Meanwhile my bike was naked, stripped of the tank, the seat, and the bags, and floating three inches above the floor, suspended by rope from the rafters in a warehouse in Inglewood, Los Angeles. It was already after midnight.
Read moreJim
I Could Ride 500 Miles
So we’ve made it to Los Angeles. Actually, we’ve been here for four days now. We were not intending to stay so long.
Read moreHow Do You Feel?
I’ve tried so hard not to leave before we’ve left. I’ve tried to stay present, to hold space, to really be with people in the way that has proved so integral to my practice. I’ve imagined how steadily, how sure-footedly I would navigate my last few weeks in Sausalito… how open-hearted and emotionally-available and excited to share my adventures. Oh, and the freedom! Ha. My imaginings proved far from reality.
Read moreA Little Shakedown
We took our first fully loaded (almost) shakedown ride this weekend. It was just a quick 70 mile ride up to Lake Berryessa in Napa, but it felt good to see how the bike handles with a passenger and luggage. We also got to test out some of our camping gear. Overall I was very satisfied. My favorite new gadget are the rokstraps. It may just be a heavy duty bungee, clip, and strap, but it's a game changer when you are strapping your bags down.
Charlie rode with us on his r80gs build to remind me how far I have to go on the badass-scale. I love how his bike looks with the tall forks and extended swing arm. It's a lean beast of a machine.
He also brought his torque wrench so I could tighten down my oil pan bolts. I changed my oil pan gasket last week and tightened the bolts by hand. Unfortunately, I discovered that almost half of the bolts are stripped. The oil pan is functional but leaks a little now. I ordered an m6 timesert kit to repair it next week.
I wish we could go on a few more of these little jaunts, but we will be pretty busy between now and October 15.
Key learnings:
The GPS battery is almost worthless—it lasted maybe 30 min.
Diana needs a little practice mounting the fully loaded bike.
It is not convenient to store our headlamps in the cooking pots.
Facing the Immensity
I began to tell a few people about our motorcycle trip about two years ago. For a couple years before that, I kept my two-wheeled dream almost entirely to myself, secretly stowing away plans, but unwilling to commit even to the act of description. I think I was afraid of both an incredulous response and an interrogation for which I was unprepared. Surprisingly, and perhaps due to good fortune, people rarely respond in the way I feared. My friends are enthusiastic and a little envious, my family is hesitant, but supportive, and my coworkers are excited for me, if not a little sad. The more people you tell something to, the more real it becomes, until it feels inevitable and you are caught up in a force quite beyond your will. There is power in that transference of will.
Now, less than two months from our intended departure, I am beginning to feel the pressure of what we intend to undertake. I feel as if a wave is gathering above me, lifting and propelling me forward, and now I must stand and ride where the wave will take me, or crash beneath it. There is no escape from it now. I am already in the wave. From time to time, I awake early in the morning panicked about the future, feeling suddenly the impossible immensity of everything at once. I feel engulfed in a cloud formed of every border crossing, breakdown, language barrier, illness, confusion, bandit, pothole, and rickety bridge. In this fog, I wonder what I am doing, what compelled me to think that we could take on something so immense. My heart rate increases as I stare at the twilit wall, suddenly wide awake.
I try to remind myself that while the fearful cloud is not real, it is natural to feel panicked before a great unknown. The overwhelming feeling will pass. The future can never be faced in its entirety. It is simply too immense—even when life seems mundane and predictable. One must, in order to continue living, have faith that tomorrow will be provided for, by whatever means. This is a sort of self-deception, but it is useful self-deception. It is a deception in which we all participate daily because the unknowable is paralyzing.
Before we begin
There is still a lot to get done. That has become my mantra this summer. But we are slowly checking things off the list and adding things and checking them off and adding things... Nonetheless, it is important to take some time off and reflect now and then. I've been spending so much time projecting and planning recently, that it is easy to neglect what is going on right around me. Take, for instance, this woman, who has spent three years with me now, two of which living on a little wooden boat, and who still thinks it's a good idea to take off on a 25,000 mile motorcycle trip together. So before we begin I would just like to say ‘Diana, thank you for listening to my crazy ideas, and being patient with me, and finding my lost things, and telling me when I smell bad, and pulling splinters out of my fingernails. I hope you still like me after a few thousand miles.’