Yosemite was a place that I'd never visited, and it was far enough away to liberate the white noise of the daily grind from my consciousness. I pointed the front wheel of the motorcycle south and rolled out of the Willamette Valley into the mountains--and out of those mountains into another valley in another state, hundreds of miles away.
The miles in California are never dull on a 900-pound motorcycle with 300 pounds of rider and luggage ski-jumping into the air from the depth and rise of one pothole after another. The traffic system--à la Marquis de Sade--blends nicely with the aggressiveness of Californian drivers. My newly acquired GPS unit was a welcome beacon shining up from the dash; the road signage was so poorly placed and obscure, it might as well have been in Braille.
A note about GPS units: They work wonderfully until they do not. Nothing spells "annoying" like being in the middle of the Sacramento highway spaghetti at night. In the midst of this, the GPS reported that the desired exit was .5 miles away, and then, of course, the screen was taken over by an error message. Rebooting something on the dashboard in rush hour traffic while dodging road craters incites immense appreciation of Corvallis traffic and roads. Note to self: when using the GPS unit to plot a course, do not shut it off mid-trip thinking you can take it from there. These units are programmed to plot counter-intuitively. Any user foolish enough to try flying solo may end up flying lost.
Despite all this, I made my way into Sacramento.
When I travel into Sacramento, I feel like I'm wearing clown shoes while stomping through the minefield of family relations. My sister-in-law Mimi has spent the last few years dispensing with any form of co-dependence, which means I can use her house as a hub without having her tell me who else I should be visiting nearby. This trip was about The Miles, not about visiting.
From Mimi's place it is 173 miles to Yosemite National Park. There are those who can describe the Yosemite spirit and soul far better than I. All I can do is write about how it made me feel.
I felt El Capitan before I saw it. This monolith of granite juts out of the ground with no clue telling you it should be there. Imagine paddling a raft in the fog and then having the iron hull of a freighter appear just before you hit it. I looked over my shoulder to see a curtain of rock that wasn't there a minute ago, and then damn near ran off the road when I craned my neck to see how high it went. When the bike was parked and I could really look at this thing, I uttered an inarticulate exclamation. The view was so unsettlingly astounding, it was all I had at the moment.
The Tioga Pass runs 60 miles from the center of Yosemite National Park east to Mono Lake, at around 10,000 feet altitude. The entrance to the Tioga Pass opens just before the sign promising no gas for the next 50 miles. Oddly, this was right next to a gas station unabashedly selling gas for $4.00 a gallon. After that taste of capitalism, I launched into the adventure. I began the trip over the Pass late in the afternoon. Soon enough, I discovered that the fires that had raged through Yosemite this year inundated this road in smoke. This road is so twisty it makes a seismograph needle during an 8.2 magnitude quake look like a flat line. When the sun went down, the forest revealed pockets of glowing oranges and reds between the pickets of trees. It looked like the descent into hell. It was tough enough looking for wildlife crossing in the dark without the smoke; navigating my way through this made me repent every sin.
As twilight faded and the turns got tighter, I realized there are only three things that really frighten me: my wife, payroll taxes, and this damn road at night. But, there was something that made it impossible to go back. It's like a runner wanting to finish a race, or a matador, or a boxer; this thing was not going to be over until I came out the other end--even if I was pushing the bike, with a bear in hot pursuit. It was as if each turn took me closer to my demons. I couldn't see them, but like El Capitan, they lurked. As the tricks that kept panic at bay fell away behind me like the bike's exhaust note, I fought hallucinations of leaping deer and unextinguished flames. The panic couldn't win.
And it did not. Welcome to Mono Lake.
Describing Mono Lake, once again, should be left to those with a better mastery of words than I got. This is the oldest lake in North America, and coming out of it is the youngest mountain in the world. Again, the mountains surrounding all this make our Oregon topography look pretty weak. This was all at an ear-popping 7,000 feet above sea level. (A mother of twins once told me that nursing helps keep the baby's ears from popping at altitude. Since I was on the motorcycle, I stuck with chewing gum.)
Friends camping out by the lake had invited me to come hang out. With all this topography, it was little wonder my cell phone didn't work too well. I clung to this belief until I realized my room was literally 50 feet from the cell tower. (T-Mobile strikes again!) Between text messages and smoke signals I figured out where their campsite was.
Then the altitude sickness set in. Now, I'm pretty lucky that I get it only about one out of ten times that I'm up over 7,000 feet. I know what it is, and the worst part usually lasts only an hour. I spent the rest of the day hydrating and keeping it low key, and then I was done with it. After the festivities were over, I loaded the bike and wrote the directions to my friends' campsite on my hand. Listen, those who do not do motorcycle touring may not understand how terrifying it is taking a heavy road bike down a gravel/sand road. Now add to that a touch of nausea accented by a questionable sense of balance. Boy howdy. After a couple miles of prayer, I found their spot. And yes, it was as advertised; those Cheltons know how to camp. They have done their time sleeping under tarps in the snow and have earned the right to use a camper. Thus they had the facilities to feed me well, give me coffee as good as any at sea level, and offer me a place to sleep for a couple of days. I explained that this trip was about The Miles and the road was calling. A different trip would be about camping. And so I took off.
It was time to go back over the road that had tried to drag me down the night before.
This time the Tioga Pass reached out and grabbed me by the chest. Every turnout and vista point was another peek into the soul of beauty. Being delighted by day by that which had terrified me at night made it all the more precious.
At one particularly well-populated vista point, I mingled with others to gaze at the back of Half Dome. As I was returning to my laden bike, I heard someone call out my name. Incredible. When can I ever get away? A couple of Darkside regulars were touring the park as well. I was a little embarrassed about getting right up next to them; I hadn't been standing too close to my razor and was still sweating out some of the altitude sickness. After the pictures were taken and goodbyes were bid, I realized how really appropriate this meeting was. One of my favorite Avalon artifacts is a photo that a group of cinema fans took after climbing to the top of Half Dome. The word "Avalon" is spelled out in rocks, at the feet of the sprawled and grinning group. One of these days, I'll have to hang that photo at the Darkside.
I made my way down into the park. As the day wore on, I started looking for the road to Glacier Point, perhaps a little more frantically than I should have been. It struck me that this was not the spirit with which I'd started this trip, so I pulled the bike over in the first parking area. This was not altogether unpleasant. I walked into a meadow, balled up my jacket behind my head, and stretched out. And there I spent the next two hours, watching the sun set across the craggy contour of Half Dome. The shadows did an eerie slow-motion shimmer across the rock face, changing shapes and textures by the minute. There was nothing else or any place else I wanted to be at that moment. This is what I had come for.
When I embraced photography as a kid, I fell in love with the work of Ansel Adams--who didn't? I had a view camera and studied the Zone System. I moaned when Tri-x was replaced with T-Max, and knew anything less than medium format was an insult to the art. So when I took a picture of Half Dome with my digital Flip Camera, I felt like I was spray painting across the Mona Lisa. Sorry, Ansel: I too have replaced quality with convenience.
As I was heading for the road back to Mimi's house, it struck me that I would be heading west into the glaring sunset. Self-preservation was the excuse I needed to not rush back into Sacramento. As I puttered along, I noticed people along the side of the road looking up. I parked and joined the fray. On the side of El Capitan hung two mountain climbers. They were so far up there it took a minute to see them. The scale of such small humans against such a big piece of rock was uncomfortable and sent me down the road of clichés: are we really that insignificant? I waited until the last shaft of sunlight skittered away from the mountain climbers, leaving these brave souls of questionable sanity in the dark to hang for the night, sleeping in the wind. It was a good note upon which to leave the park.
The next morning, leaving Sacramento, the forecast for I-5 was hot. Damned hot. Figuring the coast would be cooler, I headed west. That didn't go quite the way I'd hoped. Off highway 16 toward 101 the temp hit about 105 degrees. I went through two liters of water in an hour; 105-degree heat moving over you at 70 mph is desiccating. At these times I think of the mantra, "Be in the moment." But, what about when the moment sucks? My mind fled to the surf, about 100 miles away.
When I finally dropped over the ocean side of the mountains, the temp dropped like a stone to forty-five degrees with fog. Any touring biker worth the salt of his/her sweat will tell you that no matter how hot it is where you are, bring all the cold weather gear you can pack. In the fog my GPS unit was my best friend, since my sense of direction is so bad, even in broad daylight I can't find my ass with both hands. In the fog my sense of direction was dangerous, but the GPS got me to my room in Eureka, where I peeled off soaked layers of cold weather clothing.
I have a strange and unnatural pull toward The Trees of Mystery where Paul Bunyan stands about 50 feet tall, next to his blue ox, Babe. I felt an obligatory visit was due to that shrine of Americana before I took the Redwood Highway 199 north out of California.
In the redwoods, the ancientness of the trees put life's little worries in perspective. If you have never traveled The Avenue of the Giants, put it on your list of Things to Do Before You Die.
After the ride the day before, the 100 degree weather on I-5 out of Medford was downright chilly. I lumbered on. Fifty miles before the Corvallis exit I stopped at a rest stop to get rid of all that water that wasn't being turned into sweat. When I came out, someone was praying over my bike. Literally, with his hand touching the handlebar. Not something you see every day. Not only do most people know to never touch someone's motorcycle, it would seem that unsanctioned praying over someone's bike must violate some rule of biker etiquette. When I approached he looked up and said it seemed to him like I had a bike that was well traveled. (The bug guts gave it away.) He then asked if it was okay if he blessed my bike. I told him I'd take all the positive energy I can get--however, I could have used it about 1,950 miles ago. He smiled and said it works retroactively, a concept that kept my mind busy for the last fifty miles before rumbling into my neighborhood.
In "Travels with Charley," John Steinbeck had this to say about the truck in which he and his dog Charley toured the United States: "I believe that American-made automobiles are made to wear out so that they must be replaced. This is not so with the trucks. A trucker requires many more thousands of miles of good service than a passenger-car owner. He is not dazzled with trimming or fins or doodads and he is not required by his status to buy a new model every year or so to maintain social face. Everything about my truck was made to last. Its frame was heavy, the metal rigid, the engine big and sturdy. Of course I treated it well in matters of oil changes and greasing and did not drive it to its limit or force it to do acrobatics required of sports cars."
I think of myself as riding a motorcycle with the same parameters. It is the most standard of models, built strong and bulky with aesthetics born of function, not décor. It has run dependably, long after most people would have traded her in on a newer model. I have not always treated her well. On this trip alone, I almost burned up all the brake pads on the hills, and in an effort to save what was left of them, stretched the primary chain using the engine compression when the brakes started grinding. Still, she has never let me down.
Lainie expects me to take these journeys without her. She prefers shorter rides. I go with her blessing and return to her relief and affection. My usual riding partner, Monty, couldn't come with me this year; our schedules didn't mesh. With a silent nod, he and I would have agreed how special it is to tour Yosemite on a motorcycle. If my cell had worked there (again, a special shout out to T-Mobile), I would have called him from the meadow to brag about where I was--the same way he called me from the top of the Continental Divide on his ride this summer, when I was stuck at the theater.
With the season changing and bringing with it slick roads and seam-seeping rain, it is the summer miles that comfort my winter-bound traveling heart. In these looming dark months, stories of the road shared take my mind into the kinder weather. Alone or otherwise, people who ride know it is about The Miles, since every single one is like a warm ember in the night of winter.
Two minute video of the trip. Click here.