Harley and Me (16 page)

Day Four:
Monday, August 26

Cody, Wyoming, to Wall, South Dakota: 428 miles

This is the first morning I've woken feeling ready for what might come. My muscles have finally settled into the pattern of riding hundreds of miles a day. Miraculously, my legs, back, and forearms don't ache. I am becoming seasoned.

We down some coffee, munch Lärabars, pack our bikes with Edna and George, then hit the road. Our first stop, Sheridan, Wyoming, is 120 miles or so away, so we'll need to plan a gas stop. As we leave Cody, I figure the morning's ride will be uneventful. We just need to get to the next location.

How wrong I am.

East of Cody, the road rises and bends. As the twists become tighter, we lean gracefully into each curve, moving like ice dancers across the asphalt, four of us swaying in choreographed, effortless unison. The pattern of our movements is mesmerizing. We travel in perfect harmony, synchronized grace made visible. The canyon walls rise up right around us and the vistas become spectacular. We've entered Bighorn National Forest, one of the oldest government-protected forestlands in the United States. The light of the morning, combined with the shadow of the canyons and the magnificent views, and coupled with our feeling of nimble flight, creates a magical aura. The air smells of pine and soil and sunlight.

This forest lies well east of the Continental Divide and extends along the spine of the Bighorn Mountains, a mountain range separated from the rest of the Rockies by Bighorn Basin. Elevations range from five thousand feet along the sagebrush and grassy lowlands where we entered to thirteen-thousand-plus feet on top. Fifteen thousand miles of trails weave through this stunning preserve.
We take U.S. Route 14, known as the Bighorn Scenic Byway, through the middle of the thirty-mile-wide woodland, a road that's closed in the snowier months of the year. By the time we reach the top, the temperature has plummeted to the thirties and we're all grateful to have motorcycles without sensitive carburetors that might cough and choke at elevation. What scant traffic there is comes to a stop so that cattle may cross the highway, herded by cowboys on horseback and dogs. We try to stay warm, balanced on our bikes, and I'm grateful for the heat rising off my pipes.

This day, for me, becomes emblematic of the whole adventure. There are days when you know something amazing is expected, like seeing Yellowstone yesterday. But days like today, when you're not expecting anything out of the ordinary and yet are graced with wonders beyond your imagination—just the feeling of serendipity that comes with the experience cannot wipe the smile off my face.

After the glories of Bighorn National Forest, as we descend into Sheridan, the temperatures quickly rise. It has taken us all morning to go only 120 miles, and by the time we stop for lunch, the day is in the hundreds. We eat at a little diner and run into two men also en route to the Harley gathering in Milwaukee. One rides a '70s vintage Harley that lost its brakes as he was coming down from the Bighorn Mountains. The thought of descending that mountain with no brakes terrifies me. Over sandwiches and fries, he tells us how he's been looking for a mechanic in town to help him out. His younger companion is on a Buell sport bike, a family member of the Harley clan though it looks and rides nothing like a Harley. We will see these men almost daily until we hit Milwaukee. With each stop, we're running into others who are part of the summer migration to Harley Mecca.

• • •

The wonders of western Wyoming are breathtaking. Eastern Wyoming, however, is an unlovely creature. After the joys of the morning, we settle into the numbing grind and cross the South Dakota state
line, which promises “Great Faces, Great Places” and more hot, flat tedium.

We pass through the Black Hills and then enter the Badlands and their rugged beauty. The geologic deposits here are said to contain the world's richest fossil beds. Ancient mammals once roamed the area. I can almost picture them: rhino, wooly mammoth, giant tapirs, a saber-toothed cat. The park's 244,000 acres protects an expanse of mixed-grass prairie where bison, bighorn sheep, prairie dogs, and black-footed ferrets are supposed to live, but today we see little moving. The most memorable part is the deep silence that surrounds us. Amid the tall grasses, emptiness from horizon to horizon.

Next up is the ritual pilgrimage to Sturgis, South Dakota, home of the annual motorcycle rally held in early August since 1938. Originally created to showcase stunts and races, Sturgis has evolved into one of the largest motorcycle rallies in the world. My friend Emily, whom we'll stop to see in New Mexico on the ride home, was taken to Sturgis as a nine-year-old by her Lutheran-minister father. Emily lost her leg as a young child to a congenital defect and then developed a mad yearning for motorcycles. Though she and her father, I imagine, could not have been more out of place at Sturgis, with its beer-swilling, sunburnt, bare-bellied biker crowd, I have always loved the story of her father's unstoppable desire to please her, a desire so strong it carried them here.

By the time we reach Sturgis, the cleanup from the event a few weeks earlier is complete. I've seen photos, though, with the streets so lined with motorcycles it's amazing anyone can get a bike in or out. Hotels and motels within a hundred-mile radius are booked months in advance. I imagine the thundering pipes and the craziness of the parties. I adore picturing little Emily and her dad among that bacchanalia, but not me.

Today, thankfully, it's quiet.

We take an obligatory photo by the Sturgis bar, purchase cut-rate T-shirts at the souvenir shop, and stop at the Sturgis Harley-Davidson
so George can top off his oil. As we have come to expect, more than a few male bikers request a picture with Edna and her Barbie bike.

Then it's back on the bikes and the continuation of one of those days that stretch on forever. We pass the turnoff for Mount Rushmore and decide that we'll save it for the return trip.

As I ride, the words of Lejuez, the addiction specialist, come back to me. Many people who embrace risk are either running toward or away from something, he'd said. Into which category do I fit? Yes, I am running away from the saintliness aura I had bought into as younger woman. But I'm not running toward its opposite, a kind of reckless decadence associated with both midlife crises and motorcycles. I am running away from a marriage that had begun to suffocate me, but I'm not looking for the arms of a new man to throw myself into.

So, what then,
am
I looking for?

Lejuez called on his expertise in addiction to help me understand risk taking. He explained that, from a learning perspective, there are two reasons why someone might use drugs. The first is positive reinforcement. It's what we think of with drugs: the high, what feels good about it. But even more influential is negative reinforcement, the idea that we might be removing something bad or unwanted in the process.

To illustrate, he conjured up heroin users. If they're experiencing withdrawal and they use again, another dose of heroin will take the pain of withdrawal away—that's negative reinforcement, taking something bad away. But this process occurs on more than a physiological level; there's also a very strong emotional component. Cocaine addicts, for example, might find the drug eases their depression and makes them feel saner and more normal than without it. Likewise, people who suffer from anxiety attacks but don't know what's happening. They're walking around and all of a sudden their chest feels tense, they may experience heart pain, and they think they're having a heart attack or going crazy. A drug like heroin can
medicate that. Heroin or cocaine might be medicating emotional symptoms, blunting an emotional response, as much if not more so than meeting a physiological need.

The same thing happens with risky behavior like motorcycling. “You could argue that the ‘high' someone gets from that kind of activity may be needed because they're not feeling a lot of reinforcement in other parts of their life. It brings an excitement, a new group of friends,” he told me. I consider the thrill of the ride plus all the new people I've met, people quite different from those I knew previously in the world of writers and academics. All act as positive reinforcements. My world
does
feels larger.

“But it also removes something, a negative,” he continued. “For example, imagine someone in such a rut they don't know how to say no to that rut. They're the person who does this or does that and everyone has this expectation of them. That becomes a negative.” If that person finds a new love, like motorcycling, they're suddenly so motivated by it that they get busy and are finally able to say no to the things they wanted to say no to all along. Through their new passion, they can make those things go away.

I consider how unhappy I'd been in my marriage. I'd aimed for perfection, character impeccability, and exactness, all the while feeding a subterranean desire to be the saint for whom my parents named me.

How many saints do you see on Harleys?

Though most people might label this scenario as a form of avoidance, Lejuez reassures me that our escapism reflex is probably one of the body's most powerful and important responses. “In many cases, we think of avoidance as a bad thing because you're not doing the things you need to do.” But avoidance really just means being able to make a choice that allows you to avoid something you don't want before it happens. Sometimes this is a good thing. You're avoiding all numbness and disconnectedness that's built up over time and engaging in something to turn the tables. This is also accompanied by a release of endorphins and an increase of serotonin.

“Never underestimate the value of making negative things go away,” he said.

Lejuez talked about learning theory and what's officially called
punishing a behavior
. When an alcoholic gets sober, for example, that person is punishing the addiction behavior. “
Punish
sounds so pejorative, but it just means what we do to make something stop.” If you punish one kind of behavior, though, you have to reinforce and reward alternatives. If you don't reward the alternative—for example, taking care of and praising yourself for avoiding an addiction while addressing underlying issues—you may end up simply suppressing the drive until even more damaging behaviors arise. Think of people on a diet. They do what they're supposed to, they strive to be “good,” and then one day, they just say, “Forget it! I'm going to do what I want.” There's “this explosion of selfishness because they didn't take the time to look out for themselves from the start.”

Though I hadn't considered it before our conversation, I asked Lejuez if there's a connection between my own two-decade abstinence from alcohol and drugs and my desire to ride a motorcycle in my late forties. “In your case, you can make the connection from an unhealthy escape/avoidance behavior to a healthy escape/avoidance behavior.” This, he said, is an important lesson. “Every one of us has had things that have crept into our lives and have taken over. We wish we could find a more healthy way.” It's crucial, he said, to know that healthy alternatives are possible, that we can find new, enriching ways to meet these needs.

Throughout South Dakota, I keep seeing signs for a place called Wall Drug with the promises of free coffee to newlyweds and military personnel, free ice water to anyone who asks, the best pies in the country, the largest drugstore ever. We follow these signs, like Burma-Shave ads, for more than a hundred miles. By the end of the day we hit the little town of Wall. We're weary and wiped out, susceptible to the lure of all that advertising.

Wall Drug is a cowboy-themed open-air shopping mall, unabashedly tacky, consisting of a drugstore, gift shop, restaurants, western
art museum, chapel, and an eighty-foot brontosaurus. In
The Lost Continent
, humorist Bill Bryson writes that “it's an actual place, one of the world's worst tourist traps, but I loved it and I won't have a word said against it.”
The New York Times
reports that it takes more than $10 million a year and draws some two million annual visitors. Wall Drug earns much of its fame from those billboards we passed. They pepper a 650-mile-long stretch of highway extending from Minnesota to Montana.

We snag motel rooms, shower, and go in search of the best dining option along the single street of restaurants and extended drugstore offerings, including, what I'm told, is an impressive art collection. By the time we leave the restaurant, though, it's no later than 8:00
PM
on a summer's night and yet all of Wall has closed down. We haven't yet seen its storied attractions beyond the tasteless diner. Just like we bypassed Mount Rushmore and skirted the Black Hills, we've missed our chance to see the Largest Drugstore in the World. But we got the magic of Bighorn National Forest this morning, and that's more than enough.

•
    
CHAPTER ELEVEN
    
•

ON TO THE PROMISED LAND

But if you never did anything you couldn't undo you'd end up doing nothing at all.

—ANNE TYLER,
Ladder of Years

Day Five:
Tuesday, August 27

Wall, South Dakota, to Albert Lea, Minnesota: 461 miles

The hotel clerk in Wall, South Dakota, amazes me. When we arrived late yesterday, hair plastered to our heads, a necklace of salt around our necks, holes burned into my textile armored pants from where my leg drifted too close to my exhaust, we looked as if we'd been through a battle. She, on the other hand, was the picture of cool leisure. Her hair coiffed to perfection, a blouse so crisp it appeared constructed of a fine-grade cardboard, her lipstick applied just so. Sure, she'd been sitting in the small air-conditioned hotel office while we'd been pounding out hard miles. Seeing her was like encountering a gorgeous hothouse flower in the midst of a refugee camp. I was aware for the first time of how bedraggled we'd become.

Her freshness inspired me. After dinner, I took out the Tide Pods I'd packed a week earlier after Rebecca had put me in charge of
sundry supplies. She'd suggested the little self-contained detergent balls, rather than liquid detergent that might spill, or dry detergent that could dissolve if our luggage got soaked. I put my few things—underwear, socks, T-shirts—in the bathroom sink, filled it with water, and added one pod. I happily washed my things, anticipating that clean smell next to my skin.

The pod, though, was apparently made to wash an entire load of laundry. I washed and rinsed and washed and rinsed and still couldn't purge the detergent's slimy slickness. I showered, washed my hair, enjoyed the smell of a clean body, at least, as my clothes sat in yet another sink full of fresh water. And then I rinsed again. I finally had to put the clothes in the bathtub and add sufficient water until they were soap-free enough to hang dry. (Note to self: Next time, a little bar of soap rubbed on the clothes in the sink should suffice.)

We wake early in the morning, hoping to get a jump on the heat that promises to be brutal. We seem to have arrived in the plains states in the middle of one of the summer's most intense heat waves. I go to the front office to check out the complimentary breakfast buffet. That same clerk is there, her face open and welcoming, a toothy bright smile, looking ready in case a camera crew should arrive at any moment. I am wearing clothes that, while not exactly dirty, qualify as less than clean. The things I'd washed last night aren't yet dry. I examine the breakfast offerings: coffee that smells burnt and looks like sludge. Wilted Danish. Plain bagels, precut as if we needed instructions on what do with a bagel, are hardening in the morning heat.

“I'll make the coffee,” I tell Rebecca when I return to our room empty-handed. “Have a Lärabar.” I extend one of our few remaining lifesaving goodies. We can hear George and Edna readying themselves next door. His incessant coughing, especially in the mornings, is worrisome. At every road stop, George reaches for a cigarette. My own lungs seem to clog in sympathy, listening to him hack.

My mother, who'd once been a professional singer, died of lung cancer. I saw lung disease rob from her what little remained in the
wake of the bipolar disorder—the rosiness in her cheeks, the strength to climb stairs, the breath with which to sing. The cancer stole everything, that is, except the desire for another cigarette. The afternoon after she'd had surgery to remove one and a half lungs, she was begging the doctors for a cigarette, extracting the oxygen tube from her nose to insist. She smoked until the day she died in her midfifties.

Before we roll, we look at a map.

“Can we stop for lunch in Mitchell?” I request. “Mitchell, South Dakota, is about half a day's ride from here.”

“What in the world's in Mitchell?” George asks.

I stammer as I try to explain. One of my favorite singer-songwriters, Josh Ritter, wrote a song, “Other Side,” in Mitchell. In an early, unpolished recording of the song, he talks about a cross-country trek bringing his brother to college on the East Coast. Stopping for the night in a budget motel in Mitchell, he marveled at the massive Flintstone characters he could see from the motel's parking lot. “People from Canada must think we're nuts!” Ritter had said. I don't care about seeing Flintstone characters, but the idea of being in the same backwater town he'd been in, breathing the same air, feeling the same sun, appeals. The crew agrees: lunch in Mitchell.

We mount the bikes and take off. I stream the entire Josh Ritter songbook through my Bluetooth device, catching only the occasional lyric over the thunder of my pipes. One song, about Lawrence, Kansas, another meditation on a Midwest town, loops in my head.

                  
Preacher says that when the Master calls us,

                  
He's gonna bring us wings to fly

                  
But my wings are made of hay and cornhusks

                  
And I can't leave this world behind.

I savor the song as we pass unrelenting fields of cornstalks, flanked by massive spools of hay stacked like jelly rolls, forgotten by the side of the road. I remember the crisp woman in the motel. I am not cut out to be like her. This is just a fact. Like the backcountry folk Ritter
writes about, I, too, possess wings made only of humble hay and gritty cornhusks. Yet maybe it is this very cornhusk quality that allows me to feel the air thump my chest, to fully take in the smell of the grasses and alfalfa and the way the scents warm as the sun rises, to see the sheen of the macadam increase with the heat, to feel the deep thrum of my motorcycle hard along the road, and to notice my hands lose feeling from the nonstop vibration of holding on.

I move my body to get more comfortable. If I hold the grips by only my fingertips, I can raise my back almost upright from my normal pitched-forward posture. That position feels like heaven. For a while. When it gets tiresome, I try the opposite, extending my legs onto the highway pegs along the fork, and leaning back a tiny bit, the lip of my pelvis hard up against the back of the seat.

Everything is bathed in gold this morning, a life so real and precious I, too, cannot leave this world behind. Even for the promise of—what? A picture-perfect afterlife? Or this mortal one in which I might stay crisp and clean all the time? I'll take the life I have, this one right here with seared pant legs and less than clean T-shirts, with stinky socks and grime under my fingernails. Though I still fantasize of one day becoming the embodiment of pristine womanhood (if not sainthood), the truth rides shotgun with me this morning. For perhaps just this one moment, the woman I am is exactly the woman I wish to be.

Miles and miles of prairie lurch by.

We hit Mitchell just in time for lunch. I'd posted on Facebook earlier this morning that we're in South Dakota and friends have replied that we
must
see the Corn Palace there. But first I want to find the Flintstone characters and look for the budget motel where Josh Ritter stayed. I do a Google search on my phone for “Flintstones, Mitchell, South Dakota” but come up with a blank. Hungry and tired, Edna, George, and Rebecca find a patch of shade for a little relief from the pounding heat. George smokes a cigarette while Edna and Rebecca down water. I try different keywords but still come up empty.

“Let's just go to the Corn Palace and while we're there, I'll figure out what happened to the Flintstones.”

The Corn Palace in Mitchell takes pride of place in this city of fifteen thousand. It's open to the public and the kind volunteers who serve as docents will be happy to tell you, if you ask, “Just what
is
a corn palace?” that this is the world's
only
corn palace. That, however, doesn't answer the question. With its turrets and onion domes, the Moorish revival architecture of the exterior is completely sheathed with cobs, husks, leaves, and corn silk. If it's made of corn or other grains, it's used here. (As a native of Southern California, I'm reminded of the Tournament of Roses Parade where all the floats are decorated exclusively in flowers and plant material.) The smell of popcorn is immediate and overwhelming. With more than five hundred thousand visitors annually, the Corn Palace—part coliseum, part basketball arena, part multipurpose auditorium—serves as a venue for concerts, sports, and exhibits, as well as the focal point for the annual Corn Palace Stampede Rodeo and Polka Festival. (I'm having trouble picturing a rodeo inside what looks to be a high school gymnasium gussied up in corn husks, but I couldn't have imagined a corn palace in the first place, so I chalk it up to a lack of imagination on my part.) But whatever it is, from my perspective, this kitschy monstrosity looks like the world's grandest bird feeder.

Sandwiches and air conditioning at a little café across the street revive our spirits as I continue Googling for my Flintstones. Finally, the mystery is solved. Josh Ritter must have been just as brain-fried as we are when he passed through this part of the world. Turns out that Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty are to be found in the Flintstones Bedrock City Theme Park and Camping Resort, located not in Mitchell but in Custer, South Dakota, some 316 miles in our rearview mirrors.

After lunch we step outside and the heat hits us like a sledgehammer. Rebecca and I break out our “hydration vests” made of black fabric and quilted with little pouches of water-retaining gel. We fumble in the bathroom, splashing water, trying to get the vests to soak up as much H20 as possible. Dehydration and heat stroke will be as serious a threat today as the speeding eighteen-wheelers and
the monotonous asphalt. Leaving the café, my vest in place, trying not to drip all over the floor, I almost run into a man entering the establishment.

“Oh, little lady, you're going to be mighty hot out here wearing that.” He points at my vest. At first sight, it must look like leather.

I squeeze its side and let water drip onto the hot concrete pavement where it begins to evaporate on the spot. “I hope not.”

“Ahh!” he says. “Perfect. Wish I had one of my own today. Safe riding, now, you hear?”

Back on the road, the hydration vest helps for maybe the first hour but soon dries out, and the heat starts to bake my brain. Over the vest, I wear an armored jacket. The liner has been removed so air can flow through to the vest, though it still feels as if I'm wearing my own personal sauna. But safety is my priority. The list of experience I wish to have in this one cherished lifetime continues to grow. In the motorcycle safety class, I learned about the ways a motorcyclist can protect herself and I take them all seriously. Though my bike is matte black and I favor black clothing and helmet, I make sure to wear some kind of reflective gear when it's dark. A full-face helmet, while hot and uncomfortable, is the best safety choice. I bought the kind worn by professional racers to provide as much comfort and protection as possible.

Yes, it can be argued that no amount of safety gear can make what I'm doing completely risk free. That's valid. Yet I would argue that life
is not
safe and can
never
be insulated from every hazard.

There are no assurances, and given that hard-edged truth, I have only one option: to appreciate the moments of grace as they come along. I have been blessed to be as fully present as possible with my own children and then to send them on their way with the knowledge that we shared every moment we could and that's the best we get. And though I'd like to live to an advanced age, to see my children find their places in the world and launch their careers, to maybe one day bounce a grandchild on my knee, there are no guarantees. Yes, I could die on this motorcycle trip, get struck by lightning, or come
down with a fatal disease tomorrow. All the more reason to grasp this present moment, and particularly those moments that are not exceptionally memorable.