he would say. 

There will never be a day where I do not miss my friend. 

Leaving that strange geriatric hotel casino I noticed this.

Route 34 across Iowa was a solid suggestion. It's a much nicer route than the superslab (Interstate 80). It's not oppressively flat the way Kansas is. There are things to look at as you motor along.

There was this impressive field of windmills as far as the eye can see.  

There were solar arrays, some of them impressively large. 

 

But mostly it looked like this.

The miles clicked by. I noticed that 50 miles had passed and I hadn't even noticed. I was feeling no pain. 

None.

Weird. 

So as the miles clicked by as I was geezing it being slow, I decided to try to ride for a bit longer than the 60 minute intervals with half hour breaks I had been running.

And hour and a half passed by. I continued on. I would turn my head side to the side. Extend and protract my back and otherwise try to invoke the pain I was so familiar with. There were hints but no range of motion of was impaired. No lightning strikes of pain.

So I decided to carefully probe this further.

As I approached empty, I came across a gas station in the middle of nowhere. A proper farmers gas station is what I thought it looked like. I had run through an entire tank without stopping.

I loitered here for a while. There was this expansive view of the country side.

I stood here for a while perusing this landscape and asking myself the question, "Why travel?" 

The youngin' spawns will ask why go anywhere when they can see it all on TikTok? One can read and see everything there is about a place in more detail. Why go there? 

When one does a thing for deep reasons and often reasons that one doesn't fully understand, coming up with a good answer to this question is more challenging than one might think. 

Why ride across so much slab for so long just to stand on this hill overlooking this view in the wind and sunshine? 

How can one explain the feeling, a feeling that not everyone has? To be here Out There Far Away ... 

One can come up with all kinds of nonsense about expanding character and having experiences and all this higher level brain stuff that falls flat that no inexperienced youngiin' is going to care about.

Of course all those things are true. Travel and it will expand your character and it will provide you experiences you could not otherwise imagine. 

But these are "benefits" or "goals". The "getting it done" part. 

Why be in this place at this time? I fear the answer may be as simple as that is what humans do. Humans eat. They sleep. If they do not bad things happen biologically. I wonder if there aren't some primordial vestiges of the wanderer that remain embedded in some of us where we just don't feel right unless we go. 

To go to a place and let the whole of your nervous system experience that moment in a way that no TikTok video will ever capture. To feel the land. To feel the air. See see and interact with the surroundings. 

To encounter and interact with people so very different from yourself. 

To see things through different eyes. 

But all these things, to the youngin's don't feel like compelling answers. 

But a nervous system that has traveled, that has been Out There, comes back changed. Calmer. More open. If you let it be. 

There is so much more to say.

I crossed from Iowa into Nebraska.

Route 34 gave way to Interstate, a.k.a. Super Slab. 

The miles clicked on and I was still in no appreciable pain so I decided to probe it further. "I wonder if I go back to my regular pace, will it cramp up?"

The speed limit was 75 to I increased to that. A half hour went by. I was still ok. Ok. Then a GMC pickup passed me and I thought, "Ok, game on." and for the next 45 minutes or so I chased that pickup doing something like 85 miles an hour and I was fine. There were hints, echoes, vestiges of the pain I was afraid of but it never turned into the searing spasms. 

I went for the rest of the day like that, at pace and I was fine. 

Interesting. 

I did not sleep well last night. So I woke up tired and when I hit the road today to do yet more slab I was hurting a little bit, but not bad. 

I continued on keeping my normal pace. It felt right and after a while I was able to lose myself in thought as the wind blew away the cobwebs. 

I crossed the border into Colorado. The wind was coming at a diagonal that was stressing my neck and my back started locking up a little bit but not bad. 

The landscape suddenly changed and I felt like was in the "The West". 

On my adv-traveler.com site, I use a route calculator called GraphHopper. It's pretty good. However, if you give it starting point and end point it will often pick routes that are different from Google. Google takes traffic and a whole bunch of other variables into account when calculating its routes where GraphHopper doesn't have access to any of that. As a result sometimes it routes you over small side roads or through towns Google would never. 

I've found that this "bug" is a feature. I was routed off the interstate onto a very lonely road out into National Grasslands. 

Now we're talking!

It might have been a straight long road but I finally felt truly "Away". Colorado has that effect on me.

I came across one of those well wind mills and had to stop.

There's more to say, as always, because I tell no short stories but it's getting late. 

I'm in Fort Collins now. 

I was in Arches National Park sitting underneath a huge arch watching the sun set behind rain clouds in the distance, the bright yellow rays tracing dramatic shadows on the rock formations around me. There were quite a few tourists, well, other tourists, casually snapping photos and taking selfies. 

A raven landed not far from me and cawed loudly. The sound echoed dramatically under the arch. As I tried to take it's picture, thereby stealing its soul, it took flight and swooped down far behind the arch to a cliff face where it ducked into a hole. 

I had read a sign about how these arches formed. It is some process whereby porous rock above lets water leak down to slightly less porous rock which then encounters denser rock. The middle eventually gives way during freeze thaw cycles. I was not prepared how huge they were. From photos, I had always thought the arches were much smaller. , 

I pondered how many other places there might be in the wider galaxy where similar processes might produce similar structures. Kids scrambled over rocks making noise not far from me. There were dozens of people talking loudly, their voices echoing like the raven's through the arch. 

While the cacophony of voices echoed around me, I sat and quietly pondered how geologists had come up with the model for how the arches formed.  My mind wandered back to the wonderful time I had in Michigan talking to Jay and his wife, Hayley. They are both consummate highly educated intellectuals. It was a much needed stress on the mind to keep up with them, even inadequately. There's something about those conversations that opens my mind and makes me want more. At one point, Jay talked about this work. He has a doctorate in meteorology. All this time I had thought he had a Phd in Physics. He talked about the mathematical models the fire service uses and how one has to be careful to pick the right model for a given task and context. Otherwise, one might get nonsense answers. I forget how he phrased it but at one point he talked about how sometimes people will tenaciously hold on to the belief that a model is correct even in contexts where it just doesn't apply.

"So, don't fall in love with your model.", I said quoting an ancient Murphy's Law of Physics I think it was. 

"Exactly." he replied.

Sitting there thinking about the geology, I came to realize I was feeling something. I often find it challenging to notice that I feel something and then even more trouble trying to figure out what word one uses to label the feeling.There was a sense of unease. Something felt wrong about reducing this landscape to what amounted to so many abstract models of formation. 

I looked around. No. Something more felt wrong. People scurried by. 

In recent years I have begun to model my understanding of what I perceive into "frames". I could probably come up with a different word, but I like to imagine a picture frame that borders a given set of related ideas.

There's the scientific frame where one forms hypotheses, makes predictions, and then attempts to falsify them. Most of our modern life comes from the developments that have stemmed from this frame. There are those that believe that all human experience can be reduced down to a set of processes that fall within the strictures of the scientific method. This is called the fallacy of Scientism. 

There are other frames. Some are super-frames that contain others. There's the mathematical frame that contains the scientific frame. There's a philosophical frame that contains the mathematical but then also spreads out into domains that are less rigid. 

But all of these are in the frame of ideas. 

Of course, even this simple concept of frames is just a model of understand and one should avoid falling in love with a model or applying it where it makes no sense.

There I sat as the sun began to touch the clouds in the distance still feeling an unease.

I saw the road that I had just ridden through a short downpour, cars creeping along it. It now looked to me like a wound on the land.

The arches and other structures have been given names like "Double Arch". I wondered what it was like for the first humans who had to walk over this land I presume for days if not weeks to reach this place and what they felt. What names did they give these structures? I imagine they had to have some words to refer to them. Why don't we use those names? 

It was at that moment, I felt like an intruder. I realized my unease came from a sense that I should not be allowed to be here in this place sitting as I was below this arch, people scurrying by loudly. 

"Disrespect." was the first word I came up with. 

Then, no. "Not disrespect. Sacrilege." 

A sadness overtook me, as it often does.

There's a frame I've been thinking about quite a bit of late that I call the "basic human frame". Take away our education. Take away our written word. Take away our technology. Take away mathematics. Take away all we have learned from others. The basic human frame encompasses the human being without benefit of learning from those before. Imagine a feral human raised outside of human contact, of which there are a few examples in history. 

The first humans here were much more than basic humans. They had language, culture, symbology, religion, history and all the other trappings that represent what we call modern humans. But I imagine they were less encumbered than we are by our abstract dissociated world that overvalues the frame of ideas and neglects other messier frames, namely the basic human frame.

We live in a world where we have vestiges of our primeval selves that no longer serve us when we are ensconced in our mechanistic modern world that reduces humans to cogs. But there are places where what we have learned that serves us so well, no longer does. 

Use the appropriate model.

Again, I most often can't tell what I feel. There's usually a buzzing inside me that drowns everything out. A noise. I supposed you could say a screaming, which is what Duncan used to say. "Reconnect the wires to long disconnected faulty sensors and they'll scream bloody murder for a while until they settle down." He liked to use mechanistic analogies for messy human processes. I've learned for some of us the sensors never settle down.

It isn't until I ride away far enough for long enough that the noise inside, these incessant screams, quiet and for a moment, I can feel. I have often been criticized by those that meet me after I am back home. That me is nothing like this me, nor anything like these words. 

As I looked over the land words like sacrilege, disrespect, sadness kept coming back. 

But no. That's not it. What would I call it absent an observer, absent anyone to tell me that I was silly, or weak, or pathetic for simple basic human feelings? 

The sun continued tracing dramatic shadows on the cliff faces now in deeper colors. 

What is the basic human inside experiencing if I could somehow allow myself to reach it,  to feel it? 

"Awe."

If I paid attention to those barely perceptible messages coming from deep inside, they would lead me to believe, no feel, a significance.

A meaning. 

Mana. 

I imagine that those first humans felt the same but only much more so, being much more connected as it were to the basic human. 

"Sacred", not in a stupid cliche fashion, but with a deep feeling that this place is "more" than just any place. 

I would hate to look into the eyes of one of those first humans when they saw what this place has been reduced to.

There were some around me who seemed to be in the same inner place that I was. Quiet. Introspective. Respectful. Reverent. In awe.

I asked myself whether there are any other animals that experience the feeling of "awe". Do the ravens feel awe as they fly over this landscape? 

Why did humans evolve a sense of "awe"? 

I thought back to a time when I was keenly aware of the feeling of "awe". It was camping under the Big Trees with Rachel back in 1992. Despite our lives diverging so many years ago, there is still a deep connection that I feel from having experienced those places with her.

I suspect awe brings humans closer together and binds them in cooperation, which is a survival advantage. 

I have often wondered why I get so sad sometimes, sometimes crushingly so which I have been harshly criticized for at times. "What are you, gay?"

Watch a sunset over an open ocean alone and to feel it without anyone else there has always felt wrong. Lonely. 

Maybe it's that the basic human evolved the sense of awe to be /shared/. Maybe that's why it feels so wrong for a place such as this to be reduced to a tourist attraction. 

No awe. No reverence. No connection. 

On this trip, now 3000 miles in, I've traveled through such incredible landscapes. At times, they've struck me so hard I cursed, "Holy Fuck!" which I did as I entered Big Thompson Canyon outside Fort Collins.

What was the first thing I did when I could? I tried to share it. I took Ann, of Duncan and Ann, and Audrey (no, not that Audrey. Other Audrey. a.k.a. Bruce's Cousin Audrey) on a drive through the same canyon on to Estes Park and then Rocky Mountain National Park. I've known Ann for decades now. She, Duncan, and I have gone on a number of adventures together. 

I've only seen Audrey once in the last few decades, which frighteningly I have no memory of but that is another story. I got to spend quite a bit of time with her before the wedding and came to realize to my surprise that I was aware of really enjoying her company. Wonderful human being. I hope to cross paths with her again. 

There was the time riding with Robert. I still cannot wrap my head around why he would come up all the way from Texas and spend a couple long days riding with me. I hadn't ridden with him since we met in 2014 and he invited me to join the Cannonball Centennial Ride. I told him I didn't feel worthy. He didn't understand. 

We rode over Independence Pass but it was not clear that we were not going to run into ice. It is such a dramatic place. 

We rode through Black Canyon of the Gunnison, one of the roads Samantha had included on the route she curated for me. He showed me one overlook that I unprepared for which fully evoked my terror of heights. 

"Awe inspiring." I said. We spent quite a bit of time there. He took some drone footage.

There have been so many people, impressions, ideas, and feelings on this trip. Too many stories to tell. I met Jenn in person for the first time in Fort Collins for brunch. I met Kevin who I hadn't seen since last New Years, the same time as Audrey, but who I also had no memory of meeting. I know Kevin from highschool days. He's getting his private pilots license and we talked at length about that over dinner. "I will never jump out of a perfectly good airplane." I declared to him. 

Conversations with Robert and their implications would take hours. Every time I talk to him I learn something new. His mind works in ways so different from my own but there is still a sense of connection I have never understood. He's a good man and I would ride with him any chance I get. 

There was Ann who flew out for the wedding. Duncan's loss was ever present and still is. I'm glad she and I have a connection that remains. 

And there's now the time I have been spending in Moab, which I have extended with help, by two days. 

I've been chatting with Samantha over Facebook messenger for many years now semi-regularly. We'll sometimes go months without communicating but then pick up where we left off as if no time had passed. She used to run a motorcycle touring outfit and laid out a self-guided tour for me through the wider area. It has been /fantastic/. 

I still don't understand. I arrived here and she and her husband, Ron, set things up and insisted I take her car, a Nissan 370z, which I have been driving around for days now. My bike is safely stored with most of my gear in their garage. 

The implications and insights that have come about through my now long in person conversations with Samantha could easily take a novel. I have never before met another human being remotely like her and I am altered from the meeting. There's always a nervousness I feel when meeting someone in person who only knows me through my writing. "You're not the man I thought you were." is such a common disappointment I get, that I almost have PTSD about it. But meeting Ron and Samantha was like meeting very old friends i have never met. 

And I got to meet what was once a feral dog, but the feral is still very much present. One can feel it. 

I had had a dream about the dog long before I met her in person, and weirdly the dog behaved almost exactly as I had seen in my dream. 

Fucking weird and powerful at the same time.

My time in Moab is coming to an end. I will collect my bike tomorrow and head Southeast towards Los Alamos. 

But for now, I am going to take Samantha's car out for a drive into the canyons again and then hopefully stop by their place for another afternoon in person conversation. 

I have gotten her car a little dirty which I feel terrible about but she is not letting me clean it. That is so not my way. But I am doing as I am told regardless of how uncomfortable it is. My temptation is to find a detail shop and have it detailed tomorrow, but I promised I wouldn't clean it. If someone else details it, then I'm not cleaning it right? Someone else is? 

Yesterday I had an easy day. I headed out for a short slow contemplative jaunt to Deadhorse Point State Park, which is another must see spot on Samantha's Moab Tour. ( Tabs above -> Plan -> Open Interactive Map -> left menu (on phone press upper left three lines icon) -> Itineraries -> Samantha's Moab Tour ).

I drove the 370z out the twenty some odd miles stopping at various overlooks on the way allowing myself a pause at each spot to take it in quietly. 

I came across a sign that evoked a memory from my much younger years. There was a TV show with an introduction that went:

"Looked for, he cannot be seen. Listened for, he cannot be heard. Touched, he cannot be felt." 

In my little mind this resonated so strongly that as I went for long escapes in the woods I would practice walking without making a sound leaving no trace. To remain hidden, unseen, unheard, and untouched ... older me, of course, now looks back at the psychology of younger me and sees patterns and causes that were oblivious to me then. 

I walked quietly to the cliff face trying to leave no trace, not even a footprint. 

So many places here evoke my terror of heights and I keep challenging it. Dramatic mountains could be seen in the distance. 

Walking back to the car I noticed this interesting formation on a rock face and wondered about the geological processes that created it. It's hard to walk on this land without thinking about the millions of years of plate tectonics that formed it.

I drove across a wide open area and came to an entrance station that was operating.

"Oh, right. State operated. Not Federal." There was a line of cars, two RV's and a bus waiting to get in. 

Fortunately, they take credit cards. $20 entrance fee. $10 if on a bike. 

I drove past a few parking spots, camp sites, and the visitor center unaware of the spit of land I was driving out onto. The road tightened and narrowed and there were cars and people to be seen everywhere. On one corner there was a slight hill and at the crest it suddenly became clear that spit of land was not much wider than the road itself. 

I saw the canyons.

"Whoa!" I said aloud. 

I found a parking space and walked around. The area was German appropriate with a nice bench off the trail to the restrooms. 

I sat there for some time trying to tune out the cacophony of voices around me. The view was not to be believed. 

There was a walking path along the rim which had a nice safe feeling stone wall a couple feet high. I decided to look over it at one point and to my shock it went STRAIGHT DOWN. 

"Oh hell no!" as a gripped the wall tightly with one hand while tentatively reaching the other hand out to take this shot, hand shaking from the terror. 

I would ask Samantha later how far down this was. 

"Oh, about 1200 feet". 

She has suggested I find a particular spot that was likely going to be far away from the noisy humans but I was not able to find it. But I did see, below the bench where I had sat a pile of boulders that led down to a shelf about 20 or so feet down. In an out of character exhibition of mobility and fool hardiness, I scrambled down the the sharp angled pile of boulders to the flat below.

There was a smallish boulder near the edge of forever and certain death that I sat on. There was a somewhat uncomfortably narrow gap of about three feet between the small chair sized boulder and doom.

"Oh hell no, I'm not hanging my legs over the edge. That's Instagramer certain death." 

I looked down from that spot and noticed a sliver on the land that extended around the point. I could make out vehicles on a road.

The peace of moment was further interrupted by a violin in the distance playing a pop tune, not classical. I looked up and saw a wedding taking place. The sounds of the instrument echoed loudly mixed with the screams of little kids and people talking about all manner of subjects except that spot they were in.

I got off the boulder on the edge and climbed back up the pile to the walkway above. The woman there exclaimed to me, "I could never do that, sitting on the edge like that. I'm terrified of heights!"

"I am too." I replied then I looked down at the boulder and from that vantage point it looked like it was about to fall off the cliff. 

I walked around to the other side where there was this small formation maybe about 10 feet high that looked like a table top. I should have taken a photo of it because I don't know what to call it. A super mini monument. It was not a separate boulder but part of the ledge that stuck up. I climbed up onto it and sat there for a while. The sense of height and near death was particularly strong. 

As I went to climb down I realized all the rocks below were angled towards the cliff edge, the 1180 foot high sheer cliff, and that if I happened to slip and tumble it would be the end of me.

Carefully, I climbed down making very certain to follow the sailing rule of three points of contact. 

In some cases, it's the fear that's the real thing to be afraid of. Fear interrupts the mind and makes the automatic too conscious and that's where mistakes tend to be made. 

I drove back slowly and went to visit Samantha, Ron, and the once feral dog for another afternoon of deep open meaningful conversation the kind of which I am starving for.

It's so tempting, the basic human mind reaching for patterns where there are none, to believe that "things happen for a reason". "Meeting Samantha was supposed to happen." Some souls you cross paths with have a way of altering, or clarifying a life. Powerful. 

But that model of understanding doesn't resonate with me. 

"Things happen when they can." 

And I am so grateful that these moments were able to happen. 

I am about to pack my things up and cram them into the car and head up the last must see route, Route 128. I've had a taste of it and it is spectacular. In this area, one runs out of words to describe the landscape. Awesome. Inspiring. Spectacular. Incredible. Holy Fuck. Whoa. Damn. Oh wow. Holy shit I was not prepared for that. (Next Corner) OH DAMN! and so on. 

Then I will gas up the car and return it. I have been forbidden to clean it. Thinking like a lawyer, I thought maybe that would mean I could let someone else clean it, i.e. get it detailed.

"No." she said. 

Dammit. No means no, most of the time and this time it really does.

So against every impulse I have I will return the car dirty. I am however looking forwards to spending a couple hours in a final conversation for my time here in Moab. Then I'll suit up and hit the road once again. 

Leaving this place is not easy. 

I will have to come back. 

If you are one of the precious few that has made it this far I'd like to point out the list of tabs at the top, particularly the photos tab where I post many more photos than I do to Instagram or Facebook. I'm sorry the pinch zoom isn't implemented, but you can click (or tap) a photo for full screen and then swipe.