One on the Side (aka The Great Sidecar Excursion )
March 26th, 2015 After what seems like years of waiting (actually only a few months) I’m in the Atlanta airport awaiting my flight to Seattle to pick up the sidecar rig. There is the typical sense of unreality, experienced often before, when the long-awaited event finally arrives, as if I have identified myself as “one who waits” and now I’m having to make the switch to “one who does”. There are thousands of people here, all going somewhere, but I doubt many of them are doing exactly what I am. I’m flying to Enumclaw Washington, across the country, to the northwest corner from the southeast, to purchase a motorcycle and sidecar rig that I’ve only seen once, nine months ago and that I’ve never driven. My total sidecar driving experience, on a Ural test drive, is about 25 minutes. My riding gear and clothes are already out there, shipped via UPS two weeks ago, so I’m carrying only an Aerostitch messenger bag. From my original idea of traveling light, the bag seems to have filled itself with odds and ends, becoming much heavier than any definition of “light” should accommodate. There’s the iPad (the one I’m typing this on), the Kindle, the Dopp kit, the camera and a bunch of maps (that I should have shipped…but I forgot) and a California DeLorme book that Jay Smythe thoughtfully gave me just before I left. Though I still have no definite route planned, depending instead on the weather to guide me, it does appear that I’ll be in California for quite a while until I can reach a point where the weather in and on the other side of the mountains will be more fun than ordeal. The problem that a DeLorme always presents is that it shows so many enticing roads that one is like a grade-schooler in a bakery with Dad’s credit card, spoiled for choice. I’d like to sample them all, but then I’d still be in California by next winter.
It’s a long flight out to the west coast, made longer by the fact that airlines have again reduced the size of everything in the passenger compartment to squeeze in more seats. I’m not a small, or even normal sized person. I feel like Gulliver in Lilliput as I try to slot myself down the aisle, barely wider than my hips and wriggle into my seat with my knees pressed firmly against the seat in front and my shoulders against the man in the middle seat. He’s as big as me, and he can’t move away because his shoulders are pressed against the guy in the window seat. So I, as usual, have to lean to the right with my torso out in the aisle to be hit by other passengers and the snack cart as they go by. Well, it’s only six hours, and then I’ll be there, where I’ve been waiting to be.
Tara, one of the owners of DMC, picked my up at the airport and drove me to the shop, pointing out the various sights along the way. She once worked at the massive Boeing plant here, in the aerospace division, which makes me feel even better about the rig. If they can make airplanes that stay up in the air, surely they can make a sidecar that will keep together. Enumclaw is a small town, about the size of Ashland, KY where I grew up, but Ashland didn’t have a specialty motorcycle sidecar shop. The town sits under the presence of Mt. Ranier which dominates everything in the skyline. The base of the mountain is so huge that it can’t really be distinguished and as the sun is setting to the west, the frozen top seems to just hang in the air like an impossibly enormous luminescent celestial being, floating in space.
There she is
The rig was sitting there in the front of the shop as we pulled up. I hadn’t seen it since that day in St. Paul MN back in July when it captured my attention. The paperwork took only a few minutes, the unpacking and repacking of the stuff I’d shipped out ate up a few more and then suddenly I was ready to leave the shop on my own sidecar rig.