Transcript: Everything is OK
The only thing that changes is everything.
I’m sure there’s some quantum something or other that says it better, but there is no end stage - the universe, physics, society, life itself - goes on indeed. As objects move they interact with other forces and change course and even when motionless, they face decay. With or without our consent, the world will keep turning, that is, until it doesn’t.
And as a thing moves toward that inevitability it meanders and bounces to different places - with no destination or goal, just: forward until the next thing. It’s a pinball - quick and frenetic with sudden pauses and slow build ups. Largely uncontrolled, except a little with some well-timed nudges - but always moving.
Under myriad circumstances, I’ve had moments of certain clarity and perspective to see how a impulse decision or minute action changed the trajectory of my life entirely, even years later. That perspective seems to be easier-gained when times are good - quote unquote. When gratitude is abundant and I couldn’t imagine things any other way, I can reminisce and shudder at what might have been for my misguided past-self, completely unaware of what would be coming his way. And in those instances, I am always grateful that he kept moving forward.
But that hindsight is expensive and only comes with experience.
That’s this seems grandiose for a story about a stupid motorcycle, you’re not completely off the mark. This story is about getting a motorcycle and taking it on an adventure, but also about a time in my life that kinda parallels the story of how the bike came to be in my life.
It’s about perspective and not wasting time chasing things that don’t seem to want to be chased; it’s about being in the moment with the people important to us - even in a pandemic - and moving forward to the next thing that you can do, even if it’s uncomfortable or slightly against good judgment. Most importantly it’s a story that I hope helps us all remember that everything will be OK.
This story is about a pair of Moto Morini 3 1/2’s; a 350cc vee-twin Bologna icon. The first is mine - a 1977 roller bought sight unseen on eBay, requiring a trip across the country to retrieve and a thorough scouring of some Italian swap meets for parts. It is, in my opinion, the better of the two. The second belongs to one of my closest friends – Blaine Dehmlow - with whom I’ve spent countless hours talking about life and the occasional motorcycle over many slices of pie. And this story is how he took possession of this bike - Blaine’s 350 would also require a road trip before being put back in service, running alongside mine and ultimately parting ways as they once might have in Bologna more than 40 years ago.
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In April of 2020, Blaine and I decided to record some conversations. It wasn’t the first time; I’ve got recordings of us from when we worked together in San Francisco. We had a podcast that recorded in a maker space and interviewed people we thought were interesting. At that time I resurrected my first motorcycle in a space I had claimed in the corner and we hosted a ‘bike night’ every Wednesday, helping each other and anyone else interested in fixing old motors - and almost always wrapped with a short walk to a diner on Mission Street for a piece of pie. We’ve had a few profound adventures together - chased antelope across a Nevada desert on Ducatis and one time I set his face on fire while we were working on my van. For a bit of context, one of the Ducatis was a Terra Mostra - the result of Blaine’s time heading Overland Motorcycles - a project that converted the ubiquitous Monster street bike into a very capable dual sport machine. The other was my E900 - sometimes called an Elefant, due to its Cagiva heritage. Those 2 motorcycles sort of characterize our tendencies with motorcycles - either finding weird models or find common models and doing weird things to it… then putting them back to work.
That time in San Francisco eventually changed, as all things do. The startup we worked for had its share of dysfunction and though we gradually lost the time for a dedicated weeknight, we stayed connected and bounced terrible ideas off each other. After some new jobs, a new baby, health concerns and respective out-of-state moves, we found ourselves well into one of the weirdest periods of American history ever. I was laid off from a sort-of career-defining job the year before and had been consulting for some large software companies off and on for about 18 months. That may sound a little fancier than it is - it basically meant that work was intermittent and only vaguely interesting. I spent most of 2019 interviewing with at least a dozen companies and got to final stages of 3 or 4 jobs that would have been amazing next steps in my career - I thought at the time - only to have them suddenly evaporate for whatever reason. So, in March of 2020, everyone was terrified of Coronavirus and/or had suddenly become unemployed, I was sort of already used to things not going the way I wanted. The only difference for me now was that I couldn’t leave the house or ride motorcycles in good conscience.
So, like everyone else, video calls suddenly allowed me to reconnect with people I hadn’t spoken with in more than 20 years and became an important way for me to communicate with people outside of my house and get out of my own head. Among those reinvigorated friendships, I reached out to Blaine and we decided to jump into some recording sessions - probably the 5th time we’ve started some kind of motorcycle show, for lack of a better term.
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Our first conversation was of course, in consideration of a motorcycle acquisition. Blaine was itching for a new project and when a BMW X650 Challenge came up, the thinnest of rationale threatened to separate him from $5k before he came to his senses. The opportunity to thumb nose at the BMW community by riding a black sheep of the brands’ lineup seemed a little frivolous and we moved to other topics - including his envy of my Moto Morini 3 1/2. A bike that’s been on his dream-list for years, and is just rare enough that he might be willing to play at least a passive part in my demise should the opportunity arise, betting on the chance that my wife would just let him have it.
Also in April, as it happened, a member of my wife’s family here in Seattle decided this new downtime would be a perfect opportunity to practice riding on some dirt bikes to eventually be comfortable on her first dual sport motorcycle. Now, the only thing that comes close to the excitement of buying myself a new motorcycle, is helping someone else buy theirs. So my daily searches expanded in range and criteria until we found, oddly enough, a BMW X650 in Sacramento that really spoke to her. Interesting that this stepchild BMW model would appear for the second time, in an unrelated conversation, in a week. Further, before she took receipt of the Beemer, she wanted to practice riding before she got down to the business of practicing riding. She’s an engineer, and we suspect, a potential quote unquote: ‘BMW Person’. So when I let her borrow one of my smaller bikes to get more confident, I found myself with some available room in the workshop. Not much room, mind you, but when a Moto Guzzi T3 suddenly came up for a good price, the Time-Space-Money equation filled out enough that I justified my first motorcycle purchase in a pandemic. AND the seller would deliver it - that NEVER happens. And as we very awkwardly socially-distantly unloaded and schlepped my new 850 into the garage, the seller saw my horde of bikes and at the front, my Moto Morini 3 1/2. Which reminded him: his neighbor was selling one just like it.
This impromptu transaction made me late to my scheduled call with Blaine, for which he pouted and poked holes in my decision to buy the Guzzi, until I shared with him my Morini lead.
There’s more incident to that story, but I eventually purchased the bike on his behalf and we began planning an irreverent meet up to deliver it and play out some docket of boyish activities ultimately just to get some pie. However, for me, those best intentions were suddenly overshadowed by a culmination of events - an annoying breathing issue gradually escalated into an asthma diagnosis and my ego was given a good resizing with yet another rejection for a job I had spent weeks interviewing for. I know better than to put a lot of value on expectations, especially given the last year, but the gig was with a team and a company that I had worked with before, so it stung that much worse.
With no immediate job prospects and a shortness of breath - the urge to bug out was made very real. Our goal of finding the best pie in Utah, however, suddenly seemed petty and unjustifiable - which is saying something - we’ve gone a lot farther before for less reasons than that.
I needed to accomplish something. The work I had managed to get was so abstract – mostly building slides in PowerPoint – and I was chasing those projects near constantly. To restart the process of job-seeking seemed like walking downhill, only to start pushing up a big rock. Again.
The first and only thing I could think of was going to Oklahoma.
My mother inherited a house from my Great Uncle a couple years ago, and while a bittersweet piece of fortune, she was looking forward to spending weekends in a quiet neighborhood just a couple hours drive from the busy-ness that Dallas had become. She would eventually retire and take up full residence, but in the interim, some landscaping and a fresh coat of paint didn’t seem too big for a weekend of work here and there. But like all projects, once you dig in, you start to find bigger and bigger problems that need addressing. Some electrical outlets didn’t work, the toilets refused to flush in any acceptable way, unkempt vines had rotted out a fence, and the neglected pool had lost its lining, its cracks now fostering a burgeoning terrarium. Rain and moss had not done the outside doors any favors. Plus, my uncle’s reclusive cat had left its mark in various parts of the house before it departed – which is super fun on hot days, I can tell you. I had intentions of addressing as much of these things as I could when we went for Christmas, but inevitably, eating and visiting trump any real house work, especially in winter. I tried corresponding with local handymen, electricians and plumbers, but coordinating their timing from Seattle was impossible. Work, school and a misunderstanding of priorities made it seem like a lost cause.
But at this moment, I felt pretty useless where I sat. The process of getting another interview would take at least another 2 weeks, and in the meantime I would be a ball of irritation and grumpiness. But any effort I put out seemed to never pay off and in short, I don’t want to play anymore. My daughter, in the last weeks of the now-remote school year, pesters me for attention and I snap; my wife asks a pretty pedestrian question and I reflex to defensiveness. Plus, I couldn’t breathe! Even after a Covid test ruled it out, this weight on my chest would not lift. And what’s this I hear about false negatives?? Everything seemed to be lined up, and despite my normal ability to adapt, I couldn’t muster a shift to optimism
And again, the only thing I could think of was going to Oklahoma. With my wife still working, I would need to take my daughter. Maybe we could both have a little bit of the Summer as I remembered it. When I was her age, my grandparents would take me to my great-uncle’s ranch, then to their weekend house in nearby Marietta. And when I say ‘ranch’, I mean ranch style house in a rural suburb. And by weekend house, I mean single wide trailer on a lot in a retirement country club. And while the ‘weekend house’ blew away one year in a tornado, the ranch endured and every other summer or so I went to spend a week with my Great aunt and uncle. They were both Shutterbugs and we would stage elaborate pictures of me moving landscape timbers or doing yard work, then mail the pictures to my mom, pleading for her to hurry back. Funny now, because all I want to do is go to the ranch and move landscape timbers, heavy wooden barriers that now crumble with a kick, harboring micro biomes of spiders and snakes. A lot of the house was like this – not crumbling, but definitely in need of some repair, removal and refreshing.
I don’t really remember if it was a hard sell to my wife –it seems like the proposal of taking our daughter on a road trip during a pandemic, to stay in a run-down house with bad plumbing and encroaching wildlife more than 2000 miles away would be met with a strong resistance. I was also going to rendezvous with Blaine at some point, but that’s about as far as I got in the planning of the trip. I suspect that she knew there wasn’t a lot of discussion to be had, and I appreciate her trust in me, in spite of her need for a concrete itinerary. The only reservation I had was at UHaul for a trailer to bring the two Moto Morinis and my single cylinder Benelli for long term storage. I loaded tools, a small compressor and anything else that might fit, including my hitch rack so I could bring my lone Morini back to Seattle on the return trip. Books, toys, snacks and an iPad loaded with Disney movies were all a short arm’s reach from the child seat in the back. Two days later with a sippy cup full of coffee, we took off.
The easiest formula for any new acquisition is relative to time+space-money. And with a global pandemic, we all suddenly had a change in at least one of those variables - and
I’ve made the drive to Texas from the west coast probably a dozen times - and typically, I don’t like to hurry. It’s a road trip - if you want to get there quickly, just fly. The extra space in the car is convenient for impulse purchases, so every stop for gas or a potty break is an opportunity for a quick Craigslist search to see if any parts or projects may have come up since we left. And, as I usually make the journey during Winter, patience is the best precaution.
But not this time. While I can report that the middle of the country is beautiful in June, we only stopped for gas, grub and getting some sleep - combining them when possible. 10 hour days of sitting and steering, with deep conversation about the particulars of each of the little ponies. Midnight check-ins at the finest of the Choice Motels’ lineup and lots of tacos. Because 3 days of burgers and fries is too much.
Each of our stops, however limited, became increasingly stressful. I realized I was super anxious about wiping, sanitizing and distancing, and as I drove further East, the general population seemed anything but. I’m not normally uptight or stressed out about world events, but at this point in the pandemic, we just didn’t know what the actual facts were. And as much as I tried to chill out, the reality was that if we DID somehow become infected, there would be no way of knowing for up to 2 weeks. So not only was my daughter and my health on the table, but my mother and grandparents’ also - if we did a visit. Every time we got out of the car, it was a ritualized dash of gloves, mask, wipes, spray. Constantly vigilant and registering the people around me, what I touched, where the kid was, and what I had already wiped down. At exactly 12:48 on the second night, as my daughter was sprawled out on our blanket I had layed on the bed, it occurred to me that I didn’t wipe down the headboard and I had a laugh about how insane and neurotic I was being. But again, I had to assume it was justified.
On the third evening, my daughter was sleeping in her car seat, surrounded by a chaos of activities and toys. We rolled into the ranch’s dark driveway and opened the back door to be punched in the face with warm, stale, ammonia-tinged air. What the hell am I doing here?
For 4 days I worked on the house. I mowed a full acre of grass with the riding mower Mom got last year – hereafter known as ‘The Tractor’ – I replaced 2 toilets, 5 outside light fixtures, mortarted a loose brick wall, leveled a swinging gate, took a trailer full of things to Goodwill and 3 trailer loads of garbage and debris to the landfill. I went to bed tired and woke up sore. A guy came out to steam clean the entire house and I hired another to help haul away the small jungle that I had shoveled out of the pool. It was awesome. There was so much to do and I didn’t have to build a slide or have a conference call about any of it. I woke up, made coffee and breakfast, sorted the kid for school and got to work. The heat and sunshine was such a pleasure after months of Seattle’s grey Fall, Winter and yes even Spring. When I got too hot, I drank iced tea. When she finished with her class, I blew up a giant unicorn sprinkler thing and she played in the water until it was time to make dinner. When Mom came up on Friday, she seemed happy with the progress I had made – after an awkward pandemic half-hug, we went for BBQ and fried catfish to celebrate. What she and I were both excited about, though was that I now had a baby sitter for the weekend. Blaine was now en route from Arizona and would be getting in tomorrow.
At this point in my motorcycle story, I got to actually ride a motorcycle. On Saturday morning, I was a little nervous, because this was the first time Blaine was going to see the Moto Morini – he trusted me with thousands of his dollars to buy a motorcycle for him, relying on my interpretation of its condition and value. So I gave it a little dust-off, very conscious of the small dent the previous owner had made in the tank, and started it up to make sure there were no issues. Then I turned to mine for some fettling and a quick ride. This would sort of be a maiden voyage for my 3 ½ as well – having rewired and rebuilt it over the course of about 3 years. The truing of the rear wheel was the last job it needed and I had picked that up in March, before things got locked down. With Covid, though I couldn’t justify any real riding in Seattle – this is the absolute worst time to be in the healthcare system, should anything happen. So I bombed around the neighborhood to warm it up and futz with the carburetors. After every cycle of adjustment, the throttle became more responsive and acceleration a little quicker. The neighbors, while a few hundred feet away, would need to prepare for a noisy weekend.
Late in the afternoon, Blaine pulled his truck into the driveway – and by ‘truck’ he means his secondhand Mercedes mini van. In his defense, he’s lifted it a couple inches and put on some bigger tires, which was apparently not a factory option in 2004 – no longer the white-collar-mom-mobile it once was. It had been a while since I had seen Blaine – a few years ago, we met outside Portland to test out our Spanish trials bikes and follow up on a lead I had on a honeyhole of Ducati bits. He took one home, but I wouldn’t get my first single until the following winter, which worked out, because when I got stuck, I’d call on him for some empathy. And now we were here beginning another chapter of Italians, following another awkward Covid-greeting.
I rolled his bike out of the garage, in an informal presentation – and I think we were both relieved. 350’s are handsome bikes. To see one in person is pretty great, but to see one and know that it’s yours is an excitement all its own. And when he threw an enormous smile as I popped it on the center stand and backed away, I knew he felt the same, in spite of the now glaring dent in the black tank. I predicted a 2 kick start, but on the first attempt, Blaine’s new Moto Morini 3 ½ fired into life with a crisp staccato rumble. After some poking and prodding, we decided that the only way to find out how it rides would be to find out how it rides. Blaine hopped on and made it to the end of the driveway before making a U turn. The excitement had almost gotten the better of us, so we took a beat to get our gear on.
For anyone doing their first shakedown ride, we offer the following advice: start with concentric circles around your tool bag. My experience says that the severity of a breakdown on a maiden voyage is directly related to the distance from the tool needed to correct the issue. With that in mind, we did some quick accelerations around the neighborhood – luckily, the only thing that fell off was my lighting control cover. A small piece of pressed sheet metal that I considered a worthwhile price to pay for the vigor that my Morini seemed to suddenly muster when we opened it up on the farm road headed into town. When I looked back and didn’t see Blaine, I suspected his luck had run out in some way, but as he caught up, I saw a small glint in his hand. My control cover wouldn’t be sacrificed after all.
We decided to press our luck and venture on to find some grub – about a mile down the road, over the Mineral Bayou bridge, through the old downtown and onto Main Street. I pulled us into a parking lot shared by the Fire Department, my great uncle’s boot repair shop and Main Street BBQ – fyi some of the best bbq-that’s-not-from-a -gas-station I’ve ever had. After a hearty round of brisket and potato salad, I poked my head into John Wayne’s Boot and Shoe Repair to say Hi to my Grandfather’s brother, who keeps the remaining cowpokes from as far away as Kansas belted and booted. The two-room business has an atmosphere of suspended oil vapor and century-old leather tooling. In the reception area, a glass case with the memorabilia of the shop’s namesake and two beautifully patinated saddles, which have been awaiting pickup for nearly a decade. On every visit, I ask if he’d be interested in taking on some side projects doing motorcycle seats or pannier bags, and the response is always a charming , ‘nah’. The business has changed little since it began, even when the fire department moved in next door and expanded, it simply extended its new facade over the Boot Shop to incorporate it into the architecture. The interior never missed a beat and I can picture my uncle behind the counter reading the paper in his blue smock as the bricks went up around him.
Before the sun started to retreat, we made our way back to the house. We decided to end the day on a high note and resume in the morning; both bikes needed some adjustment with timing and fuel mixture – still had some misfires at higher revs and hesitation with a heavy throttle. New plugs and fuel filters might not hurt either. By dusk we had put the twins back in the garage and Blaine mapped a nearby motel. I felt weird that, thousands of miles from our homes, one of my closest friends left my family’s house to stay in a motel. Pandemic, remember? We both have health issues that may or may not be a thing with Covid and I hadn’t really done a proper quarantine before I’d be visiting my grandparents the following week. So before it even came up, Blaine took one for the team.
I woke up the next morning to missed texts. With coffee in hand, I met Blaine back in the driveway for a day of some socially-distanced-tuning. Mine had been misfiring on long straightaways, so I suspected the carbs were starving. Raising the float height a bit and replacing the inline filters should sort that out. Blaine’s Morini was showing more elusive symptoms– an inconsistent lack of power in the higher end, but a perfect idle. It could be anything from jetting or fuel mixture, to an ignition issue with timing or spark quality. Some advancing seemed to help, but when Blaine asked for a cup of hose water, I was confused. As I was getting the float needles sorted, he had scuffed and bondo-ed the dent on his tank. And this was clearly the aspect of the motorcycle that worried him most. To his credit, he had it wet-sanded and touched up with a strip of tape and my daughter’s finger paints by the time I got my fuel system back in place. And it kinda looked great. His next objective was to convince me that we needed to trade seats. His saddle was a café style, with a rounded hump at the rear, while mine was the flatter, strada type. I swapped them to see how it looked, with absolutely no intentions of trading – half humoring and half taunting. His effusive praise of mine’s potential new look fell flat. We both knew it wasn’t going to happen.
To test his new racing stripe, we decided to strap on some tools and give it a proper ride. So, coming out of the Ranch, we took a left; away from town. I rode in front so he could get a good look at the perfect visual balance that my leather strada seat created.
Rural Oklahoma is pretty fantastic for riding smaller motorcycles. The interstates are great for cruisers and liter bikes, but the farm-to-market roads and 2 lane highways woven throughout and connecting the small towns usually feature straights that are just long enough to get up to speed before sweeping curves. The flat farmland terrain provides great visibility in the tighter spots and there’s almost no traffic.
Admittedly, I haven’t explored much of the area outside Durant. My trips have usually been so brief that the only real recreation to be had was within walking distance of the parking lot I mentioned before. And of course, as a kid I was shuttled around for whatever errands there were. For this excursion I was just going to count the lefts to find our way back. After a couple miles we turned down a spur to find a shady spot for some further tweaking, but as we continued, the density of the woods on the left side of the road suddenly thinned and I saw a driveway with a familiar sign post. Suddenly, I was 11 years old and knew exactly where we were. I stopped as fast as the new drum brakes would let me and circled my finger in the air to let Blaine know I was going to turn around.
The sign read, “Durant State Fish Hatchery” – not a grand cultural icon or anything, but in this long-standing campus of buildings, my great aunt worked for her entire career. And I can remember this location on my uncle’s list of to-do’s - which almost always ended at the Braum’s for a pint of chocolate ice cream and a box of pecan sandies – an under-represented combination in my opinion. We pulled in the driveway and sat for a bit before realizing the nuance of what might be considered trespassing and continuing on.
With an Oklahoman June, the only way not to bake in a helmet is to keep riding or find shade, and in the next crossroad town of Armstrong we happened on a picnic shelter that would do for further fettling. We repeated this cycle of ride, stop, tweak a couple more times, but those few twists of an allen wrench woke my 3 ½ up further - to what would likely be the best it was going to get. While the racing stripe did help, the new Morini was having trouble keeping pace.
We decided to trace our path back to town for a late afternoon snack and coffee; there’s been a bit of a renaissance in the area and some of the older architecture in downtown has been claimed and restored. One enterprising couple converted a pre-war building into a coffee house. The building is cool, but really, the decision was made because there was space in front to park the Morinis and look at them while enjoying pastries and solving the country’s manufacturing crisis with our amazing ideas. We were well aware that of everyone around us, we carried the highest opinions of ourselves.
As we talked, we had to acknowledge how strange it was that we were even here in the first place.
Two months prior, our intentions were pretty limited – record a weekly conversation and see where it goes. That first session tipped a domino that would lead to a few different surprises and decisions, ultimately putting us in a town I never thought I’d have a relationship with as an adult. The segues were pretty pedestrian, but looking back, this year has been characterized by massive changes in perspective around what we think we want and need. If the only thing that changes is everything, then why would anything be off the table as a possibility going forward? Apparently, the only thing required to completely shift one’s personal paradigm, is the willingness to be wrong about everything. If only these people knew of the massive concepts we were dealing with here.
Our day ended soon after, while the light was still good, and after taking the long way back to the ranch we prepped Blaine’s Morini for transport on the back of the Barbie Wagon. I could tell Blaine’s enthusiasm for his new motorcycle had waned a little, and I was bummed that we couldn’t get it to run with more juje. I didn’t know if it was the bike itself or if his idea of the mark was more vivid than reality – mine seemed spirited and awesome, but I tend to be impressed if something just idles. I suggested he take mine for a spin to compare and
ten minutes later he returned with the massive smile that we were after. I spent a lot of time in the shop with this bike, and it occurred to us that we needed to give his new Morini a break – 10 years of storage would need more than a morning of driveway tuning to shake off.
But selfishly, it felt good to have the affection I have for my 3 ½ validated by an outside party. Most of my motorcycle projects have a finish that only a father could love.
If hellos are awkward in a pandemic, goodbyes are worse. A big hug is the natural thing to do, but when you can’t do that organically, it becomes glaringly obvious that you both want to. Then it gets weird. So these days, the odd gesture of bumping elbows has become loaded with very complicated meaning. And with an Italian on the back and a box of parts in the passenger seat, our brief adventure concluded.
I stayed in Durant another full week, working on everything I knew how to fix and googling the things I didn’t. I felt better about visiting my grandparents, so we drove down to Dallas for an early dinner on a patio somewhere before retreating back North of the border. I rode the Morini into town a few times for no good reason, and took the other bikes I have stored there out for some exercise when my Mom came back up. The town of Blue Oklahoma was a few miles East, the high school my grandfather attended was still there off the main road. I have a Moto Guzzi T5 – in Italian Police dress that someone imported from Milan – and the irony of riding a police bike down a road that my great uncle – a career Highway Patrolman – once cruised wasn’t lost. Plus, the thought of riding a Blue bike to Blue, Oklahoma was sort of Dad-joke funny. And of course I chased a classified ad about a motorcycle – a Montesa 246 sprang up for a great price about an hour away and the seller was quite a character – though anyone in Texoma with a Spanish trials bike and a penchant for making pirate-ship cannons would be.
Eventually, the time came to head back to Seattle. I felt better. My breathing issues were still there, but by that point it was pretty clear how much anxiety and pacific northwest allergens were a factor. My daughter’s remote school year had officially ended andy further projects on the house would require extra hands or heavy machinery. I tried to calculate how we could stay longer or have my wife come down, but really it was time. I was proud of the work I had done – which is something I hadn’t said about anything other than a car or motorcycle in quite a while. My daughter got to experience a little bit of the summer as I knew it when I was a kid, and my mother could enjoy the house, without a backlog of maintenance staring at her. Our trip back would be slower, going the long way. Not because we didn’t want to get back, but because nothing had changed – there was still a pandemic and work was still dry. So it made sense to practice at least one of the lessons I had learned. I taught her stupid songs and let her watch TV, we went to Devil’s Tower for ice cream, and stopped briefly at the very forgettable Sturgis and Mt Rushmore, unaware of the President’s controversial visit the following week.
Through Montana and Idaho, with a quick stop to check out some Italians – which would become another story in itself. Over the mountains and back in to the Emerald City, where the gloom was just starting to dissolve.
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This story began with an axiom that the only thing that changes is everything.
And as I said, clarity and perspective typically only appear with retrospective view. This bug out was what I needed. However grandiose, it seems like everything has changed now, even though circumstance has not. With a little break from chasing what I thought I needed, I’ve been able to see what I already have. My daughter started proper Kindergarten this year and what a gift it is to be able to engage in that with her as we do this weird-ass remote learning on an iPad. I’ve been able to revisit a dumb podcast I started, this time with one of my best friends. And with newfound mental freedom, I’ve moved forward with a few business ideas I’ve had. Maybe they’ll take off, maybe they won’t, but I think I’m able to bring a little value to my family by being more present – or at least practicing it. As a father, I hope the example I can set is that when life is upended and uncertain; step away, breathe and listen with different ears. However ridiculous that seems, everything will be OK.
Because as a thing moves toward inevitability it meanders and bounces to unexpected places - with no destination or goal, just: forward. And now that I can’t imagine things any other way, I can reminisce at my misguided past-self, unaware of what would be coming his way. I am grateful that he kept moving forward.
And there you have it – I hope you enjoyed this season of the Hole in the Head Moto storytime podcast. I didn’t intend to do it in this serial format, until it was pretty clear that’s how it was shaping up. Blaine and I have continued our conversations and have made a few ridiculous purchases since. Stay tuned for those updates and more, but in the mean time, I appreciate you listening. Let me know what you think of Everything is OK – get at me on Facebook and Instagram @holeintheheadmoto – also subscribe and maybe leave a review on what ever platform you use to listen.
Our Morinis’ saga isn’t over. As of the release of this episode, after 12 weeks of top-down Post Office ineptitude and customs bureaucracy, Blaine has received a custom fitted ignition unit from Sweden. No updates on a seat change yet, but I’m sure he’ll dust off his sewing machine soon, if he hasn’t already. And at that point, we’ll begin to seriously consider logistics to find the best pie in Utah.
Copyright Andrew Taylor 2020
Storytime Podcast - Season 2
The Hole in the Head Moto Storytime Podcast is back!
For most of my motoring adulthood, there have been a few guys who have either instigated or at least supported this ridiculous pursuit - and conversations with these guys often start around some dumb idea or shifting opinion, and they inevitably meander and evolve over a few more conversations into some dumb event we’ve somehow committed ourselves to.
This season, I’m reconnecting with my long-time accomplice and frequent bad influence - Blaine Dehmlow (Overland Motorcycles). Every Adventure begins with a conversation and I wanted to see if I could capture that evolution in real-ish time by setting aside some space every week with a guy I’ve known for nearly a decade now.
Follow us as we inadvertantly kick off a series of dominoes that lead to a cross-country trip during a pandemic.
Subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen!
Episode 01: Son of a Preacher Man (BMW R75/5)
Though, more accurately, the SON was the preacher.
For the inaugural episode of Hole in the Head Storytime, I dive into the story of my BMW R75/5 - from a preacher's garage to mine, with an epic shakedown ride between. Hope you enjoy it!