adventure

Chance

Life is a chance that we must take, otherwise we are only survivors. There are dangers, that’s how life is. And to live life, to live as if there aren’t dangers inherent is foolish. The bubble you build will eventually break.

That being said: don’t back down from danger. Stare it in the eye, push fate and smile as you stare over the edge. Don’t wait for the bubble to break, pop it! Do not let those who have not lived tell you how to do so.

Life like passion demands dangers; it demands taking chances. Life will take from you but so will the lies handed to you by those who live safely. Don’t be careful, but be smart. Take chances but know that failure is always an option. 

Go on adventures but know that they will have hardships and will often end in surprisingly disappointing ways. Life is full of hardships and we all will die. Life is full of surprises but don’t let the end of your life be a surprise. Go towards it with a smile on your face as you look for your next adventure.

Two Wheels and a Tent

The third travel book, Two wheels and a Tent is now out on Amazon and other distributors. It is available in eBook, print and audio form. 

Mark and his Suzuki DL 650 that he calls “Mabel” love adventure. This is a collection of some of the
adventures that they have shared. Like most motorcyclists, a certain relationship develops with the motorcycle; Mabel and Mark trust each other. As they have found out on many occasions adventures are those things that happen to plans and sometimes you need someone you can trust. These are some of those stories.

“Mabel and I have had our fun and our difficulties. Both she and I are getting up there in years but I like to think that both of us have a few more thousand miles in us. I know that when I get back from a long tour and park Mabel it’s not long before I’m thinking of my next adventure, and I think I can hear Mabel thinking about the same thing.”

The Waiting Game

There is no doubt about it, it is a strange mix of happiness and sadness. Seeing the motorcycle sitting silently in the garage, patiently awaiting me to flick the key and push the starter button. It has the patience of a motorized saint. It knows the day will come. It knows somehow. And I know as well. It sat, dirty, after the 6600 mile trip for a few days…for a few. But then I washed it and polished and put it back in its place, beside the wall in the garage to wait for the next time.

The adventure came to an end, a pause in between paradise. I see the handlebars just over the hood of my truck as I slowly make my way into the garage, squeezing the large truck in between the motorcycles and the other car. It is strangely silent when I turn the key off. I’ve found myself walking over and just staring at the bike, sometimes I start it just to hear the engine. One day the maps will come back out, just for fun, and routes will be considered and then I’ll know the time has come again. It might take months or days, or maybe hours.

Touring on a motorcycle is really simple. That is, if you want it to be. A few bags, a tent, a loose plan. Go alone for the most freedom. Riding a motorcycle alone is talking to yourself in your helmet as the hours whiz by with the wind and the road in your ears. There are many good conversations to be had inside a helmet. You are really never alone. Riding alone is stopping when you want and riding into the night.

Touring on a motorcycle, the complexity of life disappears. Simple things at home become more simple. Instant oatmeal and a pour-over mug of coffee is all it takes to jump start the day. Dinner is just as simple, cooked on a one-burner camping stove in a single pot. Two wheels, not four, no glass, just the wind and the rain and the cold and the heat. Go or don’t go. Sleep or don’t sleep. Either way your two-wheeled ticket to freedom will wait. Just as it does in the garage. It knows the waiting game well. Silently, knowing that the time will come when you will have to feel alive again. To feel human once more. To wonder and to laugh out loud inside the illusion of safety as you lean into turns and watch the world go by in a blur.

The Motorcycle

A motorcycle is most at home on back roads, leaning into turns and switchbacks. Not sitting in the garage or chomping miles on a highway. It will do these things but will taunt the rider at every chance. In the garage it will beckon, promising adventure and excitement. On the highway each exit represents a chance to feel alive and test your endurance and moxie.

These things, these motorcycles, are cumbersome when standing still. Like a seal on beach. But give them a road to go through their gears on and they come alive, like a seal in the water. Down gear and give it gas just as the curve comes up and gun it out of the end. Swing your body over to and from to follow the jaunts and snake-like line that the road takes. The motorcycle knows that you are smiling.

Motorcycles are often called death-machines but really they are a chance to live. They take one out of the mundane, out of comfort zones, out of life spent looking at a clock or the world through a windshield. There are roads that speak a language that only motorcyclists can come to understand, and that only motorcycles can decipher. On a motorcycle it is easy to realize that comfort is your enemy.

A motorcycle is a conglomeration of gears and steel and oil and gas. But it is more than a sum of its parts. It becomes a part of one’s body and psyche if enough time is spent on it, if enough patience is given to understanding the machine and its limitations. Experience will open up avenues to adventure and a motorcycle opens adventure up to life.

The Adventure Less Travelled

travel

The word “adventure” conjures up fun and excitement, endless activities and wide-eyed happiness coupled with friendly unknowns.  And while this is true, it is true like most things concerning human life are true: partly.  In coffee shops around the world people sit sipping coffee and munching scones, talking about what they “would do” if given the chance; but they never do it.  Perhaps, the adventure is already alive, but waiting for us to act upon it.

In the fifty or so years that I have been alive I have travelled to some forty countries, lived in four states, travelled throughout the lower forty eight, been a truck driver, a musician, and a college teacher.  I have climbed mountains and trekked the Annapurnas in Nepal, eaten curry in Calcutta, and a Vietnamese sandwich in north and south Vietnam.  I have drank instant coffee in a cave high up on the sides of mountains in places that I can’t name and have believed that cup of coffee to be the best I’d ever had.  I have drank beer in more pubs than I can count in England and eaten Bratwurst in Germany, spaghetti dinners in Italy, drank Belgian beers in Belgium, meatballs in Sweden, and enjoyed the beaches in Denmark as well as wine in France and crabs in Norway.  I am a homesteading farmer and carpenter at present and those activities present me with even more adventures.

This is all to say that the adventures that I have experienced are life: there are good and bad times, boring times, scary times, frustrating and irritating times.  There are times when a cup of coffee at a well known coffee shop, surrounded by suburbanites in a “safe” neighborhood is an adventure and there are times when scaling a peak at 13000 feet is an adventure: I’ve tried both and while the feelings are different, they can both get interesting.

An adventure is carved out of the experiences that we have while living.  The only time we miss out on adventures is when we choose not to do something because we are afraid, or tired, or lazy.  Sometimes an adventure can be had sipping a cup of coffee and sometimes we need to put the cup down and do something.  The adventure starts when we know what to do and when to do it.