Travels with Sinbad: Motorcycle Journeys - Part 1
In Australia, the aborigines have a belief that everyone’s existence is a “songline” that runs directly back to the source of all life from wherever they wander. Sometimes that means striking out solo.
The view in South Fork Colorado—beautiful open country.
I love the images this “songline” concept evokes. It makes me think about each of us writing a rainbow-tinted, unique melody with our lives, a jazz fusion of trills and riffs, patterns of notes dancing in combinations all our own. There is also a sense of destiny about their belief, as though we must follow an assigned path.
Have you ever dreamed you were in a room without windows or doors? A road without an exit? Many times the responsibilities of our work, our friends, and our families can leave us feeling like there is no central self that belongs to us alone. We must stay alert to the hidden crooks in the road, the secret windows we can climb through to explore alternative universes; in other words, the possibilities that present themselves to truly conduct our own symphony.
It seems to me that we often live our lives like we are confined to a train track, with an assigned destination we go to and from each day. We take the same route to work, one we have determined is the “quickest.” We go to the same supermarket, cleaners, gas station, and eat at the few restaurants we have determined are the “best.” We see many of the same faces daily as we interact or pass by people on adjacent tracks to ours, all rushing along on essentially the same routes. But if one day we jump the track, we might be surprised to find it is not the disaster we have been warned about. There are countless other parallel or crisscrossing paths very different from ours, equally “best,” perhaps more compelling than the one we originally selected.
Perhaps our parents put us on the train at an early age; perhaps relationships have kept us there. When you jump the track you are confronted with people and ideas that play no role in your previous life. It is exciting and stimulating—and it changes our lives forever. That is what happened to me when I began riding motorcycles.
After I had been riding awhile, I found I was drawn to longer and longer rides—I just wanted to see what it would be like to see this or that area astride a motorcycle. Completely different from automobile travel, you are sensually aware of every dimension surrounding you—the rhythmic thrum of a bridge beneath your tires, the smell and feel of a moist hot wind after a summer rain, the immensity of stone towering over you as you wind through a canyon. It is a first-hand experience. You are not looking through glass and thinking about what it is like out there, applying previous knowledge or experiences to the visual, you are completely and fully present in the moment. You may be riding with others but your experience is uniquely your own within the group.
As Robert Hughes, art critic for Time magazine once said in an essay, “The motorcycle is a charm against the Group Man [or woman].” In these days where we are increasingly identified not by our faces or voices, but by our “numbers” (social security, driver’s license, account numbers, etc.), I find it important to my sense of individuality not to be confined to a category—neither by number, age, economic status, nor gender.
Riding a motorcycle with a group of other riders still contains the pressures of conformity that I need to escape at times. As have most of us, I have spent my life feeling the subtle, sometimes not so subtle, weight of how others would like me to be, what they would like me to do. A part of that I have done willingly for those I love and I have enjoyed the warmth and comfort of fitting in and receiving societal and familial approval. But a part of me has always rebelled against molds based on cultural expectations. I want to reason things out for myself, make my own choices—and I am fully prepared to live with the consequences. Some of those issues arose in riding with groups when I became a biker. I have some close friends I ride with who just ride their ride and let me ride mine. There is no pressure, no need to perform to a certain standard—there is just the road, the enjoyment of the journey, the acceptance of each other as individuals who love the sport. I have spent some great days with these friends and hope to spend many more in their company. Outside of that, I much prefer to ride alone, to putt along at my own speed, testing myself when I choose, going where the road beckons, stopping where my curiosity carries me.
One of those solo journeys during my first year of riding began as a long weekend late one August. I love those hot, dry summer days in Colorado when there is not a cloud in sight and I can pack up the bike and be on the road by 6:00 a.m. That morning I headed south to Morrison in the foothills outside Denver where I often have breakfast at the start of a trip. I was having a little difficulty with my clutch lever, just getting used to a new friction zone, but it was no big deal and the day held so much promise for adventure. After eggs, bacon, hash browns and numerous refills of steaming coffee, with the sun on my shoulders and the sweet feel of freedom on my mind, I continued south down Highway 285—this is a beautiful road, winding through small mountain towns, curves sweeping into open, luscious views of valleys and sky, and the high desert beyond.
Arriving in Fairplay I stopped for gas and checked my odometer, noticing I had just clocked 8,000 miles—a lot for a single year. I drank a French Vanilla cappuccino and wolfed down a Twinkie, my sugar rush for the next leg. Not many bikers on the road. As the afternoon wore on, I climbed into the mountains to the west toward South Fork; clouds began to roll in and it appeared inevitable I would have to dig into my saddlebag for my rain gear. I had never been to South Fork before and it is some of the most beautiful country I have seen—a multitude of rivers and streams, beautifully crafted log homes, open country under a big bowl of a sky. The 14,000 foot peaks to the west gave it a magnificent perspective, even as it began to rain.
Time to stop for the night—[TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK, MORE ADVENTURE TO COME]