Day 4 — Continued
In and around Big Thompson Canyon, CO

The first half of the day was the fun — riding the Glen Haven route twice — once with camera, once without — enjoying the view in Estes Park, being out and about in the Rockies on my bike. Fun. But the halfway point of the day was when the universe decided to, as they say, bring the pain.

First was the flood victims memorial flyer that I came across in Glen Haven. I asked around after I saw that, asking locals if anyone else knew about it — nobody did. The universe just put that out there for me, I guess. All this time I’d known I’d be there at the river on the anniversary of the flood — hell, I stayed on the river for the anniversary of the flood in some weird form of tribute — but it never occurred to me that there might be some kind of ceremony or service. And yet there it was.

But before that I had family business to deal with: scattering my dad’s ashes in the river and seeing my I-guess-you’d-call-them-estranged half-sisters in the process. We stay in contact, but very minimally. So that was a guaranteed good time.

Charlene and I email occasionally, but I have virtually no contact at all with Christine. There’s a weird, fucked-up dynamic between them out there and me and my immediate siblings here in California, and I think much of it is driven on their end by assumption (I’m assuming) and misinformation and resentment and I don’t know what. For me personally it’s more about just being tired of all the tension and perceived anger and my natural first instinct to just pull back and isolate myself from it all. For my brothers I think there’s resentment toward my father that is bleeding over onto his 2nd set of kids (Charlene and Christine), coupled with some anger at them for some things they’ve done and said in their own anger and hurt. And as for my sister out here in California… Well, who fucking knows. She’s an alien to me and I am baffled by the way her brain works. So with all that, my brothers and sister here in California didn’t come out to Colorado to scatter our father’s ashes, it was just me and his 2nd set of kids in Colorado. So I was meeting up with Charlene and Christine with all that as a backdrop, so I was looking forward to that.

When they showed up at the river with Dad’s ashes in a box, and with his old friend Vic’s widow Pauline in tow, I wasn’t sure what the mood would be. Thankfully, it was friendly and low key. Whatever differences they had with me and mine were put aside, at least for the day. I was relieved. I felt a little bit awkward with them, given all the above, but I think we all came together well.

We took the box with the ashes down to the riverside and I opened it up with a pocketknife. As I did so, I took a moment to note how surreal it all was — to be standing in that spot, on that day, with all that history, with my dad in a bag in a box, cutting it open so we could throw it in the water… The 13-year old I had been living there in the canyon 31 years before never could have dreamed this would be waiting up the road. It’s two weeks in my past now as I write this and it still doesn’t seem real.

We each took a handful of ashes and threw them into the wind and the river. Me, Charlene, Christine, and Pauline each took our own moment, said our own goodbyes, took my dad in our hands, and scattered his ashes. We were surprised at how much was left after we had each taken our turn, so I poured about half the remaining ashes into the river and we watched as they formed a gray cloud in the water that bloomed as the current carried it away.

We stood there for awhile afterward, just talking and thinking and absorbing the sights and sounds. We shared memories about my dad, laughed a bit, I think each of us shed a few private tears. Then we drove back to my motel where we sat around and continued talking and reminiscing for awhile before it started getting late. They had to get back down to Loveland and I had to get ready for the flood victim memorial, so we said our goodbyes, promised to keep in touch, and they left.

After they were gone, I performed my own private ceremony with the remainder of my dad’s ashes. I had written a letter to him the night before saying all the things I wish I could while he was still here and saying my goodbyes, and I took that letter and his ashes down to the banks of the river directly across from where the restaurant once stood. I read the letter out loud to the river and to him, then I burned it and let its ashes blow into the river and poured the rest of his ashes in the river after it. It felt like the right thing to do. It felt like a good goodbye to my father.

Then I went to the flood victim memorial service, where I got another kick in the emotional nuts.

There are two memorial sites set up for this in the canyon, but I had somehow never found this one before. The first site, which I’d been to twice before on previous trips and can’t find a picture of now, is a tribute to two police officers who sacrificed their own lives saving others in the flood. This memorial was a tribute to all the victims and I don’t know how I had missed it before. It’s exactly what I always throught the other one should have been.

144 people died in that flood, including 8 people who were in my dad’s restaurant, The Covered Wagon, that night. Three of them — Martin and Frances and their son Adam, were like family to me. They’re why I decided to scatter my dad’s ashes there in the river, and on that date.

So I’m standing there at memorial, waiting for the service to start, and people kept eyeballing me. It’s a rural area and most of the people knew each other, so I was out of place because I was a stranger. Eventually an older woman, Barb, asked who I was and who I’d known in the flood. I told her my dad had owned the Covered Wagon and she immediately knew who I was. Apparently my sister Christine had spoken to her once about buying a brick in our dad’s name there at the memorial and she put the pieces together from there.

With all that I’d been through that day and all that I had on my mind as I stood there at the memorial, I was pretty much on the ragged edge, emotionally. Barb knowing exactly who I was and what my link had been to the flood was hard enough and I was sort of struggling to keep it together. I wasn’t crying or teary-eyed, but I was close.

And then she said “I have some pictures of Adam to show you” and I just fucking lost it.

First of all, I hadn’t said a word about Adam, only that my dad had owned the restaurant, so her knowing that I knew him blew me away. Secondly, learning that there were pictures of Adam there was like a punch in the gut — I’ve only seen him in my memories for 31 years and I didn’t know pictures of him existed anywhere, let alone here. It was all too much — I had started the day thinking all I had to deal with was scattering my dad’s ashes, then I learned about this memorial service, then I met this woman who knew who I was and what I was carrying with me, and then I found out she had pictures of Adam.

I lost it. In a controlled manner, of course, but I did lose it. I had to turn away from her and walk back to my bike and I stood there for a few minutes fighting back tears and trying to get myself back together. And of course she followed me and was comforting and caring and reached out to me saying, “Oh come here, you’re not too big for a hug” and that just made me lose it worse, and then the fact that she was fighting back tears too just added to the party. So we had us a good hug and I went with her after the service to see Adam’s pictures.

He looks just like I remember him, but also younger. He was only 8 at the time, and I was 13, and childhood memories aren’t the most reliable, but those pictures were definitely the Adam I knew and remembered and still miss. He was a good kid. I’m glad Barb showed me those pictures.

By nightfall I was pretty much wrung out and just wanted to get back to my room and get to bed. I was checking out the next morning and considering heading south to Cortez, CO, which was near my dad’s last hometown of Dove Creek. I was debating heading down that way and maybe making a pass through Dove Creek as one final goodbye to my dad. So I broke out the Zumo GPS and my atlas and started planning.

And now, I’m going to wrap this entry up. Days 5 & 6 come in the next one.

Day 1

Los Angeles, CA to Hurricane, UT. 415 miles.

The plan was to make St. George, UT and call it a day. I ended up going further than that — made it to Hurricane, UT.

It was normal LA traffic until I’d been on the 15 for awhile. North of Apple Valley and Victorville it started feeling more like I was on a trip instead of just a long ride around town. Outside of Barstow there was a huge traffic jam — miles long, bumper to bumper. People were out of their cars, talking, looking, hanging, waiting. One guy in his mid-20s was standing on top of the concrete divider and pumping his arm in the classic “blow your horn” motion to 18-wheelers going the other way. He had one taker as I went by.

Me, I didn’t wait in the traffic backup. I rode mostly along the breakdown lane on the right, did a little bit of lanesplitting just for variety, but it was much easier on the side. I rode on the inside breakdown a little too (that’s where the horn kid was) but it was asphalt there instead of concrete and there was a lot of debris. I was afraid I’d hit a nail or something and get a flat, so I bailed out of that pretty quickly.

I finally came to the head of the backup, where a Land Rover Discovery had gone under the side of an 18-wheeler’s trailer. A helicopter was landed there waiting, but it was obviously going to be a long wait: they had cut the engine and the rotors were still. I got some pictures of it as I went by — the fire crew was still trying to extricate the victim. It looked pretty bad.

After clearing that, I stopped in Barstow for lunch, at a funky little mexican restaurant that had stuffed animals EVERYwhere. Tigers, zebra, bears, gazelle, etc. It was odd. Food was good though — but I hope the flautas really were chicken and not something from the wall.

When I got to St. George I found some kind of convention was going on. They place was crawling with sales types — all in dress slacks, white shirts and power ties. I think they would have been in full suits but it was too hot. Some were, though. And they were EVERYWHERE. Crossing the street, blocking traffic, just crawling everywhere like ants. And it turned out they were all convening on the convention hall at the Hilton where I was trying to get a room on points. Hilton was booked solid — in fact they said the whole town was booked and that I’d be better off continuing on to Hurricane or Springdale.

I stopped in Hurricane because the girl at the desk had given me the address of a hotel there, but I wish I had pushed on to Springdale. I made great time and could have kept going. I decided to stop because tomorrow’s plan calls for going through Zion National Park and I didn’t want to be doing that at dusk. If I hadn’t had that planned I probably would have pushed on for another hundred miles or so. I was a little worried that I was being too ambitious in planning 500 mile days but I see now that that isn’t going to be a problem — 500 miles is a piece of cake … at least on Day One.

I’m holed up now in a Super8 motel room that I think I paid too much for — $65, when their advertised rate is $38. The clerk said that’s the weekend rate, but I think I probably could have gotten that rate if I’d really tried. Next time. And since I’m in a motel room, it’s time for the ever popular View From Here shots:

Had dinner at the JB something-or-other next door, took a dip in the pool, and now I’m getting tired. I think I’ll go to sleep early and try to get an early start tomorrow. Tomorrow’s planned route calls for a stop in Torrey, UT which is now only about 4 hours away since I got further today than expected. I’m probably going to push on further — maybe to Rifle; that would be pretty cool. It’s about 500 miles, which I think is doable depending on how “scenic” the early part of the day is.

Day Two
Hurricane, UT to Glenwood Springs, CO. 517 miles.

I was up by 7 am, packed and out the door by 8. I headed east and 20 minutes later I was entering Zion National Park. It was beautiful. As I was planning this trip, one of the areas I wanted to ride through was southeastern Utah because I love the desert landscape there. Zion had everything I was looking for without having to detour half a day out of my way to see it. It was well worth the $12 entry fee.

Riding through Zion was the big plan for the day. I didn’t know how much time it would take, so I planned a short day that would end at Torrey, UT — about 200 miles away. I got through Zion pretty quickly, actually, and then enjoyed the back country on the way to Torrey.

As motorcycling days go, this was one of my top ones. At one point I had Barenaked Ladies “If I Had A Million Dollars” on the stereo, I was singing along at the top of my lungs, and smiling from ear to ear. Everything came together this morning and in that moment, everything was just perfect. The fact that Utah is a no-helmet-law state may have had something to do with it, but I’ll never tell because Beth would have a heart attack if she thought I wasn’t wearing my helmet. But I’ll say this — feeling the wind in your hair on a motorcycle feels decidedly different when the last time you felt it was 20 years ago and you still had hair.

I ended up making Torrey by 1 pm. I stopped there for lunch (breakfast, actually) and to take a much-needed break. One thing I’ve noticed about these long trips is that I start getting goofy as I get tired — I start riding like a rookie and making stupid mistakes. Target fixation in the twisties instead of looking through the turns, duck-walking through gravel parking lots because I feel like I’m going to drop the bike, starting from a stop really slowly and wobbly — stupid stuff that makes me mutter at myself to quit being such an asshole. I was getting into that zone when I reached Torrey, so I knew I needed to get off the bike and take a break.

After lunch I started feeling better so I hit the road again with a new plan: Rifle or bust. Since I’d already made my planned miles for the day I decided to take care of some of tomorrow’s so I’d have some flexibilty. I looked at the map in a convenience store (three of them, actually, and at such length that I think the counter girl was about to make me buy them) and calculated that I could definitely make Grand Junction, CO by dusk, and maybe even Rifle if I made good time. So with that plan I got back on the road.

The great thing about the route I took today up to that point is that it wasn’t super-slab riding — I was on state highways, not the interstate. Interstate riding isn’t about *riding*, it’s about chewing up miles and spitting them out. There’s no finesse to it, no beauty. But on the little 2-lane highways — now that’s riding. So taking highways 89 and 12 and 24 made for a great day of riding.

I was going to have to take I-70 into Colorado, which I wasn’t looking forward to for the reasons noted above. But I needed to make some miles and it was the quickest route, so I did it anyway. But I was pleasantly surprised. I-70 through Utah was pretty much what I expected. Sure, the desert landscape is pretty, but the highway is sterile and very much separate from the desert around it. But once I crossed over into Colorado it started feeling more like a state highway. It actually wasn’t too bad.

It was only about 4:30 or 5:00 when I got to Grand Junction so I decided to push on to Rifle, which was 60 miles further. As I approached Rifle I put my spanky new Zumo GPS to work and told it to find me the nearest hotels. I found a Hampton Inn in the list and knew I could get a free room with my frequent flier points, so I told the Zumo to get me here. It was in Glenwood Springs, another half hour up the road, so I passed through Rifle and stopped in Glenwood Springs. And here I am now, in the Glenwood Springs Hampton Inn.

Mileage total for the day: about 500. I’m only about 200 miles from my final destination in Colorado, so I think I’ll use that flexibility I gave myself and take an especially scenic route tomorrow. Where I’m going is in the Rockies midway between Loveland and Estes Park and I was planning on coming up through Loveland, but now I think I’ll come in via Estes Park. I’ll take Highway 34 through Rocky Mountain National Park aka. the Trail Ridge Road, the highest paved continuous highway in the United States. It tops out around 12,000 feet, so the view should be incredible.

And now… Off to bed. Pictures to follow, maybe, probably. I’ll probably just go back and edit them into this, but in the meantime you can go check out my flickr set with all the pictures from this trip.

Day 3
Glenwood Springs, CO to Estes Park, CO. 205 miles.

I got off to a late start today because I knew I didn’t have that far to go, so there was no reason to push. Besides which, I knew I had to talk to the Hilton HHonors desk to make sure my room was covered with points, and I had to call the motel I was trying to stay at between Loveland and Estes Park — the Two Eagles Resort — to see if I could get a room.

The 2 Eagles is directly across the river from where my dad’s restaurant used to stand and I wanted to stay there so I could be, as goofy as it may sound, close to the spirit of what I was there for — memorializing my dad on the anniversary of the ’76 flood, and by extension memorializing my friends who died in it. The hangup was that I only wanted the room for two nights but the proprietor required a 3 night minimum, and we’d been going back and forth for weeks about letting me have the room for less than her minimum. Long story short: she agreed to rent me a room for 2 nights.

So. I got up at 8:00, made my phone calls and sorted everything out, farted around for a little while, and finally packed up and hit the road by 10:00. Since I was ahead of schedule and had given myself the flexibility to explore, I decided to take a scenic route to my motel. My original plan had me taking the interstate up through Loveland and approaching from the east, which was going to make for a boring ride (by Colorado standards, at least — it’s still a decent ride even with the superslab). My new plan had me riding a series of county roads in the high plains, going through Rocky Mountain National Park on the Trail Ridge Road, and coming in through Estes Park. Much more scenic, and about the same mileage and time. Go figure.

My first leg took me to a wide spot in the road called Toponas. I gassed up at the general store and continued on, heading east across the high plains on a small county road.

Probably half an hour in I came across some major roadkill: a dead elk at the side of the road. Skid marks told the story: it had been hit by a car or truck. Judging by the size of the skid marks I’d say it was a truck, and judging by the size of the elk I’d say it fucked the truck up good. Naturally, I took pictures.

A few miles further on, I started scaring the shit out of myself. As I mentioned earlier, when I get tired I start riding like a newbie and start making stupid mistakes. I was well-rested today, but something had gotten into my head and I was nervous and tense about the day’s ride through challenging terrain, and so I started riding like an idiot early.

I was being way too tentative going through the turns, braking hard for no reason, riding the rear brake (very much not indicated in a turn), going too slowly, weaving through my line, etc. And then the icing on the cake came on the nice easy right-hand curve that I target-fixated on and ended up crossing over the yellow line and into the oncoming lane, where I would have been splattered if a log truck had been coming.

That scared the piss out of me. I started yelling at myself and cursing and generally getting pissed off — not that it helped. I didn’t make any more boner moves of that caliber on the day, but I definitely wasn’t riding up to my usual standards. I don’t know what the deal is but it’s really bothering me.

Aaaaanyway. I stopped for lunch at a little Mexican joint in a small town called Kremmling, then continued on to the high point of the ride: going through Rocky Mountain National Park.

The park wasn’t quite what I had expected. It was beautiful and spectacular and I don’t mean to take anything away from the experience, but I was expecting something more … challenging. First of all, looking at the road on Google Maps, it looks like a maze of switchbacks and looping turns and precipitous drops. Then, reading the hype about how it’s the highest continuous paved road in the US, well that makes it sound pretty extreme too. So these things made me think it would be like Beartooth Pass in Montana, which was a pretty intense ride. And it was like that in terms of scenery and the alpine environment, but as rides go it was pretty smooth. It certainly wasn’t worth all the heebie-jeebies I gave that made me try to get myself pasted by a truck.

So, bottom line: really pretty ride, but pretty easy too. Oh yeah, except for that bit at the summit where they’re repaving it. There’s a stretch about half a mile long that’s just dirt and gravel, and mostly uphill from the side I was coming from, which makes for a slightly hairy ride on a Harley. But that was the worst of it and even that wasn’t that bad. So I’m just a geek.

Exiting the park put me into Estes Park and just a few miles up the Big Thompson Canyon from my final destination. So I decided to stock up on groceries on the way since I knew there wouldn’t be any easily reached restaurants in the canyon. So I had the Zumo tell me where the nearest supermarket was, and on the way to it I stumbled across Stephen King geek heaven.

Now, I’ve always known that the Overlook Hotel from The Shining was in Estes Park, and I’d sort of had it in the back of my mind that if I had time I might go looking for it on this trip — but it was waaay in the back of my mind and I didn’t think I’d really do it. But then I saw it from the highway. And so of course I had to go.

I parked my bike and practically scampered to the courtyard, where I whipped out my cell phone and called Beth. I was in full geek excitement mode as I told her “Guess where I am! I’m at the OVERLOOK HOTEL!!!” Beth’s response was decidedly lackluster: “What’s that?”

Oy. But I didn’t care. I corralled some random tourist to take pictures of me standing at the entryway, then I went inside and looked around in the lobby. I looked into one of the ballrooms and imagined Jack Torrance talking to the ghosts of the Overlook in there and talking about how “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” and chills went down my spine. It was full-on geek alert, let me tell you. I was as excited as an 18-year old virgin at prom, and believe me when I tell you that I have personal experience with just how excited that is — both at the Overlook and at prom.

…and now I’m in my motel room and trying to sleep. In fact I was already asleep, but then the people in the next room arrived at 11 pm and proceeded to make as much noise as is humanly possible. It woke me up, so I decided to get up and start writing this, and about halfway through it they were making so much noise that I had to go knock on their door and ask them to pipe the fuck down.

I don’t know what was going on in there, but it sounded like either someone chanting prayers or a weird kid singing to himself while playing videogames or I don’t know what, but it was loud. And now, thankfully, they’ve shut up.

So now I can go to sleep. Again. I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow: I have to scatter my dad’s ashes in the river and try not to cry.

Day 4

Estes Park & Loveland, CO.

Today was an emotional one, with a lot of it ambushing me and taking me by surprise.

It started quietly enough — or not. There’s a couple staying in one of the other cabins here who are fellow Harley riders and they’re using this motel as their base of operations as they spend their days riding in the area. They hit the road at 7:00 this morning and their motorcycle firing up is what woke me. So fine, I got up and started my own day of riding.

Ah, but you’re looking for the View From Here, aren’t you? Here’s the room:

…and here’s the view:

And now, on with the story. I got up and set out in search of breakfast. There are precious few restaurants here in the BigThompson Canyon; instead it’s overrun with campgrounds and hotels. I knew there was a restaurant a few miles upriver in the town of Drake, so I headed that way. But as I arrived in Drake (and by arrived I mean “didn’t blink and miss it”) I was distracted by a shiny fork in the road with a sign indicating another small town called Glen Haven down the road that-a-way. I’d read something online about the general store in Glen Haven having cinammon rolls “as big as your head,” and since I have a pretty damn big head I figured I’d better go see that. So to paraphrase my close personal friend Robert Frost, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Or something like that.

So I detoured up the road to Glen Haven and immediately regretted not bringing my camera with me. I saw many sights worth photographing, which is what always happens when you leave your camera behind. What usually doesn’t happen is that you go back and get your camera and do it all over again, but that’s what I did, so I have the pictures after all.

There were a few road signs scattered about advising that the area was “Free Range,” which meant that you might encounter cows lounging in the road. I didn’t see any, but I did see a house whose owners obviously don’t own any cows. I knew this because of the big sign by the road that read “COWS NOT MINE!!!” I got a picture of it, too, but it’s so out of focus that you can’t even make out the sign, let alone read it.

Further on in I encountered highway workers laying down fresh tar on the road. Out in the middle of nowhere, free range country fer fucks sake, and I get stuck in a traffic jam. Go figure. At least I wasn’t stuck behind the bicycle…

When I finally got through the traffic jam I nearly got pasted by the tar truck. The whole line of cars (and bicycle) was following the tar truck down the one open late and they were going about 5 miles an hour. I decided to pull off and wait for them to get ahead, rather than riding my clutch and inching along with them all. I stopped, got off the bike, took some arty nature pics, then I got back on and headed up the now-clear road again. Only trouble is that I took so long to get going again that the tar truck had apparently turned around and was coming back my way, because I came around a blind curve to find him coming at me in MY lane. He swerved and missed me, fortunately, but I took a moment to reflect on my recurring theme of going wide on turns and crossing into the oncoming lane. At least this time it was HIM doing it rather than me — not that that would have made any difference if he and/or I had been going any faster.

Anyway… When I finally got to Glen Haven I found that this is a town with an insecurity complex of some kind.

It’s not enough to tell you that they’re Glen Haven, they had to add the not-Drake distinction. (For what it’s worth, I liked Glen Haven better.) I also found the General Store, which unfortunately was out of cinnamon rolls. So I had a sandwich for lunch instead. (Yeah, I know — I was supposed to be looking for breakfast. Remember, please, that I went through this whole thing once without my camera, then went back to do it again with it. That took me past breakfast and into lunch.)

The emotional ambushing I mentioned earlier started at the general store. In the store window was a flyer for the 31st Year Remembrance Service for the victims of the Big Thompson flood I’ve mentioned here before. It was happening today, in about six hours, and I knew I had to be there. So now I not only had my dad baggage to deal with, I also had Martin and Frances and Adam too. More on that later…

Aaaanyway. Continuing on, I followed the road out of Glen Haven to Estes Park. It was your nice, classic country road, but it had two nasty back-to-back double uphill hairpin turns. Negotiating those while staying in my own lane without dumping the bike was a nice challenge, but I was up to it. And my reward was this:

Just a hundred yards after the second switch-back, you come over a rise to see this, the whole Estes Valley laid out in front of you. This picture doesn’t do it justice, so trust me when I tell you that it’s spectacular. It may be one of the most beautiful landscapes I’ve ever seen. I think I’d kill to own property there.

Later on I met met my half-sisters and scattered my dad’s ashes, then still later on I attended the flood memorial service, but right now I’m tired and I want to go to bed and that’s a lot of heavy stuff to write about, so I’ll post the rest later.

I’m heading out for a week-long road trip on my motorcycle in the morning. I’m heading to just outside of Loveland, Colorado, to where I lived when I was 13 years old.

My dad owned and operated a restaurant on Highway 34 in Big Thompson Canyon called The Covered Wagon, and we lived in the house next door. I moved out here to California with my mom and siblings in June of 1976, so I wasn’t there for my dad’s birthday on July 31st, so he and his girlfriend went camping on his birthday. And on that night that we weren’t there, a huge flood ripped through the canyon and destroyed everything and killed everyone at the restaurant. I’ve written about it here and here.

This happened on my dad’s birthday, and his best friend Martin and Martin’s family were all killed. I think my dad blamed himself for that. I don’t think he ever forgave himself. I think he always thought it should have been him in that river. So now that he’s gone, we’re going to make it happen. We’re going to spread his ashes in the river where the restaurant was, and we’re doing it on his birthday, July 31. I think he’d like that.

I’m riding out there to meet my half-sisters Charlene and Christine and whoever else from my dad’s life in Colorado shows up. I’m the only one of his California family who’s coming, which is pretty much par for the course.

My original plan was to leave at 6:00 a.m. Saturday morning (in about 4 hours, in other words), but instead I’m sitting here writing an entry. So I may be off to a late start, but I will be on the road at some point in the morning. The bike is packed and ready to go and I’m pretty much finished with my preparations and just need to sleep for a few hours.

My plans are specific yet fluid. I need to be in Loveland by Monday night. I need to be back here by next Sunday. In between I’m going to ride where it looks good and see the sights. Possible waypoints include Zion National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, the Four Corners Monument, and anything that looks interesting in between. I’m planning to do some camping if I feel hard core about it, and stay in motels if I don’t. I’ll be taking pictures and writing entries as I go, and if I’m in motels I’ll upload them. I’m aiming for St. George, UT tomorrow and we’ll see how it goes from there.

This is going to be good.

I’ve been doing a lot of riding on my Harley lately and I’ve gotten involved with a club that I’ve been doing a lot of that riding with. We all rode up to Hollister, CA on 4th of July weekend for the 60th annual Hollister Independence Rally, which also happened to be the 61st anniversary of the infamous “Hollister incident” that made the club I’m riding with famous.

Most of us camped out while we were up there, but a few of our guys stayed at a hotel in town. I was all set to camp out — I even brought an extra tent for anyone who needed one — but I ended up lucking into one of the hotel rooms in town the first night. So continuing the View From Here tradition, here’s the view from room 134 of the Hollister Inn in Hollister, California.

First the room:

Then the view:

Now that I think of it, I guess I should have taken a View From Here picture from the tent the next morning, too. Oh well, maybe next time. Because I’ll tell you what: this was my first time camping in something like 25 years and I had forgotten how much fun it is — especially on a motorcycle. I have a motorcycle trip to Colorado planned for the end of this month and I may try to do some camping along the way instead of staying in hotels like I had originally planned.

That is all.

My dad died today.

I’m not quite sure where to go from there — “My dad died” pretty much covers it pretty well. Seeing the words on the screen like that… Wrong, yet inevitable. I’m sad and numb and tired and … I don’t know. Dead inside, a little.

My relationship with my father has been long and strange and taxing and has felt very much one-sided for a long, long time. My parents split up about 30 years ago, and my brothers and sisters and I lived in California with our mother while my dad lived in Colorado and started a new family there. I have been the glue linking these two sects and practically the only open line of communication between them the entire time. It has been frustrating and tiring and taxing and thankless — and now it is over.

I’m feeling a lot of guilt and regret right now, but I think that’s inevitable, especially in estranged families like mine. I think the only way you could possibly have someone die and not feel any “I wish I’d done it differently” would be for them to drop dead while you were hugging them at the end of a marathon “I love you, let’s clear the air, here’s all the things I wish I’d said and all the apologies I wish I’d made” session. Which, let’s face it, just doesn’t happen. At least not without a murder charge to go along with it.

I’m feeling guilty because I sort of started turning my back on my dad over the last several months. After more than a decade of being the only one keeping the lines of communication open between him and my siblings — and doing it partially because I didn’t want them to regret not having had a relationship with him after he passed — I had finally gotten tired of it. I never did it for anyone to thank me or owe me anything for it, but in the end I did get tired of the thanklessness of it. My brothers didn’t appreciate it — I think they resented my making them feel guilty when I’d remind them of his birthday and urge them to call him, or telling them he was sick and he’d like to hear from them. My sister couldn’t care less, since she completely internalized my mother’s accounts of his many faults and wrong-doings and had written him off years before. And my dad… Well, there’s some resentment from me there…

I honestly can’t say that my father loved me. I like to think he did, but I don’t know it. I certainly never felt it. And toward the end, I started to wonder why I even bothered. In nearly every telephone conversation I had with him he would eventually turn the conversation toward my brothers and sister and basically complain that he hadn’t heard from them or that they hadn’t visited or that they hadn’t reached out to him in some way. There was always some almost petulant complaint and then a sigh and “Well, they know where I am if they want me…” Never any kind of thanks that I was making an effort to stay in his life, only regret that the others weren’t. And it was always me calling him. Practically the only time he ever called me was when he needed something. It was as if his phone was incapable of making outgoing calls — at least to California.

Phones only working one way: that’s how it always was with him. The mountain had to come to Mohammed. I was 13 when my parents split up, my brothers were 11, my sister 10. We were kids, and yet somehow it was incumbent upon us to maintain a relationship with him. And in later years, when there wasn’t a relationship, there was never any regret from him that he hadn’t done more to stay in touch with us or apologies for how he had shut us out of his life — only resentment that we hadn’t reached out more to him. He would complain to me that my brothers or sister hadn’t called him and I would bite my tongue — at least until the last year, when I started saying, “Well, your phone dials too, doesn’t it?” And he’d get quiet for a minute and then “Yeah, but…” and change the subject.

After the divorce he started a new family in Colorado, where he had two more daughters and ended up raising them himself. He was a completely different father to them than he was to me and my siblings. It was like night and day. Completely different. He doted on them and loved them unreservedly. He was, to put it bluntly, a model father to them. Everything he never gave us, he gave them in spades. It was almost as though he took all the love and care he never gave us and gave it to them, so they got two families’ worth of his Dadness.

I can remember an incident from when his “new” daughters were kids that illustrates this perfectly. After years of trying, I had finally brokered a breakfast between my dad and me and my brothers and my sister. He and my siblings had been completely estranged with no contact at all for five years or so, during which time he had had these two new daughters, and I had finally managed to cajole him into coming to California to visit and my brothers and sister to agree to have breakfast with him. I have a photo taken of all of us together that day — my dad, my siblings, his two new daughters — and I always refer to it as my proudest moment, the day I got them all together again.

Anyway, we’re all having breakfast at this coffee shop in Pasadena, and his two newest daughters who were probably 5 and 6 years old were all over him — climbing in his lap, crawling on and under the table, eating with their hands, eating off his plate … it was one of the most impressive displays I’ve ever seen of children with absolutely atrocious table manners and a doting parent letting them get away with murder. It was the kind of thing where if they were at the table next to you, you would have been muttering snarky comments about poor parenting and giving them dirty looks.

And me, I was utterly shocked at the display. When I was their age, my dad ruled the dinner table with — Well, I was about to say “an iron fist,” but that’s not true. He ruled it with a butter knife handle. Kids spoke only when spoken to. Your glass of milk could not be drunk until your plate was cleared. You did not get up from the table until your plate was cleared, and if you didn’t like what was served you ate it anyway. And the butter knife handle? If one of us kids reached for something rather than ask someone to please pass it, or if we put our elbows on the table… THOCK!!! He would whack us with the knife handle. And let me tell you, that shit hurts, especially if it hits a knuckle or the bony part of your elbow. That kind of thing will get your attention — and it’s why I have the excellent table manners I enjoy today. So I was absolutely stunned to see them getting away with such behavior. When I was a kid that kind of thing would have just about landed me in a full body cast, but these two girls were getting away with it with a smile.

I think the difference was that he loved these two girls, absolutely loved them. I don’t know why he was different with them, but he was. He loved them without question, but he had … well, nothing for me and mine. I don’t know why and I never asked. It was what it was.

But I don’t think I resented it — at least not until the last year or so of his life. And that’s where the guilt I’m feeling comes from. After playing the Good Son for so long, I basically ran out of gas in the last year. I got tired of the complaints about us never calling him — but never hearing regrets that he never called us. I got tired of the guilt trips for the rich life he imagined we had here while he lived in poverty there — especially after I asked him last year to come live with me and he never gave me an answer, just kept saying he was thinking about it.

And you know, I think that really is where things changed for me. His health was failing and he was living all alone, across the state from his daughters who he loved so much, and the Colorado winters and the altitude were really hard on him. He needed help, so I offered to move him out to California and have him live with me. He never really answered me; over the course of several months — and through another winter that was the whole point of my offer — he kept saying he was thinking about it, that he wasn’t ready to move yet, that he’d let me know. I thought it would help him live more comfortably and be a great way to bring the two factions of his families together and help him get to know his grandkids and yadda, yadda, yadda. It was an idealistic move on my part that he just couldn’t accept, and it eventually became clear to me that, as the song goes, “When you choose not to decide, you’ll still have made a choice.” He didn’t choose me. Instead, he chose to live out his days near his daughters in Colorado. Away from me, away from us, away again, still, always.

And that’s when I started shutting down towards him. After choosing not to make the California part of his family a part of his life time and time and time again, he made that choice one last time and it finally hit me. And I started shutting down. And now he’s gone and I regret it. I worked so hard for thirty-some years keeping the lines of communication open so that my brothers and sister wouldn’t regret not talking to him, and now he’s gone and it’s me who regrets not talking to him.

I wish I had sent him the pictures of Zoe that I never got around to sending. I wish I had taken Zoe to visit him like I had planned to do “someday.” I wish I had been closer to him and he closer to us.

I wish things could have been different.

Charles Atkins
7/31/22 – 2/18/07

Inspired by the one-eyed Dread Pirate Vane, otherwise known as my blushing bride, I have taken the Pirate Name Quiz. I am quite pleased with the results:

Our dogs Suki and Sammy were barking up a storm in the back yard a little while ago at 1 a.m. and wouldn’t come in when I called, so that could mean just one thing: possum. I went out and looked, and sure enough they had one “cornered” on the fence.

I say “cornered” because it was five feet in the air where they couldn’t reach it and it could have escaped in either direction on the fence or jumped into a tree on the other side, so it had plenty of avenues of escape, but it was frozen in fear. Cornered, as it were. So I shooed the dogs back inside and came out with a camera.

I’ve been telling Zoe a serial bedtime story for the past week or so, making it up as I go along and throwing little bits of our lives into the story and ending each night with a cliffhanger. One of the characters is a possum named Eloise. In tonight’s episode, Eloise is currently at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport being interrogated by Homeland Security agents on suspicion of trespassing, impeding in the operation of a jet, and maybe terrorism. So clearly she’s not here, but that’s not important right now — Zoe’s going to love it when I show her a picture of Eloise in our own back yard.

It hadn’t moved an inch in the time it took me to get the dogs back inside, block the dog door, go pee (I really had to go), find the camera, and come back outside. So it was out there in the dark, all alone, free to make its escape for at least five minutes. And it was still there. So it was really scared. But there it was, so I shot a few pictures of it. And it hardly moved while I was taking the pictures, so I took it a step further: I stretched out and grabbed the tip of its tail. No reaction.

It felt like a carrot, sort of. Or maybe a rope. Or a ropey carrot. Whatever, it felt like a possum tail, and if you don’t know what that feels like then I guess you haven’t lived as exciting a life as I have. For I am He Man, Puller of Possum Tails.

After that I figured I had scared it enough, so I went back inside and left it alone.

Ten minutes later Sammy was back out there again, barking her head off again. The possum was still there. Maybe it’s just stupid.

There’s an old song that says It never rains in California / But girl, don’t they warn ya / It pours man it pours. And it’s true; it doesn’t rain for most of the year down here, but when it does rain it does it with a vengeance. Well, it’s raining tonight and I’m so tickled about it that I could die.

It’s the freshly cleaned garage, you see. And the motorcycles in it. The dry, bone dry, not being rained on, safely parked on a flat clean surface with a watertight shingled roof high over head motorcycles. They’re dry, you see. They’re not being rained on. At all.

Oh, it’s a glorious thing. It’s so orgasmically fantastic that I may need to go change my pants.

It’s raining outside and my bikes are dry. Oooo-oooo-ooohhhh!!!! Pllllllllllbbbbttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!

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Aaaaahhhhh…..

I need a cigarette.

I don’t have the most vocal readership around, so comments from all y’all are few and far between and so it could have just been the usual, that nobody was commenting anyway, but if you tried to post a comment recently and found that my anti-spam captcha thing was broken and you couldn’t do it… Well, it’s fixed. You may now comment away again. Or not.

I was trolling the free ads over on Craigslist and saw one from someone asking where they could find a cheap Christmas tree. Being flush with the holiday spirit, I decided to help and posted the following ad:

Free Christmas Trees
Someone posted here looking for cheap Christmas trees. I can tell you where to get FREE ones! Starting December 26, start keeping an eye on the curbs in front of houses and apartment buildings. You’ll find just a few at first, then more and more, until by New Years they’ll be all over the place. You might even find one that still has some tinsel on it! You’ll find the best ones right after Christmas, but they’ll probably keep turning up all the way through February or even March.

Happy Holidays!

It lasted all of about 15 minutes before it was flagged down and removed. Nice work, Grinches.