My mother was born 100 years ago and came of age in Holland during the difficult years of the Depression – followed immediately by the horrors of the Second World War. She told stories of being forced to watch innocent Dutch citizens being rounded-up off the street by the Nazis and shot en masse to avenge some real or imagined slight, and finding dead children in the park because all the food had been confiscated by German troops.
I don’t know how her generation survived that with their sanity intact, but sane she was. Certainly too sane to get on a motorcycle.
Our family moved to Ontario in 1957, and I moved to southern Alberta upon graduation. During my first trip touring the Rocky Mountains by car, I decided I needed a motorcycle. Soon, my greatest joys came through riding the mountains from Yellowstone to Jasper.
But there was no way I could share it with my mother during her visits. She refused to get on the bike, not even around the neighborhood. “I've used up every one of my nine lives during the War,” she proclaimed. “I’m not about to take any more chances.”
In 1978, I rode to the Sturgis rally and was amazed to see 10,000 riders flooding the Black Hills (these days, there are over half a million). I made some new friends in the campground who asked me to join them on their trip back to California. I’d planned to tour Alaska, but as it was experiencing one of its wettest summers on record, off to Petaluma it was.
We took a leisurely tour through Montana, Idaho, the Cascades, and then south along the Oregon and California coasts. Afterwards, I spent a magical month touring the wineries in Napa Valley with my new friends – back in the days when tastings were complimentary.
A few harsh Canadian winters later, while afflicted with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder – endemic to Canadian riders in the fall), I was “California Dreaming” to my friends when someone suggested I stop fantasizing and just head south for the winter.
Seemed like a rational idea, so I quit my job, loaded my BMW with luggage, waited for the Chinook winds to clear the roads of snow, and headed for the annual Oktoberfest BMW rally in San Diego.
The next morning, I woke up in Idaho Falls to teenage temperatures. I got an early start, as was my style, intending to do 100 miles before breakfast. Big mistake: 20 miles later, rigor mortis set in. When I turned into a roadside gas station/restaurant, my hands and legs were too stiff to move. I rode straight into a snowbank and sat there like an equestrian statue.
People rushed out of the restaurant and unlocked my fingers from the grips, whereupon I fell to the ground. They dragged me into the restaurant and poured me full of hot coffee. I was enjoying a ranch-sized plate of biscuits and gravy with scrambled eggs by the time the ambulance arrived. I wondered who’d had a heart attack.
In Vegas that evening, I rode around town in my T-shirt, grateful for the balmy temperatures. The sign at one of the casinos read 52 degrees.
By the time I hit San Diego the next day, the temperature was over 70 and I was overheated.
I made some new friends at the San Diego Oktoberfest rally on the shores of Mission Bay. They talked me into staying in San Diego County long enough to ride a few of the local mountain roads before heading for New Mexico. That was over 40 years ago and I still haven’t made it to Roswell.
My mother came to visit for a few weeks every year as she did in Alberta. She enjoyed the ocean, (shown in the header image above above with my wife), the tourist attractions, and our biker parties. My friends loved her because she was gregarious and prepared excellent party platters.
One day just before Christmas, I got a call which scared me. She was in the hospital recovering from emergency cardiac surgery. “Not a problem,” she assured me over the phone; “I’ll soon come back to San Diego.”
She arrived the following September and asked me to take her to Las Vegas. It was often featured in movies she’d seen over the years and she’d always wanted to visit. I asked if she wanted to drive or fly. To my surprise, she responded, “Let’s take the motorcycle.”
A few days later, we were on the road to Vegas. She enjoyed the ride thoroughly (see photo below). We spent a week touring the sights and the casinos. She loved to gamble, and stayed out till the wee hours every night while I slept. That’s right, my 76-year-old mother outpartied me!
By the time we got to Victorville on the way home, I’d had enough of the freeways, so I turned onto the mountain roads of San Bernardino, Riverside, and San Diego counties. Along the way, I gradually picked up the pace, waiting for her to pound me on the back to urge moderation. Instead, she leaned through the turns like a sidecar monkey while gripping my belt all the way up to sport-bike speeds.
At a coffee shop in Julian, I complimented her on her riding skills and expressed astonishment at this reversal of her usually overcautious modus operandi.
Her response was, “Well you know, dear, during my stay in the hospital, it became obvious that life is temporary – like a vacation. If you find it boring, it’s because you haven’t been adventurous enough to make it exhilarating. At this point in my life, I need more adventure.”
That was the beginning of many delightful motorcycle rides my mother took with me through the Laguna and San Jacinto mountains.
Images courtesy of B. Jan Montana.
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