Drenched at Shell gas station in Burnet, Texas pelted by a violent thunderstorm and a tsunami of adrenaline, I was done. It’s one of the moments when you’ve gone beyond your limits and survived. There’s nothing left in the cupboard and your body says, “No more.” Being with Randy, my long time riding buddy, I wasn’t alone. Dealing with adversity and massive thunderstorm fronts on a motorcycle are best done in pairs. Like Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea giant blue marlin, you need a witness. We had caught the 1,000+ pound marlin all right, but that thunderstorm had its hooks in us. Boundaries though, are an exquisitely personal thing. Put two people together under pressure and they will literally float to the surface as this story unfolds.
It began as these things usually do with an early glass half full or empty prediction. Some people plan for the worst case and others minimize for the best case. Taking a motorcycle trip involves a lot of decisions and small details that can become crucial later on. At best, it’s a healthy kind of joyful paranoia. At its worst you’ll have an EMS truck and trailer with a spare bike following you everywhere. My friend Randy is a maximizer. He has the best of everything and everything in its place. He loves to ride and has the ratio of joyfull paranoia finely tuned for a great trip.
On the other hand, I have a tendency to start backyard brush fires with diesel fuel and a low pressure garden hose as my fire protection device. Once the flames instantly became as tall as the house, it’s time to call the Fire Department. True story. I just think differently. With that philosophy as my guide, I take a look at the tires on my BMW touring bike before a 1,400 mile round trip to Big Bend. Randy and I love riding there. Doing the math, I considered the hassle of getting these changed and how much life they have left. Conclusion? “Good enough.”
At the time, Randy and I had the exact same BMW R1200RT. We were evenly matched when it came to tearing up twisty roads between the longer distances where you hit the cruise control and groove to the tunes in your helmet. I’ll admit that Randy is the better rider which is fine by me. When I’m giving chase, he’s spontaneous and fun. Remember that for later. Most of the miles for a touring bike are straight ahead which wears out the center of your tires faster than on their sides. Big Bend is a dry desert with coarse pavement that offers a lot of tire grip when leaned over. And, I had plenty of side grip which we both put to good use. As Randy would say, “We had a large time.”
Dressing up for these trips is another set of “good enough” decisions not because your stuff wears out, but because you have to tick so many different boxes. Hot or cold? Wet or dry? Fast or slow? Finally including whatever you will be wear when you get there. Having T-boned a deer riding an earlier bike with helmet, gloves and a T-shirt on, I’d made the decision years prior to buy the best available protective gear regardless of cost. Wanting to impress my wife with a newfound commitment to safety, I modelled it proudly for her. She’s always been supportive of my riding, though with a melancholy sense of humor. Looking up at me she said with a bit of congratulatory flourish, “You’re going to look great in the coffin!” Not what I expected, “Good enough though.” I’ll take it.
Randy shares this philosophy so we both wear Aerostich suits legendary among the hard core riding community. Thankfully, the undertaker will have less work to do on both of us. There ought to be a discount for that, but I digress. These suits are like putting on Tony Stark’s Ironman suit. You feel invincible and believe you can ride through anything. They even come in custom colors. I’ve had mine for over 25 years.
We’re getting to the boundary part, but it’s important to appreciate that for all intents and purposes we were Marvel characters on two wheels flying in rhythmic formation to the bass beat. What could go wrong? The one global variable that we can’t control, Texas weather.
The way back home from Big Bend is 400 miles, two gas stops and about 7 hours over the wide, straight and stretching expanse of west Texas. Like running a marathon, it takes a certain mentality to save something for the end of a ride like this. When you get tired, you make mistakes. Rain makes this worse. At first, it was a drizzle as we turned east out of Ft. Stockton only a few miles into the return trip and never stopped. No problem, we’re dry inside of our Marvel suits. Press on.
Often when you find yourself in a tight spot, it’s a drip by drip matter of degree gone unnoticed. The drizzle became a solid rain, then lightning and thunder, then a sideways driving rain. This was sort of a problem in that the Aerostich has one admitted weakness. In a hard rain the crotch leaks. “Hmm, wet underwear, but we’re getting closer to home.” Press on.
Torrential rains eventually lead to a version of Defcon 5 for a motorcyclist, flooding. The road had pools of water everywhere that we were weaving through like playing Dodgeball at comical, Marvel speeds. This is when another biker phenomenon kicks in. Seeing Randy not stopping, means this must not be a problem. It’s also known by the associative property of “How hard can it be?”
Right about then, I hit a pool of water. With a loose grip on the handlebars, I felt both wheels of my loaded BMW “float” over it. That got my attention snapping an earlier “good enough” decision into consciousness. Randy’s new tires had tread allowing the water to squeeze from underneath the rubber maintaining contact with the asphalt. In contrast, mine were two in line flat bottom water skies. Not good. No wonder he is the more fearless wet crotched Marvel character.
The Colorado river just before coming into Burnet runs underneath a long bridge over a dam on highway 29. By now, I’m very gingerly handling the controls as I ski along behind Randy. Thinking about how flat those bridges are with water cascading evenly over their pavement, there’s not many ways to play Dodgeball there. Pondering that, Randy and I come up behind a Jeep and truck throwing up rooster tails of blinding water. Randy’s signature spontaneity kicks in where he treads the needle between the two vehicles at a 45 degree pass across the center line into a clear air ahead of me. Affectionally called “squirrel mode,” this is darting at any angle, any direction at any time. I love Randy, I really do.
Left behind the Jeep with my eyes straining toward the bridge ahead, the driver suddenly slams on the brakes to make a left turn. Mere feet ahead I grab my brakes as much as I dare while my heart comes out of my chest on a spring flying forward. Bouncing off the tailgate of the Jeep on its way home, I’m wondering in slow motion what happens when the skis go sideways out from under me. Unlike the lake ahead, the pools of water underneath are not that deep. As my heart was snapping back into my chest and thoughts shifting from Randy’s squirrel move, the Jeep made the turn. Hallelujah! I’ll take a flooded flat bridge over a stopped Jeep as rolls of thunder clapped their approval.
Riding through Burnet as the rain became even more intense, we found shelter near the pumps of a Shell gas station. With the Jeep brand embossed on my heart, I got off the bike thankful to be wet, worn out and in one piece. Randy comes bounding over and says with his new tire, maximizing certainty, “Let’s keep going, I think it’s going to pass away from us.” Not sharing his enthusiasm and having hopefully learned my lesson about “good enough,” I said in a rare spec of wisdom, “Let’s see what the weather radar says.” Turns out that we had been riding along in it with the radar colors you don’t want to see where we were going.
My intensely personal boundaries surfaced like a Hemingway’s 1,000 marlin. Turning to see a Thai restaurant right next to the Shell station in a small Texas town under a thunderstorm, I went into my own squirrel mode saying, “I’m cold and hungry, I’m gonna go have some curry and dry out.” Randy chose food over more Marvel adventure action and we had a great conversation as we usually do. There’s nothing like surviving to tell the war stories especially when you’re complicit in starting the war.
Deciding your “good enough” is a healthy form of paranoia, known as boundaries by another name. Respecting those for yourself and others makes room for enjoying the marrow of life without too much drama. Four broken ribs and a punctured lung later taught me that more personally, but that’s another story.
New tires are a good thing. Thai places seem to be just where you need them. Don’t put too much stock in your Marvel suit and don’t show it to your wife.
Friends of adventure are for life.