A Day in the Life: A Novella | Sherrie Lord
A Day in the Life: A Novella
Jul / 05 / 2009
Driving a motorcycle is a mental exercise. It’s
about strategy and talking yourself out of those
panic responses that would ruin your day if you
obeyed.
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Not A Poser
I know, this is a long post. But I’ll take you on my Fourth of July adventure if you care to come along...
Sunday morning in the “Treehouse.” That’s our covered second-story deck where all you can see is the tops of our backyard trees. I have a slight breeze, songbirds, and a cup of coffee with heavy cream. Pug Walter is lying in a chair beside mine, waiting for me to stop this nonsense so I can fulfill my destiny, which he believes is to hold him. Husband Harry was here too, but he got the hint and wandered off to his cave, the garage. He knows, the Treehouse is mine.
We had the Fourth to ourselves yesterday — no kids — so we got on the motorcycles and pointed them north to look for some curves. Harry was on his Suzuki Cavalcade; often mistaken for a Honda Goldwing. I was on my BMW R1200RT; looks sort of like a crotch rocket; often gets a hankering to zoom like one.
Oh, and to that guy in the new ‘Stang: You didn’t need to slow down so I could merge onto the highway after we pulled off to take pics. It’s all about the ratio of weight to horsepower, and each of my horsies is pulling only 5.6 pounds. But thanks anyway. And ta-ta.
(The Tetons are just over my shoulder. The hair looks great, huh.)
The curves came gradually as the eastern Idaho scenery morphed from city streets to welding and fabrication shops, to acreages, to pastures, until finally, the Teton Range jutted up from the horizon. The peaks poke the sky to my right, harsh and rugged and distracting me. Except for when that trio of horses ran along their pasture fence, heads high, tails graceful, and nostrils flared into the wind they created. I smiled.
God is an artist.
To our household, it’s the Loosli Spud Cellars Ride. Because that’s where you turn east off of Highway 20, at those big potato storage “garages” emblazoned with the name of the farmer who owns much of the ground we would be riding through. Where the spud cellar road Ts, we turned south, onto Highway 32.
As much rain drenched us in June as usually falls on eastern Idaho in a year, so even the raw ground surrounding the pastures and grain fields — and yes, potato fields — were green. Like a Kodak commercial on crack. I’ve lived here since 1974 and never seen it like that.
(Through my windshield, the road, grain fields, and the Tetons. FYI, the lettering on my windshield says “_hristian Motorcyclists Assn.” The “C” fell off.)
God is glorious.
And we found curves.
If you’re not a motorcycle driver, you’d believe managing that power between your knees is similar to guiding the engine on the other end of your steering wheel shaft. Not so. Driving a motorcycle is a mental exercise. It’s about strategy and talking yourself out of those panic responses that would ruin your day if you obeyed.
Panic says you better hit the brakes when you get into that curve. Strategy says slow down a little before you even start into it. Once you see where it’s going, what’s on the other side, once you know what you’re getting into, then you power-on, accelerate.
Your eyes want to look just ahead of the front wheel. Don’t let them. Turn your head and fix your eyes on the other end of the curve; like magic, the bike will follow. It always goes where you look.
So don’t look at that pothole looming ahead, unless you want to fall into it. Look at the intact pavement to the left or right of it.
I handled the right-hand curves like a guy; no fear. I turned into a girl on the left-hand ones. Maybe because I’m right-handed. Maybe because I got a little freaked that I’d lean too far beyond the center line and take out, with my face, the side mirror on that pickup truck coming the other way. Those were the curves I had to talk myself through. Don’t panic. Look through the curve. Trust the bike; this is what it’s made for.
You can say that again. Those wily Germans, engineering an instrument of finely tuned precision — and fun! High tech. Nimble. Responsive. Yahooo!
And thank you also, Steve Jobs. My iPod knows my favorite tunes.
(Aint them purty.)
The Teton Range was on our left then, and very close. The snow on the three major peaks hadn’t melted yet, and fog wrapped the tallest, The Grand, in cotton. We rode along their back side, over hills like a roller coaster — “Whee,” Harry told me over the CB — and around curves that turned and climbed at the same time, so that I had no idea if the curve would tighten up or flatten out into a grand sweep. Or if there would be a farm tractor crossing the road up there.
It was a mental exercise. Because of that, the bike is the only place I can silence my characters. I know, voices in my head. They’re nags. But they shut up when I have to concentrate. I die, they go with me.
Million-dollar log homes marked our approach to the little mountain village of Driggs. New construction; Californians buying up Idaho scenery to make it their own. When they got here, they forgot why they found Idaho so appealing. They didn’t come to become Idahoans; they came to make their new home like the one they couldn’t wait to get away from. They added chic (that’s sheek, not chick) little bistros and bean sprout sandwich shops, lattes and espressos to Main Street, Rocky Mountains, USA. It’s an odd mix on the streets, muddy pickup trucks and Cadillac SUVs, of all things. And Subarus with yellow Labs in the back.
Harry and I focused on the Tetons and on all the shades of green.
Because we had the time, we extended our ride, continuing past the junction to Pine Creek Pass and home, to roll on to Teton Pass. It’s a climb of 2,200 feet in six miles, much of it switchbacks and a 10% grade. That’s steep, if you don’t live near any real mountains. As we climbed to 8,431 miles above sea level, the thermometer on my bike computer told me the wind on my face was at 61 degrees. That’s from a high of 79 degrees in Idaho Falls. But still warmer than the Moo’s Gourmet Ice Cream cones we licked as our boots tapped hollow on the boardwalk around Jackson, Wyoming’s city square.
(You’ll get to know Moo’s Gourmet Ice Cream shop better in Book #3 when He takes She on a date to Jackson.)
Note: I can’t believe we endorsed those silly Californians by buying Moo’s — except it’s so delicious. Mine was bitter-sweet chocolate — of all things! Not all their ideas are bad.
The license plates on the cages (biker lingo for four-wheeled transportation) nosed up to the boardwalk bragged that their owners had driven far. Tourists come from all over the world to visit Jackson. And we go there for ice cream. Shoot, Yellowstone Park was a mere 40 miles from where we stood.
Go ahead and groan. I know, I‘m so lucky. So blessed. But so thankful.
(I still get a kick out of how the ski runs in Jackson are, like, right there in town.)
The sky had grown moody and angry while we walked around, so we put on our waterproof under-jackets for the ride home. We lost elevation as we paralleled the Snake River, winding through the steep and wooded canyon south to Alpine, Wyoming. This little village is at the top of Palisades Reservoir. And the sky poured its anger on us anyway, first in little drops that looked like paw prints on the windshield, then in smacks that sounded like hail striking my helmet. They became hail. The Cadillac with Utah plates behind us slowed in the deluge until it disappeared from my rear view mirror. But Harry’s headlight was still there.
How many thousands of miles we’ve ridden, one in the lead, the other in the rear view mirror. Tens of thousands, in all the western states and two provinces of Canada.
I laughed about what those Utahns were probably saying about the poor — or stupid — motorcyclists who were surely soaked and cold.
Not really. Under my jacket and helmet, inside my boots, I was dry and warm, even though the thermometer on my display dropped to 53 degrees. My new gloves got pretty drenched, but I turned on my heated grips to warm them. (High tech!) The worst thing about that would be the black on my hands, from the leather’s dye bleeding, when I took them off that evening. But my sweet machine wrapped around much of the rest of me, so that my Levi’s were barely wet. It was the water that rolled off the gas tank and onto the front of my seat that got me. Tender skin and evaporative cooling; that’ll get your attention.
I rode across Wyoming once. Two days, and it rained all but about two hours of it. Wait! The rain turned to snow that fell like cupcakes on Powder River Pass. How could I have forgotten the snow!
Because rain, hail, and snow are no big deal. Not after you’ve had 50,000 miles of road roll under the heels of your boots, with 50,000 miles of open sky above you. The smells make it worth the inconvenience. Pine trees, fresh mown hay, fresh mown grass, steaks sizzling on somebody’s grill, KFC chicken, Burger King burgers, onion fields, lilac bushes — the list goes on and on.
We checked out the River Festival downtown when we got back to Idaho Falls. More smells, these of cotton candy and funnel cakes, smacked us as soon as we got within four blocks of the vendors strung along the Snake River, leading us by the nose to find a parking place. We watched the strangers we walked among, exchanged meaningless chatter with people we knew, and tasted our first deep fried Twinkie. Tasty, but rich. We let Idaho Falls read the billboard that is our back patch — Christian Motorcyclists Association, Riding for the Son. “Profilin’,” we called it back in the ’70s, when Harry was “Thor” in an outlaw motorcycle club and the patch on my back proclaimed me “Property of Thor.” Like when you check out your profile in the store windows as you drive through downtown. You look good. That’s profilin’.
(The falls that give Idaho Falls its name. These are right in the middle of downtown, folks. They’re most always splendid, but our wet summer this year has the reservoirs full and our rivers high. You can hear the water’s tumble for blocks.)
We walked farther than we should have in motorcycle boots. They’re heavy and they don’t bend in the middle much. Neither do they slide; that’s the whole idea when you have to stand on gravel or wet pavement in order to keep that thing you’re sitting on from tipping over. But I danced the Twist anyway while we waited at the street corner for the traffic light to change. The live band was behind us, but amplified. And I learned to Twist when I was too young to ever forget it, back when the Beatles wore matching suits. Some of the people in the cars that passed smiled at me. Others looked embarrassed for me. I know, it’s scary to be different. Especially in eastern Idaho, where things tend to be a little beige, a little bland, a little vanilla. But I play bumper tag on two wheels with those fine folks smiling and chatting in frivolous conversation on their cell phones while they aim their thousand-pound machines at me. Dancing on a street corner? A piece of cake.
We rolled into the garage at 8:30, eight hours after we left. We had plenty of time to feed and water the dog, then head back downtown to claim a piece of riverbank where we could watch the fireworks. But once you take those boots off...
Too tired, and it was okay. The Fourth of July is my favorite holiday, because of the fireworks. But after the day’s adventure...they just didn’t seem that important. Sort of anti-climatic.
(sigh)
And now Pug Walter is asleep, no longer trying to guilt-trip me into taking him onto my lap. And my coffee is down to cold dregs. I think I’ll get a fresh cup...and come back to my Treehouse...and ponder what time I should get dressed today.
Thanks for riding with me.
Ta-ta for now!
Hugs, Sherrie ;-}
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