I pulled into the lonely gas station with the sun sinking on the horizon. I had just ridden many, many miles of new roads, new experiences, and I was nearing the 500 mile mark since I set out early that morning. I topped up the tank, and headed for the intersection. Turn right, 100 miles to Monticello, turn left, 150 miles to Monticello. I turned right.
A small smattering of southern Utah mesas crowded the horizon to my right, a line of mountains to my left. A quick hand check on the sun showed 2 fingers to the horizon: about 30 minutes of daylight left. Already, the reds of the desert were going into subtle overdrive, balanced against the dark grey of the storm cloud holding fast to the mountains to the left. I opened up the throttle, hoping to put on a few more miles before it all went black.
The road out here was in good shape, but isolated. Rolling plains, random mesa vistas, lack of traffic. As the sun faded, my brain went into overdrive scanning for deer, the biggest hazard to the lone biker, flying over the pavement on some random back road.
Soon scanning for deer became a background task, and the monotony of the ride slowly sunk in. Long distance biking is a balance: you get to see some amazing things, ride some great twisties, and sometimes… you get to spend a lot of time inside your own head, phasing out the boredom of just putting down the road. You find yourself digging up the little problems of the day, the week, and attempting to solve them mentally. For me, this means working on mechanical designs in my head. It’s always slightly frustrating to do this, as you can’t really test any solutions until the trip is over and done with.
And then you are in it: the meta trip. You find yourself already composing that blog entry, how you will word the story to your friends, what you will do when this is all over. Now you are just an observer, not experiencing as such, but just there for the report, to be delivered to the eager consumers of arm chair adventure.
I waffle on this point for a while: to plot out the story now, I’m just boiling it down to an observation, instead of an experience. If I can quit thinking about the story, and just live in the here and now, I truly become part of the experience, something savoured and enjoyed, but the details bleed away like a distant mountain peak, leaving you with just the feeling, the mood of the adventure.
My sound system, a battered iPod shuffle named ‘MotoShuffle’, finally winks out after 10 hours in the saddle, leaving me with just the wind and muffled roar of the mechanicals under me. The wind tugs at my legs, my arms. Now with the sun gone, my world is two pools of light cast onto the rushing ground in front of me, revealing shapes and signs that whizz by. the beatiful valley is gone from my view.
It’s getting colder now, without the thermal boost of the sun. The storm on the mountains is picking up, lightening is no longer a distant flicker, but something that lights up the mountain side for a split second, as I strive to try to take it in before the light is sucked from my view. I’ve turned east now, headed up the mountain. The cold finally gets to me, and I pull off to the side of the road.
So far I have passed all of two cars in 100 miles. It’s just me out here, me and the road and my machine. I’m loathe to turn off the bike, for then even the rumble of the engine and the bath of lights will go, but I need to get into the bags. The bike stops suddenly as I rotate the key, the lights flash off. Another lightening bolt, reminding me to get the rain gear out too.
Why am I out here? Mile number 700 has come and gone, and I’m on this lonely highway, no cell reception, nothing, and in the dark, it’s just a path to an end point. I know ahead I will find rain, and who knows what kind of road conditions. Then I remember: it’s the thrill of the challenge of the adventure. To conquer it all. To say that I completed this, where others would turn away.
I get back on the bike, and fleetingly, hope that it starts. Of course it does. I’m away now, riding up some twisties in the dark, with the random flash of light giving me some hints of what lays ahead. I take it easy, and slowly crest the mountain.
The rain begins. A drop here, there… hard to say when it started, but it’s going now. I can see the lights of Monticello ahead, down below, halos in the distance due to the water. I ease down the mountain road, rain thudding onto my pants, jacket, helmet. I can feel the cool wetness of it blowing by my chin and neck, which, while exposed, don’t actually get wet.
Now I’m in it, the lights of the town. The trip counter has hit the 800 mile mark, and I’m just starting to think about how tired and hungry I am, now that I have beat the road, the moutain, the weather. I procure gas station food, and head to the hotel to meet up with Brian. I drag in my bags one at a time, wet, tired, sore, looking forward to some rest for the next day’s adventure, as Brian tells me how he conquered his own adventure.
So now I’ve written this narrative, reported to you, allowed you to experience my private adventure in the deserted back country of southern Utah, I realize: sometimes sharing makes it all seem much better in retrospect.
I hope you enjoyed this. Go out this weekend and have an adventure, yeah? I’ll be looking for your reports from the road.
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