Peenie Wallie

He calmed down a little then.

So, eventually, we boarded and I slept like a log the whole flight. Landed, and found my bike right where I left it - short term hourly covered parking at SFO. I'm checking it out. Looks bad from the Alaska trip. Dirty as hell. Chain very loose. Needs an oil change.

I put my hands on the bike. This thing is a drug. It should be illegal. I mean, I have one in Colorado also - and one in Wisconsin - but this one I like because it took me to Alaska and back. So, I have an attachment to this thing. I dunno why. But it is there.

I call Carol and she tells me to meet her and Sean for lunch in South City and I'm like..."Uh..ok" Because she assumes that I remember where I used to work 7 years ago. But I stumble onto it because I sort of vaguely remember about where it is and we have lunch and they're trying to give me advice on what to see in Yosemite. But I'm diving into my asian lunch in the company cafeteria.

Somehow, I escape and run back to the flat on Russian Hill for the last time.

Have to do some errands. Fix my camo pants, as they're missing a button. So Mimi sews my pants for me. Then I change the oil. Tighten the chain. Wash the bike at the car wash. It looked like hell when it got back from Alaska. So, a little better now. Clean my visor. Gas up. Batteries for the hand-held GPS.

Bought a map of parts of California and Nevada at the Honda shop, but later discovered the map has no scale, for some reason.

By the time I finally get onto the Bay Bridge heading east, it's nearly 4:00 p.m. So, I end up in some rush hour traffic, and start driving down the shoulder and lane splitting. Anything to escape and get started on my next adventure. I'm following another bike on the lane-splitting, and you tell yourself that this makes it safer. Dunno if it does, but I follow him and eventually we get past a wreck in the East Bay and finally we can drive and he opens it up ...some type of BMW and I'm like...uh...no...Don't go there....Don't think that you're going ot pull away from me. Because that's not going to happen. Not if we're running double digits, anyway. Maybe he could pull me over 110, but below 110, I'm hanging in there like a hair in a biscuit.

So, I just pick a town and type it into the GPS...it's somewhere near Yosemite. And the GPS is leading me down the road. I'm on the 580 heading east for a long time. At some point, we start crossing the central valley on Highway 120 East.

The Central Valley is pretty wild. It used to be a desert, but they irrigated it and turned it into the world's orchard basically. Signs everywhere. Fresh cherries, blueberries, plums, watermelons, pears, oranges. You name it.

So I stop and buy some fruit.

The central valley is actually very dry. Like a desert really. And hot. I'm sweating and driving across this unreal flat surface full of irrigated orchards.

I stop and gas up and drink about a gallon of Gatorade.

Resume the drive east. Always east. Eventually, I stumble onto the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. So, now we're climbing some. Twisting roads. Fairly arid, but now a few trees here and there. Reminds me of the Western face of the Andes, somewhat.

Like..these long winding roads to nowhere and you can point across the valley and say...if we drive for two days, we'll be right there. Sort of like that.

So now, winding up and down these hills on these asphalt ribbons woven through the hills and passing cars and minivans because the bike was designed for this and say what you will about the Honda XR650L, but it owns this place. Just rapes it.

I can pass a minivan in about 11 yards. The bike was born for this.

Now, I stumble across this Star Wars sized crane in the middle of nowhere and, for some reason, I start driving down the railroad tracks to get a better shot. And now I can't turn around. So, I drive down the railroad bed for some distance and finally, I get a shot and I get back onto the road without wrecking, which is a miracle. But I nearly drop the bike and I do drop the tank bag again, with the laptop in it of course. Now my GPS is hanging on by the cord again.

For some reason, the GPS really never sat right in the mount on this trip. I don't know why. On the AK trip, it was stellar. But, now, now matter how much I fvck with it, it keeps falling and dropping and finally, it falls onto the road and somehow, I manage to run over it with the back tire. When I go back, it's shattered. I pick it up and put it in my pocket and she's telling me...the woman in the gps..."Turn around now". So, I can't see it, but maybe it still sort of works? I dunno. It's shattered. I do know that much.

Now getting dark and I have no GPS and the map has no scale on it, I discover. So, I decide to continue on to Groveland, but this is a crap shoot. I mean, I have no reservations. I just sort of hope that a) there's a motel here and b) they have rooms and c) I can afford them.

If not, Plan B is not pretty. Plan B is to backtriack to 49 and head south about 45 miles of twisting canyon in the dark and find a Motel 8 there. That's where my Circle 7 riding gear is being Fed-Exed. But driving in the dark sucks. A) It's dangerous. B) you can't see anything so you're not really sight-seeing any more.

I pass a dead fawn on the side of the road. Obviously hit by a car. So, it sort of underscores how dangerous it is to be riding, even now at dusk.

I hit something with my chest. Something large. My best guess is that it was a bat.

I'm praying that this canyon will deal me an Ace pretty soon here. No GPS. No scale on my map. No reservations, of course. Per usual, I'm sort of winging it.

It's so odd to me...how life is. How things work. How things really are. I mean...I flew over Yosemite so many times this year I lost count. Like, seriously, I flew to San Francisco about 30 times this year. No joke. And man, we go from Sierra Nevadas to Central Valley to Sierra Madres and the Bay in the blink of an eye. In a few minutes. But now, that I'm down here, rolling around on a dirt bike, the scale is so different. It's odd. I have problems with this. I see the powerline cut through the trees heading Southwest and I saw this from the plane. I know exactly where I am. I recognize the lake and the powerline right-of-way that they cleared through the hills.

In the plane, it all seemed so benevolent and distant. Green and smooth. Now, it feels jagged and dangerous. Death and pain and arid mountain roads.

Finally, about dark thirty, I roll into the little town of Groveland and there are some motels with Vacancy signs and I'm like...YES! Oh HELL YESS!!!! I'm gonna, live, baby!!!!

And I pass a little bar and grill called the Iron Horse Bar and grill and it's the oldest bar in California, I'm told. And I was told to stop in here. So I do. I rent a little cabin and plant myself into the Iron Horse to review my photos over Fish and Chips and Grizzly Bear Beer and life is good. I can barely see I'm so tired, but I'm on the road and I'm alive again and this is where life starts. For me, this is all that there is.

The guys at the bar are talking about Glacier (National Park) and I'm like...seriously??? Like..this isn't helping. I came here to feed the demons. For healing. Everyone said I needed to see Yosemite, so I'm here. But everyone here is talking about Glacier and at Glacier, you have to know they're talking about Jasper and at Jasper, it's a safe bet they're talking about Denali and there's just no end, I'm afraid.

And when they're not talking about Glacier they're talking about Burning Man. Yes. Burning Man. There is that. But we'll not talk about that yet. Not yet.