Living in a Media World

This is one of a series of blog posts about my summer motorcycle travels.

Blanche DuBois absolutely had it right when she says in A Streetcar Named Desire,“I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

As I write this, I’m on a pair of flights from Boise to Dallas/Fort Worth to central Nebraska. How I managed to get from the waiting room of the ER in McCall, Idaho to this point is a story of great effort by both close friends and absolute strangers. It’s also a lesson against the cynicism of our times that tells us that we can receive small miracles of the spirit from people of very different faiths and backgrounds.

McCall is a lovely place to be, and I’m sure I would love going on vacation there, but it was almost impossible to find a ride back to the motel for me and a way for Howard to get back to the ER to pick up my bike. The nice lady with long, grey hair who took my insurance information offered to give us rides once she got off work at 9 p.m., but that was still a long ways off. But she said she would see what she could do.

Before long a man came out wearing a hospital custodian’s uniform.  He had a shaved head with giant spider tattooed on his skull.  He approached us and asked, “Did you need a ride? I’m on my dinner break.”

Yes, as a matter of fact, we did need a ride.  And this man, whom I had never met before in my life, gave up his dinner break to ferry us to the hotel.  I offered him $20 for his efforts, but he said, ‘No, I’m just helping.’ This was a man who made his living cleaning floors at a small hospital. Whom I suspect could have used the money. But it was more important for this man with a scary tattoo across the top of his head to help a pair of strangers in need.

He was just the first of a series of miracles of the spirit to touch us that evening and into the next day.

While I was still in the ER, I finally called Pam to give her my diagnosis.  There was almost no cell service within the hospital, so we had several dropped connections, so it was challenging getting out the message that I was hurt, but ok. Finally, my Dear Wife and I relied on text messages.  And while Pam was clearly not happy with me, she sounded relieved that I was ok and that I had Howard there to help me.  That task aside, it was time to figure out how I was going to travel the 1,150 miles between McCall and Kearney without being able to walk without crutches.

Pizza in our room was a pretty good late dinner after a long day of riding and going to the ER.

My next call was to one of my other riding buddies, Bishop Matthew Riegel, who can use his special bishop powers to find helpful clergy anywhere in the country. Unfortunately, there were no ELCA churches in the area (Matt’s denomination), but he promised to keep working late into the night to see what he could do.

I also posted a plea for help to an Iron Butt Association discussion board on Facebook, hoping someone there might help. Again, McCall is a little, remote town, and there was no one there with an immediate connection.  But Tyler Risk, a rider I’ve never met or talked with before, said “I’ve got some ideas.  Let me see what I can do.”

Next, I  called MedJet to get my bike shipped home.  MedJet is a membership organization that’s kind of like an insurance company, except it’s not.  Were I to have been in a serious accident that required me to be admitted to the hospital, MedJet would have gotten me flown to my home hospital once my condition was stabilized, even if it involved them chartering a private jet with a nurse.  Fortunately, I didn’t need that service! More prosaically, they will get your bike shipped home if you are too injured to continue your ride.  That would be me.

A helpful operator at MedJet put me in touch with the transportation coordinator, and before I went to sleep, I had arrangements mostly completed for the bike. (Yes, I highly recommend MedJet, and not just because my Dear Wife won’t let me ride without it.)

I also got a flight booked for two days later from Boise to the airport closest to my home. It was expensive, but such is life. I still needed a place to store my bike till it got picked up in a week or two by the shipping company, I needed a way to ship my riding gear home, and I needed a ride to Boise, which was a couple of hours away.

Then, I went to sleep. It had been too late when I got out of the ER to fill my script for narcotics, and fortunately all I really needed were heroic doses of ibuprofen.

When I woke up early Wednesday morning, I had a call from a Lance in Boise who was a motorcyclist, who knew someone in Utah (I think) who knew Tyler on Facebook, who had said she might know someone who could help.  Lance had two names for me to call in McCall who could help me with both logistics and finding a ride.

I then spoke to Bishop Matt, who had contacted Pastor Robin of the local Missouri Synod Lutheran church. Pastor Robin, it turned out, already knew who I was because he had been in the ER with his wife at the same time I was there, and he saw me talking with the trauma nurse.  He let me store my bike at the church until the shipping company could take it, and agreed to get my gear shipped.  He also had to drive Howard back to the hotel after he delivered my bike to the church.

As with the Man With The Spider Tattoo, Pastor Robin refused any money to pay for the shipping. (I’ve shipped that gear before; it’s expensive.) He said it was his pleasure to do so. This was my second miracle of the spirit. Pastor Robin had no direct connection to Bishop Matt or me, but when he got an early morning e-mail asking for help, he responded.

I was still in need of my ride to Boise. I was getting ready to start calling the people Lance had recommended to me, when Pastor Robin called back.  The man who owned a small, local convenience store who just sold my new friend a Diet Coke, said he would take me to Boise that afternoon when he went to pick up his wife at the airport.  Pastor Robin told me that David was a great guy and a devout Mormon who would be happy to help me. A couple of hours later, David came by with his SUV, and I had a comfortable ride and an enjoyable conversation. My offer of gas money was politely refused. He said he was going there anyway, and that he wanted to help. David was my next miracle of the spirit.

And if any of these fine people had not come through for me, I still had several people from the motorcycling community who were willing to try to find me help.

All in all, I would have much rather not fallen and still be on my trip, riding into Missoula, Montana. But being reminded how wonderful and caring human beings can be when a wounded stranger shows up in their midst is amazing.

I could not have gotten through all this without the help of my friends Howard and Bishop Matt, of course. I always know I can count on them – and have on many occasions. And the support of my Dear Wife is always essential. But it was the kindness of strangers, from a range of faith (and possibly no faith) backgrounds,  who helped this motorcyclist find his way home.

My flight is now nearing my local airport where my youngest will pick me up, and then I will be very glad to be home.

The Platte River spread out below me was a welcome sight the I was nearing home.

But I wouldn’t have missed this for anything. As Shepherd Book said on the old series Firefly,“The journey is the worthier part.”

In a few days there will be an epilog, but this is the end of this journey.

Uh-oh, that title sounds ominous…

This is one of a series of blog posts about my summer motorcycle travels.

We had breakfast at The Corner, arriving as the early rising contractors doing mineral and energy work were leaving  from eating breakfast and taking their sack lunches. (Apparently one of the way The Corner stays in business is by contracting with these companies to provide meals, alcohol not included, to the workers. While the contractors were interesting people to talk with over dinner the night before, they were very non-specific about exactly what they did.)

We were on the road, such as it was, by 8:30, and we were now on a genuine adventure.  We had bought gas the night before from the lady who ran the other bar in town out of a couple of 200-gallon barrels. Gas was 92 octane, no ethanol, $5 a gallon.  We were glad to have it.

How you buy gas in Yellow Pine.

The Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR) at this point was a minimally maintained forest service road that got more and more minimal as we proceeded. At about the 21-mile point, Howard hit an oversized mud puddle, and his bike was not going to get out of it.

Howard’s bike stuck in the mud.

After I parked my bike, we tried to have him run the throttle and have me push, but all that resulted in was covering me with a rooster tail of mud. Eventually we had to completely strip the luggage off of Howard’s KTM and rock it out of the hole backwards. (For those of you reading who ride, he had high-centered the bike on the edge of the hole.) Once we got the bike out, we got it reloaded, and headed again on our way.

Ralph got rooster-tailed with mud trying to help Howard get his bike out of the mud. Eventually we rocked it back out of the hole and went on our way.

After we went over the top of the pass, or perhaps it was two passes, we came down into a valley where there were sandy patches popping up with little warning.  As Howard was taking the lead, he was the first to find them, and he and his bike went down.  Now, I’m a much slower rider than Howard on a smaller bike, so by the time I got to him he had already picked the bike up.  But the auxiliary light on the right side was bent at an unnatural angle, and his aluminum saddlebag had a big dent in it.  Howard also had some doubts about the condition of his ankle. (He didn’t have any real trouble continuing riding, so he likely just twisted it a little, leaving it sore.)

From there, the road became less of a road and more of a trail. I was grateful I had left my big bike (a Yamaha Super Tenere) at home and had ridden my 650 enduro. Despite the challenges of the riding, it was fun and a glorious country to be traveling with. And when we reached Elk Summit, I had somewhat of a feeling of triumph.

Elk Summit

By 1:30 we were getting a bit concerned about being able to cover the full 220 miles of the day, given that we had only made it about 50 of those miles in the morning.  But then the road widened out, started to be a little smoother, and while our pace was not fast, we were actually making progress toward our destination.

When we got near Burgdorf Hot Springs, we were ready for some lunch and fuel for our bikes.  We turned down a gravel road with lots of fresh crushed rock on it, and that’s when I had my problem. In biker-parlance, I lost the back end.  What does that mean? The back tire of my bike tried to go in front of the front tire. Yeah. That didn’t turn out well. I found myself off the bike and sliding through the gravel. A driver in a pickup truck came by shortly and helped me pick up my bike, and soon after that Howard came back for me.  We straightened out the handlebars and rode on into Burgdorf.

We stopped there for about 20 minutes to assess things.  My right ankle and hip hurt. And I couldn’t put real weight on my right leg. Fortunately I could successfully sit on the bike and make it go.  Double fortunately, after riding back across the 2 miles of fresh crushed rock, we were able to take a paved road into the town of McCall. This was really the first bail-out point of the route, so that was good.

We rode into McCall (a lovely tourist town with a major wildland firefighting base) and got checked into a hotel.  Since I couldn’t walk, I just sat outside on my bike. I also used the opportunity to press the “I’m safely in for the night” button on my Spot satellite tracking system. I certainly didn’t want to push that button, marking the end of my ride at a hospital emergency room parking lot. Yes, I would call my dear wife Pamela (the long suffering, ever patient Penelope – look up The Odyssey for the reference if you need it.) eventually, but not until I knew for sure what was going on with me.

I can’t say enough about the wonderful people at St. Luke’s Medical Center’s emergency room. Howard got a wheel chair to get me from the parking lot into the ER. There the trauma nurse did my admittance interview. For the next blessing of the day, she was also a motorcyclist who instead of mocking me for riding said she was glad I wore full gear. (I was glad, too.  Although I would eventually be diagnosed with a slightly broken bone, I didn’t have scratch on me.)

After I got out of my mud-covered gear and into a gown, the radiology staff did an x-ray of my ankle and a CAT scan of my pelvis.  There was a bit of a wait after that as the small ER dealt with a far more serious case came in by ambulance.  I will never complain about having to wait for someone else to be treated in the ER because that means my injuries are not that serious.

Eventually the doctor came back to tell me my ankle was ok but that I had a hairline sacral fracture. In layman’s terms, there was a minor break where my tailbone meets my pelvis. (Interestingly enough, this was exactly what doctor expected following our initial conversation. Apparently he had seen this injury a time or two before between motorcyclists and skiers.)  I was issued a pair of crutches and told to see my local orthopedist in two weeks.

But this also meant I had reached journey’s end. While I could technically sit on a bike, I could not put any weight on my right leg.

Coming up next: Three miracles of the spirit.

This is one of a series of blog posts about my summer motorcycle travels.

One of the primary goals of this trip was to ride a substantial portion of the Idaho Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR), a dirt and back road route that runs from the south edge of Idaho up to the Canadian border.  Given our time constraints, were planning on riding from just south of the town of Pine up to Pierce.

The first leg of that was interfered with by our need to go spend time in Boise, but we still had a great time riding north on Idaho Highway 55.  We had a half-hour long segment that was filled with curves, elevation changes, magnificent scenery, and very light traffic. To use the vernacular of another age, it was an E-Ticket ride.  (Which is also how Sally Ride, the first American woman astronaut, described being launched into space on the shuttle.)

We then turned east on Warm Lake Road which 30 or 40 miles later dropped us off on the dirt road/BDR route that would shortly lead us into Yellow Pine. Yellow Pine is an old mining town that’s now home to a bar, a really good restaurant, a few places to stay, and small but eclectic population.

Howard turns north toward Yellow Pine.

We had a wonderful dinner and breakfast at the Corner bar and grill, with Matt as our host. The night we were there he was the cook, waitstaff, cashier, bartender and dishwasher. I had a smoked brisket salad with black bean and corn relish that would have done credit to a fine restaurant in a major city, while Howard had a similar smoked chicken salad. They even had non-alcoholic beer, which remote, little places almost never have. Matt and his wife own and run the place, and as I noted in the first post of this series, people and places like this are a big part of why I love to travel to remote and new places.

Chef Matt (and waiter, cashier, bartender, dish washer)

That night we stayed in a room we rented behind the general store.  It was spartan, but it was clean, had decent  beds, and hot water. There was no air conditioning, but once the sun went down, it was almost cold out.

The big challenge was figuring out how to reach the guy who would be our landlord.  When I made the reservation, it was using Facebook Messenger with a couple-day interval between each response. When we arrived in Yellow Pine, we had virtually no phone service, so we went to talk to Matt at the Corner, and he made the call to the store owner for us, calling us “a couple of BDR-looking types.” Still not sure from his tone of voice whether that was a good or bad thing…. (Though  he was absolutely welcoming to us as customers.)

The only real negative we had in our stay in Yellow Pine was that the mosquitos were fairly thick, so we couldn’t sit outside and enjoy the cool night mountain air.

Ralph and Howard at The Corner.

Coming up next – our journey reaches an early and unexpected ending, (Uh-oh, that sounds like foreshadowing… dun, dun, dun….)

This is one of a series of blog posts about my summer motorcycle travels.

The night we were in Mountain Home, Howard decided that he would have to replace the chain on his KTM 1190 motorcycle before we headed out to the backcountry.  The chain had looked good before he left Texas, but after more than 1,800 miles of hard riding, the chain was near giving up the ghost. The nearest place we could get the chain replaced was the KTM shop in Boise, so instead of heading to the Backcountry Discovery route, we went west to Boise instead.

While we were waiting to get Howard’s new chain put on his bike, I got to talking with an older gentleman named George who had one of the new stripped-down 2018 Gold Wings that I think would make a great addition to my garage.

(Don’t worry, sweetie, I know… no room, no money…)

He told me about the many other bikes in his garage (including a 174 horsepower Suzuki Hayabusa, at the time, the fastest ever production motorcycle), and that this was the 12^thGold Wing he had owned.  As he prepared to ride off, he casually mentioned he was 89 years old. This man is my hero.

George is 89 years young and just bought a new 2018 Honda Gold Wing.

Carl’s Power Sports did a great job of getting Howard’s bike fixed at a reasonable price, and after a quick lunch at a Greek take-out joint, we were on our way to Yellow Pine, our day’s destination.

Coming up next – Yellow Pine and the Idaho Backcountry Discovery Route

 This is one of a series of blog posts about my summer motorcycle travels.

My former student Howard arrived up from Texas (He’s my riding buddy who went with me to the Yukon and Alaska two years ago) on the evening of Day 3, and on Day 4 we resumed traveling west. This was Science Day for Ralph and Howard.

Our first stop was at EBR-1: Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 – the first atomic power plant. It was primarily a research reactor, but the research included how to generate electricity by splitting atoms. The reactor produced enough electricity to run the plant – A first.

EBR 1 – Experimental Breeder Reactor 1, near Arco, Idaho.

It was a place Bishop Matt had recommended, and it was fascinating. It was of special interest to me, given that my dad is a retired nuclear physicist who came of age as a scientist as this reactor was going online back in 1951. What, you say your father didn’t talk to you over the dinner table about the challenges of liquid sodium cooled nuclear reactors? Well, mine did.

Would you let this man run a vintage nuclear reactor? Didn’t think sol.

One of the scariest exhibits there were a pair of experimental reactors designed to test whether it was practical to have an atomic powered jet airplane. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed, and the project was scrapped.

Experimental reactor tested to see if it was practical to build an atomic powered jet plane.

The second stop was at Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, a place I have dreamed of going from the day I first heard of it. Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin referred the actual moon as a “magnificent desolation,” and those words could be used to describe this huge, 2000-year-old volcanic lava field.

Riding buddy Howard checking out the lava field at Craters of the Moon National Monument.

While we spent quite a bit of time investigating the lava flows, cones and splatter cones, we did not go into the caves. Had we done so, we would have to certify to the ranger that we had not been in a cave or coal mine wearing these same clothes any time since 2006. Why? To keep the White Nosed Bat fungus from spreading into the bat colony there.

WNB fungus was an innocuous European species, but when it was accidentally brought to the United States, North American bats had no natural resistance to it. The fungus, which gives the bats a white nose (duh!), and acts essentially like cold. The bats have trouble breathing, it wakes them up from their winter hibernation, and then the poor little bats die of exposure. In some areas, more than 90 percent of the bats have killed by it. (If you really want to scare yourself, read the book The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert that tells the whole story of White Nosed Bat Syndrome and a host of other potential extinctions caused by invasive species.)

We ended the day in Mountain Home, Idaho. It was ok, but our motel was not the finest place we’ve ever stayed…

Not the world’s finest motel.

This is the first in a series of blog posts about my summer motorcycle travels. It was written in a motel room in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Me with Doug & Telisha Williams (AKA Wild Ponies) near the start of the Natchez Trace.

There’s an old Harley/motorcycle meme out there that says, “If I have to explain it to you, you wouldn’t understand.”

Now I get how that might make a rider feel like a “bad-ass biker,” but since I was washing my socks and undies in the sink of my motel room this morning while on a two-week motorcycle trip, I guess that doesn’t really describe me.

To tell you the truth, understanding why motorcycling means so much to me is not that hard to understand. So let me explain…

This spring and early summer I’ve been working around the clock, finishing a draft of the seventh edition of my textbook Mass Communication: Living in a Media World.  Each edition is a two-year-long process that culminates in several months of feverish writing after reading, reviewing and tagging more than 1,000 articles that provide the background for it.

Once I delivered the manuscript, I’m not done, but I’m on a looser schedule.  So come late June, it’s time to go riding. This year I had two trips planned, probably a little too close together. This is the story of the first.

Me and Bishop Matthew Riegel

In late June I rode east to meet with Bishop Matthew Riegel to ride down the Natchez Trace Parkway as His Grace was on his way to the national Lutheran youth gathering in Houston. I rode there from central Nebraska by way of the southeast Missouri Ozarks – an underrated area of great twisty roads with very little traffic.

The Natchez Trace is not as well-known as the more famous Blue Ridge Parkway running through the southeast, but it’s a gorgeous, relaxing route to ride from just south of Nashville to Natchez, Mississippi.  It’s essentially a national park that’s 50 yards wide and 440 miles long. It’s a winding, rural two-lane road that’s controlled access.  There’s no trucks or commercial traffic.  The speed limit peaks at 50 MPH, so it’s not a place for excitement. It’s a place to relax, enjoy the scenery, and travel through the country where Elvis grew up.

This trip was the third time I’ve ridden at least part of the Trace, and I’m already looking forward to the next time I can make it over there.

The Loveless Cafe

Before meeting up with Matt, I had breakfast and a Sunday morning of riding with my Nashville friends, Doug and Telisha Williams AKA Americana band Wild Ponies. (Musicians who live in Nashville… whooda thunk it?) We met for breakfast at the incomparable Loveless Café located a block away from the northern end of the Trace.  Country ham, biscuits, eggs, sausage gravy for me (though red eye was an option), and hash brown casserole.  A proper southern breakfast!

I got to the café a bit head of the Ponies, so I grabbed a free cup of coffee from the café’s store (You can buy whole country hams there at prices I don’t want to think about), and sat and waited on the porch. A perfectly pleasant way spend the time.

Then, after breakfast, we rode together. Telisha on her BMW R850R and Doug on the R1150R. Me, I’m on the Yamaha Super Tenere, AKA Big Blue. Had a great ride down the first 100 miles of the Trace. D&T headed on south, and I headed back to Nashville to meet up with Matt Riegel.

Doug and Telisha with their BMW oilheads getting ready to ride.

Matt got in late that night after having dinner with friends in a nearby city (Hi, Cheryl and Eric!). Monday morning we had a great, if hot, day riding the Natchez Trace. The Trace has more subtle charms than the more flamboyant Blue Ridge Parkway. The first 20 miles are quite twisty, and it stays quite amusing down to Tupelo – Elvis’s birthplace. Then the road straightens out, but goes through some beautiful forest areas. The last 20-30 miles were almost like going through a tunnel of trees. It smelled so good and fresh.

On Tuesday we made it to just north of Jackson, Mississippi where we stopped for brunch. Then I had to head home to get  some family things taken care before starting off on my next trip to ride the backcountry in Idaho.

You can’t argue with this kind of weather.

That evening, I had to follow my motto of “Proceed as the way opens” (from William Least Heat Moon’s travel book Riverhorse) when a line of heavy thunderstorms blocked my path ahead and required me to stop 150 miles before I planned to. But from Arkansas/Missouri border, I had an easy trip home without being menaced by any more hail or tornados.

So as you can see, it really isn’t that hard to explain the joys of riding.

It’s time to spend time in your own head away from work. It’s time to enjoy the physicality and mental challenge of riding a motorcycle down a twisty road. It’s enjoying the smells, sights and weather up-close-and-personal. It’s meeting with friends who share your passion.  It’s getting to eat in local restaurants and cafés that aren’t part of a homogenized national chain.  It’s a chance to see this gorgeous country we live in without be separated from it by glass and steel.

I’m so lucky to have the time and resources to go riding in this beautiful country we have. (And a Dear Wife who supports me doing this!)

This is the SPOT satellite track of my trip to the Trace. The map was created using the service Spotwalla.com.