I made it back home at dusk yesterday. I traveled 466 miles from Jonesboro, AR to my home in London. Altogether I  rode 4371 miles on this 11 day trip. As you know I cut the trip short by a week so I can attend my son’s commissioning ceremony. There will be other trips, other destinations, but only one swearing in day.

I rode through familiar territory all day yesterday. I have duck hunted in Arkansas in this area over the years so I know the places where I have hunted but that is not at all to say I really knew the area. The towns are larger and the farms are more developed than it all appears when all you have on your  mind is shooting ducks. I left Jonesboro early and rode east toward home and soon found myself back in rice fields and the wind that accompanies these vast areas of open ground. Thankfully it didn’t last long and I was able to enjoy the rising sun and the lush green crop fields of Arkansas before moving on over into Missouri which, in that area, is also heavily agricultural. Having been in the southwest where water is a precious commodity and desert is the norm, the grass and crops in these  Mississippi river valleys were almost neon green  in their appearance.  I crossed the Mississippi near Dyersburg , Tennessee.

I want to give the Mississippi River its due. There are other rivers in this country for sure. The Rio Grande, Missouri, Chattahoochee, Cumberland and the Ohio are waterways that are prominent in our literature and culture but all of them lack the sheer size and scale that gives the Mississippi its enduring grandeur. I have crossed her many times and every time I am in awe of her size. Now do that on a motorcycle at 65 mph in a crosswind on an elevated bridge and you come to respect the river even more.

Once I crossed the border into Kentucky I was home. My wife is from Mayfield so far western Kentucky has been home for me since 1977 even though I live in London.  I rode to Mayfield and cruised by Susan’s old street before riding over to the building which formerly housed the Merit Clothing Company. The Merit was for many decades a manufacturer of men’s suits, both their own label and for other, more famous brands in the men’s apparel industry. Susan’s father was the Executive Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer of the Merit and worked there for 45 years. My first suits as a young lawyer came from the Merit and were manufactured in this building complex in downtown Mayfield. It seemed only right to get a picture of  the old Merit with my GS since they both, in their own way, carried me some considerable distance from where I began two very different journeys in my life.

It was getting on toward the lunch hour as I left Mayfield. I knew where I wanted to eat and I hoped they would be open. I was in luck and found Belew’s in Aurora, Kentucky doing a brisk business. Belew’s is a hamburger stand where the girls, yes, only girls, come out and take your order and then bring you your food. They even walk out to guys riding GS’s and take their orders. When I arrived the parking lot was packed with cars and a larger contingent of some sort of Jeep enthusiasts club, the kind where the owners throw tons of chrome and  oversized tires on the outside and then fill the inside with leather and stereo equipment, it being their intention to strut in their Jeeps but never really put them to the test. You know, a lot like Harley riders. Speaking of which, I had not been there for more than a couple of minutes when in roared a Harley contingent and they were typical in every conceivable Harley way. To a man they were all dressed like clown pirates at an amusement park, sporting black leathers, chains and bandanas. Just one or two  helmets, and plenty of sleeveless t-shirts to, of course, show off all the ink on those biceps. I spoke to a few of them but got no replies. I guess I just intimidated the hell out of them what with me dressed like a great big banana in my yellow coat and yellow helmet.

Which brings me to Harley biker manners. When I was out west ALL riders waved to each other. We spoke at gas stations. We were interested in each other’s gear. I don’t know why, but once I was in Kentucky the waves stopped and the surly “I wish I had been at the Waco biker shootout to be a badass” attitude blossomed. My theory on the good western manners has to do with geography. Things are so spread out in the western states, gas stations and repair assistance are so hard to find, that bikers know they need to rely on each other and are just glad to see someone who might be of assistance to them. Then come east where things are so concentrated and you are never more than five or ten miles from gas and it’s suddenly easier to cop an attitude.

The lack of manners issue extended to the western Kentucky Jeep enthusiasts or at least one of them. I had parked my bike in the parking lot just like everybody else. It was hot. I was tired. I had, as baby Hoss Cartwright had pointed out the day before, a genuine case of the sore-ass and I had been riding hard for three days. In short, just because I looked like a Chiquita banana I was not someone you wanted to mess with. That’s when fancy Jeep redneck who was parked behind me stuck his baseball cap covered jug head out the window and said to me “Hey buddy. Move your bike. I want to pull through there.”

Now…my bike as loaded weighs about 650 pounds. I’ve just taken off my armor and helmet and ordered.

I looked at Jeep boy and his woman and did what any proper southern gentleman would do. I said “No.”

And then I stood there.

Jeep boy got the message and moved on another way.

 I wasn’t about to let the parking lot encounter ruin my Belew’s burger and chocolate shake. I thoroughly enjoyed them and then it was off toward Bowling Green where I would refuel and then hit the final leg for home.

I stopped at an IGA convenience store on the western side of BG to fill up. As I was doing so a Harley comes roaring up. The rider was about my age. He too, like the other Harley guys, works in pirate movies and is invincible since he had no protective gear on unless you count the vest he was wearing  over his bare chest. He proceeded to fill his bike up. In a few moments he peered around the island and spoke.

“Is that a BMW?”

“Yes.” I replied.

“I thought so. My dad had one of those.”

And so it goes. My relationship with Harley riders is a work in progress.

Fortunately I did not have to speak with other Harley riders on the two and a half hour ride home from Bowling Green. I encountered one last brief rain shower in the final five minutes of my ride home and then it was over. I pulled in to the driveway and there were Susan, Elliott and Sydney to greet me.

So here I am. The “I’m Still Here Tour 2015” is at an end. I traveled over 4,000 miles in eleven days and had a great time. I met interesting people and rode some really terrific roads. As you might expect, I have some more intimate personal reflections as a cancer survivor which I will share with some of you when the time is right. As to my friends in the world of BMW bikes, I’m going to do a follow-up piece on my experiences with equipment and the bike – what worked, what I liked and what I did not. I want to take a few days and reflect on that before I speak on the gear that got me through.

So, you may ask, “Was it worth it? Would you do it again?”

The answer to those questions is yes and yes. Look, riding a motorcycle is not for everyone. You have to WANT to do it and if you want to get back alive you will follow-up the want with a ton of preparation, practice and training. I did all of those and I used all of my training at some point on the trip. As to the worth of the thing I will say that this was a physically demanding undertaking. It required stamina, physical strength in maneuvering a big bike around and a lot of coordination and self-confidence. Most of you have those things and take them for granted. Cancer patients do not. We are not what we once were or at least we worry that we are becoming less of who we were, that we are being diminished by the disease. In truth age diminishes us all but that is a slower progression than cancer can be if left untreated. In truth, I have never had a bad day since being diagnosed with prostate cancer but the worry is always there, the fear of the thing is always floating around in the back of your mind somewhere. A trip like this served for me to assert my own existence on my terms, to say to the disease that came to kill me “You may take my life but you will never ever take the living of a full life from me. I will live it up until the very end and the disease be damned.”

I hope to do other rides like this in the future. My new British friends invited me to do a next year’s ride with them and I just may do it.

This blog started out as a way to just keep a few of you in the loop. It has evolved into something more as writing can and often does. Some of you know I write a lot. This little blog has given me an idea for another project. We’ll see where it goes in the coming months.

Be safe and bless you all. I’ll see you on the road…

Brian

The picture of my bike is what it looks like  ten hours in to a twelve and a half hour ride day. The GS looks none the worse for wear but I certainly do. I covered 595 miles today and regrettably about 200 of it was interstate and during Little Rock rush hour as well! You would think such a long day in the saddle would leave little time for meeting people along the way but actually it was one of my more memorable days on this trip.

I left Seymour Texas at 7:15 this morning. The skies looked like rain was possible but none came. When I went out to load my bike the parking lot of the motel was alive with the activity  of work crews loading their trucks for the day. All were young men except for one middle aged fellow who was clearly the foreman. We were all busy to be somewhere else so no small talk. Just men getting ready to go. I was away and gone before they left. As I rode through Texas I passed by who knows how many hundreds of thousands of acres of rangeland. I saw very few cattle and more than a few ranches for sale. I never did see anyone working cattle although I did see a few stock trailers being hauled around by pickup trucks. These appeared to be horse haulers. What I did see in abundance were oil wells and fracking sites galore. When I drove through Artesia , NM yesterday I came upon a fracking field that easily covered 10 square miles. It went on for at least that many miles along the highway and the pumps stretched to the horizon.

So, where are the cowboys? My strong suspicion is they work for much better pay for these fracking companies. The workers’ trucks parked at the motel had the name of a “Ranch” painted on each door. I looked in the beds of the trucks and did not see livestock tools. What I did see was a lot of equipment to work on other equipment and all of it emitted the smell of grease and oil. Fracking has become a real flashpoint topic in the west and those who oppose it have become militant in their opposition. I suspect the fracking company uses the word “ranch” in it’s public name in order to protect their workers from some anti-fracking zealot. Those who used to be cowboys now work upon the same ranch but it’s a different enterprise altogether.

“Maybe there just aren’t any cowboys left anymore” , I thought as I rode. Around mid-afternoon I stopped around Texarkana, Texas to get a soft drink. A UPS truck pulled into the gas station and parked beside me. In a few moments the truck’s door slid open and there stood Hoss Cartwright’s doppelganger or at least an east Texas 2/3 scale version with a mustache and wearing brown short pants. Turns out he was really in to enduro riding and Honda bikes. So, we did what I have done so many times on this trip – have one of those totally unexpected but very fun and entertaining conversations between strangers about a shared interest.

Mini-Hoss as I call him, was passionate about the new Africa Twin that is supposed to be the GS killer. I told Mini-Hoss I was very interested in the Twin  but I was happy with my GS. He wanted to know if I did the valve work on the GS myself. I told him “No” and that I lacked the tools and the expertise to undertake such a project. He nodded his Hoss head in agreement and then out of nowhere he said:
Hoss:  “You ride a lot of miles?”
Me: “Well, I am on this trip.”
Hoss: “You ever get the old ass ache? All of us enduro guys get it. You get it? You get ass ache on that BMW?”

There are times when the truth hurts and then there are times like today when hurting is the truth.

Me: “Yes. On this trip I sure have from all the miles.”

Hoss, smiling as he heads inside the gas station, “Well, that’s something you and me got in common. We both got ass ache.”

And people think traveling solo is a silent undertaking.

I stopped in Jonesboro, Arkansas for the night and went to an Applebee’s that was adjacent to the hotel. I sat at the bar and had a salad and a beer while watching the Cardinals and the Royals play. I was about half way through my salad when four guys came in wearing their work clothes. They had been in the sun all day and had the dirt on their clothes to  give evidence of hard work done. They were large crane operators. Turns out they were from Kentucky. I was wearing a UK shirt and that got us started talking. When I told them I was a lawyer (don’t blame me. They asked and I wasn’t about to lie.) it almost killed the conversation but as soon as I told them I was on a motorcycle trip the entire conversation became one of each of us sharing with the others where our journeys have taken us recently. We passed the time there as fellow travelers defined not by our occupations but by our desire to go and see and do things that take us away from the familiar comforts of home. I left the boys there while they were eating stacks of hot wings, their versions of a late night meal. It felt good to have spent those minutes talking with them just as I had done with the Brits a few days earlier.

Tomorrow I will be back in Kentucky and may make it home if the weather and I hold out. As I ride I’m sure I’ll be thinking of Mini-Hoss and the crane operators. That is, until I meet the next interesting person on the road tomorrow.

Be safe and bess you all,
Brian

Tonight I was supposed to be camping in Cloudcroft and I almost made it.  As things stand I am writing this installment at a lay your head down motel in Seymour Texas , some 420 miles from what I had hoped would be my camping spot for the night. But, things change.

My day began at 6:00 am. I decided to write my blog in the morning since I had been really tired the night before. I knew what I wanted to write so my plan was to brew coffee in the little in-room brewer and get started. I would then go downstairs to the lobby and refuel on the Hampton’s better grade of coffee. So, I opened up the brewer and…..bugs crawled out.

I started looking around the desk and the wall and there were dozens of bugs. They were everywhere! Not bedbugs, just some kind of bug that looked like a lightning bug without the lights. I went down for coffee and came back and wrote the blog while fighting off the attack of the legions of bugs at the same time. The blog posted, I then began loading so I could get out and head to Cloudcroft for camping and breakfast.

While I was loading the manager on duty came out to smoke. I told him about the bugs and he immediately went in to get pest control on the problem. By the time I was loaded the head manager spoke with me, apologized and comped me the room. I was satisfied and rode on to Cloudcroft.

I followed my policy of giving every restaurant a second chance and this morning Dave’s was on his game. I had the day’s special – biscuits and gravy with sausage crumbled on top, thick sliced bacon and two scrambled eggs and coffee. It was excellent. the owner offered to charge my phone for me when he saw me checking my battery. and my waitress brought me several packets of crackers for my camping at no charge. I’ll be back at Dave’s this fall when Susan and I come out to visit my son Elliott and his bride Sydney. Which brings me to my change of plans:

I had just selected my camping spot at the Silver River campground and was in the process of unloading my bike when Elliott called. The Air Force had just notified him he would be sworn in and commissioned as a First Lieutenant next Tuesday morning in Nashville. Well, there went the camping plans. I checked my maps, made a plan and got on the bike and headed for home.  Tonight I’m here in little Seymour 1019 miles from London. I’ll get home in time to pack and turn around and drive to Nashville. I wouldn’t miss his swearing in for the world.

I encountered a lot of West Texas wind today and it was bad, real bad. One good decision I think I made before starting out on my trip was to remove the top box. I think if I had it on the bike it would have been near impossible to control. Also, last night I decided to remove the visor/mud deflector from my helmet. It is much, much quieter and my head is more stable in the wind.

I took the by-pass around Lubbock today and it was still a nightmare with construction zones everywhere. Texas is just so big that places like Lubbock don’t look significant on a map and yet they are true cities.

Did I tell you that Texas oils their roads? Well, they didn’t tell me. They just let me come around a curve at 75 mph and wham! there is fresh oil on the road. I’ll give the Texans this, they do things complete or not at all. Not only did they pour fresh oil all over the road, they then spread gravel on top of the oil “to make it safer.” In whose world is such a mess safe? As it was I kept the bike upright and let the GS  find it’s way through the stuff. That mess went on for hours all afternoon.

Texas has beautiful rest areas. It’s kind of a private club because they don’t have any signs telling you they are there. You just sort of see them as you swoosh on by and watch the locals go to their own private Texas potty. So considerate of them.

When you are looking at a Texas map you need a Texas frame of mind. Get rid of your Kentucky/easterner thinking. All those little roads to out of the way towns you’ve never heard of? They’re four lane roads with divided median and the speed limit is 75 mph and they go through towns that have less than 500 people. One town after another offering no services of any kind. For hundreds of miles. For hours and hours.

General Motors and the other auto makers have secretly developed cars and trucks that get over 200 miles to the gallon. You and I don’t have these vehicles but everyone in Texas does because there are no gas stations in most small communities. The only way these ranchers and townsfolk can survive, in my view, is to have the top secret high mileage cars of tomorrow right now.

I rode through the Llano Estacado today – the Staked Plains of west Texas. It is flat and beautiful and oh, so very, very big. I don’t know how a handful of Texas Rangers ever brought law and order to the place. Had the buffalo not been exterminated I think the Comanche might still be out there today. The vastness of the American West is so special. The punishing wind, the lack of gas, the goofy road policies – none of that matters. This part of America is so beautiful it just has to be seen.

I know this, I’ll be back and I can’t wait for the next trip.

Tomorrow I will ride in to Arkansas. Let’s see how far I can get as I make the journey to be with Elliott as he takes his oath and prepares to serve at Holloman AFB, Alomogordo, NM.

Be safe and bless you all,
Brian