Life & Island Times: Detour Version 1.0 Part 3
Day 3
Trailers for sale or rent.
Rooms to let fifty cents.
No phone. No pool. No pets.
Ain’t got no cigarettes.
Two hours of pushing broom
Buys an eight by ten four-bit room.
I’m a man of means, by no means,
King of the Road.
King of the Road by Roger Miller
The initial miles of Day 3’s first side road were rough. We braced our feet on the floorboards and clenched our legs on our tanks till they goggled under our thighs. Over the first pothole the bikes screamed in surprise, our front fork oil shocks bottoming with a clank. Through the plunges of the next ten seconds, we clung on, our gloved hands tight on the twist throttles so that no bump could wide open it and spoil our control. The bikes now and then wrenched sideways across parallel long ruts — we made sure they didn’t sway dizzily, wagging our bike tails. In came the clutch levers, engines racing freely, bikes checking and straightening with a slight shake, as they should.
We side-tripped again when we veered off between Joplin Missouri and Tulsa Oklahoma and later hopped onto a smooth surfaced, four lane divided speedway east of Tulsa. With the rough side road pavement behind us, our two wheeled flight became birdlike soaring smooth. After three miles of pleasant highball riding, we noticed people were holding Sunday morning yard sales along the frontage road next to our 75 MPH four laner. To facilitate their bazaar endeavors, these open-air shopkeepers had trampled down or cut the state department of transportation erected chain link safety fences that were inconveniencing their souks’ clientele. More amazing was the sight of their customers’ high-speed pull-offs to peruse their offerings. The shopping and bargaining genes were really strong in this portion of the midwestern plains of grains.
While on I-40 between Oklahoma City and Amarillo, we waved our arms off at hundreds upon hundreds of eastward bound bikers’ high-speed greetings. There must have been a rally they were returning from.
Observation #2: Posted speed limits out west are mostly 75+ MPH. The flow is well above 85 MPH, often exceeding 90.
Just as one of my neighbors predicted, the winds on this segment came up steady at 11 AM blowing 20+ MPH, while we were still east of Tulsa. By the early afternoon, as we rolled through the Oklahoma City area. They attained a constant 40+ MPH velocity out of the south-southwest. The lower, upper and trailing edges of US flags were straight out and looked like they had been starched and ironed flat. There was no flapping, fluttering, or moving edges visible.
I had only seen this phenomena during hurricane seasons in the Florida Keys and during flight operations onboard US Navy aircraft carriers. With Amarillo as that day’s destination, we were forced to ride straight westward almost the entire day, so our bikes like US Navy ships leaned south 15-20 degrees into the wind. The winds’ steadiness was a very good thing. For when they slacked in a roadside wind break shadow or suddenly gusted upward in velocity, we and our 1000-pound displacement bikes were tossed suddenly left or right like dried out fall leaves 7 to 10 feet sideways before we could correct.
We also saw the trip’s first dead armadillos on the roadside in central Oklahoma. Hitting one of them, dead or alive, with our front wheels was a major undesirable event. We learned to rise up on our pegs when hitting one was unavoidable.
Observation #3: We saw no helmeted riders in Missouri, Oklahoma or Texas. It was the same the day before in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. My Indiana dwelling grandchildren always say when they spot an unhelmeted one: “No helmets, no brains.” My response is always “It’s a free country.” Enough said.
Observation #4: Massive increase in sighting frequency of men wearing suspenders in Missouri and Oklahoma. None seen previously or since. Meaning remains unclear.
Lots of church-going with rural chapel parking lots overflowing onto the road side farm drainage ditches as we rode the back roads and through the small towns of northeastern Oklahoma. Occasionally we heard the congregations singing so beautifully we downshifted and coasted in neutral to allow ourselves to be blessedly transformed. More than half the vehicles observed on the roads were pickup trucks and many were towing trailers. On half of these we spotted outfitted bass boats. Suspect in these parts that some Sunday worship services are held outdoors upon the waters.
We passed by a farm whose sign along an Oklahoma road said “We don’t rent pigs. Don’t ask.” I didn’t know why for a long time. (2023 comment addenda: So, after twenty years, I asked the internet — it’s from Larry McMurtry’s novel Lonesome Dove. The character Gus McRae insists that it’s “better to say it right out front because a man who does like to rent pigs . . . he’s hard to stop.” In fact, Gus considers the policy so important it’s clearly stated at the bottom of the Hat Creek Cattle Company sign. More importantly is how Gus defined his thoughts about capital-M man in the next line on his ranch’s sign “Uva uvam vivendo varia fit.” Roughly it means “A grape becomes mottled by being a grape,” with the sense that it’s the nature of a grape to become “mottled” as it ripens. Simply said “A man’s character is his destiny.” Sorta fits well with our skin mottling biker trips.)
For the third day in a row, total strangers walked up to us darkly clad figures, striking up conversations about our bikes, trip, destinations, their lives and their hopes. We seem to be a culture populated with folks, old and young and in between, with little to no fear of unknown outsiders just passing through.
Observation #5: Texans don’t need off ramps for the rural portions of their Interstates. More than I care to remember along I-40 we saw SUVs, big 6-wheel dualie pickup trucks, posh BMWs driving northwest Texas crazies displaying unmatched automotive machismo. It always came during long stretches where no exit ramps were available. They would just gun it though foot high grass, mowing it down flat, clunking through the drainage ditch, leaving occasional rooster tail dust clouds, throwing dirt clods, and uglifying their rides as they headed to and from the frontage roads (sometimes US 66). Yee Haw!
Trapped at the Log Cabin Texaco
Late PM gas stop in Erick Oklahoma. Exit 7 on I-40 whose signage proudly announced that it was the childhood hometown of singer and songwriter Roger Miller. Town of 500, if counting the visiting 300 cows within the city limits. Outside of the Interstate, this is open range country. Texaco gasoline is the only brand of choice. Perhaps there was in the distant past a range gas war where attacking bands of gas pump-jockeys (Men Who Wear The Star) destroyed all but the occasional Oklahoma state trooper reinforced CONOCO station redoubts.
The station’s parking lots save for postage stamp sized concrete pad gassing-up areas next to the pumps were irregular sized, lumpy gravel covered areas. We wore our helmets while refueling since the wind remained hard, steady, and chilly. The winds towel-snapped the worn plastic pennant shaped flags to within inches of my goggled eyes.
Inside the station’s small log cabin structure, a 60-ish, fully silver-grey haired, rimless glasses wearing, focused, tidy woman presided as cashier and attendant. In response to some idle chit chat and my oft asked question about how she came to be in Erick, she told this story.
No tornadoes have been recorded hitting the town. Some say that it’s the bountiful water in the local springs and creeks. She agreed. Native legends tell a story that spells cast long ago protect the area from being hit by “bent winds.” She said that the previous week saw winds in the steady 50-60 MPH region, blowing down barns, pancaking road signs and billboards with gusts tumbling down oil field drill rig equipment.
Originally from Osceola Missouri. Fourteen years ago she was living with her ex-husband’s son from a previously failed marriage in the northeastern Colorado foothills and was loving life. This stepson wanted to be nearer to his father, who was in a nursing care situation near Erick. Sold it all. Moved to Erick. Bought a really nice place so her son could have a good home while near his father.
She hated it there now. Longed for her lost Rockies spaces and friends. Boy’s father finally passed away, while the son grew up and moved away. She’s stuck there. Trapped. Selling Texaco gas, hard rock candy, stale candy bars, and cold sodas. Can’t sell her retirement fund — the house. No real Erick friends. Bored. Lonely. Constantly feeling poorly due to near year-round, revolving allergy seasons (wildflowers, grasses, trees, molds, weeds etc.). Absolutely “sick and tired of incessant straight winds.” Silently scary and isolating?
While recounting her story, she stared off into the space in front of her. The “telling” didn’t offer her any visible relief. We offered her hope and support of her efforts to eventually sell the house and move back to where she once was.
Lesson Learned #3: As Roger Miller says, don’t let your present and future happiness be irretrievably trapped by present things in one’s life. Especially true in one’s middle age. While owning one’s home is one of the core received truths of the American middle class, perhaps the essential point here is “not ‘things’ but ‘people’ and ‘places.’”
Dinner at Amarillo’s Big Texas roadhouse. Home of the 72-ounce steak — free if you can eat it all and keep it down. Otherwise, it’s $49.95, sides extra. Yes, it was a tourist trap; but we were tired; and, it was really late; and, you know, if you’re passing through the Lone Star state, the law requires overnight guests consume some range-reared, steer butt. Filets do not count.
Day 3 miscellany and counts:
Daily Windshield Bug Smash Bingo Game winners: Yellow x 1, Black x 1, White x 1. Multiple games due to windshield visibility repeatedly obliterated by bugs, requiring serious scrubbing.
Query count through day 3:
Where’re you going? – 5
What’s that? (Steve’s Valkyrie) – 3
Damsels in distress? – 4
Screenshot 2023-02-02 at 11.03.09 AM.png
Long ago in a desert highway small town Way Out West
Copyright © 2001 and 2023 From My Aisle Seat
www.vicsocotra.com
Life & Island Times: Day Two
May 2001
Detour Version 1.0
Day 2
“Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.”
business oral greetings
upon a customer entering
“Hallelujah, all y’all, Hallelujah.”
my response upon entry
Ah, the melodious voices which welcome patrons as they open the front door to a 24/7 Waffle House restaurant — home of the Pecan Waffle, juke boxes with some of the finest country western music anywhere, both classic and modern, and at least a dozen different songs composed as odes to this southern roadside tradition!
Round the clock, they welcome all — rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, drunk, stoner, sober, religious, and profane. Yes, we were breaking on day and night one of this trip’s rules regarding chains but just this once as we began our western way. Our RCI room did have its allure — walking distance for our creaking road sore bodies to this pinnacle of cheapo yet good eats. This chain was where I long ago shed my northerner grits virginity way back in 1971 in North Carolina. Comfort Food. Mmmm. Mmmm. Mmmm.
Road trip tip #1: Get your waffle and bacon extra crispy for max great taste.
Revelation #1: Learn how to decently tie the biker’s kerchief, all by myself in my mid-fifties. No, not one of the overpriced, faux, easy to tie with Velcro or snap clip-ons doo rags that Harley peddles for $11-$13. Mine was an authentic Kmart workman’s sweat band printed cloth. To those wise guys in Kentucky: no, I do not look like a chemo patient. And to my “new age” acquaintances: no, there were no accompanying insights about crossing some modern boundaries of my inner sensitivities, ya da, ya da, ya da.
Old Lesson (Re)Learned #1: Repack your TBag tightly each day before heading out and solidly remount it the same way to prevent serious leaning, unsightly bulges, and poor motorcycle handling.
Observation #1: Steve’s TBag leans to the left, Mine to the right. He’s a New Mexico Democrat by more than century of local, state, and national family tradition. Me — a Republican of recent family lineage. Commie Bag? Patriot Bag? Nope. Just Red, White, and Blue. These stuffed seat backs provided us great lean-into lower back support for these early days of grind-it-out riding.
At the day’s first gas stop in Corydon Indiana, we met a 68-year-old, thrice retired (20-year US Army career; 20+ year career in the automotive industry on the assembly line in Kokomo Indiana; and a just ended stint as a school bus driver), current cattle ranch owning with her motorcycle driving man as his back seat companion. They were riding a pristine 1985 Honda Goldwing with 97,000 miles on the odometer. As the original owners of this classic bike, they had toured all over the lower 48 states. He had just quit his most recent job to go on a short trip (500 miles one way).
They both were full-on wandersluts. He crowed about the time how they had ridden all the way from Salem Indiana to dine at a restaurant across the Mississippi River from Memphis Tennessee — 800 miles one way! We yammered on endlessly about bikes, our military service & retirement, and the road. He had been riding bikes since before he was 15 — longer than I had been alive. They revealed their plans for his soon to come 70th birthday — buy a new Goldwing (he was ecstatic about the new 1800cc engine, added cushy extras and ABS brakes that we told him about) and tour all of the lower 48 before he turned 71. Steve and I silently hoped we’d be so lucky in our 60s to still tour and have our spouse’s full approval and support.
We pulled out of the station to greet another bend in the road: Steve had the honor to lead us onto another of Midwest’s myriad of hidden scenic and fast roads. The burble of our exhausts unwound like long cords behind us. Soon our speed snapped them, and we heard only the small cries of the wind which our battering helmeted heads split and fended aside. The cries rose with our speed, while the morning air’s cool dryness streamed by our goggled eyes. Thus protected, we focused our attention hundreds of yards ahead of us on the empty mosaic of the green bordered asphalt’s undulations.
Lesson Learned #2: Great road trips often start upon quitting jobs.
We took Indiana route 62 as it roughly paralleled I64 and had excellent twisties, ups-n-downs, small towns and vistas.
As we highballed past a central Missouri I-64 on-ramp, we were quickly overtaken and passed by an empty, ever accelerating 10-ton dump truck, its driver obviously headed home at the end of a long Saturday of hauling. Curious as to his velocity, I downshifted and twisted wide open the FatBoy’s throttle to reel this big fish back in. I caught and paced him doing 95+MPH. Whoa.
We ended Day #2 a bit shy of its Joplin Missouri goal since there’s was no point of exhausting ourselves after another 12-13 hour day in the saddle due to the extra mileage of our side route excursions. We’d make up the shortfall on tomorrow’s segment,
While walking to Kenny’s — a local BBQ joint in Springfield — we happened upon a classic, restored, custom and cruiser car drive-in show in a chain burger restaurant’s parking lot. These vehicles were driven by loving fiends of America’s rolling automotive beauties from the 1920s through the early 1970s.
This warm spring, shirt-sleeve Saturday evening witnessed a 4-lane byway metamorphose into a cruising street just like the ones we experienced during drive-in Friday nights in the 1960s. A geezerfied version of American Graffitti. Very cool.
Day 2 miscellany and counts:
(2023 observation: my scribblings are silent this day for this tally sheet info.)
Copyright © 2001 and 2023 From My Aisle Seat
www.vicscotra.com
Life & Island Times: Day 1
Editor’s Note: Marlow’s Road Trip, 22 years ago, resumes this morning with the experience of meeting America and it’s roads up close and personal!
– Vic
May 2001
Detour Version 1.0
Day 1
I hoped to slip out of Alexandria to pick up Steve in suburban Fairfax county to avoid any more public displays. Out the door well before 7 AM doing my final rig checks wasn’t enough for an undetected getaway.
As this farewell unfolded, I recalled a midwestern summer’s morning in the very early 1960s. The occasion was my eighth-grade graduation from Immaculate Conception Elementary School. My mother directed me during that sweaty Midwestern afternoon to pose in front of every conceivable backdrop on our well-manicured front yard for my father’s decades old Bell & Howell 8 mm movie camera with color film. I could hear the key wind-up, spring-driven, gears grinding as I stood still with salty perspiration stinging my eyes in front of his prized Red Emperor cannas flower bed.
I heard over and over our neighbors drop by to congratulate me for graduating and to compliment Mom for the shiny new suit in which she had encased me that day. For months, she had shopped, no, hunted for it. I remembered her triumphant moment when with me in tow, for what had to be the sixth shopping trip, she found the perfect electric-blue colored model on the deep discount rack at the downtown Union Department Store in Columbus.
To commemorate her success on that multi-day hunting safari, she had one of the clerks take a photo with my Kodak Brownie camera — a big game “trophy shot” with me on one leg kneeling at her feet, the suit draped over the rack behind her, and her cradling between her palms her still smoking store credit card. Sadly, those pictures never saw the light of day — something must have happened to cause that whole film roll to be overexposed.
Despite the relatively cooler AM conditions four decades later, it was a welcomed déjà vumoment as many of the same encouragements, admonishments and best wishes came my way again. As a bonus, this time I was dressed in the clothes of my choosing — black leathers that would be used many times over the decades that followed. During a brief driveway moment I tried to figure out what I was graduating from or matriculating into.
After a brief twenty-mile westward jaunt to Steve’s place, we went through another photo op with his wife Janet before being cleared for departure.
Departure photo — Steve and Marlow
Before we left, Steve started removing the cold weather gear from his saddle bags to leave behind. I asked him to consider taking it, if room permitted as we’d be doing some early morning mountain riding out west. This was not me being prescient — just blind rookie road trip luck as you’ll see later.
Just an hour into our journey, we whizzed past a hand painted roadside sandwich board sign that proclaimed:
“Antiques Made Daily
Inquire Within”
We took its sheepish sentiments as a good omen, as we were embarking upon a path where we might be crafting personal memories that our heirs could consider as olden days, grandpa once-upon-a-time tales. Antiques, if you like.
We stopped in Beckley, West Virginia, for lunch at Fosters. It was a small-town pub serving a decent lunch as the man on the sidewalk contended in response to my query about where to eat. A women in her mid-30s with her two petite, well mannered, towheaded kids scampering about the place, ran the tavern.
Upon learning of our journey, she sounded envious and related her desire to ride the country as well. This was to become one of this trip’s themes, if not refrains, which repeated itself in numerous variations about attempting to do deferred things from one’s secret “to-do” lists. It was sometimes masked by a hidden unwillingness to risk personal failure or injury.
With others, in particular, the fifty plus year old crowd of our new road friends, it was predominantly tinged with regret for not having tried. Our tavern operator understandably seemed restrained by her two darlings and her lack of a partner. As we did with all the others on this and future trips, we encouraged her to hold onto her dream, keep a list and attempt it when she was able and ready.
While waiting for our sandwich order, I went outside to retrieve and apply sunscreen. As a card carrying pink eyed, pale skinned, northern European extraction rider, I come in one of three colors — red, white, and blue. For a long life, two of these should be avoided. As I was applying the screen to my face using my bike’s mirror, I was approached by a kid who couldn’t have been older than eleven. Keep in mind the picture here of a small-town child talking to an utter stranger outside a local tavern, a biker who was two plus feet taller than him and clad in all black and wearing yellow-tinted bug-eye prescription riding goggles.
Here’s the first part of our conversation:
Josh:
(looking at my mildly dirty bike) “Can you wash a bike like that at a car wash?”
Marlow
“Nope. Need to wash it by hand.”
Josh
“Well, how much would that cost?” (not missing a beat) “In these parts, it’d be at least $5-6.” (Note: Local Harley Davidson dealers charge more than $50 to detail a Big Twin; a little less for a Sportster.)
Marlow
“Sounds about right.”
Josh
(while handing me his business card) “Well, I only charge $2.50.”
Marlow
“Well, that seems fair . . . for a good job.”
Josh’s business card
I was astonished at how quickly this kid established a rapport, got to the point, and tried to close the deal. We continued for a short while talking about his and his brother’s odd jobs business, his prices, his savings and the like. As we parted, I for lunch, he for more marketing encounters, I wished him a good day. Hopping aboard his home-made skateboard, he replied over his shoulder: “I will, Mister. I most certainly will.”
As I got back to the table, our sandwiches were delivered as I slid into the booth. Steve was amazed at my tale of an unchaperoned kid coming upon and engaging a total stranger. We both made a promise to stop by Beckley sometime in the future, call Josh for a wash and wax appointment and meet his amazing, supportive family. He’ll get a nice tip.
We spent the rest of the day power riding the interstate road system to put us back on our time and distance schedule and goal of riding the legendary roads of the west. We did take some nice two-laners in the Shenandoahs but cut them short, since today was a 600+ mile butt-buster.
Arriving in Louisville at twilight, the plan was to enter the city and then circle back out along an old US route to the now bypassed areas of locally owned motels, diners, drive-throughs, and dives.
We entered neighborhoods not so much bypassed by I-64 but rather by time, progress, and the DotCom fortunes of the late 1990s. Many were old and dilapidated, the remains of a well distant in time middle class flight. Some areas had resisted with their new inhabitants proudly keeping them shipshape.
Sadly, most were not.
We putted our bikes by a broken-down Howard Johnson restaurant and shuttered HoJo Motel to find an open-air drug market in full swing. We cracked our throttles as we had started to gain unwanted eyeball attention. You could almost hear our observers’ eyelids sounding like motorized press cameras going click-click-click as they fixed us with their best Who the f*#k are you stink eye stares.
Failing to find in town accommodations during our 20-mile city searching sojourn, we retraced our path via I-64 out east to an old motel area, secured a Red Carpet Inn room, called home, and dined at a local greasy spoon after logging 680 miles.
We had one Alpha Sierra moment. Steve’s recently dealer-installed throttle lock fell off on one of West Virginia’s twisty mountain roads. It had come loose back in Virginia but he didn’t ask to stop and tighten it. Lesson learned.
Day 1 miscellany and counts (updated and edited whenever)
Windshield Bug Smash Bingo Game winner: Yellow.
Query count:
Where’re you going? – 2
What’s that? (Steve’s Valkyrie) – 1
Damsels in Distress – 1
Copyright © 2001 and 2023 From My Aisle Seat
www.vicsocotra.com
Life & Island Times: Farewell
Editor’s Note: One of those “future news” stories floated by in the stream yesterday that made us shake our heads. Apparently the Harley-Davidson Management has released a press note indicating they are going to go “all electric” to power their magnificent fossil-fueled two-wheeled rockets. We are with Marlow on the Fatboy of yesterday, powered the way they were! Oh, in light of the news about classified documents scattered across the nation’s capital region, Marlow has thoughtfully included unclassified reminders at the head and foot of this unclassified (but sensitive) verse.
-Vic
May 2001
Farewell
My Old Town Alexandria, South Lee Street neighbors, settled and successful professionals and business owners, looked at my trip as an admixture of mild midlife crisis and mega-stupidity.
Save one or two, none had traveled as extensively, foreign or domestic, let alone deployed to the weird, wooly and wild places associated with the US military. It came as a surprise to me and Steve to be fête’d the night before our departure with an impromptu front stoop wine party. One across-the-street ponytailed neighbor, CB, honored us with penning and reciting the following:
In the hours past midnight, the moon at my back . . .
I was searching for what rhymes with Jack Kerouac
Some pithy subjunctive supporting tales to be told
By Marlow on his return from being “On the Road.”
Or perhaps an elliptical adverbial construction
That links to something about his Harley Davidson.
We need a song, an ode quite specific
For our South Lee Street rider off to find the Pacific.
This moment needs couplets on the fame he’ll enjoy
Tooling around Tulsa on his sleek red “Fatboy” . . .
His tour of the heartland, the rich earth beneath,
The blue sky above . . . the bugs in his teeth . . .
As spring turns to summer and allergies flare
We’ll think of our Marlow, motorcycling out there
Where vistas are grand, and sunsets are fine
And the wine tastes like slightly used turpentine.
Ah, the romance of riding throughout the day
The nights filled with ADVIL and tubes of BEN-GAY.
The tales of landmarks and vistas so nice
The aches and the pains and the bags filled with ice.
We envy his freedom of riding throughout the day
We’ll have to make do with Sutton Place Gourmet
Where we’ll think of him wherever he may roam
Till we raise a glass and welcome him home
Farewell stoop wine party of the South Lee Street Irregulars
Copyright © 2001 and 2023 From My Aisle Seat
www.vicsocotra.com
Life & Island Times: Genesis
Editor’s Note: Marlow is on a roll. He is releasing some of the components of a legendary ride to the Four Corners of the United States. On Two wheels.
– Vic
Genesis
July, 2008 Coastal Empire
Author’s Note: Writers normally have a moral in mind when penning a story. Not so for most who are simply living life during their Great In-Betweens. During your author’s midlife wanderings on two wheels of American back road wilderness, there was a moral but only in retrospect. These multi week rides with other riders tested instincts and agilities. Some of them were soft, some visionary, some disillusioned, but most if not all of them were comfortably and numbly happy in the perfumed suburban life of our imperial cities.
Long days astride powerful motorcycles slowly transformed them into primitivists. The daily tests and adventures pushed them beyond their city limits, so much so that at times these personal journeys of searching for their outer boundaries served not just as a challenge but as a reproach of their city lives. Successful or not, the extremity of the challenges became what these trips were all about. It was about their personal sufficiency in unsuspected, unforgiving situations, where the thrill hunter portions of them would have the tables turned as they became the hunted when they crossed unseen barriers that cut them off from the predictable comforts of city life’s civilization and order.
What follows is my fourth attempt over fifteen years to put this down in some reasonably readable form . It is a lightly fictionalized kluge of recovered rememberings from several of those trips.
A long high view of a narrow two lane, treed road in Northern Virginia revealed that this once sole east-west path since the 18th century between the imperial city and the inland farms and cities that supplied its wants had been bypassed by a recently constructed six lane divided parkway only 60 yards to its north. An endless procession of cars and trucks coursed along the new artery. The old road bed was slowly being covered in debris, since county maintenance crews cleaned it infrequently. The wooded valley around the old road was slowly walling up the road.
At the lowest point of the old road, a narrow, century old, lane and a half, wooden bridge across Accotink Creek still served the few local residents who still lived along this pike’s sharp curves and cliffs. The creek beneath this bridge was rocking and rolling with the previous night rains, made even stronger by the runoff from the new six lane expressway 50 feet above.
Farther on down the creek through secret woods past shale faced cliffs, rapids, deep pools and finally in the far distance old flood control holding ponds now connected in a single huge lifeless lake could be seen. The ruins of a small cluster of homes, where the original owners of the 18th century pike were now in almost in total decay. Closer inspection down the swollen creek’s northern bank revealed a crumbling cemetery dotted with graves dating from the late 18th through late 19th centuries. As this dead lake grew, the cemetery and home ruins would disappear.
I had ridden this road for several decades before this new bypass appeared. I cherished it and mourned its passing that day atop the wooden bridge while getting wet from the storm surge’s mist from below.
Mine was a sunburned face of a tall crystal city building, desk man in late middle age. I was wearing an orange bandana under a motorcycle helmet festooned with cigar ring wrappers from the stogies I had smoked during the past few years. My leather jacket showed signs of deep weathering from his incessant wearing of it in all kinds of weather unprotected by rain gear.
A well-worn road atlas laid splayed flat before me on his gas tank and headlight. My yellow-tinted goggled eyes stared at the orange highlighted circles of places I wanted to visit before they disappeared.
Someday I thought I might see them. My finger traced lines between them, while my suburban face contorted further as I concentrated on the difficult parts of a draft itinerary.
I relaxed and my face fell back into its soft lines as I made penciled notes to include a century-old, forgotten pike in the northeast.
Seven years later
This two-wheeled journey got its kick start at Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris that fall. A motorcycle rider (and friend of mine), his wife and an 86 year walker-equipped woman were trapped there when the Air France airline unions decided to strike worldwide.
Augustus, his Margaret and her mother’s inadvertent Parisian stay stretched into a week-long sojourn. It was punctuated with daily twelve hour long visits to the airport with all of their luggage to queue up for that day’s hotel and meal vouchers. Mob unrest and solidarity was spiced up by the regular appearance of surly French elites attempting to jump the queue. Augustus’s mid 60ish petite wife would dress down these interlopers with sailor language in several tongues. He smiled broadly every time when the vanquished jumpers would slink back to the end of the line.
Needless to say, Augustus chunked his plans and brochure to return to Europe the following year for a long dreamed, guided Alps motorcycle tour straight into a De Gaulle garbage can.
I knew that Augustus might disagree, but I did not care. Augustus was tied to his electronic maps, GPS and its computer routing system software. Many of the roads and places I was bent on seeing were unknown to these devices. Their calculated route plans had an affinity for the straightest of lines and did not do well accommodating the off-track, let alone the offbeat. These places and paths had to be seen, no, witnessed, by the group before they disappeared. Much like my treasured bridge and creek in Northern Virginia.
Augustus was a retired Marine fighter pilot who had finally moved from the most important city on the world down to South Carolina horse country. I, a retired Navy spook, lived now in the Florida Keys. I was thin, loose, slow-eyed, hedonistic, and an inveterate risk taker. Augustus was powerful, tightly wrapped, alert eyed, aesthetic and a risk assessor. Augustus could be manically obsessive, while I could only be so for brief periods under the leadership of someone as equally crazed as himself.
When circumstances demanded, both could be confident, calm and almost mystical. Despite our open differences on just about everything else, we amused each other and were deeply appreciative and affectionate of the other’s strengths and foibles.
Planning this trip had been something like playing four rounds of golf at the US Open. The course was known but its terms, conditions, pin placements and green speeds changed daily. The group was going to traverse a course that was quickly returning to its wilderness state, not like the unchanging municipal par 3 course slab highways and connected cities that dotted the interstates.
Each of the four riders had his targets to visit beyond and between the corners (Key West, Madawaska, Blaine, San Ysidro). Many of them were well offline of the most efficient line of travel. So we laid these targets out and negotiated selected places along two route alternatives.
Once they were done, they presented the two routes via email to the other two riders, Rex and Steve. On a conference call, the competitive route drafters negotiated and sold their own selections while trying to avoid complaining about the other’s choices and recommendations.
“Wait till you see the Cascades in Washington and the volcanic mountains of northern California. I tell you they are beautiful and wild, if not savage.” I was speaking softly almost hypnotically as I could see the roads and vistas in front of me.
Augustus went on with his ideas, “When you see the river waters and forest of the Northeast and Michigan’s upper peninsula, you will change. The city things inside of us all will wash away.”
Stopping briefly, he then said half in jest for me and Rex to hear, “They’ve got deer and elk up there, guys, made of meat instead of that processed jerky you two chew on.”
All of them laughed at that.
In the end, we would visit everything, stretching the trip from its original mostly straight line 11,000 miles to nearly 14,000 miles. This would be no mean feat, since with few exceptions; the average riding day would now be over 500 miles often in crappy weather and rough road conditions in order to get it done in the four weeks they had allotted to it. Their average age was mid-60s.
I was ebullient. Before ringing off the teleconference, I concluded “There’s nothing to it. I’ll leave my southeasternmost corner city first and head up north, pick up y’all along the way to the second corner. We’ll all be back in time to catch the first games of the college football season.”
Steve noted for the record, “Parts of this route look tough – roads of chipseal and frost heaves, not to mention severe weather with below freezing wind chill temps to hail, thunderstorms and extreme dry desert heat.”
“Sounds like we’ll be experiencing the best sensations life has to offer. Well, truthfully speaking, the second best . . . ” I smirkily said.
“Piece of cake. Just pack flexibly.” offered Augustus.
“This vanishing civilization and wilderness is gonna be great!” Rex finally said.
“We night be some of first and last few who will see a lot of this.” Marlow interjected as he thought of his beloved wooden bridge.
With the call finished, I exited his home to be swallowed by his small town’s afternoon rush hour traffic along North Roosevelt Blvd. Flabby sunburnt tourists headed northward back to the mainland, while palefaces drove southward into town for the weekend. The streets were clogged. The thick, slow moving traffic caused yellow tinted exhaust to linger. His fellow journeyers on the mainland had it worse. Much worse. Their trips home would be delayed by bridge raisings, accidents, presidential motorcades and so on. He had fled those horrors years ago.
Augustus with my mutual support had sucked the group into this trip and why not? All of them wanted, no actually needed, these escapes. So it was no surprise that Steve and Rex assented to all the changes to the original draft route alternatives.
Four weeks later in the mid-summer heat of July
I, ready for the back country blue highways, stood by my loaded Harley FatBoy, grinning a little crazily. At first it seemed that his neighbors were gathering to bid him goodbye. I was focused inward.
“Sun’s coming up. Snowmelt-fed creek waters are running dry up north. Time to go. Will send you all postcards along the way. See in four weeks, give or take a day or two.”
With that I climbed on his long silver and black bike that filled my condo carport. With a few simple electrical checks complete, I fired it up, cracking the throttle several times to wake the few neighbors who were not yet awake.
The back of my bike was packed and stacked with a variety of bags, rolled clothes and equipment for the trip. I swung the kickstand back and leaned hard into these packs to make them act like a seat back cushion, put the bike into first gear, and blew out of the driveway and onto US 1 north.
Copyright © 2008 & 2023 From My Isle Seat
www.vicsocotra.com
Life & Island Times: Detour Version 1.0
May 2001
Detour Version 1.0
Part 1
Why a Motorsickle Roadtrip & Preparations
I had been feeling out of sorts for some time — long before the Y2K hair-on-fire nightly broadcast and cable news stories started in earnest. It was an itchy-scratchy uncomfortable feeling about being in my own skin. I was tired of waiting for something to happen, to take me away from this Beltway rat-race, and its crazies running around in clown shoes.
I was so desperate that I settled on a two wheeled escape plan — city to city, town to town, rock-n-roll runnin’ around and away from these no count, desperado thieves of the truth, beauty, and love in my life. No more of their funny business shakin’ me down. Needed the oh-so-sweetness that far western myths offered.
Yeah, I knew that the old world back home would keep on turnin’, but so what, I didn’t doubt it, I just needed to keep myself on the move and live a dream, and that’s all that I would ask for — my mind at rest.
First of all, let me answer the trip’s WHY question of motorsickling it.
· Recent sudden deaths of young shipmates, surprising divorces of friends’ long-lived marriages
· The road travel works of Jack Kerouac and CBS Sunday Morning host Charles Kuralt
· Long kept and curated list of must-visit places and to-do things
· Windshieldless skylarking at 80+ MPH
· Never dissipated wanderlust from my formative 1960s days
· Movie road trips like Animal House, Grapes of Wrath, Easy Rider
· And being creatively played out after three plus years as a consultant to the point of postal worker syndrome for a $1.5 Billion Marine Corps program to automate and digitize their WW II era ground warfare fighting command and control systems spanning breadth from the Commandant inside the Pentagon all the way to the buck private in some distant foreign foxhole.
Thus, it was no surprise that my earlier shared idiot gauges read like this:
Select Marlow’s pre-Detour gauge readings
From hereon in, to my maximum personal physical extent possible, I promise that these musings will be as all good road trip motels promise in their throne-wrapper writings. To assure you, my readers, that they are as advertised, please note my headers and footers.
Preparations
After some informal landline, voicejail, and email discussions, my Detour 1.0 mate Steve and I met for an hour seven nights before our departure to map out a route. Using my old road atlas from the previous century, we laid out roughly where we had relatives, friends, college roommates, on top of the scenic places I had from my “must tour” list.
I’d been compiling this list for many years with the care of a small boy in New York City during the 1950s collecting his must-have’s — the Mantle, Mays and Hodges rookie baseball cards. As time and travels came and went, I’d take out my list and begin deliberations whenever I read about a new place in the newspaper travel section, see something on the tube, or listen to a fellow voyager wistfully recount the memorable beauties of a place long ago visited but ever present in a special place in his heart.
Trading one destination for another was tough, so I instituted a baseball farm team system for those places which were not major league in quality for this opening day trip but with time (and additional trips) could move up to the “show.”
Temporal structure for this odyssey was imposed by both of our general managers instructions: celebrate Steve’s fiftieth birthday on May 10th in Monterey California and return to Northern Virginia no later than May 20th. The internet was only consulted to calculate the rough daily distance between way points to see if what we were considering was sane from a numb butt syndrome standpoint.
Our exchanges to date had been on the necessities, such as packing lists, extra keys, etc. Lessons learned from my prior long-haul trips, deferred maintenance, must-have equipment for such a journey like throttle-locks, quality (i.e. thick) leathers, boots, tire patch kits and so forth.
Key trip planning rules included mandatory side routes, interstate road system avoidance whenever possible, cheap hotels, no chain/fast food eateries, no shopping, no museums, no gift shops, no tourist traps, no TV other than the Weather Channel for daily route tweaks and occasional SportsCenter reports on the Orioles, no newspapers, no whining, maximum daily schedule/destination flexibility, Harley and Honda dealership oil changes at three thousand mile intervals, one weather/maintenance day each on the out to the West coast and back to Virginia trip segments. Our initial rough outline was a 6500 miles, three-week skeletal route non-inclusive of side trips:
Northern Virginia 611 miles to
Louisville KY 547 miles to
Joplin MO 475 miles to
Amarillo TX 281 miles to
Santa Fe NM 152 miles to
Pagosa Springs CO 494 miles to
Tempe AZ 398 miles to
Santa Monica CA 342 miles to
Monterey CA 459 miles to
Reno NV 319 miles to
Ely NV 431miles to
Grand Junction CO 449 miles to
Lamar CO 490 miles to
Louisville KY 611 miles to
Northern Virginia
With side trips it looked to be ~ 8000 miles, give or take.
Easy peasy. Wink
Copyright © 2001 and 2023 From My Aisle Seat
www.vicsocotra.com
Life & Island Times: Detour Version 1.0
Editor’s Note: The Writer’s Section at Socotra House is attempting to clean house by actually opening the closet/garage/cellar doors to see what is contained within. This afternoon, we share Marlow’s version of something those of you of a “certain age” will recall: Getting Ready to Get Up and Go. His requires two wheels. And a lot of road!
– Vic
May 2001
Detour Version 1.0
Note & Prologue
Scrapbook title page
Author’s Note: I episodically penned and penciled this on pieces of scrap paper while my motorcycling partner, Steve, and I two wheeled our way across the USA long before 911’s arrival in September 2001. Later that year, we and the rest of the nation started careening all over the place on a journey that led us to this strange and unknown way station in which we find ourselves today.
The detour I then thought we were taking has now become something more, much much more, than we ever thought, imagined, prayed for, or could have bargained for.
Smoke ‘em if you got. Tip another one or two back while I whip and wheel this sucker out for all y’all.
One last saved round: Outside of my riding partner reading the scrapbook version of this back in 2001, these tales have never seen the light of the day until now.
– Marlow
————-
Prologue
In late 2022 I was weeding out my closets to pare down the crap of 50 years plus on the road and high seas. It had graced me when I came upon three scrapbooks of singular memories. One was a journal of a fortnight 23 plus years ago I spent caring for my three grandkids while their parents did business in the People’s Republic of China. All parties had a blast while parental rules and guardrails were lovingly and jollily enforced. The children learned new sailor vocabulary, songs of the sea and that, upon my acquiescence to their suggestion, a bad word fine jar for their grandfather’s verbal creations could be an immensely profitable enterprise for them.
The second scrapbook piece upon which we embark today is nearly 22 years old and is much more free form, since none of its days had much sameness to or among them, day after day after day. They only experientially congealed near the end of the trip when our consciousnesses had expanded enough to figure and lay it all out.
Stick around – hopefully you’ll see what I think we saw.
-Marlow
PS: As a way of introduction of how rudimentary and scrappy our analogue photograph and paper journaling technology of those times was, here’re some samples from my opening and closing pages.
“““““““““““““““
Select Marlow’s pre-Detour gauge readings
Detour journal source material pile
One short week’s work of road grume on my FatBoy’s motor
Copyright © 2001 and 2023 From My Aisle Seat
www.vicsocotra.com
Borders, Borderlands, Heartlands
Editor’s Note: This essay from Marlow is about an epic trip around the four corners of the Continental United States. That complete account of life on two wheels is a work still in progress, and still takes our collective breath away.
– Vic
Author’s Note: This new life frontier situation caused me to dig up and rewrite this 20+ year-old, dust-covered, motorcycle road journal entry.
-Marlow
Borders, Borderlands, Heartlands
This novel life space I find myself in is becoming my heartland as its heretofore hidden borderland spaces and boundaries rushed my way unannounced into my conscious being. I will not be shocked into some type of subsistence frontier lifestyle. No way of life in the shadows of despair for me and W.
I have been for most of my life a maker, producer, builder, and giver. Within less than a year, I was faced with becoming a taker. The significance of this cultural shift between creating and consuming is profound all around.
When I two-wheeled travelled our country’s midwestern and western borderlands and frontier boundaries, seeking fabled lands in which our country’s settlers’ time was spent, I was disabused of lotta ideas and myths, seeing our people completely off the track — busted towns and folks, rusted places that couldn’t make it back. Farther and farther out the story was the same — former heartlands of which America the beautiful used to boast had gone to seed.
Sorta like me now.
Anyway, my motorcycling buddies and I stayed at cheap motels in these ghost towns. Drinking Augustus’s blue elixir, taking showers and cooling down at the end of long days in the saddle and meeting, greeting and getting to know the land’s people and stories.
We’d seen miles upon miles of verdant places — wasted away down to barren soil and sand, former homes rotting stretching out across the land. Desolation — where fat crows had once been, desert over no eagle dared to fly, and graveyards now decaying, no more burials, bowed heads or reddened eyes.
More miles of empty streets with endless strings of vacant store fronts than I care to remember.
More than once, one of us thought we’d heard a black crow squawk nevermore.
A horizon where dreams are no longer seen
Nothing but a repeated sameness of ragged, shuttered scenes
Treacherous things trap the remainees
Endless beguiling survival schemes that always fade
Gaunt and haggard folks toil alone and work like mules.
And we lone sundowners riding swiftly ever onward through it all.
As I was back then, these places were part of our great heartlands that had become borderlands, as they and their folk were hollowed out, and were becoming then borderline frontiers as all but a dwindling hardy or immobile few abandoned them.
In my rear-view mirror, I have seen that my new receding boundary was resolutely fixed; it was an impossibly thin membrane, phenomenal in length and height, but with no width.
I now viscerally know that when I crossed that boundary, things became quite different.
Onward. As always — Full Wide Open Throttle.
Copyright 2023 My Aisle Seat
www.vicsocotra.com
Life & Island Times: Long ago one April
Editor’s Note: The arrival of Marlow’s thoughts- the unfinished ones- was timely this morning. They are bracing and add context to this morning’s attempt to understand what happened in the Opera Buffe on The Hill, the mess in Ukraine and two other regional conflicts in motion now. It is a time of great and fundamental change. And as Marlow demonstrates, it can require a positive transformation…
– Vic
Long ago one April
Unfinished Manuscript
Pages from an unfinished Dr Seuss book manuscript (courtesy Saunders Auctions)
Not writing is no good but trying to write when words fail you stinks. Writing about writer’s block is better than not writing at all, so . . . .
I am quite used to sitting in a small room, in front of a computer keyboard and making words cascade down a screen like black snowflakes against a white sky. So when the words are not forthcoming, I won’t get up and walk away from my digital typewriter. Why? All I’d have left would be the sickness which started me typing in the first damn place.
I have witnessed enough of mankind in supermarkets, 7-11s, freeways, bars, restaurants and windowless, humorless rooms of war. One can´t help but do this after living for six plus decades. I’ve tried it all — war, women, travel, marriage, children, the works. I suppose I wanted to know about things, what made them work. So, I don’t feel like kicking myself in the ass for not watching things carefully for new material. It’s true even sometimes for those gatherings, when the drinks are free and I have a designated driver ride home.
For better or worse, I don’t get much inspiration from what is current. It’s the same old thing in disguise. Only one thing comes without a disguise, and you only see it once, or maybe never, like getting hit by a whistle-less freight train or a car that runs a red light.
I´ve got enough clay to fiddle with in my writing. But as time passes, forgetfulness is emptying me. So, in spite of myself, I must refill.
I´m not sure what´s best for me in this regard. Should I sit somewhere, smoke a short cigar and watch. Seldom do I think doing that would lead to a chance meeting of a rare or interesting person. I think the endless waiting would make me goddamn grouchy and off I’d go in search of a river of whiskey and music played so damn loud I couldn’t think. That worked for a long time down here in Key West.
Maybe what’s needed is reinventing myself, changing my tone and shape often so I don’t fully categorize myself. Or fall into ruts. Reinvigoration. Reinvention. Self-taught. Your history and present belong only to you.
When the words flowed in the past, I was never sure whether what I had written was good or bad. No matter its quality, it likely was due to the low-down southern whiskey I was drinking. This brown magic juice made my heart beat faster and sometimes helped my mind see things. It certainly dulled the ache that came with the deadly drone of life.
My spirits were lifted each time I saw that the very poor and very rich extremes of society were allowed to mingle freely in the dives I frequented. But I didn’t get why my spirits were often so low. It took decades, not hours, days, months, or years of feeling absolutely terrible and that nothing would change that; neither health professionals, changes of diet, drink, humility, or God would fix it. I should have awakened and stopped insisting on clearing my head and cleared my damn aching heart instead.
I was like waiting and waiting. Didn’t I know that waiting was one of the things that drove folks crazy or killed them dead? I saw it in the lives of others. People waited all their lives. Most waited to live, the truly hopeless waited to die. We waited in line to buy toilet paper at the market. We waited in line in front of unmanned bank machines for money. Those who didn’t have any money waited in longer lines downtown in unemployment offices, shelters and soup kitchens. All of us waited to go to sleep and then waited to awaken. When it was dry, we waited for it to rain. Then we waited for it to stop. We waited to eat and then we waited some more to eat again. Some waited to get married and others waited, sometimes too long, to get divorced. We waited in the courtroom with a bunch of other unhappy couples for the judge to issue the dissolution order. Afterwards I wondered no more if I was finally going to stop waiting and start living.
But that courtroom event happened much, much later, and only after I had started to die. I didn’t get that I was dying by my own hand just to get away from her.
There were signs, sad ones, that it wasn’t working early on. Even when times were what appeared to be okay, we didn’t sing or laugh, or even argue. We sat across from one another, eating and drinking in darkness. Afterwards I would smoke cigarettes or cigars. Later, when we went to sleep, I didn’t put my feet on her body nor she on mine like we used to. We would sleep without touching.
When I saw the signs for what they were and got it, I fought for each minute. I fought to fight for what was possible within myself, so that my life and death would not be like the others. I had nothing to really get away from except for one person.
The problem up till then was that I kept choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what I chose, these bad things sliced a just little bit more off of me, until there was almost nothing left. At the age of 45 when most people were just beginning a new phase of life, I was almost finished.
I finally learned from the regrouping and the moving on. I had been stricken with fear for decades. I feared failure so much that I almost died — too conditioned, too used to being told what to do. It began with the family, ran through parochial school, church and finally thirty plus years in the military-industrial world. Failure wasn’t an option, but strangely death was.
I wasn’t lonely back then. I had lots of friends, close ones. Oddly I experienced no self-pity. I was just caught up in a life in which I could find no meaning.
We had lots of laughs. Then we started to laugh when there was no reason to laugh. That should have signaled that we were crazy. Were we nuts? Who knew? Insanity is comparative. We told ourselves that it depended on who set the norm. When a stranger said in our earshot, “those guys are nuts.” we curiously felt honored.
I should have looked honestly in a mirror. Maybe I’d have seen my real self. Like somewhere . . . suddenly . . . say in a large mirror in a furniture store . . . bloodshot eyes like little ladybugs . . . face contorted, a bit demented, a freaking mess. Yet, when I did look, I saw the regular guy I felt I was. My God, I’d say to myself, I’m glad I’m not one of them.
Now that I have recovered, there is finally something here for death to take away.
I know that I can’t beat death, but I have finally beaten death in life. The more often I learned to do it every day, the more light was in my life. Since my life is my life, I know it while I got it.
I haven’t died
yet
and I have certainly
lived
thank God that I’m alive
tonight
We are only given
so many evenings
each wasted evening is
a gross violation against the natural course of your one and only life.
Dying will come easy:
like the 5 AM trains I
hear when
I’m asleep on my
side
I am blocked no more.
– words from an unfinished manuscript
– Marlow
Copyright 2023 My Aisle Seat
www.vicsocotra.com
Life & Island Times: Keep ‘Em in Our Hearts
The Socotra House Legal Department sent around what they called a “views expressed” disclaimer and insisted we publish the same. An opinion disclaimer being defined by a billing hour’s generation of a formal written statement attributing specific information to a certain individual’s personal opinion. Like other disclaimers, an opinion disclaimer is designed to limit (or totally eliminate) legal liability. Independent contractor jobs with their own opinions not in direct supervision depend on it.
– Vic
Keep ‘Em in Our Hearts
Post New Year’s eve this week, a long-time reader – a Marine Corps F-4 aviator and movie star (he flew all the F-4 scenes in the movie The Great Santini) — had just perused one of my 2022 year ending posts, when he winced at reading a fellow cross country motorcycle rider revealing himself as a long-term member in the ranks of diagnosed COPDers. He had quit smoking when he was 24 back in the mid-1960s on the day he left for Vietnam. He, like me, had suffered from adult asthma.
Various other disorders impacted his mobility along his way. It came as no surprise that we both share a certain feelings of lethargy — a lethargy that is not just physical, but one of emotion and spirit as well.
We both no longer tolerate as much, if any, current news source because there seems to be little to no good to come out of any political events, any organizations or individuals. All of its audience focus is directed by forces unseen towards chaos and the slow dissolution of a nation we steadfastly served for more than half of our lives.
Petty tyrants du jour seemingly are winning. I am not as despondent as he is for the morphing of our Democratic Republic into a Banana Republic where revolution(s) might become the news of the day. Regardless neither of us longs to see this happen.
His sainted wife lives a life of drug suppressed pain and loss of mobility. It will not improve, and he hopes he’ll have the constitution to keep up with her needs. So far, so good.
Join me as I wish him and her as well as things will allow.
May all of their and our hopes and desires be fulfilled. Let’s keep ‘em in our hearts.
Semper Fi, Gus and his Saint Margaret.
Copyright 2022 My Aisle Seat
www.vicsocotra.com