Going off on a little three-state motorcycle ramble over the holiday.
One of the reasons I consider a 600-mile sortie “little”:
Almost exactly three years ago, my college roommate and lifelong pal Tom Gillespie and I embarked on a motorcycle trip through Ecuador. We were celebrating our 50th birthdays by testing our nerve—pretty thoroughly, as it would turn out.
I ran across my story about it recently, “Fear at Fifty.” It begins:
Tom hit the dog and went down hard.
He was right in front of me, but I actually had time, as I swerved around the wreck on the wet mountain curve and looked for flat enough place to park the motorcycle, to think: And here I thought getting robbed two days ago in Cuenca would be the low point of our trip.
“Adventure travel” seems packaged and safe until you’re in the pouring rain in the Amazon jungle with an injured buddy and a bike that won’t start, a satellite phone that won’t work, and a 20,000-foot Andes mountain looming between you and a warm bed.
The story is also captured in this video my daughter pulled together from video footage we shot.
Happy Memorial Day, friends. And as Tommy and I tell each other, superstitiously now: Keep the shiny side up, and the rubber side down.
