I had an exhaustive plan for every road trip until this one
I Had an Exhaustive Plan for Every Road Trip … Until This One
Even my projects that seem the most harebrained typically involve a rigid plan. When deciding to take my derelict 1989 Honda XR250R into six different forms of racing within a single calendar year, I drew on years of DIY experience and solo travel, plus a well-equipped home garage and a ton of spare parts. Years later, I bought a non-running motorcycle almost a thousand miles away and rode it home almost exclusively on trails, but when I booked the one-way flight, I knew the bike’s owner and had total confidence in our combined ability to fix any problems before I rode back. I like planned things, destinations and timetables. Everything natural has a schedule, so it only makes sense that I keep one as well.
Last June, an opportunity arose to drift with the tides rather than to predict their arrival. I needed to get a 1984 Honda Goldwing out of my driveway in Traverse City, Michigan and into a friend’s garage just north of Boston, and I had a full week to make the trip. I was not born a rambling man, but certainly it was worth trying once.
Before hitting the road, I seized the opportunity to save some money by taking advantage of the bike’s empty passenger seat. My traveling companion would be a freshly built XR250R motorcycle engine, negotiated in a trade deal with the same friend who would be receiving the Goldwing. With liberal use of the metal glue gun that gets sold as a welder by some discount outlets, I built a mount best described as “good enough” on the back of the bike. By transporting the engine myself, rather than shipping it, I could save a small pile of money—or cost myself a lot more, if the freshly painted, barely broken-in engine went tumbling down the interstate in the Goldwing’s gracious mirrors.
I saddled up the land yacht of a Honda with a strange reluctance, and set sail on a trip dictated by weather and whim.
Headed south out of Traverse City on a Tuesday afternoon meant traffic would be mellow, especially once I was on the two-lane of M-115, headed southwest to Ann Arbor, and more specifically to the garage of Eric Weiner, head honcho of this very website. Traffic crescendoed back up to bumper to bumper as I passed through the college town, bobbing the loaded-down Goldwing through traffic with a grace and comfort unique to such a luxurious 1980s machine. Even after nearly five hours on the road, I arrived feeling fresh. I knew I looked like a goof, though, atop the giant motorcycle, with my bike-engine-passenger, wandering through a neighborhood looking for the right house.
The garage door was open upon my arrival at Eric’s, revealing the first quest on this journey: Project Sven. When Eric Weiner heard I was planning to pass through Ann Arbor on my way to Massachusetts, he asked if I would be interested in helping him knock out a handful of items on his latest acquisition, a 1966 Volvo Amazon. Naturally, I said yes. I arrived in the morning ready to pick up wrenches and start the day, as he was on his second cup of coffee, a toddler adding more to his morning routine than I can really imagine. I joke with my neighbors that I can do anything but sit still, but I’m downright lazy compared to the parents of a newborn. That glimpse of his typical morning was a reminder of just how hurried we can be, by choice or by necessity.
For two days, Eric and I scurried around the Volvo, replacing parts large and small, with a fair bit of tuning mixed in. None of the work was particularly difficult, as Eric had lined up the jobs and smartly ordered parts to arrive before I did. The days felt casual right up until I glanced down at my hands before dinner on the second evening. Pizza grease is its own special blend of hand cleaner: Wiping off a little grease that slips off the side of a slice can remove even dried-on junk, restoring a pale skin tone speckled with a few scars and calluses.
Between bites, Eric grabbed a Sharpie and detailed what we had accomplished and where he sat in the current project. I realized we had effectively crammed 4 to 5 weekends of individual effort into just two quick days.
Before I could process what we had and had not crossed off Eric’s wishlist of Volvo tasks, he was off to pick up the baby from childcare, and I was re-packing the luggage on the Goldwing, already thinking about the next stop. After another four hours on the highway headed south and east into Ohio, I arrived at the end of Eddy Eckart’s driveway. I turned off the two-lane highway and drove the Goldwing down the freshly graveled path with caution. I used all of my adventure bike skills to maintain the tiniest amount of momentum as the highway treads rearranged and sank into the loose stone. The sensation was similar to being mired in mud, as if the earth was pulling me in and begging, nearly requiring, me to slow down. When I finally made it to the house, Eddy and I drank beers, grilled meat, and told stories as the sun set.
The next morning, the Goldwing and I continued on a path that led towards the coast of Massachusetts, but only in a general sense. Stop one: Niagara Falls, a place I had heard about my entire life but never seen. Sitting right on the border between New York and Canada, it was an easy detour that pushed me north through Pennsylvania and deep into New York.
Over the next few days, I obliged the signs from the world around me and embraced the space to adventure off the quick route and see things I never would otherwise. Luxury has many forms, and the most luxurious thing I have ever experienced was the space from those around me to just ride my motorcycle and enjoy the environment I happened to be in at that moment. Work had signed me off, family was well aware I was drifting and might be hard to reach, and friends who were curious about the journey were patient enough to wait for updates on my schedule. I was alone, wandering, and finally getting comfortable as I crossed the border between Pennsylvania and New York later that day.
As I progressed across New York at the 50-mph pace required by secondary highways, stopping for coffee at diners and fuel at small service stations, there was a silent and nearly unnoticeable shift in how I paced my life. I began to discover just how little I could do in eight hours. Sure, I had to make forward progress, but that was the only requirement. Each morning I awoke in another small motel, more comfortable with the idea of not fully knowing where I would stop next for food or rest.
The thing about traveling on secondary highways is that they put you down the main street of some really delightful small towns. These are the best places to stop and sit for a bit. After an hour of riding, following a lunch of diner French toast and bacon in Norwich, New York, I was dropped into another town. This one had a small river running through it, with the typical park sitting next to the bridge. I’d been trying to outrun the dark clouds that seemed to be chasing me all day, but for the first time, I stopped calculating a solve. For once, an unplanned break to sit and watch the river go by felt like a thing that should happen, rather than something that could happen. The sticks in the river passed by as frequently and stayed as long as the thoughts in my head. After 45 minutes, small drops of rain began to turn the light green of my jacket into a dark green. I still hold the belief that there is no waterproof motorcycle gear. Everything is water-resistant until proven otherwise.
One of my favorite places to rest on a road trip is beside an old metal bridge. The riveted metal lattices that arch above the two-lane spans of bridge are under-appreciated marvels, in my opinion. They are often tucked out in the middle of nowhere, supporting roads that connect unincorporated towns rather than the massive cities found alongside the interstate. While stopped at a seemingly random span of concrete and steel in Vermont, I left the bike beside the road and jumped between the large rocks that rose from the swift but silent creek. Once out in the middle, I spread out on the largest rock I could reach, sunning myself like a lizard as the warm yet still pleasant midday sun cast down.
As a young man, I learned to drive on a John Deere garden tractor. I was so light that Dad had to wedge a stick under the safety that prevents the tractor from running with no one sitting on the seat, and still the tractor would shut off every eight feet on the bumpy lot. He loved that I would mow the yard, which was almost an acre. He didn’t like the speed at which I did so. The old hydrostat mower only had one speed to me: full rabbit, never turtle, and pedal full down. My focus was on more than just moving fast, though. What Dad didn’t notice was my constant search for a more efficient path to mow—a way that might take less time, or that would make cutting the dense and healthy grass that grew between the septic field laterals a little easier. I wasn’t racing against a clock as much as I was trying to solve a task I saw as a puzzle.
My tendency to solve puzzles carried on for many years, though I didn’t acknowledge it. My personal pace of life ran just a half beat ahead of those around me most of the time. Hearing others wax poetic about road trips and the freedom that came with driving with only a cardinal direction in mind seemed wasteful at best, and foolish, if I was being kind. Why waste time wandering when you could spent that time at the destination? The only purpose of traveling, as I saw it, was to be someplace else. “The journey is the destination” is just not a thing you say, when you grow up logging hundreds of miles a year on I-70 just to get back and forth to school and family events back home. The journey is the journey. The destination is what gets you through the journey.
Lying on a rock in the middle of that Vermont stream, I was able not only to recognize this puzzle-solving bent inside my brain but to consciously flip off the switch. This trip was not a puzzle to be solved. It was a puzzle being created, one that I might solve in a year, maybe two, or potentially never. It did not need to be solved or shared; it was simply an opportunity for me to reflect. More comfortable than ever with the idea of simply wandering, I wondered how I would flip the switch back to the pace of real life. I picked my way back across the rocks to the bank.
Even through a helmet and foam earplugs, my ears picked up a slight knock when I fired up the ‘Wing’s flat-four. A few miles later, as I was restarting the engine after refilling the gas tank, the knock became stronger. It vibrated up through the bike, begging me to flick the ignition key to end the metallic chaos inside the crankcase, at least temporarily. The bike was dying.
While calling in a tow was likely the most rational thing to do, I had only 92 miles to go, so I decided to chance it. I joined the long and growing conga line of cars waiting for their turn through a one-way construction bottleneck. I thumbed the red turret on the right hand grip, feeling the faint but present click of the detent denoting the grounding of the ignition coils. The sound of the four-cylinder stopped. Despite the dozens of cars idling around me and driving by in the opposing lane, the world felt still.
The construction worker directing the flow of traffic tilted an ear closer to their radio and flipped the sign to “slow” with a halfhearted wave, signaling the first vehicle in line to giddy up. After resetting the ignition switch, I thumbed the starter button and … nothing. I cycled the key and kill switches furiously and tried the starter again. It wasn’t even spinning. The neutral light dimmed slightly, glowing a faint green between the speedometer and tachometer, each needle stuck firmly at zero. Only now did it become clear to me that those gauges were not going to move for the foreseeable future.
Feeling the pressure of the massive line of cars behind me, I awkwardly pushed the half-ton bike out of traffic, getting just far enough off the road to not be a hazard. While grabbing my camp chair from the saddlebags—I might as well call a tow truck from a position of comfort—a friendly voice cut through the murmur of the traffic beside me, now stopped and idling once more.
“What’s going on here?”
The voice belonged to a kind police officer who had been sitting on the other side of the construction site, monitoring traffic. If I didn’t have a tow on the way already, he said, he could put in a call to central dispatch and see if that got here quickly. I might be able to negotiate with the driver to have them take me where I was headed instead of back into town, he added.
I folded my chair back up and packed away some of my riding gear. Not five minutes later, a flatbed arrived. Shortly after that, I climbed through the truck’s passenger door, settling into the seat as the driver dumped the air brakes and shifted into gear.
Time to get back to puzzle-solving. First up: What was I going to do with this dead motorcycle?
