#motorrcycle

Day 19, Monday, August 10. Sheridan to Greybull

The day that worry died

Today I wake up to Shayley’s chi-weenie licking my face and marching on my chest. It’s late, maybe 11. Late night last night, I’d say. Shayley is stirring around somewhere in her bedroom. She comes out and sits on the adjacent couch and we talk casually. Shayley’s got to go to work at the farm around two, and I’m thinking of getting on the road pretty soon myself. I promised the group last night that I’d visit Frackleton’s for lunch on the way out of town, and that’s what I plan to do. 

I head into town. Frackleton’s is right on the main drag, and is quite nice looking; big panes of floor to ceiling windows with a simplistic, well-considered Frackleton’s logo in the middle.  The building itself is one of the originals of Main Street; tall and brick, with many different businesses occupying spaces on the street level.

Frackleton’s was empty when I got there at 1:30; more employees than patrons. I am seated by a woman I didn’t recognize; something I hadn’t expected, having met no less than fifteen employees the night prior. I ordered a raw tuna bruschetta served on fried wonton crackers, and a spinach salad with boiled egg and a sweet, warm dressing. Everything was excellent; virtually gourmet quality but priced like a cheap chain restaurant.

I leave and walk around Sheridan for a bit, wanting to see more before departing for good. I go to the post office to get some stamps, in case I find some time to write a post card or two, right.

I head out of Sheridan at about three. It’s more flat country here. There are real mountains on the horizon now; bighorn national forest, and I’m closing in. I have to get past these mountains to get to Cody, Wyoming and Yellowstone. I start to scale the pass, which is staggeringly beautiful. Steep, jagged rocks shooting up from the ground with a geologic violence I’ve scarcely seen before in my life. Trees and small shrubs dot the mountain pass, but the arid tan rocks show through prominently. The road is steep and littered with switchbacks, jagged cliffs falling off onto my left and then my right. I can’t imagine a more beautiful way to experience this road than the exact circumstance I’m in. I am  ecstatic to be in this moment. 

The bike however, is not happy. The higher I go, the worse it’s running; It feels like the spark plugs are fouled now. It’s developed a pronounced flat spot in the power curve at five thousand RPM, or right in the middle of the rev range where I spend all of my time. What was once raw, hilarious, and ruthless horsepower is now a treacherous, sputtering, uncollected mess of hesitation. I have to run the bike a gear down just to keep the tach above the flat spot. The power is still compromised, but at least usable. I’m starting to wonder if I need to do an emergency plug swap at my next stop.

It levels out near the top of the pass and theres an expanse of high plains grassland. There is one car at the top, smoke billowing from somewhere, and I turn around. A fellow mechanical failure at the top of the pass, maybe?

It’s a girl, by herself. I pull up to her car, and she looks confused. I flip up my visor, helmet still on. “Everything okay?” I ask, examining her car from the seat of my bike. There were pillows and blankets in the back seat. “Yep, just making lunch” she replied in a chipper voice, no longer confused by my stop, her camping stove steaming away. “Oh, okay, have a good day” I said and throttled off prematurely in one motion, Immediately regretting not starting a conversation. I think her blatant beauty and obvious free spirit threw me off from the first second. She was clearly doing something like me, a cross country as a twenty something and living in the back of her car. “Idiot” I tell myself. I can’t turn back around now. I throttle off, hiccuping through five thousand RPM, and don’t look back.

I’m descending now, thank god. The bike wasn’t getting any better spending another second up here. Even on the descent, the throttle is useless from 4-6 thousand RPM. It’s starting to seem chronic, and my mounting worry is detracting from my ability to enjoy the scenery, which is immense and spectacular.  I continue to descend.

Worry is present in the back of our minds almost permanently. It’s what keeps me from living in, and experiencing the moment fully. It compromises nearly every experience I have, at least in some subtle way. It seems necessary but in reality is a useless source of toxic, preventative anxiety, and it has to die; I have to kill it.

At that moment, I asked myself: what happens if the bike dies and I find myself stranded? Will I be inconvenienced? Yes. Will it cost me money? Yes. Will it be a while before someone can help? Probably. Will I be hurt? No. Will I be in any real danger? No. So what does it actually matter?

Ask yourself these, or a similar series of questions objectively when you are in a situation that makes you feel anxious. I guarantee that if you let your heart answer them honestly, you will feel better.

I get to the bottom of the hill and pass through a few towns. I see signs at the limits of each town that say things like: Shell, Wyoming Population: 83

The next tiny town is Greybull. I pull over at a gas station and go inside to buy fuel injector cleaner and get gas. The bike is running a bit better now and that puts me at ease. I don’t want to put much thought into the prospect of carb repairs or ignition issues. I pull out of the gas station and almost immediately see an adorable cabin-themed motel. It’s getting late and I need to do laundry, get dinner, and write. I decide to pull in. Cody, Wyoming is a big town that’s close to Yellowstone; a place to sleep would be expensive, and it’s too late to couch surf. 

I get a cabin, which is perfectly charming; A tiny, rich, dimly lit space with a buck mounted prominently at the head of the room. Two wooden bunk beds dominate the space, with a small, raw wood desk and matching stools sit opposite the Buck. There is a small flatscreen TV with cable, a microwave, and a fridge. What an absolutely adequate space for the night.

I go across the street to a tiny coin laundry and and throw everything in. I meander to the adjacent A&W and get a rootbeer float; something I haven’t done in the better part of ten years. There are a surprising amount of people there, including an old couple with three perfect golden retrievers in hand, connected to a three-leashed harness that looked tailor made for this application. They were excited and rambunctious, and I could not help but to fall in love with the spectacle. 

By this time my clothes are done and I cross the street to put them into the dryer.  I have twenty minutes to kill so I walk back to my now unladen motorcycle and crank it up. There’s a sunset happening and an expansive stretch of highway just a mile away, and I want in on it. Back in the low country, the bike is doing well. The flat spot has all but vanished, and unladen for the first time in a while, the bike feels like a rocket ship again.

I forgot how good simple motorcycling can be; a pure synthesis of the organic and the mechanical. An unadulterated harmony of nerves and metal, powered by fossilized sunlight, formed in a time unfathomable but also inseparable from our own. Each drop of gasoline is a precious memento; A post card of energy from organisms that lived four hundred million years before us. We use it to ship goods, to get to work, to make plastic, yet we never take the time to appreciate it; it’s the most precious, energy dense, volatile, and destructive liquid on the planet. It’s the source of wars, imperialist occupation, bloodshed, and tyranny. When consumed at the level it is now, it has the power to alter the composition of our atmosphere and change our climate.  

It is immensely valuable, precious, finite, and destructive.