A little story I started...

Are you talking to me? J says rolling over for a few more winks half asleep. No I say, thinking to my self, I’m just trying to read a silly book and can’t seem to get a passage straight in my mind for thinking of my own trip soon to come. The book is a little paper back J clipped from the library the other day; On the water by Nat stone, he’s rowing a glorified kayak with outrigger oarlocks from the waters in town (nyc) to mexico via different waterways, the first, or getting to the first is the Hudson river. I’ve always wanted to sail Athena up that river, there’s something about it that draws me to it, but with a five foot draft she’s probably not the ideal river craft but it would have to be some sort of sailing boat, hell, I’m not rowing, as much as I like to row I’m much better at sitting in the stern sheets watching the wind on the main do my rowing for me. Still, as always the lazy bastard. I’ve never even been on it but have driven, both by car and motorcycle along it, over it and sat on its banks many times. The place has more history going on than you can shake a stick at, just looking at it and the places and land mass’s it boggles the imagination. Forts and buildings, factories that have soured the waters for decades just now being cleaned by human beings concerned and by Mother Nature herself. What a place!

This journey of mine, the latest one has come from a long time ago so to speak. I stopped riding street bikes back in the 70’s or more honestly I took the Norton off the road because of a little thing I had with a chevy suburban on the long island expressway, I was taking Gabriel, a step son, into his grandmothers for a month at some summer camp and for the first time it sunk in my head that we both could’ve been run over in the blink of an eye by a stupid driver not even seeing how close he was to snuffing out two perfectly good lives. My youngest was just born and the thought of her going through life without a dad didn’t sit well. Faith, would have a dad even if it meant not riding street anymore, or for awhile. Well, Faith is thirty and lives in North Carolina teaching school and Zephyr is twenty five working a good job a few towns west of me. Now it’s my time, time to resume my motorcycle Odyssey. Riding dirt is my religion but not much can compare to a trip on a motorcycle, its almost has visceral as rowing to mexico!

As Nate makes his connections, two so far with people of the road its this third that I’m reading about that I’m trying to grasp in what is left of my brain that I’m having such trouble with. The book is well written but really in his own head and it takes a while (especially for me being such a shit reader) for me to be there with him but it’s the only way to read this lovely little book, you’ve gotta be right there with him every step of the way or its not as much fun… tobecontinued



perseverance furthers