Dan's Travel Adventures

We pack our bikes in an underground parking lot in Vancouver. It’s been a whole day off the bikes, and as has been the norm, we miss being in the saddle. The time off is cherished, but this is a motorcycling adventure, so we’re all eager to be off on the next leg.

The trip from Vancouver to the US border is uneventful, and as we approach the border, one last reminder that we are coming from the wilderness appears. A brown bear, right at roadside, is going about his/her business, a seeming docile apex predator with zero interest in us.

We arrive at the border and crossing is quite easy. I suspect the grey hair and overall crud on the bikes lets our border protector know we are just a trio of weirdos, posing no threat. For the all political crap that is happening in our country, I am nevertheless happy to be back home. Canada, probably the closest cousin to our form of government and our way of life, still isn’t home. I am happy to be feeling grateful for my homeland, warts and all.

We come down US 5, a road that if we just kept heading south, would eventually spit us out in Tijuana, Mexico. For today, we’re just on it a short bit before turning east, and beginning our long-anticipated run on the North Cascades Highway, and another reminder about expectations.

Throughout the trip, we’ve had a few places and roads we’ve really anticipated. For folks who ride the way we do, roads need to provide at least one of two basic draws – great riding or great viewing. Once in a while, a road delivers both – more on that later. We picked a few from our memories and research, before ever leaving our comfy lives, which we thought would deliver one of these traits in spades. Along the way, we were steered to a few more that promised the same, but came from someone else’s memory (good or bad), rather than ours. Not all of those, though, kept their promise.

Top of the World Highway, a road we planned to take on our way out of Alaska, was shuffled earlier in the trip, on our way to Alaska. It was a timing and weather decision, one which proved flawed. Touted as having some of the best views in North America, and a fun dirt road to boot, it proved to be completely lost in the low fog and miserable road conditions brought by rain. We arrived at the end wondering what everyone was on about…it was one of our worst mornings on the bikes. Afterward, we checked in with other folks, and heard pretty consistently that the folks who hated it also had bad weather, and those who loved it didn’t, so we’re chalking that one up to bad luck.

North Cascade Highway, a renowned scenic byway, also did not deliver the goods this time through. When I did the road 20 years ago, I came home and declared it one of the top 5 roads I had ever ridden. Again, we think weather played a role, but it wasn’t nearly the spectacle I had remembered.

Then, there is Lolo Pass. I had recommended it to a friend with whom I exchange routes with, and his recommendations are, without fail, top shelf. I was so happy to finally tell him about one I thought was perhaps the best 100 mile stretch of riding in North America. He rode it a few weeks before us, and came away unimpressed (I did manage to salvage my reputation with a few others, such as ID 13 and 14). After his thumbs-down, I now wondered if I suffered from some type of rosy retrospection. We would find out a few days later.

I took my new data and started to think about a deeper meaning – about expectations. Some roads far exceeded our expectations (the Icefields Parkway, between Banff and Jasper) and some disappointed. I saw in the three of us a different approach to expectations. One of us experienced our rides as a comparison to others he had seen. Often times recalling an area we may have seen together, and calling out the similarity…the “this reminds me of…” approach. That was coupled with a good understanding of the route and a regular looking ahead to anticipate what was coming up, what the weather would be like when we got there, what time of day we might encounter it, etc. I think a fair amount of advance thought went into his coming days, and with it, the expectations baked in to this approach.

The other took everything as it came; very “here and now” about the ride. He didn’t look ahead at the route, just let us or the GPS routes I built guide him. Because of this, I think expectations were kept to a minimum.

At the risk of sounding like a motorcycling Goldilocks, I think I was somewhere in the middle, although because I generated the routing, I had a more intimate knowledge of where we were headed. And I had expectations, at least in the beginning.

The funny thing about expectations, of course, is they don’t alter the outcome. The roads are going to be what they are going to be – different day to day as weather, traffic, surface condition and time of day change our experience, but expectations don’t – they only alter how you interpret those experiences. As the trip wore on, and as some roads disappointed and others surprised me, I found I just enjoyed all the roads more if I accepted it as it came, fully present, without expectation. When a road turned technical, I adapted and enjoyed. When it was gorgeous, I slowed down and enjoyed. Accepting what was without trying to anticipate what was going to be. It began to feel like this was wisdom worth deepening and applying in more areas of my life.

Lolo Pass, from Kooskia, ID to Lolo, MT, was better than we remembered, as it turned out. It delivered a wonderful experience to each of us. Lolo is one of those holy grail roads – excellent riding, breathtaking scenery, very little traffic, no houses, no intersections. It was simply glorious.

Tony decided, or perhaps was compelled by the beauty, to slow down and absorb the wonder. I think it was a spiritual ride for him, much the way Going to the Sun Road had been for me. For Mitch and me, it was go time. Riding a road like this at a spirited pace is magical. Your mental processing is overclocking, you are on point and laser focused, and you are exercising skills and craft and art, all at once. Having a buddy along with you, who is riding at the same level, makes it that much better. When we get to the visitor center at the top, after 99 miles of bliss, we are elated. It’s a high that will last a while and offer gratitude flashbacks. Having let go of any expectations beforehand, I was left only with “it was better than I remembered”, as a qualifier for our joy.