A positive experience

I've been working on posting about a ride that I took into the wilderness of Northern Idaho a few weeks ago for a while now and have been struggling with keeping the post brief enough, and yet, trying to share all of the things that happened on the ride. I'm finding it rather difficult to write in about 1000 words or so of my 14 hour ride that covered over 100 miles of wilderness, and another 450 miles of some of the "blue roads" of Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington.

Instead, I have decided to break it down into a number of smaller posts like the one here about my experience with a man and his gorgeous Harley. Thinking back on this encounter from a month ago, I feel the world needs more people like this fellow.


He and I were directly across from one another at the gas pump, topping off our tanks; the white haired gentleman fueling his Harley, and me, with my Kawasaki. He rode a custom painted Road King with the hard saddle bags; a beautiful Pearlescent white covered everything, including the bags. Only a few select parts were trimmed out in chrome, well balanced, very well done! He was a large man, standing every inch as tall as myself only he had a solid 40 or 50 lbs on me. Frost white hair and goatee accentuated by a tan so dark he was almost a deep red; it was obvious that this guy had spent some serious saddle time on his bike.

As we fueled up, I could sense that he was staring me down from behind his biker shades. I tried to remain indifferent, but eventually gave in and looked away from the pump and over at him, from beneath his mustache I could see that he was smiling. Not the condescending type of smirk that seems so ubiquitous these days, but a warm one; one that looked like he was projecting himself onto my bike and riding away satisfied, yes satisfied! As he hung the handle back up on his side of the pump, he leaned a little closer in my direction and uttered three words that I have never heard come from the mouth of someone who owned a Harley-Davidson.
“I envy you.”
A blank stare was coming from my side of the fuel island, my eyes just blinked in disbelief.
“Come again?”
I had heard what he said, I just couldn’t quite understand why he was saying that to me, there was a part of me that was bracing for the punch line.
This time a little louder, he said, “I envy you.”
More blank stares.
“I love my Harley, but you can go almost anywhere you want with your bike.” I could feel the envy in his tone of voice, it was honest, genuine. As I hung up my pump, we rolled our bikes out of the way of the busy fuel station to talk for a while. He was from the south end of the state, Mountain Home, Idaho (Ironically, Mountain Home is not home to many mountains), and was up in the panhandle with the same intentions that I had, to ride over Lolo pass, he was coming from, I was heading towards.
He told me how he, like so many of us, grew up riding dirt bikes, moved on to a number of Japanese street bikes through the 80’s, and then made the step to Harley’s about 15 years ago, the Road King was his third.

We must’ve seemed like an odd pair standing there together at that gas station in the mountains of Kooskia, Idaho, the large white haired man in his black leather vest and white t-shirt and me, laden in all of my protective gear. We talked for about twenty minutes or so, exchanging various stories about the motorcycles of our childhood; at one point I decided to stow my cold weather jacket in exchange for my lighter, warm weather one that I had in my tail bag, he just kept smiling, too polite to mock me. Eventually we mounted our bikes and nodded our goodbyes to one another, we pulled out of the gas station simultaneously, he turned west and I went east; two similar individuals traveling in opposite directions.

Riding out of Kooskia towards Lolo, my thoughts turned to my youth and to the man on the Harley and his youth, to our beginnings. Recalling his childhood experiences, I imagine that we were probably both very much alike back then. Somewhere in our young adulthood I gravitated towards sport bikes and he went towards the Japanese cruisers and eventually the big American Iron. As I inch closer and closer to his age, I imagine myself riding on a German boxer, something that I have coveted since childhood..........Time will tell.

A few more miles out of Kooskia, I found myself growing impatient with the seemingly endless caravan of Motor Homes lumbering up and down the two-lane roads, gracelessly running in both directions belching diesel fumes, slowly listing back and forth on the narrow highway and casting enormous square shadows on the canyon walls, disgusting.

I made a right turn onto a dirt road and began to climb up into the mountains, going “Anywhere I wanted” as the man on the Harley explained before. Climbing higher, the road narrowed to a single track, up and up I ascended until I crested the mountain range and began my descent into an unknown canyon, hints of a river occasionally peaked through the forest.

Riding through the wilderness alone, I found myself thinking once again of my youth and then back to the present to where I was at that exact moment in the mountains on my big simple bike and grinning devilishly inside my helmet, grinning........ exactly like the man who rode a beautiful pearlescent white Road King.

Ride Well

E.T.

A little updating is in order

Okay, so the day's ride is over, the Kawasaki and I have tucked the sun in for the night; time to come back home and do a little updating on the site.

I wanted to give the new blog roll feature a test drive by using four of my links to see how well it worked, and if it was something that I would like to use. Turns out, I like it a lot. Now I can see who has new posts and who doesn't.

With that decision made, next in line was to update my links list and add them to my blog roll.

This summer, the number of sites that I frequent on a regular basis has grown quite a bit and I've been meaning to do this for awhile now.

I gave the scooter links their own separate list because I can foresee this list growing rather quickly in the future. Scooterists (or is it Scootertista, Scootertisti? I'm still learning the lingo.) seem to have something to say, and I want to be there to read about it.

Ride Well

E.T.

Entry from my journal July 21, 2008

A week ago, I took a Monday off to go for a ride over Lolo pass. I hadn't been there in a while and thought that it would be a nice ride. I was wrong. The ride from Lewiston, Idaho to Kooskia was swarming with Motorhomes lumbering down the highway at about 35 miles per hour; they seemed to be strategically spaced at about 1/4 mile intervals as well. A couple of miles out of Kooskia, I had enough of the rolling monoliths and decided to make a right turn onto a forest service road in an attempt to get away from all of the people. It worked. Before I knew it, I was so deep in the forest that I continuously lost my G.P.S. signal because of the tree cover. Although I knew where I had come from, after about an hour of riding through the forest, I wasn't really sure where I was. I rested for a spell in the shade and re-hydrated myself with some water while I wrote a brief entry in my journal. I plan on doing a larger post about the trip when time permits.

Sometimes getting totally lost, as long as you keep your wits, is extremely therapeutic. Also I never strayed from the trail and I knew that this trail had to eventually lead somewhere. With 300 miles worth of fuel in my tank, I wasn't worried. God bless my KLR and her ship of the desert tank.

I’m not exactly where I thought I would be right now. Honestly, I’m not exactly sure where I am right now. Before I lost the signal on my G.P.S., I was 210 miles, as the crow flies, from home. I’m resting against a rock, under a thick canopy of pine trees, so thick that my G.P.S. signal keeps failing. I can hear running water somewhere in the canyon below, I think that’s where I’m headed; although, that’s all I know. I left the highway about 20 miles back and the forest service road became a narrow piece of single track about 5 miles ago. I can tell that it is used by A.T.V.’s by the tracks; I suppose it could be a snowmobile trail during the winter.

I don’t know where I am, only that I’m somewhere in the mountains of Central Idaho. I do know where I came from so if I get really lost, I can always turn around; I’d rather keep moving forward to see where this ends. I’m riding alone, I’m okay with that; nobody knows that I’m here, I’m okay with that too. It’s supposed to get hot today and already, mid-morning, there is strong evidence that it will do just that. I need to be careful with my tires, no repair kit; this is a reminder to get one. I really shouldn't be in here without one; it’s a long walk out.

I’ve seen a number of Elk, a few deer (a couple of small Buck’s), and a Coyote, not much else so far. I don’t expect much to be out moving around in the afternoon.

I topped off the KLR back in Kooskia, so I’m not worried about fuel, or water, I packed plenty of that too. I’m thinking of climbing to a higher elevation to cool off later, but not until I get my bearings and I know exactly where I am.

It’s time to go find that running water, all water leads somewhere.
I am lost in the woods, and I could care less, this is why I got this bike, to take me to these places; it’s doing a wonderful job!

I wonder where I am.

The running water that I eventually found, turned out to be the Central fork of the Clearwater river. That's where I stopped along the trail to take the picture in this post, about thirty minutes after I had written this journal entry.