On The Road Again

My wife is certifiable. We have to be in Miami tomorrow to get her operated wrist a new cast and she has decided we need to take advantage of a work-free weekend to travel. So Friday morning we leave the ground at Fort Lauderdale and regain sea level two hours later in the capital of the Dominican Republic. She got a couple of cheap tickets, dusted off our passports and loaded up with cash and fresh batteries in the camera. Santo Domingo here we come!

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Meanwhile I was in Key West today and parked my Bonneville in a motorcycle lot next to another machine that has long interested me. Its the tiddly ride in the stable produced by Erik Buell, but in many respects I think it is one of the more interesting.

For somewhere south of five grand you get an ultra low maintenance 500cc single cylinder (half a Harley Davidson engine) motorcycle that has a top speed around 80 mph, shakes like jello and gets 70miles per very expensive gallon. It uses a final drive belt, the engine valves need no adjusting and the fuel and oil are carried low in the frame. Its an easy bike to ride with no chrome to polish and a modest size that makes it easy for smaller riders. The streets of our country should be flooded with these bikes. Too bad Buell doesn't offer decent luggage and a nice windshield to create the ultimate inexpensive commuter for a new century. Don't get me wrong, I love my Bonneville, but the Blast could well live up to its name for lots of riders.

Riding With Rilke

The saying" bright enough to read a book by," is sometimes used to describe a full moon and lately its been that way on my street. I'm lucky enough to live where street lights have yet to penetrate so every night is a light show, stars on no moon nights, and crisp white light bathing everything for the other ten nights a month. When we were out cruising I preferred traveling by night, partly because it was cooler, partly because the ocean is a marvelous place at night. On moonless nights I sat in the cockpit of my sailboat and watched a deeper darker sky than a city dweller could imagine possible, and the term "velvet" sprang to mind. But to be on a tropical passage under a brightly shining moon is another brand of magic altogether and even though the silver disk obscures the stars, I really do prefer a full moon. It's an event I notice even when the moon is just starting to rise over the mangroves with the sun still high enough in the sky to be able to...read a book by. I was turned on to the book in question by the Moto Philosopher, a mention of a motorcycle biography by a Canadian university professor who told the story of riding to Texas on his highly unsuitable Ducati. The notion that a 700cc standard motorcycle might be "unsuitable" for a journey of several thousand miles is a modern conceit, propagated in a consumer driven economy where every garage should house a multiplicity of cycles, one for each purpose. A huge cruiser to travel, a dirt bike for fire roads, a scooter to commute and a classic to admire and on and on and on. Ted Bishop turns his back on that theory, falls in love with a Ducati Monster in monstrous matt black and takes off across America. Except this isn't the oily reminiscences of a wrench monkey. Bishop feels like he has climbed his mechanical peak when he has checked his chain final drive tension every evening. And perhaps, that is why the book is delightful. It is about riding a motorcycle, seeing places and enjoying America in all its grotesque glory. That's because travel writers love to zoom in on the weird and the whacked, and Lord knows there's plenty of grist for their mill in these United States.The other reason this book makes a good read is because Bishop is a professor of literature and he's a part-time detective and he's on the hunt for first editions and buyer lists and all sorts of other irrelevant nonsense. Don't get me wrong I love to read but Virginia Woolf and James Joyce are not anywhere near my list of classics I need to re-read, since I last hacked them in school. Thus Ted Bishop's orgasmic research in the ivory halls of Austin's academe don't do much for me, but I appreciate his well written fervor. On the other hand, T.E. Lawrence and Richard Burton (the explorer, not the actor) are writers of a different and much more interesting caliber, so they, and the Ducati keep me going between chiffon waves of Woolf and Joyce and their drawing room dramas. I am having a blast with this story; everybody should.