by Bill Gedye
Long Distance Touring (or, how I learned to embrace monkey butt).

What is it that makes grown, mature men long for endless hours in the saddle of a motorbike? Baked by the sun and whipped by the wind, sometimes deafened by din of interstate traffic, soaked by the monsoons, pelted with insect missiles and flying debris? We revel in the experience – the sensory overload which puts all of our everyday concerns on the back burner.
We look forward to it like a dog wanting to go for a ride in the car. The time spent planning a ride is either like a military campaign or nothing more than:
“Which way are we headed?”.
“That way.”
…the answer indicated by a pointed finger.

The motivation for a ride is determined by one thing – anticipation; the anticipation of going on your first ride longer than the overnighter to Whistler, or adding to the experiences of a previous ride. Seeing Devil’s Tower for the first time, meeting new people, like that group of war vets at the old general store in Fort Klamath, getting lost at Billings then following the Bighorn River to that misplaced stretch of I-90, or wandering through the abandoned streets of Goldfield, our imagination running wild with visions of it’s heyday.

What do we get in return for the time and money invested in a long ride?

For one, we receive the precious gift of perspective. At the end of each day’s ride, we sit at the motel or campground, a cigar in one mitt and a Jack in the other, reliving the high and lowlights, like the best peach pie we ever tasted, or the debris field outside that abandoned truck stop. This information is unconsciously stored, and comparisons are made, to our everyday experiences in our lives.

Its like stopping to look at a traffic accident. Studies show that people slow down and gawk at MVA’s to see what happened, but more importantly to integrate that event into their own life and extrapolate what they would do in the same situation.

We are spectators to our lives. Sure, we actively live them and make decisions and choices, but at the end of an average day we’ll sit back and say, “Gee, I could have handled that better”, or “I hope that doesn’t happen again”. Looking back like that, we watch ourselves and how the lessons from that experience can be incorporated into ‘the next time’.

Motorcycle riders are forced to adapt every time we swing that leg over the bike and press the start button. Touring riders have to extend that adaptability for long periods and over several days, or weeks. Road and weather conditions, breakdowns, our bike falling over in a hot parking lot – even finding a place to stay for the night, this long stretch of having to meet daily challenges might just add to our depth of character, millimetre by millimetre.

When I was having a particularly bad day on the road, having lost a notebook which contained a week’s notes of the trip, my buddy Jack gave me a stellar piece of wisdom; …”It’s the bad days that make you appreciate the good days”. That stuck with me ever since and has carried me over some rough patches.

In the end, when we ride up the driveway and signal the finale of the trip by shutting the motor off, we’re both relieved and saddened that the experience is over. Relieved that we can get a good night’s sleep in our own bed without the parade of semis bellowing by the motel, and saddened that we have to wait for the next time we can load the bike down with gear. The anticipation starts about a week later. Our new found touring perspective makes us look at home through altered eyes. We appreciate the little things we took for granted, like the dog licking our face or how great our girl looks when she walks through the door.

We’re better people for the experience.

That’s why we ride.

Bill Gedye
Two Wheel Tales

There is a place where things are as they used to be, where the smog of political correctness has disappeared. Its not Mexico, Cuba or Vegas, although the similarities are striking. Its a place where the old west has been successfully blended with our modern amenities in a relaxed and blissful manner. You can ride down the road fully geared or bareheaded with flip flops. You can smoke in the bars.

The trip begins hot as a pistol through the familiar roads of the Similkameen. The faster you ride the hotter you get. Its like riding in a hairdryer. The only relief is the wet bandanna around your neck and a stop in an old bar outside Hedley, where you sit on the veranda and catch what little breeze makes it around the corner.

The deer at the side of the road seem content to munch on the long grass. Its distracted them enough to forget flinging themselves into you like four-legged Kamikazes.

The coming Labour Day weekend means that motel rooms are harder to find than a straight flush at a hold-em game, so you end up staying in the overflow room by the abandoned go-cart track for the first night.

Crossing the border, the US Customs officer rolls his eyes when you tell him you’re heading to Nebraska to buy a pair of riding boots. Later, you find that he asks your buddy how long he’s known that crazy guy up front. Who the hell goes to Nebraska to buy boots?

A huge fire near St. Regis, Montana fills the sky with smoke and you smell like a campfire at the end of the day’s ride – another last chance motel room made available by a cancelling ball team. Flip for the king bed. Loser gets the pull-out sofa.

Funny the characters you meet on a ride. Like Mike, waiting for a ride to the jobsite outside Columbus, Montana. Mike is a recovering alcoholic who is now working steadily and trying to stay off the booze, despite the domestic wreckage he walked away from. Mike’s eyes light up when he receives your gift of a cigar. You’re proud of him and wish him the best on the rest of his journey through life.

Stop at the old Montana State Prison, in Deer lodge, and you appreciate your fortunate life. You’re free to smell the grasses, relieve the heat with a cold drink at your leisure, and ride the road in any direction for as long as you can.

Plenty of deer, and even an elk lie at the side of the road having fulfilled their mission. Are they martyrs and heroes in the world of ungulates? Do they get a hundred virgins when they go to deer heaven? Now you know why more and more Kenworths are sporting huge ‘roo bars’ which necessarily spoil the factory aerodynamics.

Butte, Montana reflects a day when mining was the cash machine spitting out volumes of the stuff which was converted into extravagant brick mansions. The old mine heads are monuments to the thousands of men who inhabited the abandoned 15 story hotels and grand office buildings in downtown Butte. You can just imagine how it looked with dirt streets, horses and gas lamps if you squint your eyes in the dusk.
Farther along the road, baking in the oven of Wyoming, Sheridan appears with a motel pool. You feel like jumping in the water with all your gear on but it was hard enough to renew that passport without having to replace that soggy mess it will become if you can’t resist the temptation. Buffalo Bill Cody built a grand hotel here served by a railway line which brought wide eyed tourists from the east and beyond to behold the exotic cowboy and indian shows, featuring the real thing.

The next day starts off cloudy and cool, with the smell of rain in the air. In anticipation, you unpack your rain gear and pull it on over your riding armor feeling as restricted as a 5 year old in a snowsuit. If the sun comes out, it will quickly become a personal sauna, like it did when you were stuck in traffic outside Hope, B.C., after that tanker truck overturned and burned. But it rains, and the wind starts up. No matter. Let it blow. You’re warm and dry, listening to Waylon Jennings on the headset. Go ahead, pick any station. They all play country music.

There it is on the right. That large green sign pointing to the promised land. Just 20 more miles on a new four laner taking you to….Deadwood. If you think that its going to be like the HBO series, you’re only partially right. The echo of the Deadwood spirit lives in the names of the buildings but the original wooden city was destroyed by a fire in 1878 that ate Bill Hickock’s favorite No.10 saloon and culminated when it arrived at the hardware store. That place held 8 kegs of gunpowder which provided a spectacular end to the historic boardwalks, false-fronted buildings and hitching posts.

Today, Deadwood Dick’s Bar, far enough off the main drag to develop the patina of neglect, welcomes you with worn and weathered arms. Its peaceful inside, with none of the bonging slot machine bells, canned western music or glittering chandeliers. Neon from the Budweiser signs mixes with sunlight from the huge old front windows to cast a warm glow on the bar taps featuring ‘Moose Drool Beer’, Busch and Miller. In answer to your query, Cindi strolls around the corner of the bar to reply that someone had bought the last two rubber tire ashtrays from the antiques display last week. They also have an old rocket ship piggy bank that you used to spend hours with as a kid, but at $250, it’s as affordable as a tankful of rocket fuel.

Stroll up Deadwood’s Main Street and you may see the staged shootouts, which give the local kids an outlet for their energy and fantasies. Off on a sidestreet, the sound of these little dramas is a mite unnerving as they sound too much like a drive-by.

A Bill Hickock look-alike beckons you inside for a prime rib buffet as you head down the street toward the subterranean Deadwood Tobacco Company, below the Oyster Bar. Run by a couple of tattooed, no-nonsense, biker brothers, this is another oasis of tranquility and a hell of a cigar shop.

Riding back to your motel home aboard the $1 Deadwood trolley, you can reflect on the everyday tensions and annoyances which have accumulated over the last year and how they have been washed out of your brain by this week’s ride and the beer at Deadwood Dick’s, then rinsed clean at Deadwood Tobacco Company’s smoky bar.

This is a civilized place.