Brookings Ride
October 3, 2002
Excerpts from a motorcycle trip to Brookings, Oregon, with Hawk GT
mailing listers.
To: [everyone]
Date: 10/03/2002 12:47 AM
So
two weekends ago, I rode up to Oregon with four guys from an email list
for a small, relatively underpowered motorcycle that Honda made for a
few years in the late 80s. I sold my Hawk GT three years ago,
but like
so many others, I'm still on the list. (Actually, it's the only email
list I'm on.) I'd met two of the guys a couple times
before. The guy
organizing the ride, Rick Holtzman, is in his late 40s, lives in Albany
(California), liberal, owns a house in Brookings, Oregon, asked if
anyone was interested in doing a ride up, staying at his house for the
weekend. The other guys who came were Dan Hershberger, a
veterinarian
in his early 40s(?); Alex Cardwell, 32, just took the bar exam; and
Kenzo Baxter, 25ish, finishing up a technical degree at
DeVry. I
wasn't sure I could get off work so I hadn't given a firm RSVP, but I
got up early Friday morning, packed my bag (the bastards made me bring
my work laptop), loaded my bike, and arrived in Albany a little late
but in time to catch them. We spent all day Friday riding up
to
Brookings, on the coast just across the California-Oregon border, took
it easy Saturday, and spent all day Sunday riding down. Had a
great
time. The play by play write-up by Kenzo is here, along with
some
pictures (note: I'm not saying you should take the time to read this,
only including it as a reference if you like):
http://home.comcast.net/~hondahawkgt1/trip-reports2/oregon1/brookings1.htm
so I just focused on a few excerpts, two of which are attached
below. Hope they're worth the read. Ah, my captive
audience, the
things I subject you to. Thanks for bearing with me.
--Yong
- - - - -
Avenue of the Giants
Unreal. No other word for it.
Couldn't possibly be real. The
experience, doing what we were doing, where we were doing it, none of
it, all of it so far outside the boundaries of what we in our daily
lives have come to accept as reality. Hurtling down a dark
forest
road, smooth asphalt with no shoulders but trees, the narrow aisle of a
towering cathedral, dark, cool, sacred. Huge, impossibly tall
redwood
columns on either side soaring higher than we dared crane our
necks at
the speeds we were going, a shadowy canopy far overhead
through which
a few isolated rays of sunlight sparkled through. Giant
sentinels
who've stood watch for thousands of years, watched as the first men
came from across the landbridge, watched as the road was first laid
down, threaded through them, passing within inches of the
immovable
trunks where it could sneak by, kinking around them where it couldn't,
a single small reflector placed at the base of such trunks as a warning
to oncoming vehicles, Continuing In A Straight Line Would Not Be Wise.
The peace momentarily interrupted by the roar of
two passing
motorcycles, then another, then another, then another, then peace
again. As if it had never been interrupted.
Such was our madcap chase through the hallowed
forest of the
ancients, four slow guys led by a startlingly unshackled Rick Holtzman,
his conservative freeway Doctor Jekyll tossed to the wind, shed at the
off ramp where freeway ended and two-lane began, in his stead this
hairy-chested Mister Hyde. Whoa, nelly. Keeping him
in sight was a
challenge we jumped at with joy and excitement and just a little
desperation, because losing sight of the only guy who knew this road
would mean having to slow down big time, return to sanity, come back
down to earth, and we were having way too much fun flying after Peter
Pan, high on pixie dust, moist cool air, the smell of pine,
unbelievable scenery that deserved hours of reverent staring for a
respectable but still futile attempt to take it all in, relegated
instead to stolen glimpses, snatches, a few frozen frames, and
otherwise trying to take it in through vision's periphery as
it
flashed by, as we flew through, focus monopolized by the road
ahead.
Barely pausing to pass the three or four cars going our way.
Felt like
I ought to smoke a cigarette when we were done.
Waving Children In Cars
What is it about children waving from cars that
makes you want to
beat your chest, race speeding trains, leap tall buildings in a single
bound, just to make them smile? The first part of our ride
down from
Brookings was deliciously cool morning air, a wonderfully swoopy road
pretending to be freeway, hugging the ocean, carving through gorgeous
coastal forests, crystal clear skies here, thick fog there.
One of the
cars travelling along with us was a late model ('96-'99) Honda Civic
coupe, black, with two girls in the back who were waving
frantically
the first few times they and our group of bikes exchanged
leads. An
ear to ear grin lit up the inside of my helmet, and for the first time
in my five years of riding, I deeply wished I could pull a
wheelie.
Alas, they had to settle for some side to side bobbing and one
unexpectedly steeply lean-angled left sweeper at passing speed that
surprised me almost as much as it did a startled and dubious Alex
watching from behind.
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