CODA
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At the risk of becoming self indulgent, here's a sort of post script.
Having firmly established the bike's ability to travel 3,754 miles across this great land without a hitch, I discover it actually takes 3,781 miles before an electrical gremlin renders the bike useless. Me and Nic take a short ride north of Chicago, stop for gas, restart, and with one flick of the light switch, everything dies on the bike. Its pretty funny, actually. All this way, and the bike conveniently dies at a suburban gas station. One call to AMA, and a tow truck is on the way.
The tow truck driver is a nice guy, though. He rides a Heritage, and we talk the whole ride back. Mostly, I keep talking so he'll stay alert. He almost rear ends 3 cars on the way back. Guess he's had a long day. I ask him if he ever rides in town. He replies, "Only when the Outlaws have something going on." Huh. The very bike gang I saw a History special about, back in Lacrosse, WI. Good to know.
So, time to go through all the wiring, again. The fuses seem fine, and since I switched to blade fuses, its a no-brainer as to whether they're good or not. The wiring behind them is still fine, so its on to the ignition. I'm hoping the fact the bike died after hitting the lights is a red herring. I'm inclined to rule everything else out before undertaking the major task of pulling the hand controls from the bars. Turns out I'm right. The ignition switch is half apart, the plastic tangs no longer holding the key portion to their soldered wire base. A half millimeter of plastic is all the difference between thousands of miles of trouble-free riding, and going nowhere. Its virtually impossible to remake the tangs, but as usual a solution lies on the ground. A used ziptie is jammed into the slot where the tang used to fit, and I cut a few pieces of said ziptie to add to the base where the springs hold the copper contact plate in place. So it is done. The key action isn't as crisp as before, but power is restored, and all works as it should.
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I'm at a loss to sum up my trip in a nice crisp way.
I left not knowing what narrative would assert itself, or what the trip would end up meaning, in a larger sense. The undertaking of the trip itself, the fact that I carried through on my drunken promises is significant, but ultimately that's just the nuts and bolts. I thought I would see wide open vistas, that I would reach places I'd seen in my imagination and that I'd have landscapes all to myself. But America is largely the same, no matter the region you pass through. Wide open spaces are hard to come by. It is exceedingly difficult to become truly lost. Its hard to find anywhere that truly feels like an "Other" place. Sometimes it seemed that the only thing that changed from state to state was the gas station chains and accents. I suppose it was naïve to think that I'd come to know this land in a deeper sense (or myself for that matter) by merely passing through it at 75 mph.
It seems like each successive generation declares that the "West has been tamed" or that the "Frontier is closed". And then subsequent books and movies come along, showing us that new frontiers and untamed vistas still exist, either in actual or psychological places. "Easy Rider" always seemed like a travelogue designed to refute the "West is closed" idea, so much so that the protagonists are eventually killed by the "wilderness" they travel through. They played "Easy Rider" for me at the bar I returned to in Chicago, mostly as a friendly joke. I had to laugh. I didn't see anything like the wide open spaces and vistas in the movie. But its not because these places don't exist anymore, its because I failed to see them. I failed to go far enough to seek them out. And I failed to look up enough from the handlebars to stop thinking about oil levels and fuel/air mixtures and just take in my scenery. The shortcomings of my trip were shortcomings in my imagination
Also, going through 8 of the flattest states in the union might have something to do with the above mentioned.
I guess my trip succeeded in more of a mechanical than a metaphysical sense. I don't see any of this trip as a failure, don't get me wrong. But it serves as a departure point for a decidedly different path and way of thinking for my next trip. Maybe this trip was just to determine that I could do it, and that I wasn't just full of words and empty bravado. And maybe it was about being able to see where I came from in a new light.
I guess that about sums it up. Sort of like this last pic taken about 50 miles from home. The flatness and seeming nothingness sometimes allows for whatever and whomever breaks it up to stand out even more clearly.
