On the road again

Just nine days ‘til I’m off on my 19th Annual Mid-Life Crisis Tour.
That’s what I call my summer motorcycle expeditions from my Midwestern home to the glorious vistas of the American West.
Friends in the East have invited me to visit on the bike for several years, but the West almost always wins in the directional tug of war with its lonely roads, mountain, deserts and spectacular scenery.
I haven’t worked out a precise route but the basic plan is to make best speed to the home of friends near Breckenridge, Colo., possibly stopping to visit writer friends in the Kansas City/Topeka area.
My Colorado friends are also hosting another couple from my local BMW motorcycle club, so we should have a great time hanging out, riding the Rockies and gasping for oxygen at 10,500 feet.
The only precisely scheduled part of the trip is the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America International Rally in Spokane, Wash., July 15-17. The annual BMW MOA rallies routinely attract 4,000-6,000 riders and passengers. Typically, they’re held at a fairground or park, although last year’s was the first-ever urban rally at Charleston, W.Va. Mostly, it’s an excuse to go for a long ride to what the organizers hope is a glamour destination.
I’ve attended most of them since my first in 1986 at Laguna Seca Raceway near Monterey, Calif. That was when Big Sur put the hook into me and has managed to reel me back to that magical coastline 10 out of the past 11 years.
The Top O’ the Rockies BMW Rally is the previous weekend in Paonia, Colo., so I may use that as my Colorado jumping-off point for Spokane.
My friend Wayne and his wife Peggy left about a week ago for Alaska. I’ll meet them at Spokane and maybe ride down the California coastwith them. I know a bunch of fun roads in the Big Sur area and Wayne is keen to explore them.
Somewhere in my post-rally ride, I need to include a day or two with my son in Portland, Ore.
After Big Sur, my general plan is to make my way home by the most interesting route. My to-do list includes U.S. 6 through Nevada, an excellent place to find out how fast my new BMW K1200GT will go.(I set my personal land speed record near Tonopah, Nev., on that road about six years ago – 146 mph on a ’91 BMW K100RS. The mile markers whip by about every 20 seconds at that speed. The bike seemed to have a little more speed in it, but that’s the point where I chickened out.)
But I digress.
What I really wanted to talk/write about is how I’m starting to get into a traveling mood.
If you know Cancerians, you know we’re homebodies. We enjoy being comfortable at home with our stuff. So, left to our own devices, some of us might never go anywhere. Maybe that’s why it takes a really dramatic change in scenery to get me motivated.
The first day on the road, droning through the lush humid Midwest, is a tedious chore. Illinois is boring and Missouri is even worse. I-70 is the closest thing to a quick way across the Show Me state (I once found myself behind a car from Missouri where the owner had altered the slogan on the license plate to read, “The Blow Me State.”). But I-70 is a steamy slog over bad pavement in the company of bad drivers and thousands of semitrailer trucks, churning the air into a buffeting, pummeling force. It leaves me frazzled and short-tempered by the time I reach Kansas City.
I start smiling early the second morning with the rising sun in my mirrors and the rolling central Kansas landscape, flooded with light and color, in front of me. As far as I’m concerned, out there around Lucas and Russell where you can still see fence posts hewn from the native limestone and the oil well pumps slowly bob their steely heads – that’s where my West begins. And that’s when I begin to feel a fresh new adventure spilling out before me.
After Missouri’s I-70 traffic pipeline, the early morning Kansas road seems almost empty. I can set my electronic cruise control for a little over 75 mph, crack open my visor to drink in a stream of cool morning air and revel in the glorious experience of being alone with my thoughts in a beautiful place.
It’s moments like this when it occurs to me that long haul motorcyclists are, perhaps, cut from the same bolt of cloth as cloistered monks and Zen and Hindu masters.
We sit in the same position for extended periods of time, alone with our thoughts. However, instead of Enlightenment, our goal is to physically be in a specific place where we are not now.
But, to do it right, you have to let go of the goal and surrender to the now of the journey.
The process, then, is much the same: if we sit in the same position, mastering our physical and emotional needs and desires for a sufficient amount of time, we arrive at our goal.
Through self-discipline we become, then, masters of space and time.
Or maybe we’re just people who like to punch a hole in the wind for hours at a time.