Last ride

On Friday, I leave for my motorcycle club’s annual Hardy Souls campout, held outside the town of Seneca in the Northeast mountains of Oregon. Seneca has the distinction of having the lowest temperature ever recorded in Oregon, minus 54 degrees in February, 1933. This is late October, not February, and by all the old-timers’ accounts, the winters just aren’t what they used to be. Still, in past events we’ve seen morning temperatures in the low teens, and it’s one thing to stiffly crawl out of a tent when the very ground around you is frozen hard; it’s quite another to pull on freezing clothes, get on a motorcycle, and start the long ride back home, never mind the frost on the road.

Still, it’s a grand event and one I wouldn’t miss, not just yet anyway. Last year, I was only a few weeks out of prostrate surgery, so I made the concession of going by car, for which I was richly ridiculed. This year I’ll be on my new-to-me 2006 Suzuki V-Strom, a bike built more for comfort than for speed and itself a concession to age and comfort I wouldn’t have considered even a few years ago.

But temperatures are forecast to fall only into the upper twenties with daytime temperatures approaching sixty, and already I’m making a mental list of the things I’ll take along for comfort. With the increased luggage capacity of the new bike, I’ll include a small French press and a bag of Starbuck’s so I won’t have to go from tent to tent with my begging mug and rely on the kindness of friends I’ve known for over twenty years.

Fresh hot coffee and a new bike aren’t the only concessions I’ll make for comfort. You learn a lot from experience when you travel by motorcycle for twenty-five years. In cold weather, I carry two sleeping bags, and depending on temperature, I’ll nest one inside the other or use one as a comforter. It gets cold enough inside the tent for your breath to freeze on the inside, but as long as I stay covered up, I’m deliciously warm.

For years, all my bikes have had electric grips, which keep hands from going numb and even developing frostbite, if not exactly warm and comfy. Also, I wear an electric vest which plugs into the bike’s electrical system. Again, when it’s below freezing there’s no sensation of actual warmth with these, just suffienct heat to keep your core warm enough to ward off hypothermia. The not-too recent development of toe warmers, little charcoal bags that somehow react to oxygen and toe jam, provide enough heat that toes only get cold and not downright painful.

Imagine sitting on a seat hard as a board, in twenty-degree weather and with a 70 mile-per-hour wind, and you can see that the best that can be hoped for is to be able to keep riding.

So why bother going out when I know the best I can do is to somewhat mitigate my misery? That’s hard to explain to people who don’t ride, but there’s something that-much-more exciting about beating the elements and heading out on a trip long after most riders have winterized their bikes and are home watching NASCAR. And life in camp is good. Our hosts Ed and Ellen Barton bring their truck with a hefty load of firewood and the makings of Ellen’s famous freeze-ass chili. Bjorn Klingenberg brings his vintage hand-cranked Victrola and a stack of rare and wonderful 78s featuring original recordings of World War Two-era big bands. And I get to meet and joke around with this eclectic mix of friends I’ve known for over two decades, many of them at least a few years older than me and, like me, determined to scratch out one more ride in the beautiful fall colors of the Oregon high country before the snow settles in and we have to settle for spiced cider around the fire at home.

So I can’t wait for Friday morning. When the sun gets high enough and temperatures rise into the forties and even fifties, there's no better feeling than riding fast through some of the most beautiful scenery in the West.

I think a lot recently about how much longer I’ll be able to do this. I have many friends who still ride in their sixties. Only a few still ride in their seventies, so sometime over the next few years, I’ll likely reach a point where age and good sense tell me that this part of my life is over, that this pleasure belongs to younger men. Anticipatory grief, my friend John calls it. John's a psychologist and knows about these things.

For now and for as many more years as I can still throw a leg over, I plan to keep the real grief at bay.