A Plan Begins to Form
A cold Saturday morning in November, 2019
I’m 48. Let’s get that out of the way. Since I turned 40, I’ve committed myself to the idea that experiences lived now are more valuable than dreams hoped for in the future. I don’t know if I’ll ever retire. But I do know that I’ve not regretted any of the trips or adventures I’ve undertaken in this lifetime. This will be the story of the latest. With luck, it won’t be the last.
I got my first motorcycle (a Honda CT 70) when I was ten years old. Some might say that was the beginning of the end. For me, it was simply the beginning. When I was 19, I rode a Yamaha XT 250 from Plymouth, Michigan to San Diego and back in four weeks. That trip planted a seed that has grown over the decades into a lust for adventure that I haven’t been able to shake. Married life, fatherhood, and a young career changed my focus, for better and for worse, away from motorcycling. By the time my first daughter was born 16 years ago, I’d sold my last motorcycle (a 1989 BMW R100GS). It didn’t get replaced.
Yamaha XT 250
My ride from Detroit to San Diego
At 40, the itch for adventure became overwhelming. My marriage was falling apart. My father, who was 50 when I was born, was needing more and more of my time and attention as he aged and insisted on living independently. My brother, Eric, from whom I’d grown quite distant over the years due to our seven year age difference, had re-emerged as a primary familial relationship as we’d begun to discover how important your only sibling is as your parents grow to an age where you simply can’t deny that the end is nigh.
It started with surfing. I decided, at 40 and three quarters, that I needed to learn to surf before I turned 41. So I texted my brother: “I want to lean to surf. Let’s take lessons.”
“I’m in!” he texted back, with no hesitation.
For a few years, that was what we did together. Mostly off the coast of Oregon and at Salt Creek, Washington, on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I did some on my own, too. I rented a board (and a VW camper) in Newquay, UK, and surfed the Cornish Coast. I did the same on Maui. To this day, I try to surf at least once any time I’m in a new place. Sayulita, Mexico was my last “new spot.”
Sailing Eldra
Eric lost his hat in the drink.
Then Eric got a sailboat. For a few summers that was what we did together (with some surfing mixed in). Every free weekend I’d drive up from Portland to Port Angeles and we’d work on his boat, a 16 foot Prindle he’d named Eldra in honor of our now-passed father, until we could finally launch it. I won’t tell you about how I capsized it the first time he handed me the mainsheet and hiking stick. Suffice it to say we learned how to right it, quick.
It’s several years on now and Eric is living in Arizona, 15 miles from the start of the Nevada BDR. He’s got a nice (too nice) KLR 650 begging for abuse, and I am now the latest owner of a 2000 Moto Guzzi Quota 1100 ES, a bike I never knew I wanted that, in the two years I’ve owned it, has become unquestionably the best bike I’ve ever owned.
Two adventure bikes and a home base a stone’s throw from the start of a spring-weather BDR? These plans practically make themselves.
At the end of March, Eric and I are planning to ride the southern sections of the Nevada BDR, from Oatman, Arizona to Tonopah, Nevada, stopping when the snow pack forces us to. This blog will journal my prep leading up to the trip as well as our days on the trail.
A quick moto tour in Ireland
No one was home.
