We have killed for beauty. I mean the royal “we”… unless my sweet Bubbles has a terrible secret? But the seriousness of the subject cannot be overstated. We humans really have killed for beauty. It is at the same time, both universally understood and completely indescribable in it’s perfect form. It is Budda’s search for Knowing, Ghandi’s search for Peace, or Pirsig’s quest for Quality. In the simplest terms… Charlize Theron:) More complex is when our desire for beauty overwhelms our reasoning. The hot/crazy matrix, buying lots of impractical motorcycles, or having bags of gelatin sewn in your chest. Ask an architect and beauty is in 'sacred geometry', a mathematician may say the Mandelbrot set, someone religious would say it’s Heaven, while an artist would spent their life writing musical notes in just the right order, or painting many little happy trees. Beauty also has a terrible and inescapable truth. Just like a rainbow, as you get closer to your goal, your goal gets farther away. We know all this and yet….
All for this indescribable, unachievable thing.
Anyone who’s been outside their house can tell you that the worst circumstances make the best stories. As long as you live to tell them. Right now the Bose speakers in my helmet are very accurately reproducing the sound of a woman I love, who is crying. Even worse is, it’s my fault. It doesn’t matter that the Columbia River Gorge was carved through rock thousands of years ago by a glacier and channels air to be world renowned for windsurfing, or that there is no other option than to move forward. The next couple hours will be us, heading due West, being blown around uncontrollably in these nightmarish 40mph gusty winds. It’s bad enough we have the hazards on and are hugging the emergency lane, while trying not to be rear-ended by instagramming Prius drivers, or blown into the dirt by the passing logging trucks. We pull off the freeway to take the tall camping bags off her Kite-a-saki and build a pyramid on the back seat of my heavier Buell that would make an ancient Egyptian proud. Even standing upright is difficult in these conditions, theres no respite, and it’s not letting up.
This means a plan change. We do get a tasty, but somber lunch in The Dalles, a cool little town catering to tourists and wind surfers, but we’re in no mood to see the sights, bypassing Brewery Grade and countless kite surfing shops. No way we are going to cross the bridge into Washington without being fish food no matter how lovely and empty the 2 lane W14 is, and no way we are crossing back over on the epic grated roadway on the Bridge of the Gods back into Oregon. We are in survival mode today. No roads parallel the 84, nowhere to stay, so our choice is to move forward, with no choice number two. We stop on a few turnouts to de-stress and stretch out the D-string tendons in our necks and no shit, The Gorge is amazing. We don’t care.
Pulling up to Mumzys house will always be special, and today a bit more so. Since we lost Kendra, my entire blood family unit is her… and me. She is at once a beautiful, welcoming, razor sharp witted pragmatist, and the softest, most generous person I have ever even heard a story of. Her grand smile at the doorway is all us dirty biker savages needed to see to completely change our mood. And beer(s).
A trip to Mumzys is never complete without a few honey-dews. Happily, I’ll hang pictures, move heavy stuff from A to B, sometimes from B back to A, and re-supply whatever. When a Costco run in necessary it can get interesting with only our motorcycles and her Miata.
Bubbles and I are un-stinking our clothes in the laundry, stocking cupboards, swapping stories, and know this will be an unusually short stay. No matter the hurry, it’s always worth the time to slow down a bit and appreciate the loved ones around us. Mumzy has spent a lifetime sharpening her intuition and refining her skills as both Astrologer and Tarot reader. I used to think hippie-shit! non scientific, even religious blasphemy. But for my life, she has had the gift, of being right. Theres no denying that. She taught me an open mind is better than ignorance, and her guidance has been invaluable. Her latest delve into expanding her skills, is a relationship of each discipline we call the Taa daa! Tarot-a-Scope™:)
The last morning has us sipping perfect strong, dash-of-cinnamon, pinch of salt, pour-over coffee, finishing the last of the marionberry pie slices, sheepishly disrupting the heavy quiet with a cacophony of V-twin exhaust note, and yelling I love you’s from inside our helmets. Today we seek cheese! For once, we are heading south and our new southerly route is easy. No more GPS, we’re going PCH all the way. Turn too far right and you get wet, because Pacific Ocean. Too far left and it hurts because, mountains. Like I said, easy! Except the leaving part:(
I love these girls!The 6 to the coast is open spaces, tall trees, smooth turns, green grass, horses, and a lot of weed dispensaries. Just before the southern turn on the 101 is the newly remodeled Tillamook Creamery! I still remember visiting as a child (hippies do free shit), and in the same orange and cream VW bus from before (I didn’t ask Mumzy about the conception thing), but we are shocked back into reality now that we’re here. Because reality has smacked us right in the face mask.
We’re careful. Not scared… but careful. We don’t want to get sick or worse, be carriers and get someone we love sick. Bubbles has someone who is particularly vulnerable to this terrible thing at home so she is well suited to taking care of germs before they take care of her. Being on a motorcycle is easy to stay distanced, but we are aware that even getting in a accident will take valuable resources from people who need it. The choice is easy to bypass the crowd around free ice cream, see the sights from a distance, and keep on truckin’.
The Oregon coast is one of the great pleasures to ride. You can thank the Cascade Mountain Range, but not why you think. Bubbles and I are used to using the mountains in So Cal for thin curvy roads and weekend rides, but the Cascades are much too high and craggy for that. There are only a few passes that connect this stellar rocky coastline and the main grey artery of I-5 billboards and truck stops. It’s a pain in the ass for people to get here in numbers and that is why you find perfect little towns, lost in time.
There are literally endless distractions and this is exactly why we are here. We have a destination of Coos bay at the border with a welcoming bunk-a-biker family but only halfway down the coast now and in no particular hurry to miss all this.
Beauty is in the journey, not the goal.
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