Knee down, surging through Turn 10 at Summit Point raceway. We are at the top of third gear and Brunhilde is impatient and fidgety. My vision is fixed as we cross the patchy asphalt down to the apex. Far from her native testing grounds on the smooth tracks of Europe, what passes for race track pavement in the US is clearly upsetting her rigid, aristocratic sensibilities. The lady’s frustration is communicated through muscle twitches and small tosses of her neck. She can see the straight coming into view, past the striped curbing, and works her jaw to get the bit up into her teeth. Still navigating the turn, she fearlessly starts to pull for the straight. As she continues to attack, the rear Michelin searches desperately for grip and the electronics fight to rein her back in. Feeling her tense up for a big lunge I stomp the shift lever down attempting to hit fourth, but not today. She rears back and now I can only steer with body English. I shift right to keep her pointed away from the grass and stab for the lever again. Fifth gear brings the front tire back to the pavement, but Hilde will not be denied. As pit out flashes past on the right, she’s back into her top end and at over 140 mph, and on power alone, lifts her front end off the ground again. “That’s a first,” I muse, while pulling her hard right to avoid another bike, which suddenly appears stationary.

My Introduction to Motorcycling

My story began some 30 years ago when I bought my first motorcycle. It was a 1970 BMW R75/5 basket case, and with the confidence of the young and the ignorant, I set about to rebuild it in my parents’ unheated Washington, DC, garage. It was a brutal experience, compounded by a total lack of mechanical empathy or experience. However, after putting it back together about five times, I finally succeeded at getting it up and running. Now roadworthy, at least from my youthful viewpoint, and with the usual road mishaps and aided by the MOA Anonymous Book, I was able to ride my “basket case” to all of the lower 48 states and a fair number of Canadian provinces by the time I was 20.

To bag Alaska, I thought a different bike might be in order, so I bought an R80GS. After riding it 80 miles from point of purchase back to my house, I promptly sold the squiggly wobbly thing.
It was now 1990 and Alaska was still on my mind. The K100RS had been out for a few years and I was able to pick up a low mileage unit with hard bags for $3,200. I promptly spray painted it matte black, and with three friends headed off for Alaska and the “haul road,” a.k.a the Dalton Highway. With the exception of periodically having to hammer the butter soft front rim straight, and that one time when the tip of the water pump exploded out the front cover as the ’85s were prone to do (it was fixed on the spot in British Columbia by a roadside welder who welded the impeller to the shaft and welded the cover hole closed), that K bike was my soulless but competent and constant companion for more than 100,000 miles.

After racking up a quarter million miles of blue highways, I couldn't resist the siren call of new and exciting motorcycle experiences. I wanted to find my way to the race track. I didn’t know much about racing, but I knew I needed a van as a mobile garage and something fast to ride. It was 1989, and I spent the last month of my senior year of college rebuilding the bottom end of a $50 Ford E100 and the cylinders and carburetors of a $350 Yamaha RD350LC. Now “suitably” equipped, I headed out to my first race with WERA, with no greater understanding as to the magnitude of my endeavor other than the challenges I had overcome that fateful winter in my parents’ garage rebuilding my first R bike.

Let’s go Racing

Racing in the late 1980s and early 1990s was a simpler affair than it is today. The bias ply tires were terrible and, as such, could last weekend after weekend as long you kept their operating temperatures in check by running them at 50 psi. Carburetors always needed adjustment, which meant there was never time to mess with suspension. The good news is it didn't matter. Back then no one knew very much about how suspensions impacted racing performance and few, if any, suspensions were adjustable anyway. There were also no track days, which meant if you wanted to ride fast, it was straight into racing. It is easy to get nostalgic for when the Yen was weak and America had a middle class. In those early days, most of the racers were bike shop mechanics or other moderate income blue collar types, and the grids were full of a rag-tag collection of street bikes souped up for racing. Race teams were usually composed of a few good friends gathered around a common mission which, for many, was winning a weekend race at a local track.

After floundering around at the back of the pack for a year or two, we bought a used FZR 400 for $1,800 and won some regional championships. We switched to WERA National Endurance Racing in 1993 under the banner of Army Of Darkness. We dove straight into the deep end and entered a 24-hour race. Twenty-four hours is a lot of swimming. We drowned when we inevitably lost the transmission on the Yamaha after 15 hours. Just as the dawn sun peeked above the horizon, it was lights out for Army Of Darkness, but just for the moment.

The irresistible allure of destroying engines pulled us further into the WERA National Endurance Series. “Us” includes some variations from year-to-year, but at the top of the list of “most years of service” you will find Tim Gooding and me with Melissa Berkoff a close second. Tim is a master fabricator, machinist, mechanic and scientist whose claim-to-BMW-fame, prior to 2013 that is, was closing one loop of the DC beltway by pitching an R100S up the road one rainy evening. Melissa is a certified BMW mechanic who used to strafe California canyon roads on an unbelievably thrashed K75C. She captained her own “Neighbor of the Beast” endurance team, and is a very fast racer and excellent mechanic. But the team, in any given year, was much bigger than just the three of us.

Depending on the season and the world economy, WERA National Endurance races are 4, 6, 8 or 24 hours long. The series is national, which again, depending on the season, requires driving a van and trailer from DC to Oregon, California, Michigan, Texas, Nevada, Ohio, Georgia, West Virginia, Virginia, Oklahoma, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and one ill-fated trip to Canada.

The races are, in effect, relay races with the bike as the baton. You can replace anything on the bike except the frame. Each rider usually rides until they are out of fuel, which typically means they have long since run out of tire. We would also build in oversized gas tanks which means, in some cruel years, each rider would have to take a 90-minute shift before a pit stop. For comparision, a typical MotoGP race lasts 45 minutes with no pit stops. At each stop we would refuel using fancy “dry breaks,” which would enable us to completely fill the tank in just a few seconds, and also replace at least the rear tire. A fast stop is typically less than 30 seconds, but when you add the slowing down and speeding up to get into and out of the pits, it takes about a minute. The way to win is simple: ride faster than everyone else on the track, have quick pit stops, and don’t have any critical mechanical issues.

Racing is the ultimate abuse of machinery. When you are racing, you just flog the bike mercilessly in order to shave another tenth of a second off a lap time. This means long hours of preparation and maintenance before each event to ensure the entire bike is up for the beating. Since all the team members have regular lives and full time jobs, the expeditions to the far flung tracks mostly happen the day and night before the event, which means maintaining the transporter and trailer as well. The logistics are daunting.

Technology Changes Everything, Sort of

Meanwhile, my long suffering K100RS was retired and BMW had moved well away from me as a customer. Rather than keeping their basic KRS philosophy and modernizing it, BMW had started down a baffling path of heavier and heavier bikes with quirky overly engineered rider's aids and overly sophisticated suspension setups. Really, what is the point of saving eight pounds with an aluminum gas tank if you follow that up by bolting on 50 pounds of ABS pumps which shouldn't ever be used?

On the racing front, we eventually graduated from the hard knocks master class, and in 1999 won our first national 600cc middleweight class championship. We proceeded to win six more championships, including our perfect year of 2003, where we won every single race of the 10-event series.

The societal changes of the hourglass economy that were occurring throughout the country were also filtering into racing. The switch to radial tires vastly reduced lap times, but at the price of increased tire consumption. Bike engines made more and more horsepower with increasingly sophisticated fuel injection. Other systems like clutches, transmissions and brakes, and the resultant overall weight reductions, made for faster lap times, but at the price of decreased component life and skyrocketing maintenance costs. By 2005 the paddock was filled with huge transporters and the guys racing out of pickup trucks and the backs of vans had largely been forced out of the sport by the relentless and expensive march of technology. Our team was fortunate in that we received enough sponsorship and support to offset most of the expenses. We won the 2005 championship with a last race victory, which required superbly detailed preparation, fast riding from Ben Walters, myself, and for the first time with our team, 16-year-old Chris Peris, and perfect pit stop team work. The wear and tear of racing are always balanced by the sweet savor of victory, and while it was a great day, after 350,000 miles on the van and untold race engine rebuilds, we finally decided to step back from the sport a bit.

BMW Redux

However, Ben Walters kept flying the flag and built a few Yamaha R1 endurance racers for a few years, then in 2009 left them in my care when he moved out West for a few years. Tim, Melissa and I could not leave the R1s sitting alone in the garage, so we would prepare them and race them periodically. Although we were far from series regulars, we could still podium, or at least be in a podium position when another transmission would invariably eat itself.

It was during this transitional time that I noticed BMW motorcycle design was coming back from the wilderness. BMW customers are typically older guys with solid credit and back in the ‘80s these guys would have grown up on Triumphs or CB500s. By comparison, an R100 would seem like a viable alternative. In the ‘90s, however, those 40-year-olds had cut their teeth on Ninja 900s, Interceptors and GSX-Rs, and the BMW offerings looked pretty pedestrian by comparison. Then, change came to the marque and the brain trust at Motorrad realizing the need to rev up the image of their motorcycles in the same manner the automotive division had haloed their cars with the M versions. Their first attempts appeared recalcitrant and petulant, as they released HP (high performance) versions of normal road bikes. Carbon fiber valve covers didn't feel that sporty when they were still levering the rear wheel off the track surface. But BMW was walking a fine line. They were trying to attract a performance-oriented customer base, or at least haloing the brand, without alienating their core customers. Having heavily promoted their enclosed driveshaft as the best way to transmit power to the rear wheeel, they gradually began to reconfigure their public relations, and now had to convince their loyal base that sometimes it was acceptable to have chain final drives and inline, four-cylinder engines.

Der Hammer

After years of carefully avoiding direct comparisons to anything Japanese, the powers that be in Munich finally saw the light and created a real sportbike. In 2010 BMW dropped the S1000RR hammer. It crushed its rivals on specifications and components and, due to the escalating Yen, BMW could even price it aggressively against the Japanese competition.

Chris Peris was recruited to race an S1000RR in AMA Superbike and was often the top privateer. He also has a racing school, which sometimes does international events, and our good friend Ben Walters ended up as a guest instructor at Chris’s school in Qatar. Ben was deeply impressed by the power and balanced nature of the S1000RR and called me when he got back to the States. His goal was to convince me that we needed to jump back into the national circuit with both feet. Hence, an incredibly unlikely Venn diagram arose in January 2013. Riding long distances, Army of Destruction teammates from 2005, really fast motorcycles, and a single point of intersection—BMW.

Chris had been racing one of the first S1000s. The 2010 and 2011 models had a geometry that was more aimed at road riding than track riding and, therefore, had some high speed limitations. One was the offset of the triple trees. Triple tree offset governs trail and trail is one of the pieces of the high speed steering puzzle. Less trail feels great right up until the moment when you lose the front in a high speed sweeper and destroy the bike. The other weak spot was the shock linkage. The early ones had a rising rate linkage, soft initially then firmer; but on the track we usually want a linear linkage that is not soft anywhere.

Fortunately, BMW had incorporated these race-track tricks into the stock 2012 model, so we would not have to mess with them. In another fortuitous twist, due to an assembly line error where someone failed to properly assemble the connecting rods on the crank of the 2012 engines, we were able to get two S1000s for a song. How? Even after BMW had warranteed the connecting rods, some owners didn't want the bikes back, so there were some low-mileage factory buy backs sitting around. We bought two of these through our long time sponsor and local BMW dealer, Battley Cycles.

Because nothing is simple, particularly when you’re trying to do things on a budget, we took possession of the bikes with only three weeks remaining before we were supposed to be on track. That is, quite simply, not a lot of time to build up new and unfamiliar race bikes. The good news is, we had done this before.
We knew the engines were strong and we also knew that they were tuned to their potential. Chris's team had blown up a number of hopped up engines while the bikes were still on the dyno, so we were not looking to make any engine modifications.

The stock ECU and the traction control settings are sophisticated and powerful, but tuning them for individual tracks was going to require special cables, unlock codes and software. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate anyone who had any real-time experience tuning the stock electronics with the race kit. We also realized that we would not have a lot of time to experiment, so we locked the bikes in “Slick” mode and then removed the stock traction control, ABS and quick shifters. We then installed a “Bazzaz” system that we knew intimately from the R1s we set up back in 2009, for which we already had mature air-fuel ratio and traction control maps set.

Building our BMW Race Bike

Today, suspension is really the biggest variable with race bikes. We redid the forks with Traxxion Dynamics internal cartridges and JRI built our rear shocks. We also swapped the stock steering damper for a racing unit. As we were ditching the ABS, we fitted a forged Brembo master cylinder, plumbed it with Hel brake lines, and fitted Vesrah RJL pads to the excellent stock calipers. We deep sixed the stock exhaust with all the valves for a lightweight titanium and carbon pipe from Leo Vince, installing the Bazazz sensor to be able to remap the ECU for smoother throttle response.

We lost some more weight with Speedcell Lithium Ion batteries and by replacing the stock bodywork with race bodywork. Then we had to start making the bike heavier.

First we installed bigger, but still aluminum, 24-liter fuel tanks. We had to cut the tops off of them and weld in double dry break receivers: one for fuel to flow in, the other to let air out. The tanks are of World Superbike design, so they also replace the seat and fill the entire area that we opened up by removing the ABS control unit. We installed various sliders to protect the outside edges of the engine and bike in case of a mild crash. We also swapped out the stock clipons and foot pegs for racing units. There are a number of reasons to do this. The race clipons are faster to repair in a crash.

The aftermarket rear sets allow for more positions for the foot pegs, are tougher and invert the shift pattern. Like the old British bikes, down is up and up is down. There are a few reasons to do this, but basically, it is easier to miss an upshift than a down shift and pushing down on the lever is more positive than pulling up on it.

Another crucial aspect of endurance racing is quick-change axles and wheels. Traditionally, Tim fabricates these items, but since he was busy drilling 1/16" holes in many bolts to safety wire them, a requirement of most racing bodies and good practice for endurance bikes anyway, we bought modified axles and chain adjusters from Fast by Frank, and combined these with captive wheel spacers and spring-loaded front fender hardware. We also shaved off as much of the brake calipers as we dared, and when we were done with the mods we could get both wheels changed in under 30 seconds. That was our target time.

Then we swapped the stock tires for Michelin slicks. The slick tires have no tread, which maximizes the amount of rubber on the track. The lack of tread also gives the tire much improved characteristics with regards to heat transfer. We run a 200 width rear tire to put as much rubber on the track as possible.

In the choreographed chaos of reconstruction, the two bikes began to shed their old “retail showroom” personalities and take on a much harder demeanor. In race parlance people often speak of the “A” bike and the “B” bike. This is not pejorative, but rather just a way of differentiating them. A and B, in our case, became “Eva” and “Brunhilde.”

With five days to go we were finally able to fire up the bikes and were greeted with a cheerful Christmas tree of warning lights and error messages preventing the bikes from running correctly. We plugged in all the stock sensors and boxes again, removed them in a prescribed order, said “Rumpelstiltskin” three times while clicking our heels, and were ecstatic when we got the bikes locked into “Slick” mode with full power available. We were ready to race.

I caught a brief hint of wood smoke through the aspen forest as we floated around another curve, a blur of white tree trunks stuttering in my peripheral vision as I followed Brad, trusting his local knowledge. This part of the Alpine Loop above the Sundance Resort in Utah was only open to bicycles and motorcycles this week, and so far we’d only seen a couple of dirt bikers disappearing into single track and one lonely bicyclist in turquoise spandex, head down and pedaling fast.

Brad flung the big BMW K1200GT around blind corners like a sport biker, but then, he lives here, and knows every curve and pothole. I tailed him trustingly on a classic BMW R100GS Bumblebee and Jonathan took up the rear on his KTM 950 Super Moto. We were laughing in our communicators; it was just too much fun and there was nobody up here but us on the sun-dappled black tarmac, weaving through budding leaves and spring flowers pushing up through damp leaves. This was our fourth day here. We only planned to stay three, but we would be here another two, and why not? Each scenic ride ended with a soak in our private hot tub, a visit with our hosts, maybe a walk to dinner at the famed Sundance resort, or an in-house dinner party with a private chef. More hot tub or drinks and dancing at the rustic celebrity hot spot, the Owl bar. We deserved it. We’d been working hard and staying put was a well-deserved splurge in a low-budget exploration of the Arizona and Utah park system that began from Overland Expo in Flagstaff.

From Overland Expo we made a beeline to Highway 89, gritting our teeth through the Flagstaff traffic and breathing a sigh of relief when the few remaining RVs turned west at the signpost for Grand Canyon Village. Suddenly our heavily-laden bikes seemed lighter as the road runs long and straight through the high desert. We’d leave this flat, dry landscape behind in a mere few hours for the delightful twists and turns through the geologic wonderland that defines northern Arizona and Utah, but not before we were bombarded by dodging dust devils racing west across the road through the Navajo Nation.
For many miles Jonathan and I shared epitaphs via our SENA headsets... “oh no, no... woooowooooaaaahhh... Dang!” They were attracted to our slipstream and, unlike attacking dogs, were not tricked by quick acceleration. Though we were well sheltered by protective gear from helmet to boots, the impacts slammed our overloaded bikes into precarious tilts that were hard to recover from. After the first few hits, we learned to meet them with an aggressive lean left and soon it became almost normal in that way things do when you have no other choice.

We approached the Utah border where vertical cliffs of Navajo sandstone rise from the desert floor pale in shades of pink and gray, sporting eroded caps of smooth white domes. Turning off on Highway 89A, we continued to gain altitude and over the next ridge there was a sharp bend to the west where we were plunged into the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument. Finally, we had left the monotonous pastel landscape behind. The cliffs flickered yellow and orange in the waning daylight, prompting numerous stops to photograph our orange and yellow motorcycles against a series of striated upturned cliffs jutting toward the road in cuestas streaked with iron oxide.

Traffic was nonexistent, so we lay in the center of the road to photograph each other riding. I wanted to stand here for hours to watch the light change on the cliffs and the dark blue sky behind white puffy clouds stained with its deepening indigo.
Our destination the first night was Marble Canyon and we arrived just before sunset. Last year after Overland Expo, I made the same trip, only I stuffed 12 dollars into the box at the entrance of Lee’s Ferry Campground and pitched my tent at a site overlooking the Colorado River. When the sun rose in the morning, I crossed the street to bathe in the freezing river, as the site has only toilet facilities. The shadow of the cliffs made the experience shockingly invigorating, but the sun soon rose high to send shafts of light onto the beach which baked my head dry.

This year we rested at Marble Canyon Lodge, a simple ‘60s-style travelers’ motel. Unfortunately the lodge and restaurant has since burned to the ground, leaving an accommodations void in the area.
At sunset we walked across the old Navajo Bridge, the sides of which are an open weave of steel bars with dizzying views to the river 470 feet below. The air currents sent water spray scented with sandstone upward to buoy the dozens of swallows swooping and twirling in a graceful hunt of invisible insects. We kept an eye out for California Condor with their 10-foot wingspans. They were almost extinct in 1987, motivating alarmed conservationists to capture the remaining 22 birds to breed in zoos and be released little by little as their numbers increased. Now there are about 250 birds, but we are disappointed to leave without seeing any.

Marble Canyon has no marble, but was so named by explorer John Wesley Powell, who thought the polished limestone looked like marble. In case you missed your American history lessons, Powell was the one-armed Civil War veteran who led the Powell Geographic Expedition in the summer of 1869. They set out to explore the Green and the Colorado Rivers and made their way down the Grand Canyon in wooden boats. A description of their travels can be found in his book, The Exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons.
The next morning we made the short ride down the red rock canyon road to Lee’s Ferry, lined with cliffs, hoodoos and balanced rocks. We reached the dead end at the Colorado River where white-water guides were busily rigging their boats. Before the Navajo Bridge was built, this was the only place to cross the Colorado for 600 miles in either direction.

Jonathan and I sat in the shade of the picnic area above a vast parking lot where tour buses would soon deposit excited river rafters. We feasted on a breakfast of bread, cheese and salami and watched the river guides prepare for their journeys, stuffing dry bags with fresh produce and plastic bladders of tequila and vodkas to augment their rations of freeze-dried meals. In contrast, the success of the one-armed expedition leader seemed all the more extraordinary. Poor Powell and his crew ended up with spoiled bacon and musty flour, moldy dried apples and melted sugar, rotted canvases, no hats and few clothes, but a big sack of coffee survived to keep them caffeinated and alert.

Back on 89A, we stopped just six miles west of Marble Canyon at the intriguingly named town of Cliff Dwellers to pose next to one of the precariously balanced rocks and browse the jewelry crafted by Navajo women at a row of makeshift roadside stands. At ten in the morning in May, the temperature had already soared to over 100 degrees. A peek inside a small house made entirely of huge stone slabs with ledges for sitting and sleeping chiseled into its sides revealed the attraction of such primitive lodging. It’s a constant 75 degrees in here, morning and night.

My polite, cursory tour of the Navajo jewelry stands quickly became a buying spree, as I found that a lot of the trinkets here are of high quality at wholesale prices. I couldn’t afford not to stock up on turquoise and silver for birthday and holiday gifts and, okay, a couple of things for myself, too. During our sales transactions, I learned that we were still in the Navajo Nation we’d entered since just a little north of Flagstaff. The Nation spans over 5000 square miles and is the largest reservation in the country. There’s nothing but rabbits and rattlesnakes here, one woman told me. The men are mostly gone. There’s no opportunity for commerce, so this is the only chance to make a living save going into the cities to sell wholesale, which is also “too far” and dangerous and lonely and crowded. Staying here is better, she said.

Standing in the shade of a rock on the hillside to drink some water and gaze south over a vast acreage of nothing but scrub, I didn’t blame them for choosing this vast and rugged peace over the din of a city. I donned my helmet, grateful in a “for the grace of God go I” sort of way that I did not have to make that kind of decision.

We headed out to pass by the Cliff Dwellers Lodge, first homesteaded by Blanche Russell, a Ziegfeld Follies dancer who quit her job in 1920 to drive her husband Bill west to nurse his tuberculosis. Their car broke down here and they simply stayed, trading food for labor from passers-by to build their rock house. Over time they expanded their spread to include a trading post, restaurant, gas station and then a lodge catering to the few motor tourists headed to the Grand Canyon’s North Rim. But their best customers were the hoards of Mormons driving the Honeymoon Trail on the road to sanctify their marriages at the temple in St. George.

As we rode west, the Vermillion Cliffs faded to beige under the white-hot sun but the air cooled as soon as we hit the switchbacked road up to the Kaibab Plateau. We rose into a landscape of scrubby pines struggling to root in the rock and then into a full-fledged forest with pines, aspens, junipers and fresh, clean, pine-scented air.
Jacob Creek up on the plateau bustles with a visitors’ center, gas station, store and motel, plus the area has a large network of campgrounds. At the restaurant we ordered beautiful fresh salads and a burger. German tourists on rented Harley-Davidsons were intrigued by our loaded bikes and especially my classic R100GS Bumble Bee. They were headed to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, but we encouraged them to change their plans and explore the North Rim just 12 miles south. Other locals at the counter agreed and, though the Germans gave us all the thumbs up, we’re pretty sure the language barrier interfered.

We headed to Bryce Canyon, only to be disappointed with limited views from pullouts. But the historic lodge, built in 1925 among towering Ponderosa Pines, has a great buffet. As we lunched with busloads of tourists, we decided that next time through we’d stay here and take some hikes through Bryce to see the stunning rock formations not visible from the road. It’s also one of the only three “Dark Skies” parks in the United States, as there is no ambient light from traffic, signs or housing, so stargazing is purported to be spectacular.

Continuing east on Highway 12, we agreed that this scenic byway is one of the most beautiful motorcycling roads in the USA, perhaps even in the world. Highway 12 passes through Red Canyon, Bryce Canyon National Park and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, meanders over Boulder Mountain in the Dixie National Forest and terminats near the entrance to Capitol Reef National Park.
When we reached Escalante, we decided that we would have rather stayed here than in Bryce yesterday. The unpaved Hole-in-the-Rock Road begins about five miles east of town, which is the main access to the Canyons of the Escalante, the Devil’s Garden and the Hole-in-the-Rock, all geologic wonders that we only read about in our guidebooks. The charming small town has plenty of cabins and lodging, and a charming Mercantile with healthy groceries, and even a small airport. Because we were on a schedule, this time it was just another place to add to our “next time” list.

A few of the 4x4 instructors at Overland Expo had recommended a stop at Calf Creek Campground on the way east, because they thought it was the most beautiful campground in the USA. The sign appeared suddenly around a bend and we swerved to take it, descending steeply into a canyon. I halted at a concrete bridge overrun a little by a marshy creek. I was not willing to ride through without walking it first, but Jonathan, unintimidated by the inch-deep water, headed on across. So I watched, half-horrified and half-bemused, as he and the KTM did a slow, graceful twirly dance in the center of the bridge before toppling over.

It took the two of us plus four campers to haul the KTM upright and slip and slide it back onto the road – a comedic Icecapades-esque show enjoyed by a group of about a dozen who gathered to watch.
Back on Highway 12, we occasionally paused at lookouts, but mostly the road and the landscape evoked deep appreciation for raw nature and occasionally for road builders. Rising to the top of a mountain, we were suddenly aware that we were riding its spine. For several miles we were awed by the scenery from this vista, but only for brief glimpses, for there was no shoulder, no guard rail, only a precarious stretch of asphalt at the top of the world from which a fall would pitch one straight down into the valley below. I felt as if I was floating atop a living breathing thing. I was suddenly connected to both to earth and sky. Yes. This is why we ride.

The road offers endless opportunities—and hazards. It’s not unlike life in those ways. We each venture out in our own way to seek the former and minimize our risk of being undone by the latter. So much of what we find on our journey is a reflection of our attitude. This is certainly true as we watch the road surface and scenery slide by in concert with the rattle and hum of the machines we trust to take us safely forward.

My own trip this past July was long overdue. I had not given myself permission until recently to plan a solo trip of any kind. This one would be to see parts of North America I had never seen. For whatever reason, it took a painful divorce, the years of upheaval that preceded it, and the months of grieving that followed it to consider this journey and see it as one of healing. It was also in many ways an opportunity to look forward. I think in years past I had made the mistake of not seeing a trip like this as something that could re-charge and invigorate me in ways that would have made me a better spouse. Instead, I erroneously considered the idea of such a trip as a potential “taking-away” from the marriage. I mention this only as food for thought to those of you who thought like I did that feeding my spirit in this way would bring little or no value to the ones I love. I don’t think I could have been more wrong.

I have always loved riding. To me it is at once therapeutic, calming and exhilarating. I catch myself with a goofy smile on my face inside my helmet as the road curls beneath my tires and I feel the moment when motorcycle and rider seem to become one in the quest for the perfect curve. This has happened many times over the years and miles, but it still surprises me.

In the wake of the loss I felt in my personal life, I began to think a lot about the distinction between being alone and loneliness. I realized that in my 50 years I had never taken a solo journey of the kind I was considering: eight days of riding across the Northeastern United States and parts of Canada, camping along the way. To be frank, it scared me, but not to the point of avoiding the chance to take this journey. The courage was born in part from the loss and the idea of those days on my own suddenly felt less lonely. It may offend as many readers as it will encourage that I was looking at this as a spiritual journey. I needed the time to connect my spirit to the world around me in a way that the distractions of life had too often stymied. It became a large part of the experience for me.

Planning a trip like this can be an informal affair. Others of us will plan each mile with such care and precision as to extinguish any chance for an impromptu course correction or adjustment to one’s preconceived ideas about what is or should happen next. I took the middle ground mapping out what I thought was a highway-free, 4,000 mile journey that would take me across West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey before heading home to Southwest Virginia. I had specific destinations in mind and things I hoped to see.

As the idea for the trip began to gel, I came across a news article about the most beautiful spots in each of our 50 states. One of the spots mentioned for New York was Watkins Glen State Park and its gorges. I had traveled some in New York but had never heard of the park or its rock formations and was astonished at what I found as I looked into it. I had my itinerary’s first destination.

Roughly 500 miles from my home in Salem, Virginia, Watkins Glen State Park seemed a reasonable day’s ride and the roads I selected—I thought—would keep me off the limited access highways I hoped to avoid. Nevertheless, most of the ride along US 220 North was breathtaking. Much of it in Virginia north of Roanoke was the perfect start to get the juices flowing and allow me to begin making the connections I was seeking.

Fried food, soft serve ice cream and t-shirt shops reign supreme in the village of Watkins Glen like they do in virtually every other tourist town. But at the top of the hill sits one of the most spectacular examples of creation you can see in the eastern United States. Whoever or whatever you want to credit with this, it’s difficult not to appreciate the miracle in it as the water has sculpted the rocks along the gorge for millennia, leaving a canyon of striated rock and greenery that is worthy of much deeper exploration than I was able to give it on this trip.

I set up my hammock and bug net and called it a night, but not before an older fellow from the campsite next door came over for a visit. Turns out he had a beemer years and years ago and went on about how much he missed it, but his wife’s infirmity kept him from feeding this part of his soul. I could relate and didn’t push the notion that our personal sacrifices can have the opposite of the intended affect. He was a minister, and I asked him to keep me in his prayers as I set out.

The next morning dawned bright and cool. The perfect day to cross northern New England, and a spectacular day it was. I enjoyed the increasingly warm sunshine and mile after mile of twisty roads and breathtaking scenery. Through the Adirondacks, the Green Mountains of Vermont, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and into Maine, Kamele swayed and purred as we pushed north and east with the scent of pine and cool mountain air breezing past us.

As I crossed into Maine and the sun tilted low in the sky, preparing to say goodnight through my mirrors, the ubiquity of moose crossing signs became apparent. Now the chance of seeing a moose in the wild was a big part of this trip for me, and I thought heading to the part of Maine with the highest concentration of the large mammals would improve my chances of seeing one, but I certainly didn’t want to get so close that it ended my trip. In the waning daylight, lengthening shadows, and narrowing roads, every dark spot along the roadside began to look like it could be a moose. My pace slowed considerably as the moose warnings grew increasingly ominous: “high hit rate” and “hundreds of collisions” jumped out at me with flashing lights. I was down to about 30 miles per hour and hoping I would arrive safely at my campsite before complete darkness fell over Kokajo, Maine. I pulled into the campsite just as the owner was turning out the light in her office. After a curt Maine welcome tinged with admonition for this late hour, I set up my tent in darkness without having any idea of my surroundings.

At daybreak I set out for my potential moose sighting in earnest. The sunrise over the campground was truly magnificent and yet would only hint at the extraordinary day I had in store as I set out for Halifax, Nova Scotia. As it turned out the maps I printed out and stuffed into my tank bag weren’t particularly helpful that morning—or, alas, maybe they were. I accidentally ended up on a logging road that prohibited motorcycles and within the first hour of riding that morning I saw four moose. The first guy was slogging through a picturesque bog as I came to a stop. He looked up from his foraging and seemed to question my relevance. The moment seemed to freeze in time as we looked at one another from 200 feet away. He must have decided he should continue his breakfast because he broke his gaze and stuffed his head back down into the watery buffet.

Not long into Nova Scotia, the gray skies decided to offer up some of their moisture. I made a quick pit stop along a very narrow shoulder to put on my one piece, yellow BMW raingear. If you’ve ever tried to pull raingear on over a BMW Rallye 3 jacket you know the armor in the elbows will hang up the rain suit every time. This time was no exception. In my frustration I yanked the yellow plastic up only to feel a tear – not in the raingear, but in my shoulder. Ouch! What should have been a simple task brought me several sleepless nights and near constant pain over the days that followed and was the only real negative I would experience over the eight days on the road. I even went so far as to stop at several clinics to see if I could get a doctor to give me a cortisone shot. Note: if you are a US citizen travelling to Canada, get travel insurance or prepare to pay out of pocket for a doctor’s visit. I was told it would cost me $675 just to register at one of these facilities. I opted to go with the pain.

The next morning brought tired eyes which were all I really needed as it turned out. I had planned a southerly route along the Nova Scotia coast on my way to Cape Breton thinking I would enjoy spectacular scenery all morning. Mother Nature had other plans. The fog that had settled in overnight would not relent until I was up in Port Hawkesbury crossing the causeway to Cape Breton and points north. Riding in the fog always feels somewhat otherworldly—made all the more so by the hulking cadavers of old wooden fishing boats looking as if they too had had difficulty finding their way through the fog. Though haunting, the atmosphere was not an entirely unwelcome wrinkle in my ideal image for the morning’s ride.

Before hitting the campsite, I rode the short mile down the main street in St. Martins to the Sea Caves. This spectacular landscape shone brightly in the evening sun, and seeing it in the evening allowed me to avoid the possibility that morning fog would keep me from seeing it the next day. I had the place almost to myself and so avoided some embarrassment as I slipped and landed on my backside on the seaweed coated rocks at low tide. Thankfully this was the only time my gear—and my rear—hit the ground over the eight days.

Arriving at the campground I found the grassy site I was assigned and set the kickstand. The fully loaded bike promptly sank into the wet ground and toppled over. Righting 600 pounds with two good arms is challenge enough, but with my gimpy shoulder it wasn’t going to happen. I asked my neighbor for a hand, and we got the bike up and found a charred piece of firewood to prop the kickstand and avoid a repeat. Again I set my increasingly damp gear out to dry under a picnic shelter, then took my naproxen and acetomenaphine, rubbed my shoulder with the ointment the pharmacist in Halifax gave me, and was able to settle in for a reasonable night’s sleep.

Heading west along Route 9 toward Bangor, Maine unfurled, some of the best roads of the trip so far. A gorgeous, sun-drenched afternoon almost made me forget about my shoulder as Kamele and I danced our dance toward the New Hampshire border.

Route 2 westbound across the northern edge of the White Mountain National Forest would be the only road I would traverse a second time the entire trip. I cruised into the campground early enough to unload, head out for a sandwich, and still had a few hours of daylight left. I cruised along Route 16 and though it hadn’t occurred to me earlier, I realized the auto road up to Mount Washington might be a ride worth taking. I had seen the bumper stickers and always thought they were a bit tacky but when morning came I was first in line to make the ride up the mountain. In many ways this was the highlight of an incredible trip. Having the road to myself and passing through pine scented forests to the rocky ground above the tree line, the weather held just long enough to get a view across to the mountains and valleys beyond. Truly breathtaking—and they now make motorcycle-sized stickers that say “This bike climbed Mount Washington.” I put mine on as soon as I returned to the base of the mountain. Tackiness be damned.

The trip south from here would take me to a much needed visit with family and friends in Connecticut, and I was able to savor every minute of good company while I rested and pulled myself together for the trip back to Southwest Virginia. For the ride home I permitted myself a nine hour ride on the interstate, clad in raingear and anxious to see my kids.

The journey allowed me to enjoy so much of what the natural world around us has to offer and time to focus on what my own place is in it. The mysteries that surround us I think are better left to remain just that. With two wheels beneath me and the open road ahead, there remain endless opportunities to explore the worlds outside and inside, navigating the potential dangers and finding peace and joy in the journey.

I feel like a queen as we pass two-up beneath the welcome sign of the 2014 BMW Motorrad Rally in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Everyone is ogling our BMW K-1600 GTL Exclusive, and as I lean back on the upholstered backrest behind my man, Jamie Anthony, I’m almost tempted to raise my hand from the leather armrest and give the Royal Wave. 

From the moment we hit the road in Munich for the one-hour drive to Garmisch, I could tell the Exclusive was special. The gleaming silver and white bike is so sleek and cool-looking that every biker on the road has been giving us the thumbs up sign. I know they’ll keep doing that for the next six days as we take the bike on a tour of Germany’s most famous and scenic route, the Romantic Road. 

This scenic route, relatively unknown to Americans, runs from the steep vineyards along the River Main in Franconia’s Wurtzburg (where they drink wine) to the Alps of Schwangau in Southern Germany (where they prefer beer), a distance of 310 miles. The two-lane country road meanders alongside turquoise rivers and borders hay fields gleaming golden in the sun and pastures dotted with sheep and cows. We wind through countless picturesque medieval towns with onion-domed churches and half-timbered medieval houses as we follow the route.

Most visitors drive from Wurtzburg south to take in views of the approaching Alps. They end their journey in Schwangau, home to the world-famous Neuschwanstein Castle, which Disney used as the archetype for Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. We plan to drive it the opposite way, which is less trafficked. Our route from Garmisch leads us to Fussen to visit the Neuschwanstein Castle, then heads north on the Romantic Road.

Read more of Margie's story in the September issue of the BMW Owners News.  Visit the online digital edition now.