The Minstrel Bo-oy to the War Has Gone...

Some where in one of these posts I mention that I am never so happy as when I am trying to do too much. I am not really sure that that is true, but it seems to be the impression many people who know me have, and they make some valid points. But even I will admit that this whole venture has been a bit of a mouthful to bite off, and I am feeling very lucky and blessed to have made it this far.

And yet...

I mentioned in another post that one of the things I do every year, now, and that really was one of the major turning points of my life when I started it, is the Pennsic War. With the Ride, and all, I knew that I would have to give that up this summer...

Wouldn't I?

So first, I "pre-reged" - pre-registered - so that my land group (household) could have the land my registration would entitle them to. They have been very good to me in past years, and it seemed the least I could do. (For the record - Pennsic is the single least expensive way to go on vacation I have ever seen - assuming you are capable of being frugal and avoiding temptation - it's $175.00 for 17 days on site. If you are adept at camping, have the knowledge to feed yourself for that long with dry goods and preserved foods, and can avoid the siren song of the myriad astonishing vendors of crafts and wares, you need spend little more than that. Of course, almost no one does that.)

But then, since I was pre-reged, I talked to my householder and asked if - just maybe - if the gods smiled upon me - and I made it to the area of War (N.E. PA - Slippery Rock is the closest real "place" to Cooper's Lake Campground, the actual site) with my camping gear intact and enough time to spare - could I possibly camp with my household, even though I wouldn't be paying the full camp fees. Couldn't hurt to ask, right? And so, with his assent, I put it in the itinerary as a "maybe"...

So, "War" is the largest function of the SCA - The Society for Creative Anachronism. It is basically a medieval siege village of over ten thousand souls that is set up for more than two weeks - after day 8 or 9 they usually have to open a federal post office, it's so big. (10,000 plus). There is everything you can think of - armored combat, sword fighting, archery, crafts, a University with hundreds - literally - of classes, about forty different ways to volunteer to help the whole thing run, and of course, at night, the parties. Oh, the parties.

Even this photo doesn't quite show the whole thing... it's A Lot.

For info on the SCA, go here:

Society for Creative Anachronism

Here is a really good, quick news piece done on War a while back:

Meet The Scadians

Also:
Pennsic Official Page

The 50th anniversary of the SCA was just a few years back; the 50th Pennsic is only three years off. The stories are rife, and entirely apocryphal, but phrases like "the king who declared war on himself and lost" and "Loser gets Pittsburgh" give you a sense of the event. Unike most SCA events, which tend to take, at most a long weekend, War is huge, global (I have several Pennsic friends who come from Australia) and... a little less SCA than most events. Because of the scale of the event, Pennsic draws folk who might be really denizens of other cultures, but who want to fight in the War, or just hang out with Scadians and enjoy the culture and parties. There are serious, very academic reenactors, more than one entire clanne of early period Celts, Romans, and even the Tuchux, who actually predate the SCA at Cooper's Lake Campground (the formal name of the site) by most accounts, and are a fictional society of caveman-like "dogs" from an early 20th C. series of fantasy novels.

I first came to War in 2007, (Pennsic XXXVI) when, after young friends in FRDNX, having badgered me for years to come try this thing they did - "we're pretty sure you'd really like it..." - forced my hand by being married there. The MD Shakesfest 2.0 was taking a summer off, and I had been riding motorcycles with renewed vigor, and had just discovered camping off of one, so there was no reason for me not to go, and as a cost-saving measure, I determined to stay in the camp instead of in a hotel like most of the "mundane" guests chose to do. 

My very first night in camp (after "trolling in" - registering - I was promptly put in charge of "cutting these into a rough dice" in the outdoor kitchen, taught to play Tamerlane's Chess, introduced to the very cute young minister, who immediately made me feel old as hell by announcing "wait: you're Joseph Musumeci? I studied you in college!" (remember, this is over a decade ago...). By the end of the next morning, I had my first set of real (if weak) garb, knew how to tie a ring belt, and had stolen a bridge from another camp for the ceremony.

The actual wedding was lovely, and brief. It involved a procession of actual knights, a lovely exchange of vows, and the bride's brother in law reading, rather drunkenly, from Shakespeare. It lasted 20 minutes. 

Max.

The groom and best man

The bride and her parents

The actual ceremony. Seriously - see how cute the minister is? She is also an entirely lovely person, but nothing kills a flirt like, "Hey, I studied you in college..." Yes, the BIL is definitely drunk, and reading from Shakespeare. In a Russian accent. Yes, I stole that bridge.

The reception... well, that was a different matter. It was no more than a hundred strong, probably less than 60 - we all fit under the newly expanded dining fly of House Hedgehog - but the feast and the entertainment were unparalleled in my experience. There were seven courses, all of meticulously documented period recipes, several courses of which I remember to this day, including sausage stuffed "hedgehogs" of fire-roasted meal, and a pear soup that was to die for. Each course was separated by a different flight of mead, and entertainment, ranging from a troupe of very seriously talented belly dancers to a woman of indeterminate but advanced age reading, from memory, Icelandic Eddas.

I miss that henna tattoo.

Two of the best cooks at an event that has a lot of them...

This is probably around course 4 or 5. I still don't know quite what to make of all this, but I already know I like it. And may, by this time, have secreted a bottle of buckwheat mead between the bride's mother and myself.

But this was only the private portion of the reception. At the end of the meal, and an approximately one-hour "honeymoon" for the bride and groom to catch their breath, the camp was opened to... well, War. HH is not a large household, by any means, but the yard and the street in front held at least 500 people, all clamoring for drink simultaneously, while constant musical and dancing entertainment went on around the fire pit: ATS dancers, Turkish, Gothic you name it, drumming, drumming, drumming, harps, sitars, brass instruments I didn't recognize. 

I don't know if I had ever seen live fire spinning close up. 

If you look closely, you can get a sense of how crowded the yard in front of the dining fly was... that's about 60 feet deep, and much wider than our (well, then, "their" camp...)

I was also introduced to clove cigarettes at this war. It still makes me smile to smell them.

I don't know whether i slept that night. But I spent the next day exploring all the rest that this Ridiculous, Amazing "event" had to offer. All I remember of Monday is watching my first battle - the Field Battle - with a soup tureen of mint juleps. And then I had to ride home.

Learning to play Tamerlane's Chess

I also wasn't kidding about the soup toureen. Just out of the frame,  thousands of people are whacking each other with sticks.

I came home with two new shirts, a pair of pants, a hat, a hat pin, a hangover, my first tribal tattoo (temporary, but it scared the shit out of my colleagues on Tuesday ;-) and a more than passing interest in a particular redhead. I have never looked back. This is the part of me that I had stuffed down for too long, that had almost died inside. I have been back, for at least a long weekend every year since, and I was proud to be made, a few years later, an official member of House Hedgehog, and to make my own contributions over time - for Pennsic, while for many the only and longest vacation of their year, is never easy, and requires an ungodly amount of prep and care to pull off each year.

A few years after the wedding, the HH household, ever eager to improve, turned their dining flies into a full-on pavilion, that bore the household badge; a few years later, our householder was lamenting around the fire one evening that he feared the pavilion was on its last legs, and he would have to dispose of it soon, as the canvas was no longer able to be repaired economically. As the legend goes, I piped up (possibly, adult beverages were involved) and said, "Milord, if that happens, I can design you a longhouse that will flat pack into our truck and go up in a day."*

Jaysus.

Needless to say, he threw the old pavilion away at the end of that war. So, I was stuck...

The story of the House Hedgehog Long House is an involved one, but it can be pretty much summed up in two words: Mission Creep. The original concept was something that would be, in essence, a glammed-up version of our main pavilion, with the appearance, at least, of solid-ish sides. The end result was a 24x36 foot adaptation of an amalgam of Norse longhouse styles adapted for the Pennsic weather, pushing the site-specific limitation of 16' tall, with a second floor on both ends.

The original dining fly - which had actually been more than doubled in size for the wedding.

Behind us is the new and improved main pavilion, sewn out of the dining fly canvas.

Go Big or go home. The gentleman to the right is one of the two other principal carpenters, and the one in charge of getting it up without me this year. I am very proud of him.

Still in process: the shutters, half closed and half woven with wattle, that will make it look much more like an actual lomghouse/meadhall.  Notice the old banners flying from the ends of the ridge poles. Nothing wasted. And rarely anything thrown away ;-)

For the first three years of the longhouse, I arranged my attendance so that I could be there for setup weekend, including attending War Practice the first year so I could survey our land. This year, because of the Ride, HH was going to have to erect the house on their own, and without my help (there was ONE phone call, pretty desperate, mid-afternoon on setup Sunday, which, very fortunately, caught me on a rest stop. More accurately, caught me after the completion of the Iron Butt run, and just as I was checking into my room. Because otherwise, I would have been dead asleep.) We did a class beforehand, and I reid all the drawings, and lent them all the tools I had usually brought along. (I invested in some lightweight surveying tools the first year we did it - hard structures are less forgiving than tents...

Anyway - part of my interest in attending this year, if only for day or two, was to see how they had done.

But really - there are a few people I only ever see at War, and moreover, only see in their "natural state." When you know someone primarily as a professional pirate, or an ironmonger, or a belly dancer, or the renegade owner of a turkish coffee house, it's more interesting than knowing them as an IT security pro, a state house admin, or a corrections officer. So i was really trying to make at least a day at War happen, on the way home. Kudos and thanks, here to Chris and Elspeth (who is, herself, or: was? - baronesses stay baronesses, but not landed, I guess - nobility in the SCA) for letting me stay with them a second time, as I altered my homeward path from Des Moines, since that is where I wound up rather than Ames. It was a long-ish day to get to them, but so good to see them again, and one more long-ish day put me in Slippery Rock. 

It. Was. So. Much. Fun.

I haven't been for less than 10-14 days in at least seven or eight years - but even the almost exactly 40 hours were just enough to prime my pump and give me the energy I needed to get home again, refreshed, and re-entered into something like my homeworld. I saw friends I hadn't seen in ages, ate food I hadn't realized I missed so much, bought a new short tunic (because I hadn't been able to pack a change of garb - although I had some "bog pants" that would suffice for the short time I was there) and spent real quality time, if not as much as I would have liked, with most of the people I wanted to see. The household had done a great job of getting the LH up, although, not, apparently, without some soreness, and angst - and had added a kitchen to it that matched, and was very impressive.

And I got to take my last little video - one I have always wanted to have - the video of coming off the highway and into our little brigadoon. It really is a moment, when the bus lot gives way to the parking lot, and then the next thing you see are all the tents covering the fields. 

I didn't even need my tent - I slept on the loft level of the Longhouse, which was surprisingly comfortable, and while I had intended to buy all my meals at the food court up in the "Serengeti" - the flat part of the site up "topside" I was invited to take all my meals with my household while I was there.

Synn Vasallo, house mother of of Midnattsol, took this pic. I literally didn't pull out a camera, after rolling video as I entered the site on my bike. All of Midnattsol, I think, is comprised of former Hedgehogs - it's cool watching people grow and expand from their roots at War.

I stayed for two nights, and headed off late the following morning, and was ready, finally, to bring the ride to a close. Which, as I have already mentioned, Bonnie and I did the following Saturday at Rehoboth Beach.

Really, what could possibly top the summer I have had? Okay, fine: this was our private beach on Rehoboth Bay. I take no credit for this year's beach planning - i was just along for the ride.

As it were...

So, that's it for this installment of As The Two Wheels Turn. Tune in next week for Ooh-Ooh That Smell... and The Playlists That Kept Me Alive




* We say "milord" and "milady" a lot. It's polite. Let it go. Also, yes, there is increasing use of the gender non-binding, "good gentle." Also - as far as the "go up in a day" part goes... there is this household at War that holds two huge parties - they do so in a replica of an Italian villa that they spend their entire first week putting up, and most of their second week taking down. I may or may not be guilty of having said, on more than one occasion, "you know, if I had six decent stagehands I could put that up in a day - two max."

So, before I posted the "end of the road..." and the final mile tally, etc...

I was in Salt Lake City, my friend Eric had just left me to go back to his family and home in Pocatello ID, and I was trying to decide whether I should do this crazy "Iron Butt" thing.

For those who are unaware, the Iron Butt Society of America presents themselves as "The World's Toughest Riders," and they have a wide variety of quests on which one can go to prove it. In order to join the ranks, one must complete at least their "minimal" challenge, the "Saddlesore 1000": traveling a measured, documented 1000 miles in 24 hours or less. Trips of 1000 miles or more in a day are more common (though still taxing, and not recommended for amateurs) in automobiles and trucks - doing it on a motorcycle, even one specially prepped for the task, is a more daunting undertaking.

The Iron Butt Association of America

The fact that I was considering doing it on a sportbike after an already sometimes grueling trip of 5000 miles or so will be not be lost on my audience, but the IBA really doesn't care. Hard Core is where they live. These are the kinds of riders who regularly remove the passenger seats of their bikes to install additional gas capacity. I promised Bonnie I would NOT become one of those. (We'll see.)

After taking an afternoon and an evening to rest up in SLC, I came to the following conclusion:

• I made it this far - there was no point in not trying
• The IBA goes to some lengths to ensure that everybody stays safe
• No challenges require you to speed; I used to doubt this - but it's true.
• They will not accept any documentation that includes evidence of breaking the law.
• They do not allow you to register a ride before the fact - that cuts down on any pressure of the "peer" type...
• I had enough time to keep to my schedule and NOT do the Iron Butt - I would just have to break it into two relatively long, hard, days, rather than one very long very hard one.
• I trust you all not to mock me too badly if I set out for it and didn't finish.

I had my route ready from the beginning - it was on the original itinerary, to which I have been more or less able to keep. Start in Salt Lake City, UT,  go to Ames, IA. The remaining questions were: where and when to begin. After thinking it over, since I had not done much night riding, I didn't want to be doing it at the end of the stretch, when I would likely be the most tired. Since I was looking at a 24-hour span, I figured putting the dark hours in the middle would be the best plan. So: start off at or around noon, finish around noon the next day.

For the details of the challenge I was attempting, you can go here:

Saddlesore 1000

As you can see, the documentation requirements are pretty stringent. I had had the thought that Eric could be my start witness, but he needed to get back home long before I was ready to start out, so, fortunately, the manager at the gas station/store where I began was happy to be my "start witness". He was actually very nice about the whole thing, and agreed to take a selfie with me, as well. With my first gas receipt (Maveriks in SLC, 11:44a.m., MT) tucked into the top pocket of my tank bag, I hit the road for I-80, heading East.

I made pretty quick work of the rest of Utah, which was actually lovely, but in a low-key, desert-y kind of way to which I had become inured. The regular daily dose of absurdly beautiful landscapes can become debilitating, and blunt one's ability to appreciate beauty when it rears its head. So it took me a second, as I rode into Wyoming, to realize that everything changed, as if on cue, in subtle and not so subtle ways.

Utah is all reds and ochres and sharp contrasts...

Wyoming is more subtle (in the area I was in, anyway) and the chalky colors were fascinating to me.

For one thing, Wyoming is a different color, There is a green mineral in the lower strata of the buttes in Wyoming that renders the whole state a sort of wan, but cheerful easter palette. (please bear in mind that when I speak of a state in generalities like that, I am, of course, only speaking of the portion of the state visible from I-80. I'm locked into a narrow passage, here, and am grateful, actually, that most states (I'm lookin' at you, Nevada) have let the Interstate run through some of the more attractive terrains they have to offer.

You have to blow up the picture, but you can see the faint green at the bottom, the color fo lichen, more than anything else I can think of...

Wyoming is also Big. I mean, freakin' HUGE. My goal, having to get through both Wyoming and all of Nebraska as the main parts of the ride, was to kill off Utah and Wyoming in the first 12 hours, and Nebraska and what I needed of Iowa in the second half day. Things were going well - I had originally planned to ride 40 minutes and rest 20 minutes, rinse and repeat, until complete. It became quickly clear that the rhythm of available gas stations and rest stops was NOT going to cooperate with that schedule, so I adjusted on the fly: 1 hour riding, 1/2 hour resting, repeat, etc. Eventually, what actually worked was simply to ride as long as I could, until pain or the need for gas or a pee made me stop, and then rest for exactly half as long as I had ridden. I stopped in Evanston, WY and in "Little America" which seems to actually be a place name, but also a travel oasis kind of place, with a truckers oasis, a family/car/bus oasis, camping, and even regular rooms. It is also the weirdest thing to see this grove of pine trees rising for no reason out of the high desert. I think I forgot to take pictures there, but here are some from the internet...

In case you think I am exaggerating about Little America being an oasis of green in the middle of the desert...

I planned on two real meal breaks, and the time for dinner coincided exactly with the advent of Rawlins, Wyoming. So to Michael's "Big City" diner I went (no lie)...

This - thing - was outside Michael's Big City Bar and Grille. I think it's... art? Yes, that's real barbed wire.

It was... interesting. But more importantly, somehow, they managed to take an hour to cook a freaking cheese steak, so I didn't even get to eat my dinner. When I asked to take it to go, they were disappointed for me, but obligingly brought me a "to-go" container. Now, I have been wearing my motorcycle armor jacket the whole time in the restaurant - I have the helmet with the audio hookup and the GoPro on the seat next to me - it can't be a surprise that I am riding a motorcycle. (The timing thing, I excuse - I never made it clear that I had a deadline, and should have, as soon as I realized that the one waitress was very overwhelmed... it was a busy night for them, they had customers...) But when they brought me a giant bag with not only the fries I had just specifically said to leave out, but a big bowl of au jus - they have a special idea of what  Philly Cheese Steak is... well, I just left the au jus on their bench outside, and took the styrofoam clamshell and crammed it into the bungee net holding my gear on the back of the luggage rack (remember this - it's important-ish...)

And got back on the road. It's now after 7 pm, and I have been on the road for seven hours, about 5 of which have been actual riding hours, and I have gone about 300 miles. If I make a mere 200 miles in the remaining 5 hours before midnight, I will be right on track. The next stretch goes without a hitch, I am riding with the sun setting behind me in Wyoming, and I have to say, it's kind of pretty, but I am trying to focus, and there is a lot of traffic because of construction on I-80. Single tracking with semis coming at you three to six feet away with a closing speed of 140 mph is a little nerve-racking, and also creates wind artifacts that require concentration.

I hated not being able to spend time looking at this, perhaps catching it just as it went down....

At the Pilot in Laramie, the sunset still lingered in the western sky, even though it was dark for all practical purposes.

By the time of my fourth stop, it was genuinely dark, although there were still signs of the sun setting in the west behind me. I stopped at the Pilot in Laramie, WY, which was weird only because while stopped I received a message from one of my colleagues about a possible workshop at school with Tectonic theatre group, the company that famously did the Laramie Project. A sign? While in Laramie, I ate the first half of my cheesesteak, (by now cold, but still, actually, a fine sandwich), crammed it back into the bungee netting, and took off. By now, I imagine, it is nearly 10pm (I have times on the gas receipts - but I didn't perhaps foolishly, keep time notes on my log entries for each stop) and it's starting to get much cooler, so I put on the first extra layer I have with me - the fleece under-layer.

I stop once more in Wyoming, sometime before midnight, in Cheyenne, at - wait for it - another Little America? I gas up, and add the windbreaker that I hope will get me through the night. I also eat the rest of the sandwich I got from the Big City (tee-hee) and threw the styrofoam clamshell away (the fries were a horrid gelatinous mass) and got back on the bike and drove off again. (paying attention?)

At 12:10 am, I hit the Loves in Sidney, NE. For the first time, when I gas up, the pump won't print a receipt, so I get a duplicate from the clerk inside, and also fill up on a coffee and cocoa. I check the weather ahead, and it still looks like I am going to be able to dodge the growing storms around me - there has been obvious recent rainfall at my last two stops, but I am watching the radar and my timing is working. Apparently, I will, over the course of the evening/morning, miss serious storms, and in one case, a nearby tornado, by less than ten minutes. For the first time, having gotten out of Wyoming on time, and feeling still really fine, thanks to my full day of rest, I think that I am going to be able to do this.

During the next leg, I see a sign in the dark: Scenic Overlook. Now, I am riding through Nebraska. It's dark, to be sure, but I am pretty confident of my assessment of the surrounding terrain, and the word "scenic" sounds like it might be hyperbole. But I decide I am due for a little leg stretch, anyway, so I pull off, somewhere near Big Springs NE. I am really not sure what they think I am supposed to be looking at during the day - it looks like a plain, plains field, going on forever, though there is train off in the distance to the south, but as luck would have it, on this night, the moon is behaving  very scenically. I snap a photo and send it to Bonnie, even though I know (or at least certainly hope) she is asleep.

This really was lovely. I still haven't figured out why this spot is a "scenic" overlook, but, hey...

I get back on the road, and my next stop is in Gothenberg, NE, at 4:20 a.m., at Cubby's Travel Plaza. I expect to be on the ground for at least a half hour, so I go to unpack the charging cable for the FreeCom (helmet audio) because no one wants to be trying to stay awake on the road without tunes.

Okay, now go back three paragraphs, to the end of the graph... what don't you see? I threw out the sandwich package... do you see where I refastened the bungee net before I took off again? Yeah.

Neither do I.

...the top half of the bungee net is hanging limply around the big bungee cord that serves as a backup for the whole "back rack pack." (thank goodness for redundancy...)

Right up to this point, I have been feeling shockingly good. I have been on the road for 16 and a half hours, actually riding for more than ten of those, and I have covered 700 of the requisite 1000 miles - I am on a good pace. But I am sure I don't have to explain the gut-blow that comes from finding you have done something blindingly stupid, and possibly debilitating... I stop and assess the damage - I have lost the GoPro bag, and it had most of the adapters and charging cables for the whole venture in there. I have lost my pillow - no big deal, but it makes me sad, because I liked it... I have lost the Purple seat pad. Expensive, but I was only using it in the first leg of each day, anymore, anyway. And I have lost the Bonneville Salt Flats hat I bought as "my" souvenir. Everything else has been saved by the redundant bungee cord. Phew. (Ask me sometime about why I am so paranoid a packer, and I or one of my closest friends will explain why ALL the semi-formal clothes I owned for a full decade wound up on the side of the PA turnpike one October....)

So:

There won't be any video for a while - oh well. I have to charge the audio - but that's a USB to micro-USB, and I find one inside the Cubby's Travel Plaza convenience store. Now I can charge the audio, and the only other thing that really matters is my trusty iPhone 7, which charges off its own cable on the bike. The rest can wait. Off we go.

Aurora is the last stop in Nebraska - breakfast and gas, at about 7am. I vow to take the whole hour until 8am. I am not sure I can make it to Des Moines (my adjusted destination) on the full tank of gas, but I can get close. Now, since Gothenberg, a lot has happened. 1) I am still adjusting to the stupid loss of the stuff - mostly not essential, but expensive, and it's more my pride than any thing else. 2) Also - remember, I have been in Nebraska since around midnight - and I haven't seen it. Since the sun went down in Wyoming, I have, with the exception of the brief, romantic respite of the moonscape in the scenic overlook, been inside a video game. There are lines to the right of me, there are lines to the left of me, (here I am, stuck in the middle with...) and whizzing past me incredibly fast, and sometime only feet away, are headlights coming the other way. That's it. Some rain, but very little, thanks to my father's insistence I learn trig at an early age, and some cold, but that's it. Dark, speed, and the occasional truck stop for about 7 hours. Frankly, not even a very good video game.

Wait - is that GREEN on the side of the road...?

But, at around 5:45, I sensed that the sky ahead was getting just a little less black than the rest of the panorama, and I drove into sunrise. I say sunrise, but of course, that would imply that the sun rose. Really, I drove into a lovely sort of cloudy greyscape, and a tinge of pink and salmon grew around its edges as the luminance increased. Slowly, I began to realize that I was in a completely different world than the one I had said good night to a few hours before - truly - I could have been home. East Nebraska is much flatter than my stomping grounds of Central and Western maryland, but not nearly so flat as SoMd or the Eastern shore - otherwise, it was a doppelganger for the east coast - deciduous trees, deep green fields, even crops I recognized. It was, honestly, slightly demoralizing, as it felt like the first little signal that this adventure was coming to an end - but at the same time there was the comforting familiarity of "home" - when a little comfort was certainly welcome. As I flew further east into the growing light, I began to wonder if I should pull over and put the rainsuit on again, because it looked as though the sky ahead was growing dar-

Poof. Everything was gone.

What has appeared, in the early morning light as though it might be clouds ahead, had actually been a pea-soup fog bank much closer than if it had been clouds. Every single vehicle seemed to be taken by surprise, and there was screeching, braking: a flurry of cars, semis, and me slowing but not slowing too quickly, putting on our hazards, feeling out the distance so that we could all see each others tail lights, but no closer, and

Phew.

No collisions, no accidents at all, that I was aware of, but that may have been the most hairy moment of the whole trip for me. It was the densest fog I think I have ever been in, and were all going 80 mph. Later, and it would have shown up as white, and we would have known what it was; earlier, and someone might have died, because it wasn't a gradual push into a deepening fog - it was like flying into a cloud. But, every one's luck held out, and onward we went - the fog petered out, before we got into Iowa, which looked even more like home.

It is around 10 am. I am in Iowa, and I am less than two hours away from my goal. And this is when I hit the wall. Like the fog, it came out of no where. One minute, I am feeling great, and the next I realize I don't remember the last 10-15 minutes. I pull over to a rest stop (remember, it's full daylight, by now, and it's sunny again.) It is a perfect, summer day in West Iowa, and I feel like I am underwater. One thing I haven't mentioned is that my dear friends Chris and Mike have both been watching this. They have (along with Bonnie and one or two other familial types) have had access to my GPS, and have been able to track me in real time. Since I launched off on the Iron Butt Run, they have been tracking me and being encouraging, noting my progress, even, apparently, in Mike's case, zooming in on Google Earth to look at what I am seeing, on occasion. They didn't know it, but in the last hour and a half, their encouragement was the main thing that kept me going. I puled into a rest stop, and took serious assessment. I had caffeine, which I hadn't really used since the one coffee the night before. More importantly, I had sugar. I looked at the distance, at my gas, and decided i had made it this far, I would set out cautiously, and singing and reciting the multiplication tables all the way, I headed out for West Des Moines, where I would have definitely have covered a thousand miles, in definitely less than 24 hours, and there was a Motel 6 room waiting for me. Now I had some concern that I was hallucinating at first - but no, there really were giant fan blades on the road with me. Iowa, more in evidence than any other state I went through, is really serious about wind power. I passed two farms, just in the first third fo the state, that dwarfed any I have seen (and I have seen some really big ones in southern IN) and was CONSTANTLY passed on the road by trucks transporting... blades. i don't know what else to call them. I had seen one on a truck, once, on I-95, but ti was a distance way from me. Having them pass right by you is another thing entirely.

You just can't have any idea of how huge these are. Each vane is over 100 feet...

One more brief, not-even-logged stop at a truck pulloff (where I got to take this pic of a windmill) just to catch my breath, and I ran into West Des Moines and the QuikTrip where the manager agreed to be my stop witness - and to take a selfie, too...

12:08pm.

Now, if you remember, I left at 11:44 a.m. ... but that was Mountain Time. This is Central.

11 hours, 36 minutes. 1070 miles.

I have often wondered if there would be any pleasure for me in this sort of riding - riding for the sheer distance and time of it, just to be on the road, the kind of miles that truckers put down. Now that I have done it (badly - for believe me, success or no, this was badly done - wrong bike, sketchy weather, etc.) I can see how it has its own unique charm - it is, really, not about the destination, or even the side show - it is about pure riding. The road slipping by beneath you, the changes in the vistas, the sun coming up on a completely different landscape than the one on which it sank. I would not do this (or, save a few days about which I have already waxed.. poetic?, any of this trip again on the sportbike I had available. But with a sport touring bike, and a little more rest between legs. Sure. I could see doing another serious distance run - maybe for my 60th birthday I'll try the 50CC (that's where you cross the country in 50 hours or less ;-)

Special thanks to all of you who were pulling for me, and to Chris and Mike for buoying me up when I needed it.

next up... deja vu.

Happy Endings.

It's my birthday.

I'm 56.

I woke up next to Bonnie today, at the beach, sharing an amazing rental with some of my very closest friends (family, really) in the world.

Seriously: this place is ridiculous. Kudos to Mike and Noelle, who found it.

The very first constructive thing I did was go into the town of Rehoboth with Bonnie, and ride to the end of Rehoboth Avenue, where this whole shebang began, one month and 4 days ago, and take a "end of the road" selfie, and a matching picture to the one with which we began the adventure.

I love symmetry. Right back where we started, just about 1 month and four days ago. Same weather, even. Only the visor has changed.

Photo credit to Bonnie, who also took the original starting photo.

(Update: this is going to be published on Monday, because technical difficulties have followed me home from the West.)

Then we went and got some amazing pastries and headed home to the "compound" which, as far as we can tell, leaves Shangri-La in the dust.

This is our view. Seriously.

I'm done. The Pirsig portion, the Return Portion, the Iron Butt Portion, the other portions ("and here, right above your spleen, is your liver...") All the Portions.

1 month, 4 days.
7,546.8 miles.
4 nights camping.
8 nights as a couch guest
1 night riding
22 nights in motels of some stripe.
Somehow, I only got wet, at all, 5 times.
I crossed state borders 28 times, and saw (for me) 12 new states. All "big" ones. Wow.
Countless (literally, although I will probably try to figure it out at some point) meals, restaurants, rest stops, coffee shops, diners, etc.)
1 set of tires. (dayum. The Michelin Pilot Road 4 is THE single best all around tire I have ever ridden. It rocks)
3 minor repairs. 2 of which I managed myself.
1 sportbike, which I now feel confident I know better than any other bike I have ever owned, including bikes I have owned much longer.

Of all the things I underestimated, the foremost is probably how long it will take to unpack this experience. I am, I think, reasonably aware of just how lucky I am to have been afforded the opportunity, and, if you are reading this, please know that my gratitude is overflowing for your part in making it happen. I'm really pleased that we have contributed over 5k USD to Tricia's Fund, but equally aware that I have benefited from your grace, and I hope that my musings, pictures, and soon, I swear, video, will be some small token in thanks.

I am especially indebted to those of you who were part of my hospitality network across the country - the benefit of a warm place to make my bed, with friendly faces, more than made up, many times over, for the ignominies of regular Motel 6 failings and the occasional "even worse" hostelry. Extra props to Eric Suess, who left his home and family to journey to SLC just to hang out - long overdue! and to Chris and Elspeth who took me in both coming and going. Josh and Mel - I couldn't have made it without you as a turning point, and Bonnie and I are both grateful for your friendship and hospitality in your new, awesome home. Carol and Don, I hope we have a chance to spend more quality time together, but I loved seeing you both. Jo Ann - well, we will find more time soon. You are awesome. And to my household at HH, PW47 (story still to come, see below) thanks for taking me in at a moment's notice, and for reminding me that awesome summer experiences are nothing new for this old man, and that I have lots of Gypsy Vagabond Savage-ry™ to look forward to in future summers. (On that note, Bonnie has mentioned wanting to ride up to Maine, if I can acquire a suitably passenger friendly cycle in the near future... but I think she's probably just trying to get my mind off whether I should try and do this all again next summer...)

So, the riding's over, but the writing and the e-mails will prolly continue for some time.

Still to come:

Iron Butt: Salt Lake City to Des Moines in 24 Hrs., or: "How stupid, exactly, can the desert air make you?"

Smells Like...? or, "WTF is in mah nose...?!"

The Playlist, or "Oh, so THAT's what that song means..."

The Minstrel Boy to the War has gone... (well, for a day and a half)

And "There and Back Again" or "Hello Pollen My Old Friend..."

As the last title expresses, I am back on the East Coast, and have, apparently, developed an allergy to the East. I think the West cleaned out my sinuses in a way they had not been before, including whatever resistance I had built up to pollen and mold (I used to have very bad allergies and now they are back in spades. The moment I got into Southern Maryland - go figure. But we hope that modern pharmacology and the sea will clear them out sufficiently.

Along with a return to the East, comes a return to my curmudgeonly ways. Love you all. More soon.

 Okay.

This where it will begin.

My old friend Eric Suess, who drove down from Pocatello, because we were not able to connect on the way out, has just left to drive home to his job and family. (after taking a day to drive down, get a room at the same Motel 6, and spend the evening and morning showing me around SLC, reconnecting, and having some really good eats. My friends are crazy. And awesome.)

I have gotten the room at the M6 for tonight, as well. I am going to gather my strength, what's left of my wits, and sometime between now and checkout (noon tomorrow), I will take off for the big run at an Iron Butt (Saddlesore 1000 edition). My target looks to still be Ames, IA, a Google Maps distance of 1060 miles. My plan is to ride one hour and rest for 1/2 half hour 16 times, until I arrive or decide that it is just not in the cards. For those who worry about such things, I promise that I am sane, will do my best to be safe, and will exercise extreme self-care leading up to and during the attempt. I honestly don't know if I am (up to it) because the last two days have really taxed me.

After leaving Mel and Josh in San Rafael, Bonnie and I went into SF proper, and bedded down at the
Beck's Motor Lodge in The Castro - I can heartily recommend  the Becks, as both a lodging and a good anchor for exploration. I should mention that Bonnie got there before I did, and was looking pretty worried when I showed up - Waze had routed us via "the Divisidero" I swear, I thought I was going to fall over backwards on some of the hills - you know that "San Francisco is hilly" but Da-yum. I found myself fighting my way up hills that were just terrifying. I was more worried about going down, but that turned out to not be such a big deal.We had a lovely walk around the area, found a nice place to eat (the SF part of our trip was a bit of a gastronomic binge) and would have stayed there if we could for our second night. We couldn't.

I felt the Beck's was a little dear, and thought I could find something more reasonable in town... and Bonnie let me. THAT won't be happening again for a while. The place (Europa Hotel) wasn't awful, but it didn't have AC, so we had to keep the windows open, and it was noisy outside, and there were burlesque places on ether side of us (which was not, in itself problem, but they work really hard and loudly to get customers to come in.) BUT - we were right in the heart of Little Italy, which was fun, and we had dinner at The Stinking Rose, which was AWESOME. Over the course of the two days, we saw much more of SF than I would have on my own - B is much better at this than I was, and got over her annoyance that I didn't really have a plan, and kept us moving and engaged the whole time.

We:
Rode  a streetcar
Rode a cable car
Went to Fisherman's Wharf, and saw the ships
Went to the heart of the Castro
Visited the Zen Center (where Pirsig's son was killed)
Went to meet her elusive and legendary friend Barbara at The Ramp - an off-the-beaten-path kind of      place that had an amazing bloody mary for brunch
Had ice cream downtown MADE WITH LIQUID NOTROGEN
Had breakfast at a great place downtown where we just beat the breakfast rush
Went to SFMOMA and saw an unbelievable Magritte exhibition
and finally, went to the Motel 6 by the Oakland airport, which was NOT as bad as she was a afraid it       would be, had a sortof birthday dinner for her at a very nice Italianesque place, and we kissed and said our goodbyes....

I'm loading all the photos at the end of this post, in a sort of montage, because: so much.

Then, it was time for me to pick up where I left off.

Since we didn't do the Tahoe thing, I was effectively a day behind, now, so I rejiggered my route to do two longer days to get me to SLC by last night. These, unfortunately, made for the two very hardest days of riding so far. I set out from Oakland, and it was all lovely for about 25 miles, maybe thirty. Then: Heat. I had grown used to the cool temps of the coast (which were really cool - Bonnie often wore a second layer...) From thirty miles outside Oakland all the way to Winnemucca, NV, it was between 103 and 107. Air temp. in the shade. Worst it's been since the Dakotas, and this was harder riding. But I made it, and camped out at the KOA, which was a bit of a revelation, both in terms of how much the place made it easy to camp -  (wifi? pool? elctricity? BOOZE ON SALE ON SITE?!) but, also, unfortunately, in terms of how little sleep I got. Birds. Never. Shut. Up. Also: ground is hard.

But, I survived, (and was a little pleased that all my camping juju came back in a rush) and was up and at'em, and eager to make an early start to beat the heat the next day. I was at breakfast in "town" by 7, and on the road by 9:30. Now, on the one hand - it was noticeably cooler (a "mild" 93 at 10 in the morning) but I had no idea what was in store for me later in the day. I made Elko, NV, with not much ado, and parked for very full lunch at The Coffee Mug (which, sadly, didn't do much in the way of coffee) , including pie, and headed out for Wendover, which had originally been my SLC fallback, so I felt like I was catching up.

Wendover, as it happens, is at the entrance to the Bonneville Salt Flats - I was soooo tempted to just dump the luggage, head out to the range, and see if i could wangle just one pass - to see what the Interecptor would really do. But discretion beat valor to a bloody pulp, and I settled for buying a hat. (for the record, the first thing I have bought - for me, at least - on the whole trip. I'm not much of a one for souvenirs, any more, I guess.) I stopped just long enough for a Gatorade and a hat purchase, and headed out again.

That's when it all went wrong. First of all, the sign "High Wind Area" comes about ten miles too late. I had been in crisis mode for about six miles by the time I passed that, and I think the truck next to me heard me shout "No SH__ SherlocL?!!!) through my helmet. The salt flats are.. well... flat. And that should have been a warning, but I'm tired, and well:

There was a constant cross wind blowing at between 45-50 miles per hour across I-80 - AND the speed limit had gone up to 80mph. Now, I know what you're thinking - but, Joe, you don't HAVE to go 80 - and you're right - I didn't. but if I didn't keep up at least 73-75, the closing speeds from all the cars (and giant trains of trucks) doing 85 was truly terrifying. And, then, the shoulder went away. Actually, there was just a sign: "Soft Shoulder". What that meant was that the shoulder was gravel, that looked (I couldn't look at very long, because trying not to die was a full time job) pretty sketchy even for gravel. But i now one thing - you don't want to try and pull onto gravel at 75mph on a motorcycle. So, there was the added stress of not having someplace to go if the wind did succeed in blowing me off the road, which it felt as if it might at any moment, because the combination of the speed and wind made my front end feel very light. And the road stretched off into nothingness - just a white blur of shimmering mirage - no turns,  nothing. I really didn't know how long I could last.

The answer, as it turns out, was about 40 minutes. Finally, in the distance, coalesced the image of mountains, and I knew that with mountains would come some break in the wind. (side question I will reexamine later - why TF aren't the Western states covered with wind farms? I mean, come on...)

Eventually, the wind lessened, and the landscape grew less... scary. In fact, at one point, there was transcendent moment when the flats next to me became saturated with water (from where, I know not) and the moutains were reflected in the sand flat like a mirror - beautiful. But I was so stressed from white-knuckling my way across 60 miles of desert, I wasn't really in the mood for too many photos. At last, I arrived at the lake, and then, the city. I met Eric, and sort of collapsed into my room. We went out later for a bite and a couple of beers, and conversation that calmed my nerves substantially, and I made the decision that I wasn't going any where today if I could help it.

So, here I am, a little spooked by the travails of the last two days, but plotting and hoping that the worst is over.

No matter what comes next, this is certainly the ride of a lifetime.

Thanks for being along.

On the way into SF

 Divisidero Street. Geez, Waze, how about a little warning?

The view from Beck's. Pretty cool.

This place was amazing.

The Stinking Rose is sort of Joe Allen's West

Now, that's a lot of bottles and corks....

There was a lot of action outside our hotel downtown.

While passing the salt flats (slightly before everything went to heck in the wind) my trip passed 5000 miles.

This was gorgeous.

So great to see Eric again!

The theatre in SLC where many of my old college professor Julie Jensen's works premiered