The leftover vacation from 2015 was used going to Hawaii. Of the many things done while there, I rented a motorcycle, completing a goal to ride through all 50 states.
It may be wrong, but I see riding a motorcycle through all 50 states as an accomplishment. I won't look down on anyone who trailers their bike, but trailers are for broken bikes; tugging a bike to a location to ride is a vacation with bike. "To and Through" is a motorcycle tour. This does, of course, mean Hawaii will always have an asterisk after it since I chose the practical route of renting a bike there.
I sometimes look back and laugh at my first year of motorcycle touring now. My first trip was short and very wet, and I really didn't know what I was in for.
I sold my Harley Davidson 1200 Sportster and bought a Superglide T-Sport specifically because I wanted to start touring. I promptly hit a deer with it, but this didn't change any of my resolve to try touring. That next spring the planning started to take the T-Sport to a rafting trip to West Virginia's New River. Compared to today, there was a copious amount of planning for such a short bike trip, all of 300 miles. And I was nervous; maybe nervous isn't the right word - anxious, aware, apprehensive excited...
As the weekend of the trip approached, the weather forecast looked bleak, and continued to deteriorate. A cold front was coming through bringing rain and rain with some rain. On the morning to depart, the weather radar painted a wide swath of green over much of the area. Knowing I was deluding myself, I decided it looked like it wasn't too bad and would probably clear up sooner than meteorologists were predicting.
The T-Sport was a great bike, but the bags were only slightly weather resistant, and the T-Bag I used on the luggage rack didn't even pretend to keep water out. While we had motorcycle rain gear, our overall preparedness for heavy weather was lacking.
Still, reality be damned, off we went.
We left in light rain and got around the first big city. Exiting the interstate, the rain picked up quickly. After an hour or so of riding in heavy rain, I was tense; I had the death grip on the motorcycle's grips and my back muscles ached.
The rain continued.
By this point we were in rural Ohio, but every small town seemed like an obstacle course. For all my planning, I didn't have clear-lens glasses and I couldn't see well with the dark clouds and obscuring water. Cars and trucks threw huge volumes of water all over everything. My boots were not waterproof and my feet were freezing.
The rain continued.
Water was ponding in the low lying areas and I wasn't sure how much was too much for my bike's tires. I pulled over a few times to let cars pass, knowing I was going slower than many car drivers wanted to. It was too wet to pull out my photocopied maps (this was pre-GPS), so I was unsure if I was even on the right road some of the time.
The rain continued.
Somewhere around the half way point, I pulled into a parking area at the Shawnee State Forest. This was a largely unimproved area, but there was a very small shelter there - with several inches of water covering the paved floor. I felt absolutely defeated; I wondered if I was not cut out for the adventure of touring on two wheels. We were too far to turn around and go home, but I just couldn't imagine continuing on through the relentless rain to the destination.
I noticed something under the water and pulled a large plug of leaves from a drain in the paved floor, water quickly started running down the drain, at least freeing us from standing in water. If ever so slightly, our situation had improved. Walking back to the bike and pulling out the damp maps, I made a plan: Continue on across the Ohio River into West Virginia, find a hotel and get up early the next morning to get to the rafting camp.
Getting back on the bike was not an enticing option, but it was the only choice.
I didn't realize it at the time, but lessons were being learned about touring by motorcycle.
Be flexible.
Every piece of gear matters.
Be prepared to ride in ANY weather.
We continued on through the rain, and crossed the state line into West Virginia. As we did so, something unexpectedly amazing happened. The skies dramatically cleared to big puffy clouds and blue sky and it was much warmer. Rather than stopping or staying on 2-lane roads, I took advantage of the break in the weather and jumped on the interstate, high-tailing it to the campground.
The weather remained blessedly good for the remainder of the day. There were friends and beer waiting at the campground. I think it rained again that night, but by that point I was drunk and in a relatively dry tent.
Leaving early the next morning, it was cold. It was cold, cold. And SO didn't have cold weather gloves. We ended up stopping at a gas station convenience store and purchasing leather work gloves, which worked for the trip home ... sort of. We occasionally look back and laugh about those grey work gloves.
Despite the cold, the trip home was wonderful and began to cement my love of motorcycle touring. Clear skies and riding through some of the most wonderful early summer scenery on little-traveled rural roads was amazing. At some point I realized that the trip home was all the more extraordinary because of the difficult trip into West Virginia two days previous.
Later that summer, we took another motorcycle trip - this one a multi-day trip through several states. It was also during a very wet period, but we were slightly better prepared, thanks to lessons during our first trip to West Virginia.
I didn't realize it at the time, but that much rain has actually been rare in the many tens of thousands of miles traveled by motorcycle since. There have been all-day rains and periods of torrentially bad weather, but a steady improvement in gear and abilities makes inclement weather more tolerable, sometimes even a fun interlude during a trip.
That first trip will always be special. A trip of that length now would be done with very little planning. But I miss the anxious excitement and nervous anticipation, paradoxically enjoying motorcycle touring more than ever.
I would never have believed during that first summer that a very wet one-day trip would eventually lead to adventures traveling through all 50 states.
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