I'm beginning to get mileage anxiety. I will need to be in Toronto in 10 days due to shipping arrangements. The weather is not at its best. Surely, we are not in California anymore... The more we approach the northern inland states, the colder it's getting... I can't imagine what it will be like in Chicago or Toronto.
Today, I did some of the best riding I've ever done so far. Wrapped in our warmest layers of clothing, we crossed the indian reservation between Grand Canyon and Monument Valley. There are strong winds all around the place. On a bike, you need to arrange your lean angle correctly. At one point, I found myself trying to read the geography ahead to judge the direction and strength of the wind i was about to face. It felt very 'real'.
[gallery type="slideshow" link="file" ids="1266,1265,1264,1263,1262,1261,1260,1259,1258,1257,1256,1255,1254,1253,1252"] Read More
When I arrive at a campspot, I look for a fireplace. Fire is like a piece of old furniture at your home. It's a familiar element that doesn't change, wherever you go. It behaves and looks a certain way. Once you have it going, and the daylight goes away, all you see is the fire and each others faces. Darkness becomes like a wall around it. And you arrive at the same place, same site everywhere, every night.
Camping gives me time after a days ride. Time to absorb everything I had seen thru the day, remembering the day, relocating everything I collected on the road. And fire brings that necessary silence. Most of us can't stand silence. It feels wrong. We break it with words and meanings. But fire utters just enough to keep us listening. It eases us to silence.
After a night like this, one has very little left ...Read More
Emilio Scotto is probably one of the most persistent people traveling around the world. I read his book called "The Longest Ride". At one point he comes across a river that is way too high to cross. He doesn't turn back. He pitches his tent next to the river and goes to sleep hoping that the river would be 'gone' by the morning. He wakes up next morning, and guess what, the river is still there... What kind of a person does this? Can you imagine trying to talk this guy into not doing something? Scotto rode his old Goldwing everywhere you can imagine including deserts and rain forests... I think he is the first traveller to ride into China with a foreign registered bike. They normally do not allow foreign vehicles but Scotto insisted to ride his 'Princess'...
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Everything is moving. But it's not all the same kind of movement. We seem to move in a different way than most of the things around us. When we move, it's mostly for a purpose. We seem to know what we're doing. Reaching for things, looking forward for a destination... We even attribute the same purposefulness to the movements we see in nature. Animals chasing each other, plants following the daily movement of sun, seasonal migrations of large herds linked to the orbital rotation of earth around the sun...
The first known movement based on a developed muscular and nervous system in the history of nature is that of the sea anemones reaching for miniature free floating organisms around them. When the anemones lost their stalks through evolution, they became the jellyfish. By the time jellyfish were roaming the seas, there were no other swimming creatures around. Nothing to chase, or ...Read More
