Where is home?

Here's a photo taken as I crossed the 45th Parallel (I actually crossed it 3 times today on my circuitous route through the north western part of Michigan, along the lake).

I'm 1400 miles into my trip already and I've had my first day where I really thought about turning back.

As I was strapping the gear to the bike late this morning, with cloudy skies looming overhead, I had this thought that I really just wanted to go home. I get that way sometimes when I travel. There comes a point when I think, "why am I doing this?" So with rain a possibility, my back hurting, and this little anxiety scratching away at me , I rolled out of my friend Stan's driveway, away from that comfy house and up north. My first stop was only a few minutes from the Miller home, at a lovely little beach Barb and Stan told me to visit on my way out of town. Even as cloudy as it was this morning, the beach was still dramatic.

Of course to make my day, this clown on a motorcycle pulls up next to me as I'm about to roll out and asks where I'm headed and did I come all the way from New York? We chat for a minute, I tell him the basic outline of my trip and he starts giving me advice on how to drive out of town. Then he asks if I have a map. I wanted to say, "a map? what's that? I brought all this other crap, but I never heard of a map." Instead I told him I had a few maps. Then he looks up at the sky and says, "It's gonna rain."

Thanks, shithead ... thanks for stopping by and putting the whammy on my day. This I don't need. But I laugh and say I have a rain suit in my bag (along with the fucking map I remembered to bring, bozo). Then I wave and drive away, but he follows me to give one more piece of sage advice that I can't remember now because I didn't listen when he said it.

So after a bit of driving, and thinking, I remember why I'm doing this trip. I remember how much I like riding a motorcycle, even if it's cloudy and my back hurts, or if rain threatens. I like riding because it connects me to the world around me. When you drive in a car, the world goes by outside and you barely notice, it all looks the same with the radio on, the cell phone ringing, and the air conditioner blasting. But when I'm on a bike, with the roar of the wind in my ears, the road laid out in front, and nothing but green fields or lake waters or ocean or dense woods to either side ... I feel connected and engaged in the world around me, even as it rushes by at 60 mph.

I've flown across this country numerous times. In 5 hours from NYC to LA I don't get a sense of the expanse of the land. I could be in NYC, LA , Denver, Miami, Houston, wherever the plane lands or takes off from, it almost makes no difference. But when I ride across I am intimately involved with each mile, I get a real sense of just how big this country really is. I feel it, I live it ... mile by mile. Each time I stop for gas (every 100 miles or so), every little restaurant I stop in for lunch, I think, "in a few hours I'll be another 100 miles from here and these people will be standing still." See, I've always thought that most places are just something to leave. Funny, I've lived most of my life within a 10 mile radius of where I was born, but I think even my little neighborhood in Queens was somewhere I had to get out of (even if only to move to Manhattan, then Brooklyn - to me they are many miles from where I started).

But I feel more connected to the places I roll past then to places I fly over. It's that simple. It's also why I prefer smaller highways as opposed to interstate because I like to see the little towns, the farms, the cows and horses, all zip by.

The other thing I like about riding is that it also disconnects me in a way too. I'm not able to IM, e-mail, talk on the phone, go to meetings ... blah, blah, blah. I'm just riding (and maybe chewing gum). I can't do anything else, so I'm connected to the world I'm driving through, but disconnected from the world I feel responsible for. And that, to me, is freedom.

Needless to say, the clouds parted, and the sun came out as I got further north. I saw some great beach and lake side views, and never touched interstate. I did about 300 miles in 8 hours. Much of the driving was through lake towns, so the speed limit was slow, but it was a good day of riding and I think I'm over my little anxiety (at least for now).

Right now I'm posting from Pellston, MI, just west of Cheboygan. I thought of pushing on to Cheboygan tonight, just so I could say I'd been there (only because it's fun to say Cheboygan ... go ahead, say it out loud and tell me you don't smile when you do). But I can say it while I'm safe and sound in Pellston and it's the same thing.