(An ldbedtime story)

dennis kesseler ©2001
a work in progress sshhhhh

I am standing on a grassy, steep knoll. A spectacular blue sky is behind me with a few clouds. The hill is alive. I mean feels Alive. Next to me suspended on air, is a fancy black cane with gold handles on either end, a top hat is in air above it. I glance over at the cane, the hat tips as it speaks to me.
“We are not alike” and all hell breaks loose.
I start running down the hill as fast as I can go. The ground seems to move beneath my feet, it feels like I can never run to the bottom. The cane is flipping end-over-end chasing me down the hill, I run faster, faster, I have no idea where I’m running to closer, closer, closer......

It’s mid-afternoon, traffic is heavy which I hear shattering window screens and feel the heat of the day. The traffic comes in caravans quiet, noisy, quiet. This is Maine, this is my farm and air-conditioning means windows are open. One eye staring down a kamikaze fly buzzing me, I roll off the couch before it falls out of the sky into my gaping jaws. There is a plan as always, I will not leave until evening, Labor Day weekend. Time enough for fools to settle in before hitting the road solo. Tourists, cell phones, SUV’s.....the tensions of daytime riding dissipated by an approaching veil.

This ’98 Tiger and I have had some wild rides together we have been the best of friends and the worst of enemies, we are still at it together so it must be love, machine love. And trust, why else would put up British iron? When it’s great it’s great and when it’s not, it sucks.

At the all night Mobil, the Tiger is fueled up, zero the gps and I grab a chocolate milk to go, of course. It’s a warm evening around 7 p.m. pulling out of the pumps, the Maine skies are clear as I head down 302 for the New Hampshire border and the White Mountains. Some twenty miles down the road is Naples, home of the Songo River Queen a paddle wheel boat for tourists which converges at several lakes. Live the dream, take the tour. Along the causeway among the bumper to bumper cars are parked several Harleys, Gold Wings and sportbikes. Most of the owners are sitting on the porch of a local restaurant/bar watching things go by. They are in T-shirts and shorts or jeans, some turn their heads drawn by the auxiliary lights on the Tiger. I am in full combat mode, ‘stitch’, helmet down, fuel cell..... but feeling ever so stealth in second gear. They look, I look back, “We are not alike” floats through my visor and I wryly grin my way into 3rd gear.

Working my way through N. Conway tourists are tucking themselves in and traffic is surprisingly modest. As I reach the opposite side of town dark clouds cover the New Hampshire mountains, temperatures drop off ten degrees and lightning is flashing over the Presidential Range. I stop and change to rain gloves and put on my electric vest and chaps. If I’m going to ride all night through Canada to northern Michigan, well I just hate to stop all that often, so this will be it.

As I’m zipping back into the stich, the rest area attendant wanders by for the 4th time. “Where are you going, it’s supposed to rain hard?” “Petoskey......Michigan” I say. “For lunch.” He turns and walks off. He thinks I’m kidding - or crazy. But I’d really rather be there for breakfast. I’m kidding about lunch. pppfffftttt.

NOW AIN’T THAT .......OOOOODD

Working my way up 302 and around Mt. Washington there is a climb commencing the other side of Bartlett, NH culminating at the top of Crawford Notch. Just before the road splits into double lanes the Tiger breaks free and we simply fly to the notch accented by a flash in the dark as we reach the top. I feel better now and fork up the highway through Twin Peaks. Here things take a different turn. Heavy road construction with pavement long gone the road is dirt, graveled, potholed and generally beat to hell. Oh, and one lane. Waiting for oncoming to pass by I light a short Punch cigar. It’s warmer on this plateau and this could take a while. I smoke the shorter cheaper Punch’s or Hoyo de Montereys on the bike. Riding the Tiger, the wind has a tendency to smoke them for me. So too expensive is a wasted cigar and too long is a broken cigar or at the very least the wrapper peels off. This makes me feel very bad when it happens. I will feel bad shortly.

I bang up through the gravel four or five miles and quickly it’s over as I approach Bethlehem. Now Bethlehem has this spectacularly beautiful very old golf course and club house as you drop into town. It is classic New England. Bethlehem ironically is also a retreat for Hassidic Jews who come here for summer studies or - something. So contrast New England charm, Mercedes and Volvos and you name it and then guys walking around town with brimmed hats and beards and pigtails and everybody is wearing a white shirt and black pants and you gotta go......... hmmmmmmm. The dichotomy of life in a mile. Because you see by then all of Bethlehem is over. All one mile of it. I drop down a long hill to I-93, the Tiger lit up and absorbed the night.

Again, flashes in the dark but no rain. Dropping down into the valleys it gets colder so I wick it up to regain lost time, roads are damp. Montreal is several hours away as I weave from New Hampshire into Vermont, traffic remains light bordering on zero the further north I travel. By St. Johnsbury I’m alone except for a couple haulers. His lazer goes off in the V1 as the US cop flashes his lights when I pop over the hill and we wave to each other, traffic is heavy again and it’s just a hassle. I crawl through the border crossing. Briefly shooting the breeze with the border patrol on the other side, they tell me heavy rain and wind has been dropping down here and there knocking out electricity and creating washouts on some side roads. I’ve been through fog, lightning and damp pavement so far. No one says squat about the LED’s on the bike. Taking CN55 to CN10 I make up my near hour in delays to Montreal and am only off a few minutes from my sweetspot TSD (time, speed, distance) by the midnight arrival in Montreal. On the CB truckers warn that cops are nailing everyone for as little as 1 or 2 km’s over the speed limit. Seems a just-settled-today strike had ended and they were on a ticket freaking tear. And so they were, on nearly every overpass sat a car with chasers ready on the ramps, the V1 was going ballistic.


AIN’T NOBODY HOME AT THIS HOUSE
...........................................then who are you?
Fueling up at a truck stop I pop in the restaurant and notice home made coconut cream pie. Now that by god cannot be passed up even if it is somewhere between midnight and sunrise. I succumb, I’m glad besides - never mind. South of Ottawa, Ontario the winds pick up and raindrops start, then pour, then pound on my helmet. Hell I’m being assaulted, but I move on like the buffalo. The quickest way through a storm is to just head on into it. Momentarily I change my name to Dancing with Traffic. By Kanata the storm is gone as well as the city lights and so friends, was I. Little traffic to dance with now and Canada is sound asleep, the Tiger is covering serious ground, it’s my favorite time to ride. But we’ll get to that.

Continuing through Deep River the local presence follow me out of town. I expect this since nine out of ten times I’ve ridden through here they tend to follow bikes down the strip. They turn off after a mile or two so I make up the ‘difference’ on the way to North Bay. It’s reasonably cool in the home base of the Blackfly 1600, Canada’s by-annual ldrally. So the Tiger gets topped off one last time for the sprint to Michigan when I notice cigars in a jar in the all-nighter counter, since there is no pay-at -the-pump, I’m inside. I go to lift one out and it nearly crumbles in the jar, ooops. So forget that...... on down the road with some light rain. From North Bay to Sudbury there’s just not much happening, not much at all, few cars, no critters, so I chase the light in front of me.

Skirting around the moonscape of Sudbury tracking westerly towards the Sault, the grays of dawn are sneaking over my shoulder. My travel time is superb as I land in Bruce Mines which is not all that far from Sault Ste Marie. There is a good home cooking-style restaurant in Bruce Mines and looking at my time I would be too late for breakfast and too early for lunch at my present pace. The Tiger gears down, we stop for a light breakfast and coffee, grrrrrr the sun is having no effect on warmth. I have six bucks Canadian in cash on me and they only accept cash. The plan and the menu are straight forward enough.

I notice a guy and girl go by on an F650 the only motorcycle I’ve seen since Montreal, they turn circling back towards the restaurant into the parking lot and loop the bike a couple times. They dismount walking around the Tiger pointing some more. He heads inside spots my helmet and sits down in my booth across from me. “You are a miracle!” he starts. I am? And laugh. “What?” I ask. “We are leaving in exactly two weeks to ride from British Columbia all the way to the tip of South America on that motorcycle” and he points to the 650. “My brother and his girlfriend have the exact same bike and we are going together.” he says in a broken English. “I want extra fuel and all I can find is Acerbis for my bike. Where did you get that?” So I explain the whole fuel setup a couple times and he asks me some questions about how much air he should have in his tires. Air? And then they are off. I look around and people have been listening in on this whole deal. I’m amused but finish my coffee, pay and head for the Tiger.

THE BRIDGE
My trip into the Sault and over the International Bridge to the USA are typical. I’m cut off a couple times riding through the city, the usual. On my ride across the long bridge over the Soo Locks to the US side I note below guys fishing in what must be some freezing rapids. The sun by this time is threatening to shine, but only threatening, it feels cool. The 64 miles to the Mackinaw Bridge go quickly. I-75 is beat to hell with gravel covering every new tar snake the DPW recently laid down. This highway in my humble opinion, has had it. I make my way down the hill towards the toll booth for Big Mac. The ‘Bridge’ is calm today as I leave the toll booth, it’s breezy in the Straights but not white knuckle riding, so I enjoy the crossing, the view of Mackinaw Island - grates and all. I am shy of a thousand miles since I left Maine and less than forty miles from ground zero.

Petoskey is the summer-home-junkie-capital of the midwest at the tip of the northern half of the lower peninsula of Michigan. Got all that? From a small town in the winter to tens of thousands of passing souls during the summer, there’s several mini-cities of summer-only homes in this area. I wind my way through Bay View along Little Traverse Bay up through the gaslight district of summer shops. Steadily climbing the long steep hills this town is noted for to my destination.

Turning on to the street, it is always a relief to note the silence-complete. It is the quietest of streets, so very rare. I park the Tiger on the sidewalk and head towards the door. This is the house where all is well. Where I unwittingly acquired the stuff to stay awake nights on end, to sleep at the drop of a hat anywhere, even standing up. To put the moment, any moment into some kind of perspective. Enjoy the night. Asleep. Awake. I received this asocial eccentricity through one person who displays only in passing, a distinction between night or day and morning or dusk, when to sleep, to eat, to take a nap or run a vacuum cleaner. “Oh, hello” as she looks up to see that it’s whom she had expected. Meet the matriarch of time, my mother.


---end part 1

Part II

The M of T

Please note there is no pretension, I am inexorably bound to the night. I function more or less flawlessly while the day is at rest. And when that crystal silence that is the essence of night is right, I just ride.

My mother actually enjoys the smell of a good cigar. By brother who lives in the area generally will stop in just so he can smoke a cigar before heading home to SHMBO where such eccentricities are taboo. So I draw a bath in our old claw tub upstairs, lit up my Punch and soaked for an hour. And after some sleep felt pretty decent and we decide to walk downtown to shop. Or what my mother calls bargain hunting. Not that she needs anything, she doesn’t, it’s just that a deal is a deal and with the summer shops unloading their leftovers (that’s a sale) well...the hunt is on simply because it’s just possible.

This really meant we were sweatshirt shopping. Every time I come home I buy a sweatshirt. Why? I have no idea why, I just do. There are two criteria, it has to say ‘Petoskey’ on it and it has to be heavy material. Cheap flimsy material sweatshirts simply suck plus the overseer of deals would object. On Lake Street we hit the mother load. All criteria are met plus it has bears logoed on it. I like bears and it’s marked down, score and score. Time for a cigar run on Mitchell Street, wine run and on afterthought we really ought to eat something, so we do. Satifsfied and with our bags in tow we trek our way back up the hill homeward.

To enjoy the evening silence on the quietest of streets, we have some wine, doze in our chairs and as if on cue then head back downtown to the bay to watch the sunset. Then back up the hill for a topper, I an evening cigar and to watch the news. The matriarch sleeps while I stare at the idiot box. By now of course it’s well after one in the morning. I head upstairs to bed since I need to play catch up, meanwhile my mother washes some dishes and does my laundry. That’s all of one t-shirt and a pair of socks. By 3 a.m. or so I note the lights are out below and all is quiet. I am out cold for a few hours.

It is the break of day and through my re-entry haze I hear pacing downstairs, someone is waiting, slicing thin air. I roll over and confront the bedroom ceiling. “Coffee?” I hear the voice echo up the stairwell the exact instant my eye opens. I don’t completely appreciate this skill of hers this instant, but I know I’m having coffee at the crack of dawn because I just am. By now the other eye checks in so I dress and within minutes make the trek to the kitchen, what the hell. Coffee.

We spend the day going everywhere always walking, once we stop back at the house and take a nap middle of the day and like snapping fingers we are on the run again. Amazing how quickly I fall into this alarmingly familiar routine. I am either awake with a capitol A or asleep with a capitol S. There is no predetermined plan to all this awake/sleep management, it just sort of happens and always makes perfect sense at the time. This routine goes on for a week and never changes, amazingly so. It’s all about time. And Mindset. I taught myself to never get on a motorcycle without it.
My mother is 86.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

Late one afternoon I made the time to ride a perennial favorite. So I‘stiched’ up fired the Tiger and headed toward Harbor Springs a town that sits opposite Petoskey in Little Traverse Bay on Lake Michigan. Aiming the bike ‘out of town’ from the quietest of streets following busy Mitchell Road and eventually down a long steep hill past the local golf course to M 32 and northward. M119 cuts off of M32 and snakes around the bay to Harbor Springs past some of the more magnificent examples of turn of the century summer homes on the planet. You’d have to be a grump not to enjoy this ride. You can see yourself in horse and buggy just fumbling along this lane. Once through Harbor Springs and the in-harbor docks pregnant with sail boats and yachts reaching a display on the verge of gaudy, we get to the real kicker. The road to Cross Village! Now if you ever want to kill yourself in any kind of vehicle this road is a damn fine example of how to do it right. Presenting more turns and twists and devils elbows than you ever thought possible and to top it off to your left are spectacular views of a very blue Lake Michigan through the trees. Don’t let those 400 ft. cliffs sans guardrails bother you at all, pay no attention. You won’t have time anyway, even 15 mph at times seems wildly over the sanity gauge. Like I said, it’s a great road!

Approaching my first devils elbow which I can describe best by.... have you ever watched a dog bite it’s own tail? That’s a devils elbow. For many years M119 to Cross Village was considered a road to nowhere. A winding but paved road that clearly followed a wagon path around the old growth trees that used to line much of the shore. Eventually like all good things it has been ‘discovered’ and is now much busier than it ought to be. So diving into my first ‘elbow’ which in a previous life was out in the middle of nowhere, you can imagine my disappointment when I discovered some jackass built a horse farm with a driveway right at the turn. Geezuz, progress. Now the turn will still scare the hell out of you it’s just that now you’ve got company, horses. So whipping through that sucker way too fa..... umm..... just right and technically proficient I might add..... Well anyway, continuing onward and heading up the hill liftng the front end a bit and down the forest-like lane I run into my second disappointment. The Worlds Biggest Slowest Motorhome driven by The Oldest Man in the World. The guy must be pissing his pants trying to maneuver the behemoth I surmise. At the same time I’m having this great conversation in my helmet concerning phrases that contain the word God in them and someone named F........g A.......hole. But I get around this pile of mobile technology and immediately dive into another......elbow! Now that turns out ot be exhilarating, yes indeed. I weave in and out of this and other similar nonsense past Good Hart where 119 sadly smoothes out. Shucks.

So I reverse the Tiger and my route and try it heading south in the hopes everyone is still aiming north. This works wonders (and a raucous time was had by all). But I’m rapidly running out of play time so I cut off at Stutsmanville and head east on the uhhhh Stutsmanville Road. Now this county road doesn’t seem all that exciting except for the fact that about midway to C27 which leads back into Harbor Springs there is the longest drop and climb of a hill and as you enter you can see all you are about to do. This is full tilt boogie riding at it’s most memorable, critters or no. I make it back to Harbor Springs cutting my time in half as the sunset fades. That’s fun. Time for dinner so I retrace my route around the bay.

Prologue to a great road: I cut my biker teeth on a Honda Super 90 learning how to Not kill myself on the 119. At one moment in time as old roads go, it was an absolute terror. I’m glad the road is still mostly in tact, now of course it’s an official Michigan Scenic Drive. But regrettably, the movie of this road I’ve carried around in my head all these years is so much better. Ppppfffft!

---end part II