I’d planned to depart very early tomorrow morning, but Kitty and I have returned early from an out-of-town family reunion and I rather spontaneously decide to make a run for it this evening. I’m going to meet Ray Smith, my friend and riding buddy of tens of thousands of miles, who’s already in a hotel somewhere in Virginia. All I have is a GPS waypoint. But I’ll find him. We always find each other. He lives in North Carolina, I live in Virginia. We’ve found each other at places all over the North American continent. He found Kitty and me during our Driving Miss Kitty coast-to-coast tour in 2000, waiting for us at a rest stop on I-70 in Illinois simply by guessing where we might be based on my daily blog updates. He found me at an unannounced and unplanned hotel on New Year’s Eve 2002 while I was doing a quick one-night and half-day 1,200-mile run to get 100,000 miles on the odometer of my Wing before the year expired, then with his brother accompanied me 300 miles to within 5 miles of home just to watch my odometer reach 100,000 miles in a parking lot. And then he rode 300 miles home again in the cold December rain that started to fall. I was with him somewhere between home and Texas when the odometer on his bike turned over that same mileage. We’ve found each other by sending GPS waypoints, or by guess, or by preplanned meeting points, or by intuition.
Kitty and I met Ray and Deb in September 1999 when some of our WOTI (Wings on the Internet) group assembled for breakfast at Wings over the Smokies in Asheville, North Carolina. Since then we’ve ridden our two Gold Wings together for more miles than any other person in either of our collective acquaintances.
The intervening time has seen us ride 1,000 miles on a brutally hot early May day, from North Carolina to Bailey Island, Maine, to eat lobster at Cook’s Lobster House. He doesn’t like lobster. He and Deb and I took an early October ride to Skid West’s Choo Choo Barbeque in Louisiana and ran smack into the coldest weather the South had seen for decades at that time of year. We rode for a day with temperatures in the 30’s. We didn’t have electric clothing (it’s the South, right?) and I still remember Deb dressed up in layer after layer of clothing until she looked like a miniature Michelin Man in a mask. Ray and I have put many 1,000-mile days under our Wings’ tires, just for the sheer joy of the ride. That has been our common ground: the love of the Long Road, just cockpit time and camaraderie.
We once rode to the WOTI Alamo Run in San Antonio and on to San Diego. Then, in a successfully-certified Iron Butt run called “50CC” (50 hours Coast-to-Coast), we rode our Wings across the country to the opposite coast at Jacksonville, Florida, in a little over 48 hours. How well I recall streaking at Max Cruise across the golden sands of Arizona talking on CB for hours to a woman trucker named “Brown-Eyes” in a big Covenant semi, finally stopping in New Mexico for fuel where she stopped just to shake the hands of the two Gold Wing bikers. To this day, we both have Pacific and Atlantic seawater collected in that 48-hour period, the permanent signature of our mad dash across the golden sands of Arizona.
He is known as “Snake” among WOTI folks because once, after a Texas WOTI get-together, he left Evelyn Cline’s place in a cold rain and soon noticed a green snake poking its inquisitive head out of one of his fairing vents, flicking its tongue against his knee! Apparently lured by the heat of the engine, the snake had crawled up into the fairing while the bike was parked and now, with the engine hot, was finding the environs a bit uncomfortable and was looking for other habitat. Ray absolutely hates snakes! And it was quite a few miles and quite a few shenanigans before he could pull off and administer the coupe-de-grace to the unfortunate reptile.
Now I’m a dozen miles into the darkening western sky on I-66, no golden sands here in Virginia, and a routine mirror check suddenly shows the pale orb of a full moon, seemingly hovering directly above the Interstate behind me. A happy feeling suffuses my somewhat melancholy musings, and the moon like a benign smiling giant urges me onward to my mission. I turn south on I-81 and the moon on my left continues to smile in a star-studded and cloudless Virginia night sky.
My mission is to find Ray. We always find each other. About 165 miles and nearly 3 hours later, I do, arriving at his hotel just before 11:00 PM.
“I’m here.” I send the text message to his cell phone and cover my still-warm Wing. Before I finish, he walks out, we shake hands, and it’s just like old times.
But it’s not like old times. Because this is the last time.
Last week we’d talked and he said “Jim, I'm going to sell my bike. It’ll happen soon. I want to do one more ride with you.” Ray has medical issues that we’ve both known would eventually limit or end his riding career. He and Deb have reluctantly decided it’s time, although he’s been riding a lot lately, most recently with our friend Gibby to Cape Canaveral to see the space shuttle lift off. And that is the reason for this ride, and the reason for my melancholy musings. So we will do this once more, with feeling.
Sunday morning, and we awake to fog lying on the hills around Lexington, Virginia. We realize there is no point in hurrying, for our day’s ride will be mostly on the fabled Blue Ridge Parkway, which is sure to be completely socked in with fog. So we have a leisurely breakfast in the Greek restaurant that opens at 7:00 AM, although the hotel clerk recommends we don’t push it, as they are known to be a few minutes late on many mornings. He’s right.
We strike out at around 8:00 AM and ride toward the Parkway, but at Buena Vista we see the mountains still completely shrouded in fog and decide to run 80 miles or so south on I-81 to give the fog a chance to clear. By 10:00 AM we take Route 8 to Floyd, Virginia, were we get on the Parkway without incident. It’s a beautiful early June day and the lifting fog adds an aura of mystery and intrigue.
As we roll southward on the Parkway, I am in the lead and check my mirrors often for Ray’s Wing’s distinctive front-end signature with the double headlights and the driving lights spread low and wide on the fairing. I’ve seen this in my mirror for thousands of miles.
The rhododendron along the Parkway are slow to bloom this year, and we see only some early volunteers foretelling the spectacular rhododendron blooming season that will be evident in several weeks. The temperature is a perfect 68 degrees F.
“I enjoy this part of the ride almost more than the southern end,” Ray says on CB. Indeed, it’s a relaxing, non-technical ride as the Parkway winds southward along the spine of the Blue Ridge.
After several detours including one through the town of Boone, North Carolina, we pass Grandfather Mountain, whose higher elevations are hidden by dark clouds. We ride slowly across the Lynn Cove Viaduct, and finally get off the Parkway for good a few miles before the long-term road closure, a result of a rockslide that closed the Parkway between here and Asheville. It’s hot when we get to the flatlands off the mountain, and we find a place in Morganton, North Carolina.
Walking to the Sagebrush Steakhouse across the street, it’s hard to fathom that this will be the last dinner we’ll have on one of these trips, and we hoist a glass or two to the good times we’ve had and to whatever the future may hold.
The next morning, Monday, we make plans to meet Deb for lunch at a restaurant near her workplace, so we ride the 250 miles on the Interstate, mostly in silence. Ray is leading, and I look often at the familiar pearl green trunk and saddlebags that I’ve followed for so many thousands of miles, most of them with Ray’s mascot, Twinken, a charming little creature of indeterminate taxonomy, peering over the back of the light bar.
We meet Deb for lunch and talk about the decision to retire the bike.
“It was a hard decision,” Deb says, “but harder for Ray.”
“She said I could get a truck,” says Ray.
“I’ve ridden my Wing past a thousand places all over the continent where I would have liked to go but the bike couldn’t,” I say. “So here’s our new plan: Kitty and I will take the bike, you’ll take your truck, and we’ll tour the country. When we get to one of those places, I’ll park the Wing and we’ll take your 4x4 to explore the rest of the country!”
Deb has to go back to work so we walk together out to the parking lot. “Every mile has been a good one, Ray.” We shake hands and our eyes lock for just a second and then mercifully, he walks away.
“I’ll have two lawns mowed by the time you get home,” he quips. I ease out of the parking lot, give a little toot on the horn, and my last view is Ray waving, standing by his faithful Wing, the companion of nearly 140,000 miles.
I point my Wing toward home and ease onto the Interstate. The radio is off but the CB is on. Some of you have read my stories about Solo Guy, who travels alone and is often confused with Lonely Guy, but is never lonely. Today for the first time, I stare Lonely Guy full in the face and realize he is me.
Several times I am startled to hear Ray’s CB voice in my headset, then realize it’s only a ghost, and my mirror holds only an empty spot where a Wing’s signature headlight configuration would be.
It is brutally hot, over 91 degrees F, and I ride the 250 miles home without stopping save for a 7-minute fuel stop. And then I’m home, 500 miles for the day’s ride.
Our friendship will continue, and we’ll see each other again to be sure. But on those summer days when I point my Wing toward the Long Road, I will miss you, my friend. When the time comes for me retire my riding boots, I hope that I will have the courage to do it, and I hope I will have the dignity and grace to do it as you have done. Most assuredly, that day will someday come. But even then, I will always wish we could have had one more run across the golden sands of Arizona.
Copyright© 2009, Jim Beachy
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