Mt. Hoodwinked
I met a girl in church back in Washington DC. Her name was Tammy and she was from Maine. She told me this story of when she was a bad-girl teen, sowing her wild oats. She snuck out of state and went down to Boston with her equally bad, beautiful, girlfriends and they got hustled the first day there by a street-carny.
The guy had a little table set up on the sidewalk. He had three walnut shells and a dried up pea. He did the ‘shuffle-and-find-the-pea’ thing enough times to take all the money she had. Then he offered her one last chance to win it back. All she had left was her grandmother’s ring. She lost that too. The underhand is quicker than the eye. Just so you know, this story doesn’t end as crushing and heartbreaking as that one, but the hoodwink principle is the same. It goes like this:
One unnamed vintage BMW rider in our group, the one with the view of Mt Hood from his home, takes the back roads home from a trip to the Bonneville Salt Flats and finds himself in the middle of the Alvord desert. It’s mid-September and he’s riding across it all alone. Being the sharer of all grand things that he is, he thinks to himself. ‘I wish all my friends we’re here with me!’ So he plans a trip, just like he does for us every year. He is excited for us to experience what he has. We are, for he is the Man Who Dreamed Upside Down.
The problem is that the cool September walnut shell is nothing like the July walnut shell. Instead of the dried-up pea which equals winning back your grandmother’s wedding ring, a fire breathing dragon pops out and scorches you while fifty black knights throw salt and fine dirt in your eyes before they pelt you with rocks, knee you in the thigh, pull your shoulder out of the socket and then get their horses to stomp on your nuts for good measure.
Every year, the thought of exploring new roads on motorcycles together the following summer feeds our wanderlust. So much, in fact, that we are able to endure and overcome challenging situations that can make our years feel like decades. This year was not only no different but it was exceptional. None of us was prepared for the events that would unfold.
There are times when being a parent is challenging. Like 0-40+ There are other times when it seems unbearable. I remember once, as a young father, hearing a mother say regarding her fourteen year old daughter: “I love her, but I don’t like her at all right now.”
Sometimes that happens within groups of close friends that spend days together but there is something much greater that happens when you persevere for the greater good of the group and decide to behave, not as “mere men” as referred in 1 Corinthians 3…
For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving like mere men?
..but as sons of God. The longer you spend together, the easier this is to understand. It takes more than three days. One day and night together is too short. One day is euphoric. Two days is too long but not long enough. All of our flaws are exposed in two days so now, three days can be unbearable. After three days, you become comrades, because now you need each other. When you are enduring life changing circumstances, you can feel like you are facing them alone and you must make an opportunity to bond. But there is cosmic resistance and it makes its presence known in the form of bad humor, alcohol, or unexpected events that may be occurring far from where you stand. These distractions are designed by evil forces. They intend preventing depth, unity and connection. They are designed to prevent repentance and forgiveness and reconciliation. Eight of us formed our Unified Corps of Resistance to that resistance this year.
We waited patiently for Gonzo to arrive for as long as we could but he didn't get the memo. We all got there Sunday afternoon to ride first thing Monday morning. Well he did, but he didn't read it. he's a doctor for crying-out-loud and ...hey Gonzo! Remember that time you ran out of gas in the middle of Wyoming because you rode faster? Bahahahah! By 10am we heard his flight was delayed, we had too much coffee and ran out of patience and readied ourselves. The good guys in the group chose to wait for him. Those of us that the sun, moon and stars revolve around, well we four took off for Nevada.
So the whole dragon/black knight thing? That’s the ride across southern Idaho into Denio Nevada in late July. The road and scenery from Boise is actually quite beautiful but at 98 degrees and climbing no one is paying any attention to scenery. There were even some turns. Ok 'a turn'. A long slow one barely discernible to the human eye. That got our hopes up, but that 'shortcut' turnoff…the one onto Whitehorse Ranch Road? That one was a doozy. Joel's ADHD riding style and obsession with analytics had him hovering at about a buck-twenty just to stay awake when he missed the sign. When we tried to catch him, he’d only speed up mistakenly assuming we wanted to play. The three of us stopped and waited exactly 4 minutes in that unbearable heat before agreeing unanimously and demoting him to catch-us-if-you-can-dust-eater. The only car we saw sitting there was a State Patrolman who stopped to see if we needed help or directions. We were pleasantly surprised to not see Joel in the back seat.
Fifty miles of loose gravel on knobbies is one thing. Yea, thanks Captain Obvious, you chose wisely. But 60mph on 80/20 tires trying to keep up has consequences. Sure, it tested our mettle as riders but more importantly it put our friendship to the test. Some swore off dirt forever. Some just swore. Goyo swore off dirt, us and any future trips with us. He had a point. Wiz was just as unruffled and pragmatic as ever. Our rock and voice of reason.
We rode 20 miles and sat on a vista to watch a small plume of dust rise from a speeding object way off in the distance like a pony express. It was our leader Joel, the one who didn’t need no stinkin badges or directions. He was chasing us down and we watched from a distance in anticipation. He was now about to learn the same lesson we did on the deep gravel of that first steep, rutted descent on street tires. His pace slowed dramatically and we laughed, knowing he most likely narrowly avoided a painful experience involving low level flight and barbed wire and knew he was now hyperventilating in his helmet.
The Saskatchewan expression ‘watch your dog run away for three days’ makes much more sense in a place like this. Two cars were also off in the distance behind us and we did not want them in front of us, so we set off again in a hurry.
That left our Mount Hoodwink guy. He was a full hour behind us and gaining, cruising along the 'Pleasure Way’ with the RV's A/C set to ‘Aaahhhh’. In his defense, we’d all be dead in the desert or at the very least, the bleached white bones of Captain Obvious would be trampled underfoot by Arch's 40 head of cattle without that RV but we'll get to that part.
Boise is a great little town and a great place to rent motorcycles and start an adventure. The ideal and obviously better plan might have routed us north on Hwy 21 into the mountains along mountain streams on twisty cool mountain roads and little mountain cabin in the shade. But we are not a group of who you would assume the obvious. Last year I led the group miles past the destination bunkhouse and up a steep dirt road that dead-ended after seven miles. After returning back to the main road, the rest of the group informed me that the turnoff was three miles back, I had transposed the address and no one even questioned my bootless errand. They just assumed it was part of the adventure.
So there are actually two towns in Nevada named Denio. The first Denio is just across the Oregon border. There’s a library and a US Post Office and a bar you can easily miss. Sort of. Denio Junction, at the intersection of Nevada state roads 292 and 140, sits three miles to the south, hosts 2 dirt runways for crop dusters, has a gas pump, a newly-acquired six room motel with a stupid-cool bar. One with no liquor license yet, and restaurant with three whiskey bottles sitting up on a big beam overhead. Those three bottles? They're full of three dead-guys ashes. No one could tell us who they were or why they were up there. We took all six rooms. The No Vacancy sign was now officially lit.
Alex, Shane, and Maddie run the place. Alex, is a world class chef and bought the place earlier this year along with an Opal mining claim. He then recruited his best pal, also a chef. He and his girl Maddie moved out there a few weeks before our trip and are helping Alex run the place.
This part of Nevada is mineral rich and the drybar and restaurant has hundreds of cool rocks and gemstones for sale. I bought my wife a raw, unpolished black Opal from Alex for our 35th anniversary. We honeymooned in Australia and stopped in Coober Pedy, the Opal capital of the world. It’s hot there too but the people had the good sense to build the town underground. Alex said it was was the first black Opal he found on his claim. The three of them go rock hounding at night with black lights. Opals glow under black lights, so they are easier to spot at night.
As we pulled in, Shane told us our 8 motorcycles had just replaced 3 crop-dusters that were in the parking lot that morning. One of them had buzzed us on our final approach from the north. As we sat at the beautiful old bar we learned, to our dismay, the the two taps behind Maddie were out of beer. Permanently. They had applied for a liquor license but it hadn’t come thru yet.
We washed the dust from our teeth with iced tea instead of beer and Maddie gave us our room keys and casually asked if any of us were good at fixing motorcycles. Without even looking up, they all just pointed at me. At the same time. Shane had a 1967 Honda 305 Dream that hadn’t run for a year. I started working on it long enough to diagnose the problem but it was our hero, Snapshot, who actually got the problem solved. We had it running for him before dark that night. It was a satisfying, just watching him pokka-pokka around the parking lot.
I was mildly irritated about the no-beer-bar, but just then, the Pleasure Van rolled up. Inside it was a massive cooler. One big enough to hold all of the ice available on three floors of a Hampden Inn that Wiz could shlep, along with Jimmy Hoffa. I was delighted to find that it wasn’t actually Mister Hoffa which made it so heavy but two dozen ice-cold PBR’s, Oregon’s best IPA’s, water, Gatorade, two massive watermelons, ice cream bars and other healthy stuff.
We are a forgiving group. Gravel? What gravel? It was then I noticed my motorcycle was missing the right rear blinker. Two wires hung from the now empty hole. An offering to the gods of washboards. Alex made us a nice Tri-Tip dinner and we spent the night sitting in the parking lot catching up on life and finally stopped whining about the 50 miles of gravel over a Colorado small batch whiskey and a cigar. We never got to the important stuff because others dragged chairs over and joined us.
The next morning, we had breakfast and headed north at a high rate of speed until we almost ran through a herd of cattle crossing the road. Manure is slicker than snot. Then, we hit the grasshoppers. More grasshoppers since the days of Moses and Pharaoh, and man do they ever hurt at 100. After a few more miles the road split and, wait, what? Another gravel road? More weeping and gnashing of teeth. I could see the shoulders slump. But the zenith was about to reveal itself. Nothing can prepare you for the first time the Alvord fills the void in your visor. It’s like the feeling you get when you approach the rim of Grand Canyon for the first time, and that was where all this started for me.
By the time the group converged, The Pleasure Way and two riders were barreling across with plumes of dust rising. Snapshot, had been instructed by the owner of that sweet R-Nine-T not to ride it on dirt, but there are some rules that simple cannot be adhered to.
Then, all hell broke loose. Dirt and noise and drones barely missing our heads while not capturing any of it! Suddenly there, off in the distance, a mirage! In the rising distorted waves of heat, a brown spot was moving slowly and a small cloud of occasional dust would appear. The logical thing would be to NOT take the motorcycle you brought to investigate, but to merely walk the 2 miles in 102 degrees to see what it was. Only one of us had the good sense to do that. the rest of us rode to Arch as he brought them little doggies home, one hundred yards at a time. He let us moto-rustle while he did one handed-wheelies. A real cowboy! Gonzo actually cried a little. To him, this encounter eclipsed his meeting a real live cardboard cutout of Captain Kirk and sitting at the mock bridge of the Starship Enterprise.
Then, in the mayhem of high speed passes and power-slides, Captain Obvious launched himself into orbit and his day began to unravel. The reasons of how and why will be debated for years to come. At exactly the same time, on the other side of the country, unbeknownst to him, other parts of his life were unraveling quickly as well. Cosmic events that would create an emotional pain that would dwarf his physical pain, which, frankly, was substantial.
The watermelon, ice and A/C in the Pleasure Way provided a form of comfort, but comfort during suffering is overrated and under appreciated. It was like being grounded and forced to watch out the window as your friends get to play with fire, guns and construction equipment. Wait what? They built a trebuchet!
With all of this happening, we were yet to make the real connection. We were consumed with logistics of travel. Like Warren Zevon said. “Send lawyers, guns and money, Dad! Get me out of here!” That’s funny when it’s just a song, but it makes you sick to your stomach when you’re the dad on the other end of the phone.
It’s funny how when you’re out in the middle of nowhere, sometimes you have to pile in a van and drive three miles west to sit on the side of the road on the edge of night to remove the distractions. So that is what we did and fate and perseverance allowed our brother to bear his soul and share his pain and grief and hope with us in the way that God intended. Why are God’s intentions so difficult to achieve?
It’s simple. Cosmic resistance. Mere men will always face resistance to God’s will for their lives but for those that choose to overcome, they will be rewarded with the power to do so and gift of reconciliation. And that is what we did in the desert. When we stopped looking at the wrong things, we realized the right thing. That alone made the trip more than just worthwhile but became the sole reason we there. It could have been anywhere and it still would have been as meaningful.
We possess something very rare and unique as a group. I’m grateful to have been included and trusted in that conversation. 2500 miles, dirt, heat, gravel, whatever. The jury is still out on whether we’ll ever ride together again as a large group, but I’m confident time heals all wounds.
Heck, I’d even bet my grandmother’s wedding ring that some of your favorite bikes come from Japan or Germany.
See what I did there?
Comments