Tell Us Your Monster-ous Story

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A buddy and I went downtown to get some coffee and watch the world go by. People are so funny sometimes. A twenty-something guy was walking across the street and right passed out bikes (his was a CBR-600RR) and gave them the once over. He then came up to me (apparently my buddy did not look like the Ducati type ) and exclaimed with overwhelming excitement, "Tell me that thing goes faster than 160!" Apparently he glanced at the speedo and felt it did not do the Ducati name justice. I happily played along and spread the mystique that is Ducati.

[PAteacher]

Hi all,

It may take two or three posts ("chapters") to get this text and pics in here. Here is Flagstaff Pt I


Part I: Tokens of Respect

I wasn’t there. When the newly-minted high school graduates walked through the receiving line of faculty in the school’s back hallway, in their caps and gowns, just before presenting themselves to their proud parents, I wasn’t there.

We were supposed to shake hands with the kids, accept hugs, and see them weep openly at the excitement of having graduated and the shock of moving on. Had I been there, I would give the girls in their make-up and heels, and the boys in their crooked neckties looks of admiration that said, You’re growing up.

I was supposed to be there, in the hall with my colleagues, for that indelible moment, but there was a problem.

About that time I was some 2111 miles away, rolling out of my friend Dwight’s garage in Tucson, AZ, at about 6:30 am desert time. Dwight's wife just had their second child, so he’d handed me the keys to his brand-new S4R. He’d said, “Go see Flagstaff without me, pal.” What went unsaid was Maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for there.

* * *

I did the first hour out of Tucson without the throttle lock, and pulled into a convenience store with a tense throttle hand for my efforts.

I think it was a bit of nerves. I've gone rural small town; I’m not at all used to highway riding, with cars right alongside and changing lanes around me. Not like this anyway. The speed limit here is 75, so 80 is the norm. And there's no guard rail either. Cars just run wide into the sand and bounce through the scrub, I guess. Morning traffic on that road made that stretch of highway at once claustrophobic, and agoraphobic.

Because it gets over 100 here every day, I wore a Camelback (a backpack bladder with a drinking hose that I could tuck up inside my helmet. Mtn bikers use them).

In Phoenix there was a traffic jam due to an accident, so it was slow speeds and frequent stops for a good quarter of an hour. Dwight's bike is a definite upgrade to my S2R. The bike both delivers and asks more. It takes some hand strength to work the clutch lever, for instance. I knew this; I’d read about Ducatis for years before buying one. For those fifteen minutes, many of which were spent squeezing the lever, I coasted along in the midst of our rolling parking lot, a lot some five lanes wide and a hundred cars deep. I now had two aching hands.

The tank held about 125 mi of fuel. At my first fill-up, where I also drank 44 oz of Gatorade on tap, I heard a voice small behind me say, "Sir?...Sir?"
I turned slowly, expecting to be kicked out of the convenience store for loitering while I finished my drink. A skinny teenage kid in a food service uniform continued: "Sir, is that a...a Camelback?"
I said it was, and this lead to a discussion about him wanting one for his orienteering team. We discuss his needs and I let him try mine on. I ask him questions; I offer advice he would not consider asking for. In the end, I recommend one with a belt strap. He heads back to his push broom, content with his ability to converse properly with a stranger--a grown-up one no less--and I am glad to have helped him in that. The exchange reminds me of a sign I have on my classroom wall that reads, a good teacher respects his pupils.

Just outside a grown man leaves his car so he can run up to me and shout, "That is an awesome bike!! That is an awesome bike!!" He's dancing in place while he says this. His huge pleated pants are billowing, revealing cap-toed dress shoes, which are surprisingly small. Over his shoulder, I see a woman sitting in his passenger seat, shaking her head slowly at her own lap. The man is only an inch or so shorter than I, but during his dance I cannot help but feel I’m looking down at him. Somehow this event and the one with boy are connected...

I give him the thumbs up and start the bike. The dry clutch rattles like a Panzer tank. I clunk the bike into gear them head back to the freeway. 40...50...60...70 blue sky above, gray blur beneath. My adventure is already becoming memorable; I still can’t believe it’s happening.

* * *

[PAteacher]

Flagstaff Pt II: Sea of Tranquility

After Phoenix, Arizona starts to open up. (See the "Sea of Tranquility" photo.) It also gets higher in elevation, and pine trees come into view. The highway is back to two lanes, and the semis labor as if stuck to the roadway. I check to make sure they could see me coming, then zip past on my thumping red bullet. I cannot say how vast it is, how big the sky is, and how all around there are mountains...except to say the land is vast, the sky is big, and mountains abound. To have taken a good picture, I'd have needed one of those Civil War era panoramic cameras.

I’ve started taking notice of how much I use motorcycle vocabulary in my classroom. When everyone’s participating, and everyone’s getting smarter, I find myself applauding their efforts and saying, “We’re “firing on all cylinders, folks.” “We’re cruising now,” During the afternoons, when everyone’s sluggish from cafeteria pizza, I say, “C'mon, now. Let’s get in gear."
This past year, though, the lingo that came to mind far too often was that “my tank was empty,” I’m “Outta gas”…“cooked.” As soon as I’d submitted my final grades, I bolted for the western desert and a back-slapping hug on my tired shoulders from a long-time pal.

So there I was, on the way to Flagstaff in Rt. 66 territory, on an iconic bike, receiving a transfusion from the sun, pumped by the perfect, perfect motor that bike has. It was the kind of experience people hope for, when they roll out of bed in the middle of the night sometime around their thirtieth or fortieth, or fiftieth birthday, and scrawl on a notepad: “learn to sail,” “build a piece of furniture,” “touch the Pacific.”

This was no dusty list, though, no quiet, unfulfilled desperate thought. During that time, as the horizon wavered in the heat, my lungs were getting bigger; I was shedding the burdens of a particularly difficult year like sandbags from a balloon. It was cherished living.

I was, however, beginning to hobble a little as I walked across the parking lots of the filling stations. A motorcycle is not a car. Nor am I a cowboy. It took me 5 hrs to make it to Flagstaff. Apparently my preliminary calculations of 3 hrs were a bit off. I was not allowing myself to consider the return trip.

Flagstaff has grown recently, and with that growth has come sprawl. Arby's, BK, Wal Mart. As I rode into Flag, I knew I wasn't in the right part of it. I stopped and asked for directions to the University (of North Arizona), and from there, soon found myself in a vegetarian coffee shop having two slices of pizza and a lemonade while bohemian types chatted happily or plinked away at their laptops, fingers adorned with turquoise and silver, and hair all split ends.

Across the street was a tattoo parlor, and a skateboard shop. I had indeed found the student part of town. Another set of directions got me to the tourist-centered main drag.

At a used bookstore I shared my observations with the kid working there. Flagstaff is part college town, part tourist town, and part suburban sprawl, with a fair amount of bohemian and outdoorsie types. He agreed. A girl at a local bike shop told me that having a car is not necessary. Clear air, blue skies, a sense of fitness about, and lots of bars and restaurants with outdoor seating. For sure a neat place to spend part of your 20's, even if for just a summer. I know now that I should mention Flagstaff to my students, if any of them ever plan to motor west. One’s 20’s are fun, if you play it right. Being in Flag reminded me of those days.

* * *

By 2:30 I was on the road. I'd called Dwight to let him know of the actual travel time. He'd confessed that he'd suspected it was more than 3 hrs. "So...that's going to be a long ride back, huh buddy?"

Once on the highway, I found a 2nd wind, got down to business, and made that engine go like it wanted to. I also grabbed the tank with my knees and got my head down, out of the wind. No tickets though. Nosiree.

Holding out my camera, I said, "Por Favor? to a Mexican dad in a faded denim shirt at a rest stop. As he prepared to take the picture, his son studied me wordlessly while I unknowingly leaned against a railing, near a sign that said, “No Leaning On Railing.”

Meeting a stranger in the middle of that vastness inherently has a sense of significance. In the parking lot, this tubby 15 yr old in camo shorts stood looking at the bike. He watched me put in my ear plugs before saying, "You must like to light for the winning."

I pulled the plugs back out and he repeated, "You must ride that bike for a living."
"Actually," I said, "I'm riding away from it. I'm a school teacher and I'm on summer break. What are you doing out here?"
Doing some long distance trucking with his dad was the answer. Cool. Two travelers we were, both chained to desks in rooms that smell of Lysol, but now...free. Vaya con dios, little man.

Then there was the Steelers fan who worked behind the counter of the remote gas station/weapons store. What a weird desert joint. I expected Kevin Bacon to walk in. When I showed him my Pennsylvania license, he declared, "Just you stop back in three years," he said. "See that black Trans Am parked out front? I'll have two gold stripes on the roof and a huge Steelers emblem on the hood. Once they start using the West Coast offense and rebuild a little." A little oasis of hope, that place is.

More traffic in Phoenix meant more clutch lever holding. My hands though had changed. And so had my knees. There was no more pain. Only a sense of being above it all. Lines from Carlos Casteneda books came to mind: “Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.” Arizona’s landscape lends itself to such metaphysical thoughts. Honestly, my intent was just to get focused and ride the bike. The transcendental feeling just came about. Maybe it was the endorphins.

When I would pull in the driveway at 7:30 that night, Dwight would open the garage door and stand laughing in the entranceway as I climbed off the bike in slow-motion. "Well," he’d say. "You had quite a day, didn't you?" No waterworks, but a kind of reception nonetheless. The first words out of my mouth would be “thank you.”

For now, however, I was racing the sun as it set behind me, trying to make it back by dark, like in that vampire movie, Lost Boys. Except I wasn’t lost. I had found my 3rd, and 4th, and 5th winds... and something more important I do not have a name for.

I had consumed some 200 ounces of liquid in the desert heat and had a suntan through the mesh of my suit. Inside my helmet, the evening was smelling like cooling dirt and the sky shone as a silvery, deepening purple. The bike thumped its taut lifeline through me like a drug of some sort, and I wanted to live like that forever. As the miles raced beneath the tires, I noticed the shadow of my shoulders crouched on the road in front of me. I watched and smiled at that part of myself as slowly the shadow grew taller.

(end. Thanks for reading, everyone.)

[admin]

Thanks to those who posted some great stories. Look for the official poll thread soon where you can vote for your favorite Monster-ous Story!