Snow in the Mountains

I've arrived in Raton. It rained hard the first 100 miles, the temperature got down into the 30s and it’s been blowing hard all day. No problems on the ride. It took me a while to travel the entire 170 miles because I had to go slow. I didn’t realize how cold my feet had gotten until I tried to set them down on the ground to stop and almost dropped the bike.

This has been a sad day for me. I couldn’t stop crying for most of the day and that continues as I write this. I’m hoping to get it together before Les, William and Harriett arrive so I’m not difficult to be with.

We may have a problem. This late season storm has brought snow up in the mountains. It looks like a lot. Too much snow means we won’t be able to get to Number One Lake. I’m not sure what we’ll do if that happens. I'm not sure I can get the bike up to the Castillo Lodge either. It's an hour ride on a dirt road, up a mountain, and it's bound to be muddy.

In a panic, I tried to rent a four-wheel drive. This cannot be done in Raton. A very helpful employee at the Tourist Information Center offered me the use of the her Jeep. She said if she could not find me a four wheel drive before I walked out of there I could leave my bike and take hers Jeep. Ultimately, after trying four or five places, she called up to the Castillo and they reported getting snow for the last three days and seven inches just this morning. The lodge is at about three thousand feet below the elevation of Number One. She did not report that Number One was unreachable, but did say that several people have been stuck. The good news: they have a four wheel drive truck I can rent from the lodge. The lady at the Tourist Center gave me a big hug and I left. I drove my bike to a hardware store to get a shovel and some chain. When I pulled up, I thought about it, and decided that if it's going to happen then it's going to happen and I'm not going to be able to control this situation. I left without a shovel. If I had purchased a shovel, you can bet your ass I'd be posting a picture of it tied to my bike.

Can’t write any more right now.

My New Outlook

I rode about 410 miles today. I left Flagstaff at around ten this morning and arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, early this evening. I’m writing this from the bar at the La Posada. This is a place I came a few years ago with Leigh, Les and Rachel. We came to this hotel for a wine and cheese tasting put on by Justin Winery from Paso Robles. I didn't plan on coming here tonight and didn't realize it until I pulled up. The weird thing was that I was just thinking about this memory earlier in the day and now here I sit.

When I left this morning, I left with a new resolve to do some serious miles and focus on the reason for why I’m here. Yesterday, I questioned why I made this trip. Reminding myself that I'm here to honor Leigh made it all make sense. I started out this morning, not focusing on the day’s destination or scanning the roadside for reasons to stop or change direction. Instead, I focused on Leigh. I started from the beginning. I thought about the moment I knew I wanted to marry her, about moving her from Denver to San Francisco, about that transition and about the time we spent learning how to be together. I thought about the day we left in our car from San Francisco to Arizona so we could get married. I remembered slow dancing with her under an over pass on the freeway on our way there because I said we needed the practice and because she didn’t believe I would do it. I also thought about how I got annoyed at her because she bought a welcome mat for our apartment that I believed we could not afford. And then I had trouble going further with the memories. I do that. I get stuck on those moments when I know I behaved badly. I start to replay them in my mind and it pushes out all the other thoughts and memories. I apologized for getting annoyed later, but it’s not like I didn’t repeat that episode over and over again during our marriage. I was sorry each time, but I kept doing it. I’d get mad about something, I’d pout. Sometimes I would get loud and say shitty things. And later I’d be sorry. And then I’d do it again a few weeks later. We probably fought every five or six weeks about something. By ‘we’, I mean me. Leigh wasn’t the fighter. She put up with a lot of crap from me.

Before Leigh died, I’d always heard that it was never too late to apologize. I think that statement misses the mark. I can tell you now that it is too late to tell Leigh sorry for being an asshole on a regular basis and not recognizing that it was I, not her, that was the source of contention. I was always trying to convince her that she was wrong. I was pretty good at it. So now, too late, I’ve faced that and I’ve done something about it.

Although my therapist traded me for year-round seventy five degree temperatures, she did leave me with ways to recognize myself for who I really am, think about who I really want to be, and suggest ways to make up the difference between the two. It’s not like I don’t have my moments when I get angry or annoyed, but I’ve stopped looking for whom to blame for my bad mood. Too bad it’s too late to say sorry to Leigh for being like that. You can say sorry for something you said, but there is no more complete way to say I’m sorry and I love you than doing something tangible about it. Every time I think about a moment that I spent pissed off at her and telling her how she was wrong and what she should she do to stop being wrong, is a moment I stole from her and ultimately stole from me. You don’t get those back. Word to the wise.

So this is what I focused on. I focused on serious riding. I focused on Leigh. I maintained a Zen like state of purpose, thought and mission. Until I saw this sign.



Anybody who knows me well knows that I have a thing for cosmic destruction. I started seeing the signs miles away. Meteor Crater 23 miles. This is not why you are here. This is not the purpose of your ride. Meteor Crater 15 miles. Think of Leigh. Think of your mission. Focus on your life with Leigh and letting go of the things you can’t change. Meteor Crater 6 miles. After making this gesture of love to Leigh, you need to turn around and get home. You will not make it back on-time if you allow yourself to be distracted from the goal. Meteor Crater Next Exit.

The crater was awesome. When I made way up the stairs, past the museum and gift shop and out the doors to the walkway to the crater rim, I started to feel my heart race. This is THE crater by which all earthly craters are measured. A mere 50,000 years old, this crater is in perfect condition and tells the real story of what happens when the cosmos says ‘WHOS YOUR DADDY!’. WHAM!!! I started to tear up as I looked at the enormity of the devastation. I stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon a few days ago, and frankly, it was hard grasp. It’s just too big. Two hundred and fifty some-odd miles and ten miles across? It’s hard to really see it. I stopped every ten miles or so, while riding the canyon rim, and took a look. It looked the same as it did ten miles earlier. But this impact crater was something you could grasp. At one mile across and about five hundred feet deep you could definitely put your finger on this. You could feel the power of the Universe. If you believe in god, and you look at this impact site, you would probably feel like god should look the other way when this thing hits because something is about to fuck up his art project. The undeniable future of the human race can been seen just a few miles from a corner in Winslow Arizona. “Hey honey, we should really change these incandescent light bulbs to more energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs. If every household in America installs just five of these bulbs, we’ll save seventeen million tons of greenhouWHAM!!!!

If I could choose my death, it would be by mass extinction. I’m a people person and would find some satisfaction in that.

But I tried not to stay too long. I felt the pull of my mission and I needed to get back on the road. I started focusing again and reaching for that Zen like state. Then I saw this sign. Rocks and wood together in one place? Free for the taking? Who put chocolate in my peanut butter!

Advice from a HIllbilly

One of my two readers has pointed out that my use of were and where is not always correct, and the she is distracted by this. I'm not thrilled that a hillbilly is telling me that my grammar is poor but I have to face truth.

East for Leigh, West for Me

As the two of you know, I’m not a stable person. The way I overcome this is by constant movement and engaging in ‘projects’. I’m always up to something. Otherwise, it gets too quiet in my helmet. But there is always a moment when I come up for air and realize the trouble I’ve made. Today was that day.

I didn’t really plan for this trip very well. II talked about it, I knew it was coming, but it was only a couple weeks ago that I decided how I was going to get here. Like I mentioned before, it’s so ‘big’ that I couldn’t simply get on a plane the day-of and show up. It had to have drama. This coming weekend has been sitting in the corner of every room I’ve been in for months just sort of staring at me.

I actually didn’t think it would be as difficult as it has been. Today I started to really feel the time I’ve been away from home, away from work and away from family. It’s only been five days but it feels like I’ve been gone longer than that. I’m feeling lonely and a bit tired.

I’m two-thirds of the way to Vermejo. It hit me today that I’m only one-third of the way through with the whole trip, considering that I have to go back. And I can’t be gone for fifteen days so I was really feeling a bit panicked today about what I’ve gotten myself into. Yesterday, I started to entertain thoughts of shipping my bike home or leaving it and flying back and coming back to get it later. But I couldn’t really dwell on that because I had to worry about staying up right and in one piece.

Sitting around today gave me too much time to think. I started working through the scenarios in my head. Then I called Rachel. You know how sometimes you are thinking about something and then someone says to you what you are thinking inside your head and that makes it real? Rachel mentioned that I had to ride the bike back and that is all it took to push me into a panic. I tried to be cool on the phone, but after I hung up I started to really think about the details. I started to think about how long it takes to drive one mile. And I thought about how every mile I drive east; I’m going to have to drive that mile back west. I had a few conference calls today for work and there were questions about when this project would be complete and when I could schedule that call and what exactly would be delivered.

I started thinking about how I needed to get back home. I started calling around to see about how you would ship a motorcycle home. I started to look into where exactly you could park a bike for a month or so at an airport like Denver and what the flight schedules looked like. I thought about the costs of implementing these plans, the amount of time it would take to set them up, how soon I could expect to put something in motion and where I would need to be to do that. The first two long-term parking lots I called said they don’t take motorcycles. I called a storage unit rental company but they didn’t have anything large enough on the ground floor that I could drive my bike into. I emailed one and called two shipping companies. Only one was open and they said they could get me a quote and shipping schedule by the middle of next week.

It was a frenzy of typing, calling and thinking.

And sinking.

And feeling like a dumb shit for doing this.

It’s hard to think clearly when thoughts are rushing through your head like the wind. Then a customer of mine called me on my cell phone and asked me for a meeting this week. I told them I was indisposed, but I could possibly do it next week. They asked me if I could do it first thing on Monday and I said no… but how about Tuesday at 10AM? Done. So working backwards from 10AM Tuesday, I had to throw out all the plans that would not put me back at my desk at that time. That was pretty much all the plans. The only way I can get back by then is to ride. And there is no ignoring the distance. The most direct route back from Vermejo is fifteen hundred miles. And driving a mile in a car is not the same as riding a mile on a bike. Somehow they are a lot farther on a bike. The most I can hope to ride in a day is about five hundred miles that will take about eleven hours if I only stop for gas and to let blood circulate in my legs and hands. That means, when I see a sign like this, I have to ignore them and keep riding. No matter if it explains why clowns are so scary, why I have a minimum room price and why I won’t eat a dirty food... all at the same time.

So, the panic has passed and I know what I need to do. This is a serious ride. I need to focus on being safe, accomplishing my mission and getting my ass back home to my family and commitments. I will have to apologize later for the abruptness of my visit to Vermejo.

This ride to Vermejo is a tribute to Leigh. I know she would be laughing until she cried at what I’m doing and she would appreciate it. And after I let her go on Friday, I know I have a life I need to race back home to. I know Leigh would appreciate that too.

Today, I Checked

After carefully considering the weather conditions, I've decided to stay in Flagstaff for another day.

Bike Has a New Look

Once, when I was sailing on San Francisco Bay in some really bad weather, I looked out on the water and I noticed that mine was the only boat out there. A few minutes later, about a mile off in the general direction I was heading, a bolt of lightening struck the water. I put the first piece of information together with the second piece of information and was able to spot the trend towards and undesirable result. It's this kind of thinking, this ability to pick out the subtleties of a situation, that has allowed me to run a successful business. Today, I was able to, once again, connect the dots and adjust my plans to meet the challenges of the day.

I noticed that there where no other motorcycles out on the road today, unless I just missed them because they where buried in the sand drifts. I also noticed that I was having to lean my bike over sideways to make it go in a straight line. I also noticed, that after driving through the fifth one mile stretch of hard blowing sand, that I was actually getting sand inside my closed helmet and somehow into the crotch of my pants. I also noticed the dark clouds building in front of me in the shape of an anvil. I was also able to notice when a gust of wind tore the windshield right off my bike.

After pulling off the road and checking my shorts for accidents, I decided to head for the nearest town. I was on a Navajo reservation heading towards more of the same so I turned towards Flagstaff and left my windshield in the sand.

Failure is always a chain of intricately woven events. I thought about this while listening to the face shield on my helmet starting to crack and tear. I thought about how one thing leads to another and if you can prevent the first event in the chain, then you prevent all the events. I would have been happy to never learn that my helmet was poorly made and that would have never come up if I'd checked the weather before I left this morning.

When I arrived in Flagstaff, I was a little shaken. I was going to call my Mommy, but being a grown man, I pulled out my Platinum Card and called the number on the back instead. American Express arranged a nice hotel room for me and told me how to get there and that everything was going to be fine.

Here is the funny part: I've 'learned' the lesson about 'checking the weather' a few times already. Thinking about it now, almost every time I've gotten myself into serious voluntary trouble, it was weather related. For the record, here they are:

1) Gilligan impression in St. Vincent with Leigh, Les & Rachel
2) Scud running in the Bay Area while exceeding the Pilots Operating Handbook's demonstrated crosswind component with Leigh
3) Demonstration of the temperature's effect on take-off distance with Mom, Barbie and Whitney
4) Super-Speedy trip to the Farralon Islands by using maximum outgoing current with David
5) All-day mountain wave riding and rivet test at thirteen thousand feet without oxygen with Leigh

To this list I can now add:

5) High-speed tooless wind sheild removal demonstration with Leigh and Scarlet

The two things all these events have in common are: I was steering & I didn't check the weather.

My therapist, the one who ruthlessly abandoned me, always stressed that everything is linked to my childhood and my family of origin. Besides getting excited at the fact that my parents are to blame for everything, I've had to work at tying my adult tendencies to my early childhood development. Not to get too deep here, but I think I don't check the weather because I grew up in Southern California where we didn't have any.

Retreat

Did I say I had winds yesterday? I should have kept my pie hole shut. I guess I should have checked the weather first:

WIND ADVISORY

CHINLE VALLEY-CHUSKA MOUNTAINS AND DEFIANCE PLATEAU- LITTLE COLORADO RIVER VALLEY IN COCONINO COUNTY- LITTLE COLORADO RIVER VALLEY IN NAVAJO COUNTY- LITTLE COLORADO RIVER VALLEY IN APACHE COUNTY-BLACK MESA AREA- NORTHEAST PLATEAUS AND MESAS SOUTH OF HWY 264- INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...CANYON DE CHELLY... CHINLE...KAYENTA... WINDOW ROCK... GANADO...WUPATKI N.M....TUBA CITY... WINSLOW... HOLBROOK...SNOWFLAKE...ST. JOHNS...SPRINGERVILLE...NAVAJO N.M.... DILKON...KYKOTSMOVI 133 PM MST MON MAY 12 2008

AN APPROACHING LATE SEASON STORM SYSTEM WILL BRING SOUTHWEST WINDS OF 20 TO 35 MPH WITH WIND GUSTS FROM 45 TO 55 MPH TO NORTHERN ARIZONA THROUGH SUNSET THIS EVENING.

A WIND ADVISORY MEANS THAT SUSTAINED WINDS OF 30 TO 39 MPH...OR GUSTS FROM 40 TO 57 MPH...ARE EXPECTED. WINDS THIS STRONG CAN MAKE DRIVING DIFFICULT...ESPECIALLY FOR HIGH PROFILE VEHICLES. CONSIDER SECURING LOOSE BELONGINGS ON YOUR PROPERTY.