After almost three years of not being on a motorcycle, early in July, the husband and I rented a motorcycle and took off for a few days. My husband found a great deal on a bike at a local BMW dealership. He knew the guy in charge of the rentals as well. Because it was a slow week for rentals going out, we got a great deal on the rate. We picked the bike up on Friday, July 1 and didn't have to have it back until Wednesday, July 6, a total of 4 1/2 days. We only paid for three days. We've always ridden a BMW, but this time the husband took out a Triumph Tiger.
As I was riding behind my husband while on this road trip, I started thinking about why I love riding on a motorcycle. Some people who have never ridden a motorcycle may think that it's a passive activity sitting in the second seat...that you're just along for the ride. For me, it's just the opposite.
First of all, I have to pay attention to how my husband is handling the bike. If he's leaning into a curve and I'm just sitting there, not leaning with him, it makes the curve more difficult to handle. I have to watch what's up ahead because that may influence how he handles the bike and how I have to react.
Riding a motorcycle is also a sensory experience. Without being surrounded by steel and glass of a car, you smell the environment. I remember riding over Boulder mountain in SE Utah on a fall trip just after a light rain had gone through the area. I loved the smell of the damp, wet, fall leaves that was all around. On a trip in the northwest the aroma of pine trees filled the air. I also get the diesel and gasoline smells, skunks, and cow pastures
As I ride along, I can feel the ambient air temperature change. Going over a mountain pass, the temps can start out in the 80s. As we climb higher, the air temp changes and cools down. There have been times when I've been very chilly going over a mountain pass because I was dressed for the warmer temps at lower elevations. But I've quickly warmed up as we've descended the other side.
Riding a motorcycle is also a very visual experience. On many of our rides, we've been on roads that we've traveled many times in a car. But traveling these same roads on a motorcycle, I've seen things I've haven't seen before. I noticed birds flying over head and cloud formations. Sometimes, it's like I've never been on that road or in that place.
Stopping for gas is usually an opportunity to chat with others at the pump. People will come over to you and ask about the bike, or where you're from and where you're going. There have been old geezers in small towns who have struck up conversations, sometimes with a little envy that it wasn't them who was riding down the road on a BMW. It seems that people always want to chat with the couple on the motorcycle....well, except for guys who ride Harleys. They are a very different breed than people who ride BMWs. We can be pumping gas right next to each other and they will hardly acknowledge us.
Taking a road trip on a motorcycle is more than just going from point A to point B. The ride is the trip. When we start out at the beginning of the day, we don't always know where we'll be that night. Our unspecified itinerary is how we discovered a charming 1950s like motel in Hope, British Columbia, the small, clean family run motel in Twin Bridges, Montana where the owner let me use her washer and dryer to do some wash and a delightful motel just a block from the beach in Cannon Beach, Oregon. We've found wonderful hotels in Santa Fe, New Mexico and on Vancouver Island, B.C. I'll never forget going through the tiny, tiny town of Denio, Nevada. The ride over the Highway to the Sun in Glacier National Park and through the twisties in the Canadian Rockies was spectacular.
We've had to dodge exploding beer cans that came out of a cooler that fell off a pick up that pulled out in front of us. There was the time that a dog in the back of a pick-up barked at us continually until we were finally able to pass. Then the driver of that pick up flipped us off. We had to ride in over 100 miles in a driving rainstorm of biblical proportions and were rewarded at the end of the ride by snagging the last room at our favorite hotel in Moab, Utah. We've been cut off by careless drivers, but waved to by many more.
Sure there have been times when I've been scared. Like when my husband had to lay the bike down when he came around a bend and saw traffic backed up at a stop sign. I jumped off with no problem, but the bike rolled over him. He was out for a minute or two and I wondered how I was going to get an injured, or worse, dead husband, plus a motorcycle back from Washington to Salt Lake City. But we were able to finish our trip with only some sore muscles and a couple of scratches on the bike.
You don't have these kind of experiences traveling in a car. Most likely, you're focused on the destination and when will you get there. If you ride as a passenger, you're probably absorbed in a book, wired up to your Ipod or laptop, or watching a movie on your personal DVD player and are more or less unaware of what's going on outside your car.
And there's nothing better at the end of a day on a motorcycle than a good hotel, hot shower and great meal, knowing that the next day you get to do it all over again on a different road.
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