In the summer of 1998, I made a trip on a motorcycle that many people wouldconsider a dream to be lived. Add to this the fact that I did this as an act ofmy employment with all expenses paid for almost seven weeks. Since I had 4weeks vacation and found most vacation boring, I offered my employer my 4 weeksvacation if they would allow me to travel on my motorcycle to visit as manyconstituents as I could on their behalf. They accepted that trade.

My job was to visit as many donors and potential donors as I possibly couldfor Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. For this feat, I enlisteda turquoise and white 1994 Harley-Davidson Wide Glide with thunderous pipesthat always caused seniors and the middle-aged to recall all the curse wordsthey could think of. I loaded up a giant T-bag that probably weighed 75 poundswith clothes for every occasion and perched it behind me on the passenger seatfor a backrest. On the morning of June 22, 1998, I roared down my Holland,Michigan, driveway and raced for a dinner in York, Nebraska, that night, 753miles down the pike. York is about 100 miles into the state, 50 miles beyondLincoln, on I-80. US 81, a major highway that goes from Oklahoma to Canada,crossroads right through York. The town is almost 97% Caucasian and rural.There are lots of Germans out in this area. It sits at the front door of theGreat Plains and is flat as a pancake. Head west out of York on a sunny day andthe sky will open before you like a Cinema as you sit on a 2-lane concrete slabas straight as an arrow.

I had made this trip out to York scores of times to see a certain unmarriedfarmer who lit one cigarette off the previous one, ate Texas toast and t-bonesteak every night of his life, and poured stiff black coffee down his throatlike somebody who was having a heat stroke. Then he would go home with a bellyfull of caffein, meat, and smoke and sleep as if he were in a coma. Thepassenger seat floor in his car or truck was piled high with coffee cups andcigarette butts beneath a dashboard carpeted with brown dust. Driving toChicago for him was like driving into a nest of cobras in Calcutta. He loathedevery second of it. Sitting alone on a tractor or pounding down another steakand coffee in a fly-infested cafe with pickup trucks tied up in front in ajoint called Sutton, Nebraska, was the same thing as Disneyland to him. Heowned a a Blue Heeler that would sit next to him in the pickup and menacinglystare down every car that came down the highway. As the car approached, thedog’s head would lower and his eyes would bead in on it. When the vehiclepassed, the dog’s head would whip to the left for the final challenge as if hewere saying, “I thought so.” I visited several people in Des Moines, Iowa, onthe way to him, and when I got there, I could barely hold my eyes open duringthe dinner while he nearly strangled himself on a 20 ounce t-bone, a chuckwagon of coffee, and enough cigarettes to finish off a cancer ward.

The next morning I rolled down that I-80 slab over the same terrain that50,000 covered wagons a year used to travel in the 1850’s and entered the maingate of the Oregon Trail at Kearney, Nebraska, which was named after StephenKearny who is called “the father of the United States Cavalry.” Between 1843and 1869, over half a million men, women, and children rode and walked thetrails through here to the West Coast. All roads to Oregon converged here inKearney, a natural highway through Nebraska and the easiest part of the journeyto Oregon. There were no bridges, no stores or homes, no food except thebuffaloes, no roads except those they made with their wagons, and few primitiveand uncertain sign posts indicating a precarious way along the Oregon Trail.Just before reaching Kearney, straddling over I-80 is a huge arch and museumcalled The Great Platte River Road Archway. A stop there will orient theuninformed of what is beneath their feet. There were many places a hundredmiles or so further back where the Oregon Trail emigrants first launched theirjourney from the eastern banks of the Missouri River within the states ofMissouri and Iowa, but all these trail tributaries flowed into one at FortKearney, which is considered the official starting point of The Oregon Trail. Ihave traveled by motorcycle over some of these routes on the way to Kearney andhave seen forgotten, weed-covered grave sites of people who died on theirjourney. In fact, the Oregon Trial has been called the world’s longestgraveyard. They say that there is a grave site about every 229 feet on averageof those who died on their way to Oregon, a 2,170 mile, 4-6 month journey thatonly covered about 20 miles a day. Most of them abandoned almost everythingthey owned and saved themselves by walking into Oregon with nothing more thanthe clothes on their backs. They drowned at river crossings, starved and diedof thirst, were run over by their wagons or trampled by their livestock, fellto poisonous snake bites, and were victims by the thousands to disease,especially the dreaded cholera that stalked them along the length of the Trailand generally killed a person in just hours. There were years when large scalecholera epidemics broke out on the trail population and swept them away, somewagon trains losing two-thirds of their people. All of them were also loaded tothe teeth with guns and ammunition and suffered self-inflicted wounds fromdropping their firearms and similar accidents. Weather and violentthunderstorms with baseball sized hail took some. Just be out here when asummer storm strikes, and you will understand. In a few parts of the state ofNebraska where not every inch of the trail has been plowed under, you can stillsee swales in the land where hundreds of thousands of wagons had left theirmarks on the soil as their wheels rolled together in each other’s ruts. Youhave to get off the main roads and onto the tractor roads through thecornfields to see these places. There are books in libraries that list hundredsof these spots with exact location details along with cemetery markers.

Stage coaches on their way back and forth to California carried Mark Twainand Horace Greeley over this very same road where I-80 now lies. The PonyExpress raced over this exact same path for a year and a half in 1860-61, andthe transcontinental railroad came right behind them in the late1860‘s. Mostpeople go into Nebraska and see absolutely nothing. If they are heading West onI-80, they cross the bridge into Nebraska and are greeted by mile marker 454,and their hearts sink, thinking they are about to endure the most boring ridein America. But all you have to do is read The Great Platte River Road byMerrill J. Mattes that the state of Nebraska published a few years ago orNothing Like It in the World by Stephen Ambrose, or Roughing It by Mark Twain.You will never see Nebraska the same way again. Like me, you will just stop andsit on a lonely road off the Interstate on a warm day and imagine the ghosts ofhistory passing before you. Many journalists of those Oregon Trail daysrecorded that by the end of the route in Nebraska, they would pass huge pilesof household goods in the form of dressers, sewing machines, stoves, tables,chairs, books, and hope chests stacked high on the Great Plains that theemigrants threw off to lighten their loads and save their lives. Nobody pickedthem up.

Further out and down the road in Ogallala, the Oregon Trail branches off tothe northwest along US 26 and heads up to Scotts Bluff, right next to theeastern wall of Wyoming. Out in this remote section, you will feel as if youare as deep in the West and as desolate as you can get as you approach AshHollow, Courthouse Rock, Chimney Rock, and Scotts Bluff, four of the mostfamous stops on the Oregon Trail. Nebraska is one of my favorite states.

The green of Iowa and Nebraska morphed into the brown desert of westernNebraska and eastern Colorado when I forked onto I-76 toward Denver. Soon thetops of the Rockies began to peak over the horizon. I took US 34 off of I-76and was soon greeted by the fragrant stock yards, dairy farms, and hog farmsthat preceded Greeley-Loveland where I spent a couple of days eating andlaughing with dairy men, friends, contractors, and others related toagriculture. Greeley is midway between Denver and Cheyenne, Wyoming, and isabout 50 miles NNE of the Mile High City. Greeley was named in honor of thelegendary reformer Horace Greeley who was the founder and “the greatest editorof his day” of the most influential newspaper in the United States from the1840’s to the 1870’s, The New York Tribune. The Tribune had high moralstandards, good taste, and intellectual appeal. It also barred scandals fromits pages. Greeley was an odd character with many extreme views both sociallyand politically. For example, he was fascinated with utopia, socialism, andvegetarianism. But he was alsoone of the most influential Americans of the1800’s. He promoted the Whig political party and was a founder of the newlyformed Republican party in 1856. He opposed slavery but initially resisted theelection of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. He became the Liberal Republican partycandidate in the 1872 Presidential election. But his friends turned on him. Hewas ridiculed and mocked in a bitter campaign, his wife died just six daysbefore the general election on November 5, and he lost in a landslide toUlysses S. Grant, the conquering Union General during the Civil War. All thistook a terrible toll on him being in poor health. He was committed to a mentalinstitution and died November 29, 1872 at age 61. He remains the onlypresidential candidate to have died before the electoral votes were counted.Greeley is depicted in the film Gangs of New York.

In 1859 at the height of the California Gold Rush, Greeley took a trip Westto California via the Overland Stage. He was so taken by what he saw that hebecame a prominent advocate of settlement of the American West. It is he towhom is attributed the famous phrase, “Go west, young man, go west.” In 1869,Greeley began to seek out and finance a location for a utopian colony – “basedon temperance, religion, agriculture, education, and family values” – topromote western agricultural settlement in particular. A location was found inEastern Colorado, and an advertisement went out in The Tribune calling forvolunteers of high moral standards. 3,000 responded, but only 700 wereselected. The colony was originally called The Union Colony (sometimes TheUnion Temperance Colony) and was later changed to Greeley. Today Greeley is allbut temperate. The crime rate in Greeley is average to a little above average,and the city is infested with Hispanic gangs. But the city did remain dry until1972 because of the provisions of the colony’s original charter in which thesettlers prohibited the sale or consumption of alcohol.

One man I met in Greeley had been a school teacher up in Montana before hecame there and got himself into a business filing down cow’s hooves. This was avery dangerous livelihood. He had a contraption on his truck into which the cowwas reluctantly driven. When the nervous bovine was in, it would behydraulically lifted and laid on its side on the bed of the truck. Each hoofhad to be secured by a chain lest the 1500 pounds of a cow’s weight bechanneled into the end of one of its rock-hard feet and delivered into thechest of the manicurist, which is exactly what happened to this man just tryingto get the hooves locked. The traumatic blow to his upper torso immediatelyinitiated a heart attack that nearly killed him.

I scooted on over to Loveland, directly west of Greeley, across I-25 anddown US 34 into the heart of Loveland. Loveland is part of the Loveland-Ft.Collins metropolitan area. It has received numerous awards as a great place tolive by Money Magazine, USA Today, AARP Magazine, and others. It isconservative in its politics and has a large and active population ofEvangelical Christians, which is the reason why I was there. If you are amotorcycle rider, this is a great location from which to assault Estes Park andRocky Mountain National Park. Loveland sits just west of I-25, which comes offI-10 at Las Cruces, New Mexico and dead ends at and merges with I-90 inBuffalo, Wyoming.

When my time ended there, I mounted up the T-bag and set my eyes towardManhattan, Montana, where a community of dedicated Christians who lovedtheological education lived quiet lives. But first I had to climb diagonallythrough the state of Wyoming and pass through Yellowstone National Park. Ratherthan the Interstate, I took the lovely U.S. 287 up the mountains intoSoutheastern Wyoming. Little did I know what was waiting for me as I crestedthe pass into Wyoming and headed for Laramie and Rawlins. I have traveled manythousands of miles on a motorcycle, but I have never experienced winds like Idid that day. For 500 miles, gale winds slammed into the bike and me from thewest southwest. The T-bag probably acted like a piece of plywood. The only wayI could keep the bike up was to lean it over at a sharp angle into the steadywind wall. When a truck came at me, I had to move the bike as far to the rightside of the road as possible and at just the moment when I expected theadditional blast of air from the truck that could have literally blown me offthe road to arrive in full-force, I shoved the handlebar to the left and drovethe bike toward the left lane at a 45 degree angle to keep it up. Thiscontinued for an entire day – 460 miles up the two lanes into the freezing coldof Jackson, Hole, Wyoming.

But in the middle of that afternoon as I shoved my way up US 287, I onceagain came into contact with the Oregon Trail. US 287 is the longestthree-digit highway in the US, 1791 miles from Port Arthur, Texas, to Choteau,Montana. In its path is the perceived midway point on the way to Oregon and thebeginning of the incline up South Pass, the highest point on the Oregon Trailat the summit of an almost imperceptible approach to the Continental Divide andthe lowest point on the Continental Divide between the Central Rocky Mountainsand the Southern Rocky Mountains. It was a natural crossing of the Rockies, andthe Indians knew about it. But it was discovered accidentally by white trappersin 1812. It was lost shortly thereafter, causing trappers to use a morenorthern and more difficult route with an extra mountain range. It wasrediscovered again in 1824. The first wagons went over the Pass in 1832, andthe first women crossed it in 1836. But between 1848 and and 1868, almost500,000 people flowed over South Pass. Every emigrant wagon train and handcartcompany that went westward rolled through this Pass. There was no other way togo. No other path offered a dependable supply of grass and water plus an easygrade to and through the mountains. On crossing the Pass one pioneer womannoted that, “…we have forever taken leave of the waters running toward the homeof our childhood and youth….” Two-and-a-half miles farther west the emigrantsencountered Pacific Springs, the first water flowing westward. It wasn’t until1869 when the Transcontinental railroad broke through that an easier way Westwas opened. I only had time to visualize thousands making their way throughthis wilderness with no knowledge or care of Yellowstone off to theirnorthwest.

When I pulled into Jackson Hole, it was frigid. I collapsed, exhausted, intobed.

The next day was mild. The spectacular, jagged points of the Tetons drapedwith snow on my left reflected off of Grand Teton Lake like a mirror andrenewed my resolve. I passed the ranger station at the south entrance ofYellowstone. Some motorcyclists I had met along the way gave me their pass forfree entrance into the park. They told me it was good for another two days.When it passed the ranger’s inspection, I throttled the Harley up into thedropping temperatures of America’s first national park back in 1872 where snowshowers now flew about me. Yellowstone is a powerful place. Its ambiance gripsyou in so many ways. 97 % of its pristine 3400 square miles and 2.2 millionacres are undeveloped. If you think it is formidable during the day, be thereat night.

In the summer of 2009, my wife and I worked in Yellowstone for three months.On our days off, we often traveled outside the park to distant towns and alwaysstayed out till way after the park was closed and would then make theincredible trip back in when there was not a soul on the road. I say incrediblebecause one night just after passing the vacant ranger station at the northentrance, I pulled over and turned the car and lights off and stepped out intothe night. This is something one has to experience to get the full effect. Butas I looked up into the park while coming in to the mountainous north entrance,it was pitch black. I knew there was a black mountain looking down on those whoapproached it, but I saw nothing. Nothing. No hint of light or friendliness ofany kind. It was like Frodo Baggins approaching Mordor in Lord of the Rings. Iwas standing on the road next to the Yellowstone River on my left, and I couldhear it roaring ominously through the unseen canyon. I looked up into the blacksky briefly because I didn’t want to take my eyes off the side of the roadwhere a foreboding shadow could mean a bear or a wolf, as they stalk prey atnight. The sky was covered with a blanket of stars of various lumens with thatfamiliar but faint milky wave of millions of them clustered together many lightyears away in the background. It was total blackness in every direction aroundme. Chills ran up my back to think what may be watching me. So like lightning Itore the car door open, fired up the motor, and roared up the road for another50 miles into the black, boiling belly of Yellowstone over roads with faintpainted lines through woods and past granite outcroppings and wisps of steamand faint sulfurous odors. There was no relief of a sense of dread till Ireached Canyon Village where we worked. I had been here for six weeks and hadnot been all that appreciative of this place, but all it took was a ride intothis dark, remote world at midnight to start to get a feel for the hauntingallure of its magic. As I lay in bed in total darkness that night at 8,000feet, I heard the mournful baying of wolves in the distance, like echoes in aDracula movie. Yellowstone is mysterious in the morning, beautiful during theday, serene in the evening, but grippingly, terrifyingly awesome at night.

]]>

On this trip, however, I pushed through Yellowstone and dropped intoGardiner, Montana, and shot 54 miles up US 89 to Livingston and I-90, finallyturning left and climbing the Bridger Mountains up to the 5712 foot BozemanPass towards Bozeman and dropping down into Bozeman at 4712 feet on to theplain leading to Churchill 37 miles up the slab. I was now threading the samegauntlet and hills into the Bozeman valley as Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea didin 1806 when they camped at the mouth of Kelly Canyon just three miles east ofBozeman, a beautiful college and western town surrounded by mountains. ChetHuntley of the 1950‘s NBC news cast team of The Huntley-Brinkley Report went tocollege here in Bozeman. Just south of here by an hour lay his biggest vision,Big Sky Ski Resort. Huntley had been born and raised in Montana and when heretired in 1970, he moved back to his home state where he conceived of, livedin, and built Big Sky. Three days before the opening ceremonies for Big Sky,Huntley died of lung cancer at age 62. After Huntley’s death, his second wifemarried William Conrad, the over-weight, mustached star of CBS’s Cannondetective series.

I hit the Holiday Inn Express in Belgrade, just outside of Manhattan andAmsterdam- Churchill, and set up camp here for a few days to visit and chaseafter the car and farm implement and motorcycle dealers, truckers, potatofarmers, and many a man who drove his combine across fields choked with dustjust so I could spend a few minutes with him on these parched slopes thatoverlooked the Gallatin Valley and driveled back into dusty valleys. This is areligious community of primarily Reformed and Christian Reformed people whosacrifice for Christian education in their community and who give a great dealof their income for that purpose and many other related causes throughout theUnited States. I know that some of them give anywhere from 70-90% of theirincome to charity. In this little community I also found one of the daughtersof Evel Knievel that I used to visit briefly when I was in town. She neverliked to talk much about her father, and she was deathly afraid that her smallson might one day want to emulate his famous uncle, Robbie Knievel, who wasalso jumping over buses at the time. The man who invented the cruise controlthrottle clamp that many motorcyclists use to give their right wrists reliefalso lived in this little town in a modest house. I was also introduced towater rights and their long history in these families that have farmed seedpotatoes in this land for many generations. Those water rights sustain thenetwork of water ditches that flow like veins to give life to the crops thatsustain the economy of the Manhattan-Amsterdam-Churchill community and thespread of Reformed theology throughout the world.

In a few days, I was off to my next stop, Yakima, Washington, another 591miles. I spent the night somewhere on that route. But when I came out in themorning, there was a young fellow on a BMW who told me he was headed forBillings, Montana. I had just come from that way and knew it was a haul he wasabout to face. He said he would be there by dinner time. I knew he had no ideawhat he was talking about because the Harley I had commandeered to this spotcould never have done that. It labored up mountains and was even passed by 18wheelers as I kept shifting down. Years later I owned a BMW KRS 1200 and knewhe was probably in Iowa by lunch time. That KRS 1200 would go up a mountain at100 mph as if it was going downhill. I learned later my snail progress up amountain on this Harley was because my bike had carburetors (not useful inthese altitudes) and had one half of the horsepower of the BMW.

On I sped past Lake Cord ‘Alene, Spokane, and into the dusty and barreneastern Washington, down I-90 and into the Columbia River basin past the wildhorses sculptures high on the eastern slopes. I carved south just beforeEllensburg down US 97/I-82 and up and down three camel-hump mountains and wounddown into Yakima. Yakima is about 85 miles from Mount St. Helens by car, but itis only 50 miles as the crow flies. In 1980 when Mount St. Helen’s erupted, itpiled 4 to 5 inches of ash on Yakima. A friend of mine in Yakima gave me a jarof the gritty brown ash (more like sand) that she shoveled off her roof, offher yard, and out of her driveway that day. I still have it.

This is apple orchard country (one of the best areas in the world) becauseof the elevations, the cool mountain water, the irrigation systems developed bythe pioneers, the lava-ash soil, the arid climate, and plenty of sunshine onthe eastern slopes, unlike the western Cascades. It is also Bing and Raniercherry country. More than 50% of the sweet cherries in the United States comefrom this area. I took a tour of a cherry processing plant and learned that oneof my favorite cherries, the maraschino cherry found in bars and Dairy Queens,is dyed red and almond-flavored. It is also the equivalent of pepperoni, thelast processed pork meat. When hogs are slaughtered, absolutely every moleculeis processed and used for some kind of food. The part that no one will use foranything else becomes pepperoni on your pizza. That is what a maraschino cherryis. The  cherries that cannot be used for anything else get dyed red orgreen and rest in a bed of whipped cream on your Sundae or are impregnated withsugar and wait for your teeth in fruitcakes.

I had many orchardists, insurance men, dairy farmers, auctioneers, and CPA’sto talk to. Just like in Churchill, Montana, water rights here are preciousintangibles. Depending on how long these farms have been in existencedetermines who gets the water for the crop and who doesn’t in those years whenthe snow fall in the Cascades is short. There is a vibrant Christian communityin Yakima and the surrounding valley down through Toppenish, an Indiancommunity painted with beautiful murals on business walls 20 miles south, toSunnyside. If it is a good year, these are a generous people to charitablecauses.

After a couple of days, I was done here. Just before lunch I started out ofYakima and back over the three humps toward Seattle. But I thought I would pullover at a factory farm stand on the north edge of town and devour a bag ofYakima’s famous Ranier cherries before assaulting the mountain. It was a hotday in the Yakima Valley. I sat up in a loading dock leaning back against adoor and popping those succulent, yellow Raniers at their optimum sweetness andspitting pits out into the sandy gravel, wondering what the poor people weredoing right then and thinking I had the best job on the planet. An open, lazyride to the cool temperatures of Puget Sound over the spectacular SnoqualmiePass lay before me. I still had a few weeks to go on this trip. I was thinkingof all this while noticing that the skies were growing ominous. It was 40 milesover those camel humps. I didn’t want to get stuck up there in a storm, and Ididn’t think I would if I got on the horse and flew like a madman out ofthere.

Since it was so warm, I didn’t think I needed anything other than what I hadon, a red checkered, long-sleeve shirt I had bought from Structure. At 80 mph,I raced against the clouds coming from the east. The wind picked up and thetemperature dropped as I dived into the backside of the second hump. Theheavens were growing black. Creeping up that last hump with the throttle fullout, splatters of rain started slamming into me. I remember looking over to myleft at one woman peering unconcerned out of her car window at me while I wasbeing thrashed with a blanket of water. By the time I reached the top of themountain, the heavens had opened up and I was soaked through. The torrent hadstopped the traffic at the top, and gullies of water and rock were rollingacross the road. If that was not enough, hail began to rain down on all of usup there. I could hear it pinging off of the cars that surrounded me and my gastank. I was stuck behind a bus and just sat there with water and hail runningdown over me like water from a fountain. I might as well have been sittingbeneath a falls. I had to get out of there. My boots were filled with water,and I was shaking violently as the temperatures, the wind, and the water tookheat from my body. I finagled the bike around some cars and between large rockson the road as the stream flowed over the rims of my wheels. I looked for coverof any kind, but there was nothing but barren rock here at the crest of themountain. My only option was to get down the mountain as quickly as possibleand out of these winds and water and seek shelter. I was so cold that my bodywas taut with chills. I gripped the bars rigidly. While trying to see throughthe helmet, I had the presence of mind to realize I had a photo op, and I wasgoing to take it no matter what. Somehow I got the bike to the shoulder. Iclimbed off. I could hear my feet sloshing in my cowboy boots. I got the strapsoff of the leather bags and found the camera. As traffic whizzed by, I took ashot of the bike on the dark mountain with the spray of cars washing over me. Ithrew my leg over the bike and felt both cold and warm water squish from undermy pants. This was the only one of two times on the trip that I really wished Iwasn’t there. My mistake had been that I did not have on that leather jacket.It would have weighed 70 pounds by now, but it would have spared me myhypothermic condition right then. By the time I reached the bottom, it wasstill pouring, and my teeth were clacking like a skeleton. I took the firstexit and pulled beneath the dark freeway out in the middle of nowhere. I rippedmy flannel shirt off and stood there with the hair on my body standing straightup and covered with goosebumps. The T-bag was not water-proof. I had to digdown a foot to find a dry shirt, which felt so good. Everything in the leatherbags was black. Those things were useless against rain like this and the dyeleaked out of them like water. I looked up and down the highway. I wanted totake my pants off in the middle of Washington to get that warm shirt feeling onmy legs. But I didn’t want to get taken in by the State Police for indecentexposure while on a trip for a seminary either. However, the boots came off andI poured out glasses of water from them and stood bare-footed on the asphaltroad.

After an hour or so and with my leather jacket back on – and my pants stillwet – I fired up the Harley in the late afternoon chilly overcast. I had to getto Seattle before the 3000 foot Snoqualmie – the lowest and most heavilytraveled east-west highway crossing the state of Washington – was envelopedwith its frigid night air. I was 110 miles from Seattle, so I had to hurry. Onebiker wrapped in an oil-cloth duster strapped around his cowboy boots shot pastme. That is not usual biker attire, but it looked good right then because itwas waterproof. The air on my soaked pants made the evaporation raw on my skin.But the further I rode, the quicker it began to dry out. I rolled overSnoqualmie and came down into Issaquah miserable, freezing, and looking for abed. I really had doubts right then about this trip. But I was 2200 miles fromhome by the most direct route. I landed in a Holiday Inn in Lynwood where Ialways stayed and slept like Rip Van Winkle.

The week was cold for July, and the next day the last thing on earth Ireally wanted to do was mount that motorcycle again. But I had people to seefrom Auburn to Camano Island to the Skagit Valley to Bellingham to Abbotsford,British Columbia. So I had to head up to Canada, cross the border, and visit aprospect. The customs officials in Canada are an austere, suspicious, andunpredictable lot. You never know what to expect from them. A few years ago Iwas headed to Ontario to preach the morning service in a church there when Iran into one of these border agents at the Port Huron crossing. When she askedme why I was coming into Canada, I told her the truth, which I thought was aneasy ticket into Ontario. Who was going to get hyper for preaching a sermon ina church? She was. It was as if I had said that I was there to blow up NiagaraFalls. She ordered me back to Michigan. I called the church to tell them Iwasn’t coming, and the pastor got on the horn with her. They went around andaround for awhile. Finally she relented and told me that if she sent theOntario Provincial Police to the church while I was there, and they saw medoing ANYTHING other than preaching, I would be arrested and escorted by themback to the border. So Canadian border agents are very touchy bunch.

When I came to the border, my appearance probably triggered some misgivings.They questioned me about where I was going and why I was out there withMichigan plates. They don’t like people taking money out of Canada or bringingin free gifts that can’t be taxed. So I always had to be careful about what Isaid. My usual answer was that I was going to visit friends. I passed throughthe gate, made my call, and appeared back at the crossing within two hours.That set off alarms because coming all these miles for a two hour visitindicated a possible drug delivery. After a thorough inspection andinterrogation by them, I finally headed south. In a few days, I was off againdown the commuter lane one morning on I-405 for Portland, Salem, and Eugene,Oregon. I turned west on Oregon 42 south of Roseburg and wound through themountains, falling steadily for Myrtle Point and the coast to stay a night withmy wife’s sister and husband. The next day I went to Bandon – which was calledone of the “Coolest Small Towns In America” by Budget Travel – and turned southagain down the Oregon coast for Santa Cruz, California.

This is one of my favorite rides, 559 miles of gorgeous California coast,redwoods, mountains, quaint towns, forests, ocean views, the Golden GateBridge, San Francisco, and Highway 17 over the Santa Cruz mountains past MountHermon Christian Conference Center and down to the northern edge of theMonterey Bay and into the retro, liberal town of Santa Cruz. My wife was fromSanta Cruz and was there waiting for me. I took a vacation for a few days andmade some local visits too.

Soon I was back on my way down US 101. US 101 is called The El Camino Real,or The Royal Road or The King’s Highway or the California Mission Trail. Thisroad started to be paved in 1912 in San Mateo County near San Francisco as atwo-lane road that was rarely used. In the late 1920’s, construction andwidening picked up. It became known as US 101. But long before that, it waspart of the Calle Real, a 600 mile road that connected 21 Spanish Missions fromSan Diego to San Francisco that was developed by the Spanish missionaries inthe 17th and 18th centuries. Each of these missions was about 30 miles apart,or a day’s ride by horseback. Just south of Mission San Miguel, I reached PasoRobles and turned left onto California 46.

Up to this point, it had pretty much been cool for the previous weeks. Butwithin just miles the temperature soared to 104 degrees as I cruised to KernCounty’s Shafter and Bakersfield where I had more contacts. One of them was aman I had met a few years before, Bob Grimm, a Missouri Synod Lutheran. Bob wasabout 48 at the time, and his brother, Rod, had died of cancer at age 51 a fewyears before. They had come from Anaheim, California and had built one of thelargest businesses in the world here in the San Joaquin Valley. Few people haveprobably heard of them, but Bob once told me that he and his brother produced –now get this – 55% of all the carrots sold in the United States. He said thathe shipped 240 train car loads of carrots every single day of the year. Theseare the people who developed the baby carrots we all know and buy. If you go toyour local grocer, you are very likely to pick up the brand Grimmway Farms ifyou buy carrots. Grimmway Farms is the largest grower, producer, and shipper ofcarrots in the world. His competitor was Bill Bolthouse who owned BolthouseFarms in Bakersfield. These two men produced 90% of California’s carrots andwere generous contributors to many causes. I talked with Bob about Westminstermany times, but he died of a heart attack in 2006. He became a majorcontributor to Concordia University in Irvine.

As I rolled around Kern County, one day I had my first mishap. I was in aremote rural area making a turn in the sand, and the bike went down with thathuge T-bag strapped on. I could not lift any of it. Out of nowhere, a lithe,sun-burned-to-leather-skin man in his 50’s drove up, got out of his truck, andlifted that Harley as if his arms were cables on a crane. Then he nonchalantlydrove off leaving me standing there stupefied in amazement.

When I had done all the damage I could do in Bakersfield, I ripped downCalifornia 99 and cut over to Santa Barbara and US 101 once again to see afriend, bypassing the historic Grapevine that the stage coaches used to travelfrom northern to southern California back in the 1800’s as they rolled downinto the LA basin. I had another round of visits to make in SouthernCalifornia, mostly in the Orange County area. This was the summer of 1998. Itwas one of the most memorable summers on record of a heat wave that gripped theSouth and Southwest. When I finished my work in Los Angeles, I set my eyestoward Dallas, Texas, 1500 miles away where my next group of prospects awaited.I had been listening to the weather reports as I came south, and many hadwarned me about the tremendous heat into which I was about to enter. Withlittle regard for these warnings, I shot up I-5 in a short sleeve shirt andthen made my right turn east on the 91 Freeway toward Palm Springs and thefront door to the 1500 mile furnace that blazed up before me. It was 500 milesthrough Blythe, California, to Phoenix. I don’t think that words could havedescribed the conditions I faced that day. The temperatures were 120 degreesall the way across. The breeze on that motorcycle was like breathing fire. Tryto imagine the feeling of being in a sauna and inhaling burning air up yournostrils. My arms broiled like meat on a car hood. One does not realize howmoisture is being drained from his body at 70 mph in those temperatures. Therewere times I began to get very concerned whether I could even make it to thenext stop. There is no place to hide in that barren desert. There are noshelters for relief and few stops for gas. Deep into Arizona, I saw a lone restarea where I laid against a small out-building and poured what water wasavailable over me. I was facing heat exhaustion, a very dangerous and insidiousthreat that can only be relieved by cooling the body down immediately andwithdrawing from the sun. The closer I moved to Phoenix, I stopped more andmore frequently to soak my head and consume gallons of water. It was dark whenI pulled into Phoenix. Why MILLIONS of people lived in thisdesert was beyond me.

The next day I pushed on through incredible heat past Tuscon. As Iapproached New  Mexico, I ran into desperately needed relief when monsoonrains tempered the awful heat. I found a lone road side cafe and took a break.But I suffered my next near miss when I accelerated on one of those cow guardgrates that often lie in the road in areas where cattle roam. The pipes werewet from the rain, and the tires slipped. The bike started to slide and take medown with it. I quickly turned the bars and somehow saved myself by stayingupright, but by doing so, I did some kind of chiropractic twist in my back thatI knew was not good. When I got to the next gas station, I could not get offthe bike. I was locked in the seated position I was in. My back would not bend.I contorted myself off the horse and remained bent over parallel to the groundas I moved toward the gas pump and lifted the handle. I don’t even know how Igot the credit card into the pump or how I got back on the bike. I remained inthis position for several more days.

In pain, I headed toward New Mexico in the late afternoon where dusk wouldsoon greet me as it lifted its dark eyes over the eastern horizon and stareddown on the western portion of the Land of Enchantment. In short time, I wasrolling up on the town of Lordsburg, New Mexico. Lordsburg was founded on theSouthern Pacific Railroad route. Although Lordsburg didn’t even exist until1880, the famous Butterfield Stage stagecoach route that delivered mail fromSt. Louis to California from 1857-1861 ran right over the town on a southernroute that was 600 miles longer than routes through Denver and Salt Lake. Butthis route was snow free. Charles Lindbergh descended upon Lordsburg in 1927 onhis transcontinental air tour in the “Spirit of Saint Louis.” Just a few yearslater the U.S. Government held as many as 1500 Japanese Americans here in aninternment camp during WWII. Very few live there today. Even captured Germanand Italian soldiers were held here. Lordsburg also had open arms for AfricanAmericans in the mid 20th century. It had one of the few motels in theSouthwest where they were allowed to stay during the days of legalsegregation.

I was 600 miles from Los Angeles. Exiting the Interstate at the far westernend of town, I coasted into a Love’s Truck Stop, very tired and trying todecide if I should continue on to Las Cruces, 148 miles further through theblack desert. I happened to pull up next to a young fellow in his 30’s who wasriding an older looking sport bike. He had come from Alaska on that thing. Hewas headed to San Antonio, Texas, and expected to be there the next morning.That was 713 miles from Lordsburg, a 12 hour ride. He wanted to know if I wouldlike to ride with him. I thought that would probably keep me awake because Iwas beginning to feel the fatigue of this trip and was getting anxious to getback to Michigan. Together we cruised at 80 mph through the pitch black canyonof New Mexico’s darkness. The Interstate made turns at the right time as it ledus through the sheets of Monsoon rains that surrounded us and occasionally justtouched us. But when the lighting would turn the desert into daytime, we couldsee menacing thunderheads dark and towering in our path. We exited at Deming inthe nick of time before a soaking deluge intercepted us. On the western edge oftown about 10 pm, we rolled toward the lonely lights of an empty conveniencestore for coffee to wait out the storm. Not a soul was in sight. We drankcoffee, and he smoked while sitting on his haunches and leaning back againstthe brick wall of the store in the pale light while a falls of water cascadedoff the roof that covered our steeds. He was a friendly, likable soul. He toldme he was rushing to San Antonio because his father was on his deathbed. Hehoped he could make it in time to see him once more. The setting made himreflective. He told me that he had seven children by three different women, andhe was married to none of them. I’ll never forget what he said after that. “Iknow God is going to get me some day.” That was the ticket he handed me thatallowed me to ask him, “Have you ever heard of justification?”This is the best word in the Bible. I talked to him about that until the rainstopped.

We continued on through the lightning all about us until we came to LasCruces. I waved off as I took an exit for a motel. He signaled me farewell ashe faded into the darkness. Many times I have wondered about that encounter.Did he make it to San Antonio by morning? Did he see his father before he died?Did our discussion about his eternal destiny have any effect on his life?

Las Cruces is the second largest city in New Mexico and is Apache country.It sits at the beginning of an urban stretch of I-10 that dips south into WestTexas and El Paso before passing out of sight of all civilization and followingthe lonely, narrow path of I-10 across the eastern portion of the southerndesert leading into the plains of Texas. Las Cruces is about half-way toDallas, which is where I was headed. I had another 800 miles to go through aburning hell. I was out of there after breakfast and descending into ElPaso.

El Paso is in the middle of absolutely nowhere, but it is the 22nd largestcity in the United States. It sits directly across the Rio Grande River fromone of the most dangerous places on the face of the earth, Juarez, Mexico, acity that is even larger than El Paso. These two cities have a population ofabout 2 million people. Juarez accounts for 2/3 of that. It is at night timewhen this becomes apparent. If one stands on the Texas side of the two citiesfrom almost any position in El Paso, he will see the lights of Juarez stretchendlessly into the Mexican horizon. The lights of El Paso-Juarez are one of themost beautiful and impressive sights that one can see at night in any Americancity I can think of.

El Paso has a long history originating with Spanish settlement in about1600. It was once known as the “Six Shooter Capital” because of its lawlessnesswith gunfighters, prostitution, and gambling. At the beginning of WWI, theauthorities cracked down on vice, and then it all moved across the river toJuarez. It is a hot, light brown, bone-dry place sitting at 3800 feet above sealevel in a mountainous region. It rests in what is called the Basin and RangeRegion of the US and is surrounded by the Chihuahuan Desert. There is only onemajor road through it, I-10. I-10 seems to go on forever through this town thatis built mostly on both sides of its east-west freeway route. If you are alert,you will notice on the south side of I-10 a Harley-Davidson dealership known asBarnett’s, billed as the Harley-Davidson dealership with the world’s largestselection of Harley’s for sale. Go in there and you will see a cavernous placewith hundreds of Harleys. I plowed down I-10 that day with one goal, get toDallas. Little did I know that in two years, I would be flying back to thisplace with my wife to buy a 1998 BMW K1200RS, sight-unseen, from the Internetto begin a trip that would take us from El Paso to Padre Island, Jacksonville,Key West, Chattanooga, Philadelphia, and back to Michigan, a 5,000 plus miletrip. But that is for another time.

The heat of the desert from El Paso to Dallas was record-breaking. It hadbeen broadcast on the news during my whole journey. But I had no alternative. Ibranched off of I-10 onto I-20 and just stayed with the tremendous heat as Imoved into the plains nearing Odessa-Midland on to Big Spring and Abilene.There were times when I was not sure that I could keep going. There are longstretches of desert and plains with barely a town in between. Once I left I-10and merged on to I-20, I saw very few cars on the way to Abilene. There isn’tmuch out that way unless one is going to El Paso, and during that time in thesummer of 1998, no one in his right mind was going there unless he was in atractor-trailer. I fell short of Fort Worth that night somewhere approachingthe brink of civilization once again after nearly 1500 miles. Without muchenthusiasm, I mounted that Harley the next morning and forced myself tocontinue on to Dallas where it seemed the temperatures had elevated all themore. All of Texas was in serious drought, and the 110+ degrees that hadendlessly blazed Dallas that summer in a record-setting number of continuousdays surrounded everything. It emanated from the road, pressed down from above,enveloped a person all around him, and burned up into his nose when hebreathed. It was even more oppressive than anything I can remember from themany years I lived in Florida. To give you an idea of what it was like, on that1500 mile trip from Irvine, California, to Dallas, I saw a grand total of justthree motorcycles other than myself on the roads.

I had gone to seminary in Dallas-Fort Worth area in the late 60’s. Dallaswas a cowpoke of a town in those days. By 1998, it was a first-class city witha completely renovated freeway system linking and surrounding the two cities,towering skyscrapers in the downtown Dallas metropolis with buildings outlinedin lights, and a magnificent international airport. It was now being called aMetroplex, a word I never heard used in the 60’s. I posted myself up in aMarriott Courtyard and set up a plan to visit a whole new group of people I hadnever met before. One of them was Bunker Hunt. Back in the early 80‘s, Bunkerand his brother, Lamar, were world famous for having cornered the silvermarket. Bunker was a fine man who loved Texas and was a committed Christian.Everybody who had ever heard of him came to see him for charitable purposes.His brother went on to own the Kansas City Chiefs. Westminster Seminary hadstarted a satellite campus in Dallas in collaboration with Park CitiesPresbyterian Church where one of our alumni was the pastor. My job was to beginto cultivate a list of new potential donors from that church and otherlike-minded congregations in Dallas. That little seminary start in the early90’s eventually became a full-fledged seminary in its own right on February 17,2009, when it broke away from the mother institution in Philadelphia and becameofficially known as Redeemer Seminary.

After a few days there fighting the heat and rolling around Dallas on thatmotorcycle in that loathsome heat, I was counting the hours when I would pointthe front wheel north and head for home without visiting one more person. I hadvisited well over 100 people on this trip so far. At last I reached the lastperson I could visit after about a week and a half and determined that I wouldhead for Michigan the next morning.

On August 6, I saddled up the Harley with that 75 pound T-bag once again,ate breakfast, and barreled out of Dallas north to northeast up US 75 at 9 amCST. It was one of those glorious motorcycle days every biker knows about. Itwas warm, but I was going home. So it made no difference. I just felt good, andthere were no more stops and no more people to see. All I had to do was flop ina motel somewhere north that night and finish it all up tomorrow to my eternalrelief. Any trip on a motorcycle is always good when you areGOING. But it is something else again when you areCOMING back. This is compounded even further if you are goingto CALIFORNIA because it is a long way and you have to comeback a long way. This day, however, all my fatigue, general weariness with thetrip, and longing for an end to it all dissipated because I felt free from thework I was burdened to accomplish, and the weather was glorious. The sceneryhad also changed. I was in the green part of Texas now and heading up intoOklahoma where there were more hills, rivers, and ridges. Flat plains hadturned into prairie. I was on US highways all the way up through McAlester andMuskogee and by mid-afternoon I intercepted I-44 and turned right toward St.Louis, nearly 400 miles further. I was sailing over the Interstate up and downthe hills of Missouri and feeling absolutely wonderful. It was one of thoserare days when everything was working like it should on a motorcycle. Manytimes during the day I had become so sleepy that I closed my eyes and nearlyfell asleep on that Harley. But this wasn’t one of those days. I was fullycharged from the first blast of that engine and had felt the same every hour ofthe day as I had leaned back on that T-bag like it was a sofa and just taken inthe beautiful prairie as if it was the first time I had ever ridden in my life.I will never forget that day.

By the time dusk was hinting at the horizon, I did not feel one iota morefatigued or less exhilarated than I had at 9 am in Dallas. It was then –somewhere in the middle of Missouri – that I began to toy with the incrediblepossibility that I may not have to stay in another motel one more night. I hadbeen on the road for so long that even one more night in a motel became adespicable thought. I arrived in St. Louis when it was dark, around 8 pm. I wasstill wide awake. The thought that I was only 426 miles from home was likeadrenaline. By this time, I was committed to going the distance. But I knewthat I had better hustle because it was getting cooler and would be coolerstill up the east side of Lake Michigan in the wee morning hours. Not onlythat, but I knew this motorcycle high I had experienced all day long would soonbegin to withdraw as the thundering hum of the engine combined with coolertemperatures. It was 300 miles to Chicago up I-55. The glare of lights in thedarkness was having noticeable effects on my eyes and making them very tiredwhen I turned right on I-80 at Joliet. I forked off of I-80 and up I-94 about 1am. Just 140 miles to go. 2 hours. I had driven this stretch hundreds of timesup to Holland. It was always cold on I-196 when it left I-94 and arrowedstraight up Lake Michigan. Deer stalked this stretch of highway, and it waspitch black as Michigan’s trees hemmed in the four lanes to and from Holland. Iwas fighting sleep, and my muscles were stiff from the cold air off the Lake.It was all I could do to scream out loud and try to stay awake and keep tellingmyself to do a little more. Alas, I forked for the last time off of I-196 andonto US 31 and exited at Washington Street. I lazily strolled through thelittle sleeping Dutch town bathed in soft lights beneath rows of trees. Therewasn’t a car or a soul in sight. I looked at the streets and familiar places asif I had returned from the back side of the moon. It had been almost sevenweeks since I had left this place. I loped down the final five miles leadingout to the shore of Lake Michigan and turned north on my street and into thedark driveway that snaked through the woods and into my garage at 3:35 am onAugust 7. I had just driven one-third of the circumference of the earth at theequator. When I turned off the key, I never rode that bike again. I sold itweeks later. I dropped into bed next to Linda at 4 am, 19 hours and 1100 milesfrom Dallas. On a motorcycle, mind you. That is over one-eighth of the entire8,355 miles I traveled on this trip – all in ONE day. I candrive a car for a long ways. But even to this moment, I have never driven a car1100 miles in a single day.  When I shut my eyes, all I saw was road withwhite lines painted on it. My ears didn’t stop ringing for three days. I havenot been able to hear as well since. It took me a long time to even sit onanother motorcycle again. But it is not possible to ever quit.

Comments are closed.