Strapping it On
In October 1996, I rode my new yellow and black Honda Valkyrie, a monster of a motorcycle, up to Woodstock Vermont to go on a very chilly ride through the fall foliage of New England. I was meeting our good friends Frank and Barbara O’Connell at their place on the Ottauquechee River, called Robinson Farm. It was a notable farm because it has a massive barn that sits on the hillside and rises to something like five stories and, as I recall, was the largest private barn in the state. The O’Connells had moved up the hill to a house on Westerdale Road and they used Robinson Farm as a guest house. I had arrived early and put my beloved Valkyrie into the barn and was in there cleaning its chrome bits. All of a sudden a short man with a narrow pigtail under a ball cap came into the barn. He had a big smile on his face and two forearms loaded with motorcycle tattoos. He introduced himself as Walt Lynd, and explained that he was a childhood friend of Frank’s and hailed from Ovid, New York, a small town between Seneca and Cayuga lakes, just north of my home town of Ithaca. Walt began what came to be a very warm and memorable relationship that covered the next twenty years of riding together, with an apology. He explained that he had done the unthinkable, he had not ridden up from the Finger Lakes to Vermont, but had rather put his full-dress Harley onto a motorcycle trailer and hauled it up by car, sitting next to his lovely wife, Sandy. Walt explained that he never thought he would do such a “Mamby-Pamby” thing as trailering his bike when there was perfectly good road to ride on. I got it. I would never be caught dead trailering a bike when I could be riding it. I was 42 years old and about as dumb as a rock when it came to such things.
Today I am in my 70th year and good old Walt left us more years ago than any of wanted him to depart. He had been the Chairman of our American Flyers Motorcycle Club ever since that fateful organizational trip to Vermont in 1996. I had been the Secretary/Treasurer and Ridemaster of the Club for all those years and more. He had modified a tattoo on his shoulder to submit as the team logo and I had had my one and only tattoo placed on my left shoulder and submitted it as my contender for the AFMC logo. My tattoo won. Walt just smiled and kept on truckin’. My years of AFMC leadership have finally come to a logical end. It was anything but a clean break. I bobbled the ball on a planned ride to Morocco this fall and didn’t bother to plan a ride to Utah as I had for countless years before. There were many factors at play ranging from the aging out of fond older members (like the O’Connells), new members with questionable activities (manufacturing and promoting assault rifles for children) and way too much political flak in the air between members that got along quite well on the road, but couldn’t help but mix it up about politics at the dinner table. So, another Club member planned a ride for this month to Arizona and New Mexico and was kind enough to let me join as a mere rider with no other responsibilities for leadership or planning. Kim and I head off for that ride later this week.
It is 376 miles from our house to Phoenix where we will stay with our other long-time AFMC pals, Steve and Maggie Larsen. We will stay with them Sunday night and then meet up with Mark and Jeanne Dilly (organizers of the ride), Ann Sardini and Chris Shriver and, eventually, riding in from Colorado, Rob and Urch St. John. We will ride for five days to Alpine, in the hills of Eastern Arizona, and then down to Las Cruces, New Mexico. From there we will ride up to Socorro, New Mexico and bake ourselves back into Arizona to Holbrook, from which we will launch our return to Phoenix. That will be about 1,100 miles of riding and from the look of my weather app, it will be a warm ride the whole way, ranging from 90-100 degrees. None of the days are particularly long rides, so with all the stops, we should have no trouble staying hydrated and cool enough to survive the ordeal. I always booked our rides to Utah for May to avoid the heat of the Southwest summer, but I am still happy that this ride got planned, even though it is a month into the summer heat.
Between here and Phoenix there is a lot of nothing. It is pretty much desert the whole way. I have not ridden a lot this year so far because there have been endless days of rain and now June Gloom. It’s 8:30am right now on the hillside and as I look out, all I see in any direction is foggy mist, not exactly inviting weather to hop on the bike and take it for a spin into the warmth of the inland valley and mountains. But between here and Phoenix, the desert changes those atmospherics and sits in its normal sizzling state with temperatures in Phoenix hanging in at about 105 degrees. I expect that the ride from here to there, which would take me over the mountain to Palm Desert and then across the long Mojave stretch of Rt. 10 into Arizona would take about six hours if I rode at a forced march pace. that is a lot of hot weather to ride through on a bike and no one I know thinks that’s a lot of fun. For ten years I owned a beautiful AFMC trailer that I had specifically to allow me to get over these sorts of stretches without the discomfort of frying my ass in the desert heat. But as part of my disengagement with leading motorcycle tours, I sold the damn thing this year, just in time to miss having it when I most needed it.
As I was talking with Steve about the best route to take from here to his house on Sunday, I began dreading the heat of the midday, when I would hopefully arrive at his house. I lamented the sale of my trailer and he asked why I didn’t rent one. I hadn’t thought of that. I immediately went on the U-Haul website and found that they offered rental motorcycle trailers and they were available for hire here in Escondido. U-Haul is the ubiquitous provider of moving materials and equipment for middle America. Very few remnants of our motorized 20th Century history are more reminiscent of Americana than dragging a U-Haul trailer across the country, usually loaded with college furniture or the stuff of Steinbeck’s Joad family. And here’s the thing, U-Haul’s are for the Everyman and they are not expensive. I paid $13,000 for my AFMC trailer and sold it for $5,500 a decade later. By my math, assuming I used it ten times (a generous estimate), it amortizes out at about $750 per use, plus interim storage charges of another $1,200 per year, so almost $2,000 per use. This rental for a week (I will leave it at my friend Steve’s house while we ride the rails into New Mexico and back) will cost me $150. What a bargain. I actually think that will be less than the cost of the added gas had I ridden myself with Kim following me in the Mercedes.
So instead, I will load up this rental trailer on Saturday, strap on my BMW R1250GS Adventure with the $25 tie-down ratchet straps that just arrived from Amazon this morning, and spend a cool and refreshing morning driving across the desert with my lovely wife. Kim is happy. I am happy. And my old buddy Walt is smiling at me from heaven because he has the last laugh on me. Sooner or later we all have to do the Mamby-Pamby thing by strapping it on.