Misery on a Motorcycle

We’ve probably all felt it, and nowhere is misery more pronounced than on a long motorcycle trip where there is no end in sight. The rain, the cold, the heat…it all makes us wonder why we do it. Good buddy Juan Carlos said it best when we were riding through an extreme freezing rainstorm in Colombia’s Andes Mountains. “We sometimes wonder why we suffer through this kind of misery when we could be home with a warm cup of coffee,” or words to that effect, was his take on it all. Indeed, I’ve had the same thought many times myself. I’ll share a few of my most miserable moments with you and then I’ll provide my answer to why we do what we do.  And there’s an invitation at the end of this blog…if you’d like to share the misery (misery loves company, you know), we’d love to hear from you.

Super Hawk, and Super Cold

My first ever memory of misery on a motorcycle was riding on the back of my Dad’s Honda Super Hawk back in the 1960s. It was a 305cc twin-carb black-and-chrome beauty, and Dad bought into the dream during a time when you really did meet the nicest people on a Honda. What the Japanese marketing gurus left out, though, is that you sometimes also met the coldest people on a Honda, and two of them would have been Dad and me that morning. It was early on a Saturday in September, I was 14 years old, and we were riding the Honda to Cooper’s Cycle Ranch in Ewing, New Jersey for its first service.

It was really cold that morning, as only New Jersey can be that time of year. Really, really cold. We weren’t dressed for the weather, the bike had no windshield or fairing, full-faced helmets and good moto gear hadn’t been invented yet, and the cold was brutal. I remember we stopped at a diner somewhere on Route 130 and Dad bought two copies of the newspaper. After a hearty and hot breakfast, Dad stuffed one of the newspapers in the front of his jacket (not a motorcycle jacket, as that kind of gear didn’t exist yet), and I did the same with the newspaper he gave to me. The newspapers helped a bit, but not enough to really make a difference. But I remember that ride like it happened yesterday.

Canada: My First International Adventure

For me, this thing about international adventure riding started early, as in college. I was in my junior year at Rutgers when good buddy Keith Hediger and yours truly decided a motorcycle adventure from New Jersey to Quebec was just what the doctor ordered.  It was Spring Break, our engineering courses were brutal, and we needed a respite from hitting the books.

Canada. It would be great.  As they say, it’s almost like going to another country.  Both Keith and I were ROTC students, and we joked that we would be draft dodgers. The ride north was great, Canada was great, and then it rained the entire length of Vermont on the way home.  I’m not exaggerating.  It was raining when we crossed the border back into the US, and it rained all day long without a single break.

We didn’t have rain gear in those days. Keith was on a Kawasaki 500cc two-stroke triple and I was on my CB-750 Honda. For us it was bell-bottomed jeans, nylon windbreaker jackets, open face helmets, and tennis shoes.  We were soaked to the gills and we were indeed miserable.  And cold. But we had ridden to Canada and back on our motorcycles.  I didn’t know anybody else who had ever done that.  It was fun. The rain notwithstanding, it lit a fire in me for international motorcycles rides that burns to this day.   And I remember it like it happened yesterday.

Mexico: Soaked Again!

Fast forward thirty years or so and good buddy John Welker and I were on our cruisers headed to Baja’s Cabo San Lucas, a ferry ride across the Sea of Cortez, and then Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara, and other points in mainland Mexico.  I had a ’92 Harley and John had a Yamaha Virago I called the Viagra.  Most of the ride was in great weather.  But that first day was terrible. It was raining I left the Los Angeles area, it was raining when I hooked up with John down in San Ysidro, and rained nearly the entire day.  It rained when we blew through Tijuana and we rode through the rain to Ensenada.  We were experiencing the tail end of the El Nino storms that hit our part of the world that year.

We didn’t let the rain stop us, though. We stopped at La Bufadora south of Ensenada, a spot where there’s a natural opening in the rocks, and when the waves from the Pacific come crashing in, it shoots a spout 150 feet in the air. That spray soaked us, too.   But it had rained nearly all day, so the extra La Bufadora spray didn’t make us any wetter. We were already soaked.

We rode nearly 200 miles south into Baja the first day, and then I threw in the towel.  I had to stop. I was soaked to the bone (we didn’t have rain gear, even though we started the ride in the rain…smart, huh?). I was so cold I couldn’t ride, so we stopped in a little hotel in Colonet. I remember feeling the water seeping through my leather jacket, and I remember shivering so badly I could hear my teeth clattering. The hotel had an old-fashioned register you had to sign when checking in, and I was shaking so badly I couldn’t sign my name. Even soaked and freezing, though, I couldn’t remember when I had ever felt better or more alive.  And you know what?   I remember that day like it happened yesterday.

Steamed Mustangs

When I was a consultant and I wrote the blog for CSC Motorcycles, in the early days the company made Mustang replicas. They were cool little bikes that looked like 1950s Mustang motorcycles, and I had this bright idea that we would make a splash if we rode the little 150cc Mustangs to Cabo San Lucas and back. You know, ride the length of Baja on little 150cc tiddlers. It was a story that guaranteed press coverage, and my idea worked.  Half a dozen magazines picked up that story.

What I didn’t realize when I scheduled the ride was that September is the hottest month of the year in Baja. I mean, who know such a thing? I grew up in New Jersey, and in New Jersey, September means you’re rolling into winter.  In my mind, September is not a month one associates with hot weather.

But not in Baja. As soon as we crossed Parallelo 28 and Guerrero Negro, the heat went from bad to you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me misery.  And then as we rolled into Santa Rosalia and approached the Tropic of Cancer, the humidity hit us. We were riding in a crock pot, and the setting was on high.  Those little bikes would barely make 50 mph the way we had them loaded, so we couldn’t make enough wind to stay cool. It was, without a doubt, the worst heat and the most physically-challenging ride I’ve ever experienced.  But (and you can probably guess what I’m going to say next), I remember that ride like it happened yesterday.

Why We Do It

Guys, I ain’t the smartest person in the room, and I don’t have any great insights here.  I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself.  I ride because it’s fun.  If a little rough weather comes along, hey, that’s part of the deal.  It’s miserable when it happens, but it sure makes for some great memories, and oddly, the off-the-scale misery moments are the ones I remember best.

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Do you have a particularly miserable motorcycle day, you know, a ride through rough weather, you’d like to share with us?  Hey, leave a comment!

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