One difficulty was that when we talked to him in Tokyo he said there was a slim possibility that he might not make it but I went ahead and canceled the first bike on the chance that he would make it and I'd stay in touch while waiting. It was just about the time of our first conversation that they decided to change the phone system in the town in the Philippines where he was staying so we spent the next two weeks not knowing whether or not he was going to show and hence whether or not we'd have a summer vacation as planned.
Aspen was fun. we of course took our roller blades from Tokyo so we didn't need to rent a car. We went rafting with friends. The Colorado rivers were at their highest in recent history with 8 or 14 drownings so far in '95 (I forget exactly how many) but we had fun. My friend called on the 29th and we flew to Seattle the next day and spent a week at his place getting the bike ready for touring.
What a trip, we left Seattle early August and took 10 days to drive the 2000 miles to Sturgis . In those ten days we were out of a National Park, forest or wilderness area no more than a couple hours. We rode through the Noisy Diobsdud, the Boulder River, the Lake Chelan-Sawtooth, Wenatchee, and Glacier Peak Wilderness Areas, the Snoqualmie, Mt. Baker, Okanogan, Snohomish, Colvile, North Cascades, Coulee Dam and Kaniksu National Forests.Towns named Goldbar, Startup ,Diablo, and of course the 5th of July mountain. We spent the night in Winthrop just up the road from Twisp, not far from Okanogan. Another night we stayed in Chewelah. That was just in Washington .In Idaho we drove through the Sawtooth, Salmon River, Challis, Thargee and Caribou National Forests. Spent the night in Arco, the gateway to Craters of the moon Natl. Park, a giant rift of lava flows in the middle of nowhere Idaho. Both of the only two restaurants in Arco serve inedible food.They trained for the Apollo landings there, it looks like the Kohala coast of the Big Island in Hawaii. Early pioneers freaked out when they came upon it in their wagons which couldn't cross it. Who could imagine such a place in Idaho?
We rode from the Northwest rain forests of the Skagit River (I still don't know how to pronounce that) through Alpine Deserts where they got 1/4 inch precipitation a year and that is snow. Places I didn't have any idea existed. We ate wild blueberry's along the Salmon River where I stopped to take a piss and we found ourselves standing in the middle of a blueberry forest. Montana saw us in the Lolo, Kanikso, Coeur de Alene, Beaverhead, Painted Rocks Natl. Forests, in the Bitteroot Range, through Grand Teton and Yellowstone Natl. Parks over the mountains on the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway our first full -on rain and thunderstorm as we rode over the top of the pass on 6 miles of gravel and mud which is by now paved. It was so beautiful that we wanted to stop and stare even in the rain.
Arrived in the evening across the fierce wind and lightening wracked plains, down into Cody ,the ghost of Buffalo Bill riding next to us. At breakfast the next morning, a rancher overheard us raving about the beauty and the incredible wildness up in the high country we'd just come through and he came over to our table and sat and told us he lived up there and enjoyed hearing us sing the praises of the place and he invited us to come and stay with him and his Chinese wife whom he'd rescued from Tianaman Square times and brought to America to ,I imagine, be quite amazed their first winter up there as the lady had never seen snow in her life.
So we have a place to visit next time and believe me there will be a next time because we've seen places this trip that I never imagined existed in the States. Mind you I've watched the full moon rise over Everest, danced naked in the jungles of Sumatra and on the beaches in Bali, seen and done a lot of neat things in amazing places in the far corners of the planet and here I am spending the summer being astounded and blown away every day by my own country that I left when I was a kid.
Anyway everyday was a treat. Rode up through the Bighorn Natl. Forest 10% grade up out of theWyoming plains to the top where the Medicine Wheel Historic Site sits. Strange American Indian Stonehenge that nobody can figure out then back down to Buffalo and over the Absaroka Range past Devil's Tower into the Black Hills and Spearfish, Deadwood and Sturgis. Whoa sounding like a travelogue here. God it was beautiful, every day a treat. Yoko and I in kind of a perfect rhythm wakeup, pack the bike, ride all day, check into motel, unpack, go out to dinner, sleep and again the same in the morning. Each day full of surprise and new unexpected sights to see.
The town tourist-related businessfolk were having a wet dream ,the sheet of the Wyoming prairie stained with greenbacks $$$$$$$. From Spearfish on, all the parking lots of all the motels and restaurants are full of Harleys. However these days they vie for space with the trailers and vans of the yuppie, "I don't have the time, (translate that balls) to ride, plus too much mileage on the clock depreciates the resale value" posers.
A true story...We met a couple in their late forties on matching Heritages out for a weekend ride in the Cascades. In the restaurant, Yoko says to the lady "Oh when we passed you on the road it looked as if you had long hair." In reply the lady went and got her helmet to which she had attached a foot long silver braid of artificial hair "so I'd look like a biker and not some yuppie when I'm driving around." She was dead serious!
She spent most of the conversation asking what credentials I'd needed to teach in Japan and did I get my degrees in the States or Japan. She must have thought she was at some yuppie cocktail party- -she just had a new harley instead of a BMW (car that is)
So yes, there are a bunch of lame "15 miles and 15 grand make me a biker" citizens on Harleys out there....But Sturgis is still probably the best week of weirdness that's to be found in America in the "90s!
On two or three wheels you'll see Jesus freaks, Hells Angels, "Dykes on Bikes", and yuppie stockbrokers, Doctors, lawyers and yes even a few Indian Chiefs, dogs in sidecars, Toothless old men with just as toothless inflatable rubber dolls riding pillion, the Starship Enterprise on two wheels, trikes with gas tanks made from beer kegs, and oh so much more. The circus come to town in the Black Hills.
So we watched and played with friends for the week, rode around the Black Hills, Mt Rushmore etc. Then watched sadly as the town started emptying around Thursday. On the last Sunday we went to work around and around to the shops of all the merchants we do business with. Buying up what they couldn't sell. Watched in amazement as the tourists came in on Saturday and Sunday to buy a souvenir and walk around now that the town was once again "safe" for citizens. Overweight families walking around in their just purchased black biker T-shirts, baking in the 100 degree heat. It was our first time ever to see main street with cars instead of the 3000 bikes that were parked there throughout the week (that's 3000 bikes in two blocks). It was eerie, dusty port-a-potties vacant sentinels of the downtown.
We spent Monday at UPS and getting the bike ready for the 3000 miles to come. Felt strange to come back to motel parking lot full of cars. Tuesday morning early off and running straight down Interstate 90 headed east out of South Dakota with a stop for breakfast at Wall Drug and spend the night in Mitchell so we could visit the Corn Palace in the morning.
Wall, S.D. is unique in that it's the only town I know of that is a drug store. Yep the whole town is a drugstore and Wall Drug is the town. The Store's a couple blocks long and you get a map at the door so you don't get lost. Inside they sell everything from breakfast to saddles. There're plaster cowboys and dancehall girls lounging about the shops, it's packed wall to wall (no pun) with tourists and as the signs proclaim for hundreds of miles in all directions, there's free ice water!
Now the corn palace is something else again. Located across the street from the doll museum and next to the hot air balloon museum, the corn palace looks like the Taj Mahal, is about the same size but rather then built from white marble like the Taj, the palace is made entirely of corn, mostly corn on the cob and the murals on the outside of life-size cowboys roping life-size steers are changed every year and done completely in all kinds of corn. These folks in Mitchell take their corn seriously and well they should for from Mitchell on east we rode the next three days through three states through nothing but cornfields. We felt we were on a yacht on the middle of a sea of corn. A trite but oh so true observation.
I should mention right about now this book called Road Trip that I purchased mail order before we went to States. It has all the Scenic Byways in the U.S. (I didn't even know there was such a thing but there are many officially designated such routes throughout the States some a short as twenty miles, others over 100). Not really well organized, I could have made a better one but the book does give you all of the roads and tells you something about each one and because we had it we found rides we never would have known existed. This is a necessity for anyone who plans on touring the States.
We found another scenic byway in Southern Illinois (the last no-helmet state heading to Florida) The route followed the Ohio river on the border with Kentucky. We visited the Slave House--an old southern mansion on a hill, still standing as it did before the civil war with secret carriage entrance and 3 rd floor of pens and tiers where they locked up runaway slaves and tortured, bred and sold them back into slavery.
A dusty gravel road led up to the place which sat on this hill baking in 100 plus degree heat and it's all I can do to keep the bike steady gettin up this hill, yoko and luggage and the weight of the bike all wanting to dump me in the gravel. Anyone who's ridden a bike in deep gravel knows what I'm talking about.
Anyway it seems back before the civil war, Illinois was a free state but tolerated this family's owning slaves to run the salt concession from which taxes brought in big big bucks to the state. The evil dude hated blacks cause when he was 14 and wailing away whipping some young black girls, their fathers caught him doin it, attacked him and cut off his leg and he never forgot so his henchmen, years later, would wait by the 3 Ohio river fjords (the Norwegian spelling) at night and when runaway slaves dashed across from Kentucky to freedom, they'd kidnap them,throw em in a wagon which they drove into the mansion through secret door and unloaded them in private and locked em up on the 3rd floor. He had one prize stud who fathered 3000 slave babies for his breeding program. (that's 3000 on record, many more rumored, there's a picture of the famous gent in the mansions records).
The volunteer guide , "southern gentleman" from the historical society, dirty old man delighted in showing Yoko macabre penis sheath with carved wooden teeth which when locked on , would pierce any erection and this was used to keep syphilitic or mentally defective bucks from soiling the gene pool. Personally I think it's something the sickos made up and carved themselves to give these twisted guides something lured to talk about with young female tourists. He definitely delighted in having me "explain this to her sir".
The weird part of all this is the place had a bedroom where Abe Lincoln slept while on the campaign trail--this family were republican contributors in a big way and they are billionaires and still a name in Illinois today--respectable empire built on the vilest evil--perhaps his stay influenced Abe.
Anyway a bit of history there. The scenic byway itself was not much, not at all equal to all the others we'd passed through.
Now here's a note to bikers --AVOID THE BRIDGE OVER THE OHIO TO PADUCAH, KENTUCKY--As I started to cross, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a sign that said "warning motorcyclists" and which I figured was telling me I'd be crossing into a helmet state. Oh how wrong I was! What I should've discovered, had I read it first, is that the entire fucking giant span is a grated roadway. You know, like the part of a drawbridge that rises, the kind that catches your wheel and wants to throw you down and send you shimmering everywhere, only this wasn't a short portion, it was the entire bridge!! Like the guy in the parking lot on the other side said "that sure puckered your asshole up didn't it?
Ah the southern wit. Paducah, Kentucky is a city full of cigarette (no tax) and fireworks (illegal in Illinois) wholesale shops where people drive across the bridge from Illinois to shop. The people you meet there will tell you "I'm not from here I live across the bridge, over in America
spent the night in Paducah then got up at 5 am to take off early to do our miles before the sun gathered strength. We punched it and rode straight through Kentucky and Tennessee and spent the night in a miserable little shithole near the borders of Ten,Georgia,Bama. We pulled in early, around 1 or2 pm to a Days Inn--"Do you have a room?" at which the girl behind the desk looks over to middle aged bat behind a desk and they exchange 'looks' and decide yes they do then we ask "How much?" again looks exchanged and the answer $38.00??-- then we have to put down a $5 cash key deposit and yoko figures it's for fancy electronic key or something and asks but no it's not., so then we're in the room and I can't get the T.V. to work so I snag a maid and she shows me how and I ask by the way where's the remote control (empty holder's bolted to the table) and the maid replies "Oh they should've given you that at the front desk when you checked in so I go back and ask and same moron lady behind the desk tells me that's gonna be another $5 cash deposit and you just know if I'd been a Dan Quayle look alike, I'd'v had it with no deposit.
One thing I do remember about this area though is early morning riding past Chattanooga on the interstate and noticing it was a stunningly beautiful area, quite lovely, mountains and lake right into the city and of course humming Chattanooga shoeshine boy you ought to see him fan the air with a hopity hipity hopity hipity hop hop. Larry King would've sung along.
O.K. we're gettin near the end here and not a moment too soon cause it's been a while since we returned to Japan and summer memories fade quickly--into Georgia and we're playing tag with remnants of some hurricane and just missing the storms and we hit our last scenic byway of the trip as we enter Georgia from the northwest and head south towards Columbus, staying west and far away from Atlanta as possible.
And now we hit a truly beautiful area--the road is called "the pocket" as in "you two been down in the pocket?" "Watch out for rattlesnakes!" We're talking dueling banjoes and "squeal like a pig" as we ride through the mist on winding two lane, double yellow center lines, pickup trucks and wrecks rusting in the yard, yard meaning clearing hacked out of kudzu-overgrown Georgia red clay, "go in there and ya mighten not find yer way out", pine forest. Incredible! not another vehicle in sight. When we came to one fork where we didn't know which way to turn, we just stopped and waited and eventually a pickup truck with a couple of good old boys and two or 3 hounds stopped, and after getting over their surprise at seeing us there, gave us directions.
That was a great area, we even saw wild turkeys flying, a first for both yojko(that Norwegian spelling again)and myself. Speaking of Yoko it was down in the Pocket that her "highway name" came to me and from this point onward I decided to call her "soft shoulders" (after all the signs warning us of them).
As we rode in but mostly out of storms it came to us that the trip'd be over soon and we weren't ready for it to end--We spent the night outside Columbus where Nate the night clerk let me park on the sidewalk by the office window so I wrote a letter to the head office complimenting them for having such a fine employee and I hope it benefits him. Talked with the morning clerk and a cop as I went through 5am ritual of uncovering then packing the bike then heading out early south to Florida with a stop for gas and pecan pie on the way. May I suggest Route 19 (or was it 21 o27) south from here, 4 lanes,divided mostly but no traffic since everyone uses interstate these days.
Mid or early morning just before breakfast a bunch of ambulances passing me and I can't figure out what's going on 'til I stop for coffee and find out pl ane has just crashed where we are--it's the one that was in the news everywhere. There were several survivors 'cause the pilot (who died)was good and did what he could and almost pulled an emergency landing off.
How blessed the two of us were to have the abundant life and freedom to do what we were doing. Makes one realize it can be taken away at any moment so live yer dreams today, there's no guarantee of tomorrow and even if there were "life is what happens when you're making other plans"
We crossed the Ga/Fla state line and the first thing we came to is a package store so we bought a few fake beers and the guy gave us ice for our cooler. Route 19? is a great road, flat, divided, little traffic and most important, all the trucks are over on the interstate. When we did hit the interstate near Gainesville we stopped for the night. This was another typical junction of two major routes where a cluster of motels and fast food joints have sprung up. They range from the Huddle or Waffle Houses through Shoneys, up to the Outbacks or Crackerbarrels. This one was sparse with only a Huddle House and a Days Inn and Ramada Inn, both owned by the same Indian family(Bombay Indian, not American).
This ends the summer '95 trip for now. We'll pick up one of these days where this leaves off. To be cont'd, the gods willing........