On The Road Again

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you may be swept off to."
Bilbo Baggins

Headed For the Barn

posted 07/10/2007
I awoke from a nightmare of deer. Sunday morning and it's the last day of the John Day Rally. Time to head home but the deer troubled me. I thought about it as I lay in my tent. A little over a year ago I hit a deer on the motorcycle that I should have ridden to this rally. The deer is dead, the motorcycle in pieces, and me? In the words of a popular country song by Toby Keith, "I'm not as young as I once was..."

Last year, the day after the accident, I wrote my "Bambi Happens" column. I was sore and scraped but I assumed that a few weeks would have me feeling just like new. After all, when I was 20, I was broadsided by a car while riding yet another BMW motorcycle and it only took a few weeks to recover. That's how I felt the day after the deer strike. I was scraped and sore but optimistic. But the next day I felt worse, and the next day, and the next. By mid-week I was in full hurt, swollen, stiff and it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe this time, I was going to take a little longer to heal. I did.

A few weeks after the accident, my Fearless Wife drove me out to American Camp to the spot where I hit the deer. I wanted to see if my memory of the incident was correct and what I'd remembered was what had really happened. The busted turn signal lights still ground into the road marked the first spot of impact and the oil and blood on the road located the bike and the deer's final location. I was able to follow the smashed brush to where I wound up across the ditch. I'd brought a measuring tape; I had flown 85 feet from impact, about half of it in the air.

Why hadn't I been able to stop the bike in time? I had been thinking about looking out for deer even though it wasn't very late in the day. I'd slowed down before I got to the woods. I remembered seeing the deer coming at me from the side. Did I just freeze up like some rank beginner?

I had my wife drive back up the road a ways and approach the corner at 40 mph. The limit is 45 but I remembered slowing and looking down at my speedometer just as I approached the corner at 4th of July Beach, heading back towards town. We came around the corner... Damn! A blind corner! My mind had played tricks on me and made things seem slower, take longer than they really had.Hell, I didn't have a chance.

Even at 25 I wouldn't have had a chance! This was one of those random rolls of the dice that can take us down and out no matter how well we prepare, no matter how much we practice.

As humans, we like to think that we are always in control of our fate, that we can always affect the roll of the dice but life really is a gamble. The best we can do is try to improve the odds, to prepare for the worst, and not let our fears paralyze us into inactivity. I had been working down at Cape San Juan and had on a good motorcycle jacket, gloves and helmet.

I wished that I'd also have had on my riding boots and motorcycle pants but I was on the job and some things just aren't always practical to wear at work. I was better off than I would have been without the jacket and gloves, I'd improved my odds but I still paid a price.

As the summer wore painfully on I had another decision to make: to ride or not to ride? I'd given it up after I was hit many years ago but a repossessed bike I'd tried to sell sucked me back and motorcycling has been a large part of my life ever since. Now, 40 years later, the decision was easy, I'd ride as soon as I was able too. Maybe I'd have been better off if my passions in life were investments or art or medicine but bankers, artists, and doctors have accidents too. These are my cards and I'll play 'em.

This John Day trip is my first long ride since the accident, so I'm re-learning some skills and adjusting to a weaker wrist and ankle. I'm also exploring the line between vigilance and paranoia. During the ride over, it had been daytime and usually these are safer times to ride as deer are bedded down.

I'd still tense a little at groves of trees though and catch myself doing it. "Relax" the brain would say to the body. "Go to hell!" the body would say to the brain. "You had that nice cushy helmet on. I was the one that got all beat up!" But eventually the brain would win and the body would relax.

Friday evening at the rally was a different story. I was going to give my new friend Lisa her first motorcycle ride but I had to wait until she was done working at the coffee stand and had taken care of her family. We didn't start until 7:30 p.m.... deer-thirty as it's called!

As we left town, it was on the main highway with cars to chase the deer off of the roads and there was room between the road and the brush where animals couldn't hide. As we turned off onto a side road and headed up the mountain things changed.

The road was narrow and winding. Normally this is what I live for but there was a stream flowing through meadows on the left and woods on the right. This was a prime set up for deer to be moving from cover to food and they were here! There were deer in the meadow, deer in the woods and twice I had to brake hard as deer danced across the road in front of me. There were lots of them and they were mule deer too. These mulies were two to three times the size of the island deer that took me down.

At one point there were deer lined up on the roadside like a B horror movie. I could hear them as I drove by and they were saying, "Our sssissster, you killed our sssisster! We will gettt you!" Well, at least the more imaginative parts of my brain certainly heard them.

OK, crunch time. Do I turn around and go back to camp at walking speed with my taillight tucked under my fender or do I keep riding? I decided to keep riding, slowly, and watchfully and eventually we moved up the mountain away from the streams and left the deer behind. I was able to relax but I did a lot of thinking about "life" and "risk."

I still think that I can control the risk well enough to enjoy motorcycling but I do ride slower now. Some would say, "It's about time." Others say "Sellout!" We all need to get enjoyment from what we do and as I've told many people over the years, "Don't judge, don't compare, just ride your own ride." I'll adjust mine to feel safe but I'll keep riding.

The ride that evening turned out to be longer than expected as we went around a mountain rather than go back through "the valley of the antlers of death." As we descended back down late in the evening, Venus was setting in front of me and Jupiter rising over my shoulder. The air whispered by warm and gentle and I was planning my next long ride.

All of this was on my mind as I awoke on the morning of this last day, the deer dream soon forgotten as I heard people stirring around me. I didn't have a watch with me. Remember the scene at the beginning of the movie "Easy Rider" where they symbolically throw their watches away? I have a clock on the bike because I live on a ferry-served island but I rarely carry one on vacation. The tradition of no watch on vacation is a good one.

By the activity around me I assumed that it was around 6:30, so I got up and started packing. I got the tent struck and the gear bagged and then took it over to the bike in the parking lot. The clock said 6:00! Holy cow, I must have gotten up at 5! This is the other "Deer Thirty" time and I felt that riding a little later would make more sense. Besides, Lisa and her daughter Ashley were going to open the coffee shack soon and I wanted to say goodbye, thank them for the friendship they had shown me, and get re-caffeinated on their good coffee.

At 7:30 all the goodbyes were said and my cup empty. Time to head for the barn. Fast or slow? That is the question. You see, I have this fantasy of ambling home, dawdling along the way and seeing as much coming as going. But it remains a fantasy. I never dawdle. I get the bit in my teeth and I just flat go.

Many years ago on what was really our honeymoon trip, my Fearless Wife and I had spent more than two weeks on the road: Sturgis, Yellowstone, the Tetons. We had spent the final night in a motel in a small town in Wyoming. We lived in Portland, Oregon. It was about 9:30 and we were fed, the bike gassed, and packed. We had been talking about where to stop for the night but we were both tired of the Road. I turned to her just before I kicked the bike into life and I said, "Let's just go home." She nodded yes and off we went. It was 850 miles of mostly secondary roads on a bike that is much slower than a modern BMW. We pulled up front of our little house just as the sun was coming up the next morning. This pattern of "just going" when the wheel finally points home has stayed with me ever since.

Hwy. 396 from John Day to Pendleton is a beautiful road with gorgeous scenery but I didn't stop for pictures. Over the ridge from Yakima to Ellensburg the wind really knocked the stuffing out of the bike. When a gust strikes a motorcycle the bike responds by leaning into the wind. The sudden gusts over the high bridges on this road almost laid the bike on its side. Spooky, but I kept going.

Over the pass it rained but I've been wet before and I've always dried out, so I hunkered down behind the windshield and pressed on. At 3:30 I rolled into Anacortes and relaxed for journeys end and ferries caught. As the ferry pulled out I was already thinking of the next ride.

This ride does have a somber ending though, one that I wasn't aware of until I talked with a friend a few days later. Remember those riders who were up so early and packing? I choose not to go then because of the danger of deer strikes. Two of the early riders did hit deer though and one was badly hurt and had to be airlifted to Portland. He wasn't expected to survive. Sometimes the future hinges on small things like departure times. Knowing what I do about deer and their feeding habits, I will be parked at "deer-thirty" from now on.

- The Old Squid

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