Hard roads I have ridden. For the last four years I have hunted and motorcycled over some of the toughest in the world. From Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, North America's most northern riding point, to Ushuaia, the most southern point in South America, then up to the North Cape in Norway. There I spent the night camped in a howling wind, turned around the next day and headed south to Cape Agulhaus, the southern most point of Africa, where I spent a quiet sunny Christmas Day sleeping on a bench in the warm sun. In between these end points on the earth I sought roads lesser traveled; the little red roads on some maps, gray dotted ones on others. Some roads I found myself riding were neither roads or mapped, often making them very hard. Of all the roads ridden, the most difficult was the last ninety-six miles to my small house in the Big Horn Mountains of Montana. Those ninety-six miles took me twenty-four hours to ride.
The first time I circumnavigated the globe by motorcycle I took an easy ride around the middle of the earth, dipping below the equator to Australia and New Zealand. I spent countless days wandering the dream roads of the Alps where the pavement was perfect; motorcycles ruled the road and cloudless weather made the experience mystical. My ride across North America was almost forgettable as my bike and I hugged well-traveled roadways often ridden before. I did see some new roads seldom traveled by motorcyclists, some in Bulgaria and Romania. The outback of OZ gave me some trepidation, but that was soon forgotten when my brain took in the visual images of riding around Tasmania. That first global ride took just under two years and as I look back on it, was relatively uneventful, compared to my second global loop.
Finishing the second world ride found me leaving Tokyo with a light in my eyes as I flew east to Los Angeles. This light may have been from the fire in my heart to finish what had taken me nearly four years to do, ride a motorcycle to the ends of the earth. Landing in California brought me back to reality, as first I had to negotiate one of the more dangerous roads I have ridden, Interstate 405 during rush hour. The whole area of Los Angeles is high on my list of places best avoided on two wheels, and here was where the last leg of my trip was to start. In Mitch Boehmís office (MOTORCYCLISTs Editor) I saw the ants of car traffic sixteen floors below on the streets of Los Angeles surely practicing to knock me and my motorcycle down as I tried to get out of the city and into the mountains. Mitch congratulated me on having completed my second global ride. I told him it was a little early for a salutation, as I still had to reach my home in Montana. At the same time I was thinking to myself, there must be at least a couple hundred thousand drug taking, road raged car drivers on the expressways below, each armed and with a fully primed and pumped glans, determined to keep me from surviving. Knowingly Mitch smiled and said, yes, I know what you mean.
As I started to leave Los Angeles I saw many of those things that make America the place I still chose to come home to: Burger King, coin operated car washes, biker/topless bars, and K Mart. After having been in countries like Zambia, Ecuador, and El Salvador, I admit to my American bred desire to consume what K Mart has to offer on a Sunday afternoon. Each time I return to the United States I get down, Muslim-like, on my hands and knees, at the front door to the first K Mart I see and give thanks they are there and open. To the people walking by I must look like something out of a Star Wars movie: helmeted, Combat Touring Booted, Gore-Tex clothed and gloved, bent over, head touching the cement, while mumbling, oH God, thank you for K Mart.
Yet as much as I wanted to return to the clear mornings of the Big Horn Mountains of Montana and their wild evening sky, I did not want my trip to end. Life on the road had become like an old pair of shoes, not pretty but I knew exactly what I was going to get each day when my foot went forward. I had become comfortable with the discomforts of living a motorcyclists life of two-wheel wanderlust on the roads of the globe. Life off the road meant work, paying bills, answering the phone, and the endless things that make up a day with 99.99% of my acquaintances in the non-global adventure world. My internal IT MUST BE SO Avoidance Mode switched ON when I remembered I was in California, which has some of the best motorcycling roads in the world and I had some time to ride them, which is what I did.
BMW of North America was kind enough to give me one of their new (not available until June) F650 GS models to test for a few days. What a change from my 20 year old R80 GS. With the fuel injected F650 GS I was able to play with some of the locals on an afternoon ride (race?) down the West Grade of Mount Palomar near San Diego. Six of us freight-trained this twisty, two-lane ribbon through the woods, considered one of the best scratcher roads in the world. When we reached the end, their leader, on a BMW R1150 GS, was impressed that they had not been able to shake me on the little F650 GS single. I chose not to tell him the reason was because he had offered to buy me lunch and I did not know where the restaurant was, so I had to keep up to get my free meal. I also did not let on that I was over my head so often that I remember thinking this is really stupid, Dr. Stupid. This bike is not yours, you do not know the road, and you are severely under powered. The episode was a perfect example of how testicles make some humans dumber than farts in church.
Having survived the road warrior challenge of Mount Palomar, I opted for a slower ride some days later with a German lady/rider friend over Angeles Crest and then to The Rock Store. Flipping the little BMW F650 GS through the turns of these scratcher roads was great fun as the bike was without my usual traveling luggage and never wallowed like my overweight and road weary R80 GS. We explored gravel roads, found some small twisties, and finally ended up at the home of Dave Barr in the mountains northeast of Los Angeles. Dave and I have covered a lot of the same ground on our motorcycle rides around the world and I have great admiration for his accomplishments. He did his ride without legs, having lost both to a land mine in Angola. Before I set off for South America and Africa, Dave shared with me some of his travel tips and philosophical perspectives on where I would be going. I can say some of these tips probably saved my life a couple of times, his exploits causing me to take a stand or hard road several times when I may have turned my back previously.
California was fun, but Montana skies were whispering louder each day. It was time to end my journey of wanderlust. I gave BMW of North America their F650 GS back and headed to my life not so faraway in the Big Horn Mountains.
My last gas stop found me with ninety-six miles to home, but the warm morning sun was heavy on my shoulders as I left Wyoming and rode into Montana. I knew my body was tired, and there was no soft fire, no food on the stove and no love in some woman's eyes waiting for me two hours away. As I rode those last miles I found myself reflecting on what I had seen and done over the last 200,000 miles, the people I had met, cultures I had experienced. Zanzibar and the woman from the harem I could almost smell, as could I the blood and brains in the dust of a robber killed with a shotgun from three feet away in Zimbabwe. The vision of the snake, thick as my leg, in Brazil, rushed back as a nightmarish memory. This black flashback I replaced with the recollection of the loving smiles of someone who captured my heart along the way. Some of those memories I did not want to recall as I rode the last miles into the Big Horn Mountains, others I wanted to relive and relish as often as I could.
I knew I would be home by noon. The motorcycle was tired, as were my socks, boots, tee shirts and shorts. Everything needed to be discarded when I reached my house, especially the bike. It had a top speed of eighty miles per hour, down hill with a tail wind. Uphill, with the throttle opened to the stop, it wheezed like a fifty-year Marlboro smoker climbing stairs.
The thought of my adventure being over, my bike slowly dying, nobody waiting for me, not even a dog, was depressing. I could not ride to my house. Instead, I rode higher into the mountains and found a place to camp. Although I had no food or drink, I figured it was only for one night, I could easily manage, and I had often enough before.
After setting up my tent for a last time, I collected enough wood for a long fire and settled down. I could see my house four miles below, so felt I was nearly home. However, for the final hours before riding up to the front gate, I wanted to relive my ride around the globe. I rolled the motorcycle close enough to the fire so I could lean my back against it and still be warmed by the flames and coals. As the rising white moon chased the reddening sun west and out of the sky, I reflected on places I had camped on other parts of the earth and seen the same moon-sun races and colors. With my sleeping bag for a blanket and my rain suit as my bed, I re-rode the world through the night. I reflected on friends that I had made, roads ridden, crashes, meals eaten, baths taken, sickness, smells, rain, loneliness, snow, sand and oceans touched.
By six o'clock in the morning my memories and the sun had pushed the night away and I had relived much of my last 200,000 miles. It was time to ride home, which I did.
Dr. Gregory,
Done with the world ís hardest 96 miles, I am.
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