Arkansas Lost and Alone Part 2 of 4: This Is Starting to Suck
It is true that I have never ridden before. But is it true that I'm going to ride this motorbike all the way to Argentina? I honestly don't know what is going to happen and I may be one Guatemalan girlfriend, or one son's injury back home, or one stolen laptop away, from just stopping.
BLOG POST #005 - Lost and Alone 2 of 4: This Is Starting to Suck
How I learned to ride a motorcycle, speak Spanish and not die. Riding solo in search of adventure from Detroit to Argentina.
I put in a call to Kevin, president of my "Biker Council of Grand Elders" back home, for a five-minute briefing about what I'm in for. I didn't have a lot of tools, but this was all part of the challenge. After I had adequately studied the problem, I hiked up the road and found a guy out on his front lawn. I asked if I could borrow a wrench. My assumption is good that everybody, living out in the country, in Arkansas, has a wrench I can borrow.
Later, when I had a chance in the next town, I bought the exact right tool for this job. Weight and luggage space are at a premium so I hate to add anything to my gear, but I had a feeling this would come up again.
Once the chain problem was fixed, I rode up the hill to return the wrench. I told the neighbor guy how grateful I was for the kindness of strangers, and we chatted for a few minutes while he sat leaning over his ride-on lawn mower steering wheel with the engine cut.
It is true that I have never ridden before. But is it true that I'm going to ride this motorbike all the way to Argentina? I honestly don't know what is going to happen and I may be one Guatemalan girlfriend, or one son's injury back home, or one stolen laptop away, from just stopping. At this point talking to the neighbor fellow in Arkansas, anybody in my shoes could say any outrageous thing. I could tell people I was going to the moon, but that doesn't mean it was going to happen. So, it seems a little ridiculous to say such a fantastical thought out loud when I'm only on day six or seven.
Last week when I was getting my motorcycle license, the course instructor looked at me with the cold dead eyes of a man very disinterested in my story. This was either disbelief at how preposterous my goal was, or else the same detachment that battle-hardened dogs of war have, who don't get too attached to the greenhorn they know will probably die on the first day of combat. Then again, maybe he was just a d*kkk. Thinking back, it was probably a mix of all three things.
I'm not even sure I believe me, at this point. but that is my story and I'm sticking to it.
Just like I originally said, "Argentina or bust."
Surprisingly, that first little wipeout did not even dent my own personal Global Happiness Index. If anything, it boosted my mood. Laying down the bike for the first time took some of the mystery, anxiety, and anticipation out of it. It proved that I could crash unharmed, and I can repair the bike.
Back on the road, I howl more joyous "Scaramouche" at the Ozarks.
It was now around four or five o'clock in the afternoon. I was getting far up into the hills at this point. The unmarked dirt track roads wound and twisted, with only an occasional branch-off or intersection. Houses were very sparse.
I couldn't make heads or tails of google maps on my handlebar stand. Cell signal blanked off and on, my GPS location was unreliable, and the roads themselves were not well mapped or marked. Just keeping La Barra upright took so much more concentration than on paved roads, I couldn't really look at my navigation anyway. I bring my hiker GPS into play at this point. Tracking with this device is reliable for coordinate locations anywhere on the globe but it doesn't have data for roads. I can only see where I have been before as breadcrumb dots on a blank topography.
I try to mark locations and build my own map of what is what. But Don's cabin remains elusive and seems to get no closer, no matter what I do. Nothing he tells me, nor nothing on any map, seems to line up with what I see with my eyes.
Portions of the road took a steep incline where I could feel the wheels slipping, so I needed to maintain good speed. I would pull over periodically. Then each time a new turn came, I would have to guess which way to go based on the last 1 mile of road I had memorized and hope for the best.
The vegetation in the middle of the road between the two tire tracks is a good running indicator of how remote I am. Flat, plain, dirt roads are good. Deep ruts with a mound formed in the middle mean the roads are less traveled. Grasses and weeds growing up along the center indicate seldom use. But then in some places there were actual saplings and bushes growing out of the road, so I know that nobody has been there in quite a while.
Flying up an incline, I threw rocks behind me digging a rut as I went. This started to feel like I was on water, with the back wheel fishtailing and the engine whining. I made the pivotal mistake of slowing down. The loose gravel gave way, causing the bike to rotate from under me and lay on her side. It wasn't a long drop to the ground, due to the high dirt-bank along the sides and I managed to get my leg out before it was pinned underneath.
This is really starting to suck.
I'm a little tired. It’s getting dark. It is not easy to pick up a 450-pound motorcycle off her side. Sometimes I can use my knee as a fulcrum or press my back against the seat to push her upright. There are lots of leverage tricks-of-the-trade, but none of them work on gravel. At its worst, this is an act of sheer dead-lifting power that my back does not appreciate. Being under a time crunch and pissed off that I'm stuck here does not help matters. But if I lose too much gas with it tilted sideways then the problems get exponentially worse.
Never mind being stuck in one place, no gas means no motorcycle battery charge, which means no mobile phone USB charge, which means no maps or phone-a-friend hotline to the outside world. Like always, it is a game of resources. I'm not into first person-shooters and online gaming, but I appreciate one principle that applies. You must pay attention to food, energy, health, gear, and water.
I had a hell of a time getting up that hill, throwing rocks and power-spraying a rooster tail of gravel behind me. I decided it was break-time at the top of the hill. As the hours passed, I repeated this same activity a lot. I dropped the bike. I got her back up. I took a break and did the best I could with the maps. I rode some more. I dropped the bike again.
Once it was completely dark my mood went dead serious, and I was not loving life. I didn't know exactly where I was or how far it was to civilization.
At one point I passed a house with lights on. That far out in the middle of nowhere I didn't want to scare anybody, and I didn't want to get shot. (Gotta love 'Murica, where gun violence is a realistic fear.)
But I needed help to figure out where the hell I was. I hollered my brightest, friendliest, "Hello! Anybody here?", as I circled the place at a safe distance. But no one answered. The lights seemed to be some kind of solar-charged LEDs that were dimmer by the minute as the night faded more and more towards a deep-sea black.
I start to think about sleeping here. Maybe this would be a decent place to camp. I have some food and a lot of water. I have a tent and I'm self-sufficient. I'm not in any danger, as far as I can tell. But I haven't seen humans in three or four hours.
I'm getting more and more lost and dismayed. As I rip down one road at 12MPH, I take a fateful left turn past some bushes where it quickly dips away. I brake as quickly as I can, but that still means a twenty-yard home-plate slide before coming to a stop with the bike on her side. This is troublesome. From what little I have learned so far, I know that I cannot get out of this, going back up the way I came.
I fight with the bike to quickly get her up again. But then having her upright doesn't do much for me anyway. I'm facing downhill and there's no goddamn reverse gear on a motorcycle. I had learned to do a 28-point turn by now, to get the bike swiveled around the other direction. But half of the time this means I got it stuck sideways across the trail. I eventually worked out a system of dragging the ass-end around by the wheel until it was aligned facing uphill again. This was a great hack, but like most things, I only really figured it out at the end.
Everything is a math problem. Everything is a battle. Everything is hard work. I am sweating like crazy in this heavy biker jacket, but I dare not take it off for fear of landing on the gravel with minimal protection.
I am not a Doomsday Prepper or hobby Survivalist. I don't aspire to be on a TV show where I pretend to be in danger and starve myself for weeks, three miles from a hunting lodge in Tanzania with nothing but a pen light and eight feet of fishing line. But I am extremely safety conscious.
I have a "two-thing" rule. Let's say the first thing is darkness, which is not ideal for riding. This makes it easier to hit potholes, to be hit by cars, or to get completely lost. Now let's say that the second thing is that I am a little low on fuel in a remote place. That triggers the "two-thing" rule requirement that I must fix one of these issues immediately. I would therefore need to go get gas ASAP. The reason for this urgency is because of the possible "third" thing just around the corner. If it is dark, I'm low on fuel in a remote area, and it starts raining, then the odds of a crash go way up. I can afford to have two complications. Having three or four problems at the same time means that life can get rather miserable and or dangerous in an instant.
My two-things at that moment were being stuck and being lost. If I ran out of water, then I would have been on a real clock to get out of there before I baked in the sweltering Arkansas humidity. If I needed to repair something, then I would have to abandon everything and go for tools or parts on foot. If my phone died, or I ran out of gas, or if a storm came through, then the trouble would have multiplied.
Worse yet, I could have broken my leg. Being lost with limited phone service and a home-made tree-branch splint lashed to my leg with a shoelace would mean picking a direction, crawling for several miles, and hoping for the best. My thought on that was, "No thank you."
"Two-things' ' rule or not, the trick is recognizing that I'm one little twist away from being in real trouble. So, I use my lifeline to call Don whenever I get a decent cell signal. I send him screenshots of my location so he can try to figure out which way for me to go. Eventually he connects me with a neighbor, Rhonda, who can dial 911 and put cops in the ballpark of my location if communication goes dark and they don't hear from me in six hours. I'm picturing a small-town sheriff hollering, "Bring in the bloodhounds, boyz." Rhonda is very kind for taking my call. She can't help me directly, but one more turn-for-the-worst and it could become life-threatening if no one knows I'm even here.
After a million mini-falls and engine re-starts, La Barra was turning over more and more slowly as the battery lost power. Then it died completely and made that feeble telltale clicking noise when I hit the start button.
Breathing flames out of my nostrils and eyes shooting death lasers, I was incensed. This was my "third thing". I did not need yet another layer of complication and difficulty.
If you push a stick-shift car downhill, then suddenly jump into first gear, the momentum of the wheels can back-feed a spark to the engine and start the motor up, even with a dead battery. I decided to go for this "clutch-pop" approach to bring La Barra back to life like some desperate attempt to use those zappy defibrillator paddles on a dying patient in the ER. I had been fighting steep inclines this whole time. However, in the grandest piece of irony so far, this was the one part of the night where I was not on a hill.
I took the luggage off the bike and walked it back, to push it up the previous hill as far as I could go. I kick-paddled downhill to get up as much speed as possible and released the clutch grip all at once, hoping it would start. I was beyond exhausted. Worse yet, my methods took some experimenting and flick-of-the-wrist timing, so I had to repeat the process three or four times. I honestly don't know where the energy was coming from, but I just kept going. I suppose, when I have no choice, I just “do it.”
The universe granted me one small victory as La Barra coughed, then sputtered, then roared to life. It was a short-lived moment of triumph, before I realized that one-step-forward doesn't make up for the sixteen-steps-backwards. I was still entrenched in this situation. Without a gas gauge, I am left to guess at how much fuel is in the tank. I'm still developing my feel for how many miles I can ride on a full tank. But that calculation had gone out the window, anyway, being that I had dropped the bike so many times and leaked an unknown amount of fuel.
I'm not super worried about it but keep looking into the gas tank with a pen light just to make sure. Right now, gas is good, so best to burn a bunch and make sure I don't have a problem starting the bike again. To recharge the battery, I rev the engine in the otherwise silent night for a good five minutes. I then let it idle another 10. I did a re-start just to make sure that my method was good. If this was not working and the battery wasn't charging, then I'd like to know now. But the second time, La Barra started up like a champ. I repeated the revving and the idling, just for good measure.
Staring off in the distance with the background noise of my single stroke running 2,000 RPMs, I am worried. I have finally put myself in a situation I truly have no idea how to fix. Worry turns to frustration. Frustration turns to anger. Anger turns to un-filtered rage in my chest.
My world is crashing down around me. A few weeks ago, I was in my new house with a woman that loves me. Today, I am lost and alone in the middle of this f*kked up pipe-dream journey going nowhere with no one to even call to share my troubles with. I thought that this would be fun, but instead it is grinding my nose deeper into the dirt hour by hour.
I feel like I'm face-down on the floor waiting to die, gripped on the back of the neck by a tiger. I struggle to breathe under its weight. In the awkward few minutes where I'm too tired to fight, as I muse, "Huh. I thought she would make a good pet."
I'm a dreamer. I say a lot of crazy things and when they happen, they're amazing. But this is the king daddy of them all. A true sufferfest.
With one more try to get uphill I do another slow-speed tip-over into the dirt bank. I strain to quickly raise the bike again. I am burnt out, falling over from fatigue, with slippery sweat-covered hands and footing that gives way at the exact wrong instant, so I hit my throat on the gas tank as I go down. My body crumpled on top of the bike with leaking gas fumes in my eyes and a small burn on my arm from the tailpipe, all the DNA in my body lines up in fury to face one direction like a school of tiny angry fish. Energy roars up from my whole being and out of my lungs with a barbaric YAWP.
"Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
NEXT POST COMING SOON: August 14, 2024
