Wednesday, September 03, 2008

What do the following all have in common?
• Star Wars – Episode IV – A New Hope
• US Coast Guard Live Fire Exercises
• Butterfly Effect
• Endless Beach
• Hole in the Ground with Water in It
• 1,000 Watt Light Bulb
• Stonehenge
• Cheese
If you said, “Nothing,” you’d be wrong. Read on!

The Rest of the Story
What they have in common is that they all figured into a motorcycle road trip my daughter and I took recently on our Ducati (the Ducs). See all the photos from the trip here, at Digital Quixote’s main site.

Day 1: We began the day as we begin all our road trips: Café au Lait and Croissants at the local French Bakery. Then we hit the road on the most boring and arguably most dangerous segment of our ride – freeway from Kirkland to Olympia, and secondary roads to Ilwaco, WA. We stopped at a deli advertising “awesome” sandwiches and had … well, awesome sandwiches.

Next we headed to Cape Disappointment where we planned to visit the lighthouse. We were sadly disappointed. The trail to the lighthouse was closed. The Coastguard was conducting Live Fire Exercises and had wisely decided not to risk a friendly fire incident with hikers.

It was beautiful, though, and on the part of the trail that was open, there were discrete signs calling our attention to things. One said, “Fog often forms here.” And another, “Deer frequently graze here.” Slow news day!

No fog and no deer, today, so we headed on down 101, the coast highway; across the magnificent Astoria Bridge into Oregon; past Seaside; past Cannon Beach, to Manzanita. We stopped for the night, ate Burritos Mexicanos for dinner and took a long walk to the end of the beach and back. Cool. Misty. I asked my daughter what they would call this beach if it were 30 degrees warmer. “?,” she said. “Waikiki!” I said. I like that she laughs at my jokes.

Day 2 and we have a hop to take! The Coast Highway is beautiful! Dramatic! At least that’s what I’m told. Today, it’s foggy – the kind of foggy where moisture condenses out of the air and everything is perpetually wet. In fact, the fog starts on the other side of my visor. We ride south in this sound and vision deadening cocoon of fog and presently arrive at Tillamook.

The cheese factory tour just opened and we’re ready for samples. In 30 minutes you can learn most everything you’ll ever want to know about making cheese, and I did. But the cool thing is that you can see into the factory. There are big conveyor belts moving 40 pound blocks of cheese, cheesebergs I called them, to their ultimate demise. The bergs are cut up into berglets which whiz (not to be confused with cheese whiz) around smaller faster conveyors, until they are cut, packaged, racked, stacked, sorted, boxed and finally leave the joint ready for shipping. Think Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – but all the chocolate is a yellowy orange. This was FUN and the samples were great!

We continue on down 101 past Newport, past Seal Rock, past Yachats, past Florence, past the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, past Coos Bay … the road is twisty, traffic mostly light, the ride’s the thing and we enjoyed it. Our destination is Bandon, OR where there’s a beachfront motel … two people, two beds, no pets, no TV, no phones … “This is Bandon, Mister,” when I called them for reservations. Bandon isn’t the center of the known world, but it works for room and board. We’re looking forward to tomorrow.

Day 3: We are on the road early because we’re headed away from the cooling breezes of the coast and into the interior where it will reach nearly 100 degrees. Hot riding! In “downtown” Bandon we find a crowded breakfast place at 7:00 AM, fuel our bodies with hot breakfast egg sandwiches, and spin ourselves up with coffee. Now we’re off to Crater Lake.

As we ride away from the coast, we gain altitude from sea level to almost 8,000 feet, and we ride through different climactic zones. Each has its own unique population of insects. First we ride through the mosquito zone. These are invisible at 70 mph and seem to make no impact on us. Next we ride through the fly zone. Flies are hard bodied insects that sound like BBs or maybe buckshot when they bounce off our helmets. They leave no visible residue from our collisions and as far as I can tell, daddy flies return home to tell their children about their near death experience. Next is the butterfly zone.

I am astonished by the thousands of butterflies we see. They remind me of the scene in Star Wars where the Millennium Falcon comes out of hyperspace expecting to see Alderan and runs into an asteroid storm of planet parts because the Death Star just destroyed it. Because of our speed, butterflies are whizzing past us like blaster shots. Occasionally they impact our bikes, or worse our helmets, or worse still the visors of our helmets leaving egg-sized yellow splotches. No amount of duck and/or cover succeeds in missing them. I call them death-wish butterflies because they land on the road by the thousands and seem to wait to be run over … and when they fly, they seem to be aiming at us. By the time we reach Diamond Lake, we look like refugees from a particularly violent paintball battle.

We check into the Diamond Lake Resort and have a slow lunch. Our room isn’t ready yet and lunch is slow because they have experienced a power outage. Back on our bikes, we head to Crater Lake to do the crater rim road and to take the boat tour. The boat tour is sold out, but we hike 1.1 miles minus 800 vertical feet to the boat launch for fun. By the time we reach the lake level, we are hot, and soak T-Shirts in the icy lake to steel ourselves for the 1.1 mile plus 800 vertical feet hike back. You gotta love symmetry, I do.

I have spent much of my working career flying back and forth between Seattle and San Francisco. I have literally flown over Crater Lake 500 times, more or less, and have always thought it would be fun to be here. The lake was formed when a volcano collapsed leaving a round lake about 5 miles in diameter and 1,100 feet deep surrounded by the crater rim which rises about 1,100 feet above the water. I am not disappointed. It’s beautiful. The weather is good, but turbulent. The road’s great. I like this place.

In the motorcycle world, there are cruising bikes (e.g. Harleys) and sport bikes (e.g. our Ducati). There is a certain minor tension between sport bike riders and cruising bike riders (both share a passion for motorcycles but disagree on the details) … not quite like gays and straights (both agree sex is good, but differ on the details) … but there’s an edge to this. As we were preparing to leave a scenic overlook, three Harley Dudes rode in. We chatted for awhile about gas mileage (70 for us, 35 for them), the comfort of a forward sport bike stance, whether they had been to Sturgis, and so on. I was flattered when one, and then the other two, wanted to throw a leg over my bike. As we departed, participants in an unexpected encounter, I felt like we had bridged a gap.

Back to Diamond Lake Resort where the power outage was still raging, and our room was 100 degrees, inside and out. It cooled down eventually but I didn’t get the best night’s sleep of my life.

Day 4 and it’s downhill from here, almost 8,000 feet down hill. Gas in Diamond Lake is $5.26 per gallon … so we pass. There is no scenic or particularly enjoyable way to get to Goldendale, our destination today.

We head east on 138, a road so straight you can see it disappear over the horizon 16 miles directly in front of you. There aren’t even any butterflies for entertainment. We turn left on 97 and it’s the same drill to through Bend and Redmond. We continue to Moro where we stop at a diner recently purchased by a Harley Dude who’s trying to make a go of it. It was 80 at Bend and must be 95 in Moro. We have sandwiches, 3 glasses of ice tea each, and leave the struggling entrepreneur a nice tip. It was fun to chat with him for 30 minutes or so.

Near Moro, between Locust Grove and I-84, is a canyon we dubbed Mach 3 Canyon. What a great ride! There were plenty of twists, switchbacks, decreasing radius curves, and a few big sweepers. It was so much fun we did it, and then we did it again. If possible, this is literally and figuratively better than sex. The canyon has another real name, but for me it will always be Mach 3 Canyon.

We ducked across the Columbia River, made a brief stop at Stonehenge II, a Sam Hill re-creation, and then motored on into Goldendale. The bank’s time-and-temperature sign read 102 degrees. We checked into our motel, showered, and watched the Olympic women’s beach volleyball match in air conditioned comfort; easy on the eye if not particularly dramatic.

Tonight we visit the observatory in Goldendale, which contains a 22 inch telescope the unwashed backyard stargazer can look through, and presents a program by a quirky state-sponsored astronomer guide. [My tax dollars at work, but I don’t mind in this case.] Although it was partly cloudy and viewing was limited, I enjoyed the program and the opportunity to ask dozens of questions. (What is the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight?) Great, great fun!

Day 5: We start the last leg of our journey and are headed home; it’s 65 as we depart Goldendale. It’s figuratively downhill from here but we have to go up the downhill before we can go down the uphill.

Our 6:00 AM start was due to our distaste of riding in the desiccating heat of Eastern Washington. Half way to Yakima, we cross a caressingly sweet river valley. It’s a cool, misty, and sensuously pleasant ride. Then, we head up the other side. As we leave the valley we head up a steep climb directly into the facing sun. I now have some inkling how Icarus might have felt. It is literally getting hotter and more uncomfortable by the minute. Will my Ducati melt as I climb closer and closer to the sun? By the time we reach Yakima at 8:00 AM, it’s in the mid eighties and it’s clear it will be seriously hot in a few hours.

After a quick breakfast in Yakima we head uphill into the mountains toward Mt. Rainier. My mountain-climbing daughter, looking at the turbulent weather, asks whether it’s safe to ride in a thunderstorm. I say sure. She decides to put on waterproof liners under her motorcycle road gear. I say, “How bad can it be?” Within 10 miles it’s BAD; raining drops the size of silver dollars, and I’m not talking the wimpy Susan B Anthony silver dollars, and certainly not the diminutive Sacajawea silver dollars, but the beefy silver dollars of my youth. I put on liners under my gear, and it’s a good thing, too. By the time we reach White Pass, it’s rain mixed with snow, brittle cold, and condensingly misty. But the good news is that from here it’s downhill to home. When we reach Greenwater my daughter says, “I’m tired, cold, and ornery (she used another word, but this is a family show) and I’m blasting home. See ya!” I know not to quibble with that look in her eye! As luck and traffic would have it, I caught up with her in about 30 miles and we rode the rest of the way home together, all smiles.

The Rest of the Story (redux): We do 2-3 road trips a year and I love the opportunity to re-bond with my kids. This was no exception. I learn motorcycling technique (and sometimes other things) from them. And we have a chance to know and appreciate each other as adults.

Thanks, Carolyn, it was a blast!

Posted by Digital Quixote in • Motorcycles
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