October Highway Men

moments ago in my bed...

11:45Am, Monday. I wake up, having called off work just a few hours ago. Finally, i feel like i actually slept. Let's start at the beginning:

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11:00pm Friday: After leaving the bar, i go home, pack a sack, hit Meijer for some last minute cold weather gear and head to Jay-Fry's. We exchange mental high-fives and depart for the Detroit/Canada tunnel. Temperature: 50 degrees F.

11:45pm Friday: Fuck all this noise: Apparently motorcycles are forbid in the tunnel and because Detroit is a big face-punch full of highway closures and construction, no one (including the tunnel guy) knows exactly how to get to the bridge. We head south along the river knowing "it's down there somewhere."

2:30Am Saturday: London, Ontario. We're in a road-side trucker dinner and gas station. We are not, what you would call "comfortable" with the temperature. I'm using the exhaust headers to warm my legs and hands. A side effect is the smell of burning cow (gloves) coming from my bike every time i stop. Jay-Fry is burdened with protective and aerodynamic cowls that keep icy hands away from warm engine parts. He is left with the slightly less dignified option of urinating on his gloved hands.

At the dinner we drink hot chocolate, hot tea, hot coffee and think about warm places. Jay-Fry shares a moment outside with the waitress while they smoke some cigs. I suspect she's ready to warm him up the old fashioned way, but he seems oblivious to this. Plus, we're on a mission.

Note: I have no idea what the temperature is because the locals use an unbreakable cryptology to encode their temperature units. In an attempt to crow-bar the code, i make the general association that 5C = 5 layers of torso coverings.


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4:30Am Saturday: Hamilton, Ontario. We can go no further: the weather has won. We pull off on the first exit outside town that features a hotel. The simple physical reward of NOT travel 90mph against a frozen atmosphere is now more gratifying as any drug, woman or feeling i can imagine. Possessing all that we carry, we park the bikes on the room's porch.

I take a moment to grab a photo after parking the bikes:


5:00Am Saturday: Room temp set to 75 (why is it back to F here?) I crawl into bed. We briefly discuss the fact that we could have just as easily driven south been warmer... This notion is so profound that i refuse to incorporate it as truth and instead use the I-pod to drown the buzz of the engine in my head. I sleep.

11:00Am Saturday: Up by 9, showered, eaten, packed and ready to rock. Unfortunately the W is low on oil (half a quart after 4k miles? not bad...)



2:00Pm Saturday: Niagara, Ontario. The sun it out and we are happy. We drive by the falls, stop, and have a serious conversation about jumping the gap as a sure-fire way to avoid customs and lines. Niagara proves difficult to navigate when you're looking for a) the entrance to a USA-bound bridge or b) a gas station. We give up on b and focus on a, which will later prove problematic. I decide to stick to the now-proven portrait equation of holding the camera myself while Jay-Fry wanders oblivious in the background.









4:00Pm Saturday: Grand Island, NY. Fuck this island. I have traveled 40 miles since switching to the reserve tank and as far as we can tell there are no gas stations in New York. The toll taker gives us errant directions to one location and we extrapolate the location of a second. The first is never found and the second is closed. Things are desperate; we find ANOTHER closed (as in, out of business) gas station. (For some reason forget about having google maps on our phones as this point, probably because it would just point us to another empty building anyway) We rely on "ground intel" (read: local slack-jaws) to point us to a functioning pump, but even they seems little unsure of their directions. Eventually we find food and gas. I take the opportunity to get site-seeing recommendations from my NY people.


6:00Pm, Saturday: Rochester, NY. We have just arrived at the house of a woman neither of us knows. Surprisingly there was no welcoming committee awaiting our arrival in Rochester, probably because i forgot to call a head. We rode around downtown looking for a hotel and signs of life, but downtown proper was dead. And ghetto-y. We resorted to the "friends of friends" technique to ultimately hook up with the sister of Jay-fry's brother's ex-girlfriend. (yeah, awesome, i know) The photographer (as she is one) amazingly agreed to show us around town tonight, for she is hip to the hang outs.



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8:00Pm Saturday: Rochester, NY, "The South Wedge District." After food and beers at the first bar, we're sitting in a coffee shop that also sells the liquor. The shop features works of local artists, one of which i recognize as this guy's work. is that him...? in the corner? I'm having an Irish coffee with a Redbull chaser. The caffeine and alcohol are slugging it out in my system. As it is early, we discuss the possibility of a pre-party nap, as most of the bars won't be in effect for another couple hours. This idea is quickly dismissed as "tasting like quitter."

note: this is where things get fuzzy. We'll file it under the hours between 9pm and 3-ish am. There is no possible way i can logically retell the events in a linear and coherent manner; not because i don't remember any of it, just because science does not allow it. But i can tell you this: It involved Whiskey. (it's an ideas drink, after all) It also involved folk music, 80's punk and Christian Ska. There was a banjo demonstration that led to several hours of banjo jokes. (if you don't know, the banjo features a "G-string" and is also a slang word for girl parts). There was an attempt to recall the name Cat Stevens adopted when he converted religions, more booze, more jokes, a dissertation on why Neil Diamond is the world's greatest singer song writer, making fun of social networking sites, complaints about the opposite sex and at some point everything just reset back to zero. I sleep.

At some point in the night, Rochester claims ownership of this button:



8:00Am Sunday: I wake up on a stranger's couch in a strange city. There are house guests. The world is foggy and i'm cold AGAIN. I relocate somewhere more peaceful.

10:00Am Sunday: I wake again. (There's a cat here. Hello cat.) I remember the mission and try to throw myself into at day but my body resists. I muster a shower but decline the delicious smelling breakfast the photographer has cooked for us and her roommates. (Her hospitality seems to know no bounds) Some friends are at the house and they're discussing possible routes we should take home to maximize the nature exposure. I make my way to the front porch where things always make sense:



From the porch i see this and old OAR songs start to play in my head:



At that sight the fog lifts and mission becomes clear again: we ride. It's decided that we B-line for home. Jay-fry needs to be at work Monday and given the near state of hypothermia we find ourselves when arriving at a destination, it is better perhaps if we stay away from the lakes and seclusion... for this trip.

11:45Am Sunday: Rochester, NY. We re-tell the adventures of the night and say our goodbyes. For reasons i cannot fully understand it feels AMAZING to be back on the bike; the sun is shining and the weather is fair. I've hardly slept and my body is choking on caffeine, b-12 and alcohol but I feel awake, alive and healthy. The first 30 or so minutes on the road are the best of the weekend and i'm feeling on top of the world. We ride fast.



The trip home: Amazing; NY is fast and Canada is slow. We fill up in Niagara and decide to run the tanks dry before we stop, putting us right back on London, ON again, where we see the friendly waitresses. We enjoy the weekend's first healthy meal (soup and salad) while the sun and the temperature both drop faster than we'd like. The last 100 miles are hard. Its cold. Real cold. Plus there's construction and i'm sore. But somehow that all melts away when you see the bridge to America. Waiting in customs, we discuss the magic feeling when you're getting close to home after a long road trip.


The tally: Rochester, MI to Rochester, NY and back: 700+ miles
The time: 47hours from idea conception to arriving home
Song during final credits: OAR "Revolution"
Special thanks: Here's to the photographer; the hero of the story and our new digital-internet friend