Author: Road Runner

I Hate the Word “Content”

There was a brief moment where I thought maybe the next chapter in my life might be making videos of all the amazing motorcycle roads in America: how to get to them, where to stay, where to eat, and the glory of the roads themselves. Then, I made two discoveries that greatly attenuated this idea. One was Adam Sandoval: no way what I could do with my yearly vacation would compete with what he had done. The second was the fact that I hate setting up shots and editing video. I love talking, pontificating, philosophising, but it turns out I actually hate the core part of moto-vlogging. I do some small amount of video editing, but it turns out that this turns one of my favorite things into just a goddamned job.

I have a GoPro 13 Black and I capture some moments for friends and family whether it be ADV, scuba diving, or random camping shenanigans. I watch a lot of motorcycle-focused Youtubers though: Shade Tree Surgeon, Dork in the road, Ride to Food, Her Two Wheels, Off She Goes, Just G Kue, Doodle on a Motorcycle, Kidmoto22, MotoState Podcast, Whit Meza, Rever, RIDE Adventures, DanDan the Fireman, Meghan Stark, Lowbrowcustoms, Real Riders Ride, RevZilla, Klim, and others.
Jesus, just the thought of actually properly linking to each one of those channels reminds me of why I don’t produce motorcycle content.

Ugh, and there’s that word, “content”.

I have seen a number of Youtubers who ask the audience what kind of content we, the watchers, would like to consume. These words make me think of a nest of baby birds. Momma flies to the nest, and the baby birds open their mouths for momma to regurgitate whatever directly into their mouths. I went out and got this, now let me vomit this into your face. Motorcycle riding, ADV riding, scuba diving, camping, any kind of adventure travel: these are sacred things to me, the things that I wade through corporate America and 401ks to get to. When someone reduces this to “I will create the content, and you will consume the content”, it makes me sick just a little bit.

You’re on Youtube, with 300,000 subscribers, making cool videos for me to watch. You need money to do this full time. You work with companies who sponsor you. I get all that: just don’t reduce this to yet another transactional interaction. Riding across, discovering a cool restaurant in a small town, camping, seeing amazing sights: these are sacred experiences.

The ADV Thing

I added a Husqvarna Norden 901 to my garage. Why?

On an episode of of This Motorcycle Life, the host interviewed Melissa Holbrook Pierson. She’s most famous for taking a very long ride on a Ural with her disabled child, but also for writing a book called “The Man Who Stop at Nothing“, in which she claims that Iron Butt style riding is the most pure form of motorcycling. As a multiple Iron Butt finisher , I must disagree.

For a long time, a couple of extreme events have been calling to me. The first is the Hoka Hey Challenge, in which riders cover around 10,000 miles in short order, often 10 days or so. The rules include no staying in hotels and no using GPS. You have to sleep by your pony and follow a set of written directions with paper maps. The first years, people wrecked and died because the trip included gravel and a lot of extreme terrain.

The other is the James Dalton Highway, riding all the way to the Arctic Circle in Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay. The last 400 miles of this trip is largely shitty gravel.

Beyond these trips, it should come as no surprise that significant miles of dirt and gravel on a 1000lb touring motorcycle is at best impractical. The tires don’t grip, the suspension isn’t built for that kind of rut. The appeal of a machine that can gobble some highway miles but then just take a sharp right onto a gravel road, a Backcountry Discovery Route, maybe some muddy Jeep trails, is strong.

There are views and settings that are hard to get to, and some of those are precious and likely to be much more sparsely occupied than the paved roads to a county park.

The Challenger, of course, is still in the garage. The American highway system is amazing, and that is the machine for long road trips.

I didn’t grow up on dirt bikes like a lot of people did. The guy who’s been putting patches on his black vest for years is buying the full Klim riding gear and hopefully putting some stickers on “panniers” soon.

Adventure touring is the purest form of motorcycling.

What’s next in 2021?

I’m sitting here with a wood wick candle going, one of my sources of hygge during the shitty Wisconsin winters.

I’m avoiding writing about two adventures from 2020. First was a great trip to Georgia, and second was a weekend trip through North-Central Wisconsin. I think I’m avoiding writing these things up because there’s an uncomfortable note of finality that’s unique to this winter. The US COVID-19 cases are spiking up like crazy: far more dead, hospitalizations, and active cases than when we shut down the country earlier in 2020. I don’t know what 2021 is going to look like.

I’ve been thinking a lot about articles like this lately.

The mindful nature of motorcycling is such that you are less likely to ruminate because the motorcycle demands constant attention. This is only part of the benefit of traveling by motorcycle. You also find yourself in beautiful country with very little between you and the world.

Humans have only lived in cities for a few hundred years. I’m talking about our huge/crowded/unnatural/modern cities, so don’t put something about the Mayan civilization or Gobekli Tepe in the comments. We still seek connections with nature. We feel at peace in nature. We are so used to light pollution that regular kids who grew up in the city think they’re the subject of some elaborate prank when they see a starry night for the first time. This separate, but adjacent, idea is something I’m going to be digging into a lot more in 2021.

So, I’m going to spend some more time outside, way out away from concrete and drywall. I’ve been walking the dog wearing a 40lb weight vest to get myself ready for real backpacking. There’s tons of state & federal land around where I can do dispersed camping: I’m going to walk out into the woods with a tent on my back carrying some basic survival gear and see what’s what.

I’ve also been thinking about the state of political & social polarization in the USA. The chance that I can do anything about that is hilariously small, but I’ve been thinking about a “Political Biker” essay channel of some kind.

And, of course, I’m going to do a lot of riding in 2021: pandemic or no. I’m going to hopefully be getting an Indian Challenger early in the spring. I’m going to take said Challenger down to Kentucky for a break-in weekend. I’m going to ride from Milwaukee to Key West, and I’m going to do a lot of motorcycle camping.

The Skillful Monk

Yes, I do have write-ups of adventures coming. I did manage to get one big and one small adventure this year, even with the ‘rona out there ruining 2020 for the most part.

For now, though, check this out: https://www.thismotorcyclelife.com/episode-32-the-skillful-monk/

As you know, I’ve been writing for a long time about how Motorcycling is Mindfulness. I’ve been enjoying this podcast for quite a while, and in fact I had a brief email conversation with the host about my idea that motorcycling is a mindful activity. When the host mentioned that he was prompted to interview a Buddhist monk due to “a conversation with a listener”, I foolishly thought I might be about to get a big ole shout out. Nonetheless, it was nice to hear that I’m not crazy (at least not for this reason).

Bikers Commute

Something’s been missing.

Sheltering at home as so many businesses have been closed or only partially open, I make time to ride here & there. I didn’t feel like I was riding less than a normal year. Sure, I had to postpone the usual week-long trip since it looks like New England is closing down again and I don’t want to be turned back at a state border.

A big ole chunk of my riding every year is going to work.

Bikers commute to work. Bikers take the bike on normal errands. Bikers take their bikes to the grocery store up to the limit of their storage. Many people who ride view their cars as a necessary evil specialized for hauling large things or carrying more than two people or getting around in the snow.

I haven’t been riding to work. Wow, there goes a few thousand miles this year. I don’t ride to work every day, a little rain or whatever is fine but I work in an office and sitting at a desk dripping wet sucks. I ride when it’s cold, but not when there’s snow on the ground. I’ve ridden my bike to other states when work required it and I had the time: rolling down the highway getting sunburned with a suit jacket in the saddlebags makes me laugh.

Sure, I can make time to ride several times a week just as a break, but losing the commute to work is a bummer.

Dear Bart, Part 2

Dear Bart,

It has been three years.

There are a lot of germs that make people sick that we’re basically always swimming in. The common cold or strep throat is basically always around, but they catch us in a moment of weakness. You’re like that, always in the back of my mind but on a bad day or a particularly great day you’re suddenly there in full force, and I lose my shit.

Speaking of germs, we’re in lockdown due to a new virus that is very deadly and very transmissible. The US has nearly 1/3 of all worldwide cases and over 120,000 Americans are dead from it in about 12 weeks as I write this. I can picture you and some of your friends digging deep into the conspiracy theories on this one. You were never a fan of the science you were so good at. Your wife & son had it, but they got over it. I was scared for a while there.

Our sister lives in Idaho now, and man is there great riding out there. I went West this past year, over Beartooth Pass and through Yellowstone down into Idaho to visit her. She’s finally done having kids at 6, and man the young ones are cute – my totally biased opinion based on who wanted to hang out with their uncle.

This year, though, with the Coronavirus “shelter in place” rules different in every major city & state, it’s hard to say what a cross-country motorcycle trip looks like. I spent a lot of time planning a route through all the New England states, but that part of America has been hit the hardest. I don’t want to get stopped at the Vermont state border or some crap like that, and I’m not sure I want to eat out of gas stations for a week either. We think Georgia is unlikely to close no matter what the danger is, so we might head down to Wingnut Dave’s instead.  Local bars, restaurants, hotels is a part of the joy of travel, I can’t imagine what this is going to be like.

After the last time Mrs. Roadrunner found me mid-meltdown, I thought I’d give talking to a shrink another try. It’s been pretty good for getting me through the winter months. It’s a colder than usual May right now, I’ve only been able to ride a few hundred miles so far this year. Speaking of the winter months, the shrink I mentioned told me I have PTSD from finding you dead. That sounds insane: PTSD is what happens to people who go off to war, not well off people in the suburbs just living their lives.

I probably said this last year, but missing you is hardest when things are good. Some of my crazy plans get a little more real every week. I can see how it might not be too many more years before I can buy some land and do some real bushcraft, maybe build a cabin with the boys or something. You would have really liked that.

I had, for a while, struggled to add anything new compared to last year. I thought about what I’m grateful for, and that includes a small but loyal and awesome group of riders that I have, that you used to be a part of in fact. I think about expanding this group, and I realize that I can never replace you. That’s the hard thing: some things are permanent. Time does not heal all wounds. This will not pass.

I might as well get a tattoo that says “Bart’s gone forever”, because that’s a thing that’s already a scar.

Huh? What the hell is this?

About once a year so far, I write a letter to my dead brother as a form of therapy.

I have known far too many men now who have taken their own lives. Every time a friend is going through a hard time that’s more than a parking ticket, I have a sudden panic that they are next. I recently got spooked and called a friend and pleaded with him:

Please, don’t make me give your eulogy. I will if that’s what it comes to, but don’t make me stand in front of your family and try to make sense of your life. There’s a fucked up sense of honor in it for me; it’s a really hard thing that no one wants to do and I force myself to do it. I’ve forced myself to do it too many times, though, and I need you to hang out for a while.

I guess this is my main point this year. Don’t be the next Bart. “Get help” is such a bullshit phrase, it has no meaning. Call a hotline? Talk to a friend? Who can appreciate the depth of what you’re feeling enough to really talk to you? Sometimes losing a job is just losing a job, and sometimes it’s the last thing a man can take. If you find yourself having thoughts of self harm, think about what you would be putting your friends and family through.

A Much Needed Escape

I’ve been “sheltering at home” with my family for over two months now. This is not a real hardship. This is not a generation that sent their sons to war, or endured the dust bowl, or the possibility of a nuclear attack on US soil. Still though, for a loner like me this has been surprisingly difficult. Ordinarily I’d have a commute to work, or a lunch out to get some me time. Not with COVID19 – they’re always there.

I figured motorcycle camping would be a great way to “social distance” while getting away – buy groceries at home, ride, pay at the pump, camp, eat over a fire, talk to no one. It seems like I got a different answer every time I talked to someone at a state or county park though. Yes we’re open. We’re open but not for camping. We’re open for camping but only if you already had a reservation in February. I’m down for adventure but I’m not going to risk showing up to park to be turned away, and then a campfire on random land in Northern WI.

Luckily ABATE of Wisconsin owns 80-100 acres in Greenwood. I was told there would be wood there and otherwise didn’t know what to expect since I’d never been to “Abate Acres”. This is private land I couldn’t be turned away from. Despite the prediction of severe storms all over the state, I packed a ribeye and all my camping gear and hit the road.

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Packed and ready to camp! #motorcycleCamping

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My plan was to visit Sturgeon Bay in the “thumb” of Wisconsin, but I had packed for warm weather and it was wicked foggy and cold in Two Rivers which is still quite a ways south. After checking the radar again I decided flexibility would be key and cut off the thumb to head for Abate Acres.

Despite severe storms all over the state, I was pretty lucky with sunny weather in the 80s until after lunch. Keeping with my social distancing theme, I’d packed couple PB&J along with my prized ribeye for dinner by a campfire.

Oddly enough one of the brackets for my windshield had rattled out, yet not fallen on the ground somewhere on the road, so I got very lucky and was able to make a field repair at a gas station. Thread lock and torque wrenches are your friends, folks.

I stopped and had lunch in a rest area in some tiny central-WI town I’ll never remember the name of and then proceeded to get rained on like crazy. I’ve been caught in the rain dozens of times, and it seems I’ll never get used to it. If there’s rain gear that’s not a huge pain to put on and wear I have yet to find it.

Arriving and Camping

There’s maybe 1/2 mile of gravel to get to Abate Acres. Wow. The land is 80-100 acres, and because I only had a cell phone and GoPro with me I wasn’t able to take a picture that really shows it off. Despite being in the middle of nowhere, I miraculously had a cell signal and a little bit of data so I could keep an eye on the weather. I had the whole place to myself.

There was wood, as I was promised, but it was all insanely wet. Part of my camping kit includes a hand axe (I own several) and a 13″ knife along with my pocket knife. My secret ingredient for fire is dryer lint. I carry a bag with a couple of handfuls in it to help with fire. I also have hand sanitizer and Gorilla Tape (burns like crazy) but I’ve never had to move beyond dryer lint.

I also had a good length of aluminum foil to try to preserve some fire when it started pouring.

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Wet wood is no match for patience and dryer lint.

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I post a lot of food pics on Instagram, but very few steaks as my family just doesn’t like steak all that much. My go-to campfire meal is a ribeye and mushrooms. This was as good or better as nearly anything I’ve ever made at home.

Just as my steak was nearing medium rare, the sky OPENED UP. I’ve been caught out on the bike in storms, and I’ve camped in the rain, but I was totally surprised that my rain fly actually kept my tent dry inside: this was some green & black movie storm shit.

Thanks to the power of my aforementioned cheats, I was able to get a fire going again after that storm passed. I was able to sit by the fire, have a couple of cold beers, and enjoy hours of solo mindful time. Mercifully the bugs mostly respected my fire smoke and my Cutter insect spray.

Cold beers? Yes, I added a Bison cooler to my gear. It’s great, but it takes up a ton of space. I continue to tweak my load-out.

It stormed again at 1am and 3am, and I was warm & dry.

Mother nature woke me up at 5am with sunlight, which in addition to being woken up super early by The World’s Most Mistreated Dog the day before left me in rough shape for the ride home. It looked like the Great River Road was going to be partially flooded again due to the storms, so I went home sooner than I thought and only did 400mi the second day.

It’s not clear what the rest of the 2020 riding season holds, but this was some much needed solo time. Luckily all ABATE of WI members have a place to hide in Greenwood.

Dreaming of Adventure … Bikes

Here in April of 2020, we are on a government mandated “Safer at Home” order. Riding a bike is a great way of “socially distancing”, and we have many county parks nearby that are still open, so I’ve been able to pack a lunch and sit by myself during what little good weather we’ve had.

I have a trip booked with my father and other close family for a fishing trip in Alaska. A log cabin lodge For both my father and I, this would be the 50th state we’ve visited (though not ridden in, of course). If we don’t get some good news soon, that’s getting kicked to 2021.

Talon Lodge & Spa Southeast Alaska, Alaska fishing lodge vacation

The Power of Anticipation

You may not appreciate the power of anticipating trips like that until you’re suddenly unable to. The planning, the packing, buying gear, making sure your gear is in top operating condition. Telling people about the trip and promising to bring back pictures and stories.

My wife and I are both, thankfully, able to keep working right now as unemployment skyrockets across the country. There’s still still food in the stores and I still have money to buy it. I’m an introvert anyway so I’m doing OK – but I don’t have those big bright spots that help me get through the day. Am I getting away with my wife? Am I really going to be able to ride to Maine in July like I’d planned? I don’t know, so I’m doing the next best thing – I’m doing tons of research and planning trips, and more than just trips.

Another Kind of Riding

Many people who love two wheels grew up riding in the dirt. I really didn’t. Like many people, I was given my first real look at adventure riding when I watched The Long Way Round with Ewan McGregor. Yes, these are rich famous guys with a support vehicle, but it was everything I love about motorcycling write large: off the gird, but more. Isolated with just a friend or two, but more. Camping, making your own food, but more. Strange lands, but more. I thought of the many State & National parks I’ve ridden through and wonder what it would be like to just point the bike and go thatttaway off into the dirt & woods.

I told my self that if I could swing the time & money that some day I’d be an adventure rider. Not the way Ewan and Charlie do it, to be sure, but there’s a lifetime of adventure in North America. I want to sleep on BDR land in the middle of nowhere, I want to ride the Dalton Highway all the way to Prudhoe Bay, and to ride the Trans American Trail. In The Man Who Would Stop at Nothing, Melissa Pierson describes long distance riding as the purest form of the activity, but I wonder if it’s really this on & off road blend with a healthy mix of dispersed camping thrown in.

I don’t know when I’ll have room (or money) for a BWM or KTM adventure bike in my garage (or a Harley Pan America?), or time for yet another calling that takes me far from home for days at a time. This is something I can fantasize about, when COVID19 is in the rear view.

 

If you want friends, you have to show up

It’s the 2020 Corona Virus Pandemic, and things are pretty locked down. School is out, everyone that can is working remotely, and people are getting caught up on games and getting after that Netflix queue.

I just spent some time with a friend helping him fix his computer so he could do his taxes. Even now, without being there in person, you can show up.

Seeing your friends should be fun, otherwise why are you friends with those people? But, laziness is a hell of a beast. There’s going to be someone’s daughter’s graduation party on a weekend you just wanted to stay at home. When people need help moving they need help moving even if it’s a rough week at work. When someone needs a shoulder to cry on it’s not an event they could schedule in advance and make sure that was a good time for you. You go to your friend’s tupperware party, pampered chef or whatever the hell else because it’s important to them, not because it was the #1 thing you wanted to do.

Bikers should know this. Sometimes your buddy breaks down, and you’ve gotta be there. So, here we are on a partial “shelter in place” depending on where in the world you are.

Call your mom.

Send some buddies a photo from a trip “Remember this you guys?”

See if you can bring some groceries or beer to someone who can’t get out on their own.

You can still show up.

If you want friends, you have to show up.

Motorcycle Riding as a Path to Mental Health

Why two wheels? Because motorcycle riding may be one of the best ways to get to a healthy mind.

If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you may have come across the idea that Motorcycling is Mindfulness, and if you haven’t you might as well start there. Harley claims that riding a motorcycle improves focus and reduces stress. The older I get, the more I’m convinced that riding a motorcycle is a multi-faceted path to more general mental health. I’m going to use this particular page as a place to bookmark all of my best arguments and observations so that when someone asks “Why make that trip on a bike instead of a car?”, I have one place to send them. Some of these are ready to read now, some are teasers to be filled in as I have a chance to do more writing.

  1.  Motorcycling is Mindfulness: Mindfulness is having a moment in the sun right now, but being briefly popular doesn’t change the core benefits.
  2. Lost Connections and the Cost of Belonging: It’s probably no surprise that many people’s social interactions are, well, fucked up. Why do so many people have depression and anxiety and what can we do about it? Thoughts on motorcycling as it relates to Hari’s work on addiction and depression as well as other works.
  3. Riding Fast and Slow: Thoughts on long solitary rides as it relates to Kahneman’s work on human cognition.
  4. The mind needs nature: it’s no coincidence that the most popular rides are set against amazing natural scenery. Much of our mental wiring evolved to find food, mates, and avoid danger. Nature is complicated, and the complex texture of nature is something that makes our brains happy. Thoughts on motorcycle travel involving research I was first exposed to by Levitin.

All of these things might be attainable in other ways, but stick with me as I fill in the blanks as to why riding might be one of the best mental health bang for your buck things you can spend your time on.