How man relates to man is complicated and diverse. The picture below is indeed worth a thousand words. Man communicates through the T-Shirts he wears.
Smelty with his V Twin
Amsoil shirt is saying " I love my motorcycles and provide them with the best of synthetic oils!"
Jawa The
Puttz declaims" I love my motorcycle and use the finest craftsmanship in building all needed accessories; like my sissy bar luggage rack made painstakingly out of clear Northern White Cedar."
But beneath the t-shirt slogans and the projects, a struggle is occurring in the psychic of man. It is a battle between man's pride and the reality of the ages. The desire of man to be completely self sufficient moves in his inner being "Oh to be capable of handling all life's problems alone!" Yet man is repetitively brought to his knees by the reality that their are problems he cannot solve on his own. This reality, this age old truth cannot be denied for " No man is an Island".
To wrestle with this truth the Nobody Motorcycle Club applied for a grant from the
Collaborative Motorcycle Council Of
Intellectual Thought. Our proposal, which was accepted, outlined a motorcycle trip to Madeline Island to explore the island mentality of man. We invited all the Nobodies to participate. Four including one of our female members took the challenge.
Along with me (Kickstand),
Smelty,
Jawa The Putz and
Gutts (left to right) headed over to Wisconsin along county highway 13 to Madeline Island. Madeline Island is a 14 mile long island in Lake Superior.
http://www.madelineisland.com/index.shtml
Forty miles into the trip,
Smelty and
Gutts felt a great heaviness, which they attributed to the purpose of the trip. They decided to turn back. I just wondered if they were getting tired of
Jawa's and my company.
Fifty miles into the one hundred mile trip the highway started
paralleling the shore of Lake Superior.
The weather was spectacular with temperatures in the low 70's.
Both
Jawa and I still have some boy humor in us. This is an
artesian well.
A sailboat leaving the marina in Cornucopia.
To get to Madeline Island one needs to take a ferry from
Bayfield Wisconsin.
http://www.superiortrails.com/bayfield.html
The ferry ride takes about 25 minutes as the Island is only 1 1/2 to 2 miles from
Bayfield
Bayfield has a marina too.
Before heading over to the island we had supper and looked around this quaint town. This must be a
Norwegian gnome. A possible
mascot for the Nobodies.
Bayfield is a nice place.
Jawa on the ferry. This picture was taken just as we were departing
Bayfield.
As we departed, I realized that this trip was going to require me to think. I started to feel anxious, as thinking gives me a
headache.
That is
Bayfield in the background.
Another shot of
Bayfield and its Marina.
That is Madeline Island in the background.
Another view of
Bayfield
We are approaching the island
We camped at the state park. The next day we discovered the town campground which was fine and a lot cheaper.
The advantage of staying at the state campground was the fantastic boardwalk that
paralleled the beach. It had
interpretive stations that identified flora and dealt with the formation of the sand spit and the lagoon.
Lake Superior
Jawa and I initiated our dialog about man's desire to be self-sufficient while on our evening hike.
As the sun set, we felt we were living out a
metaphor about man's struggle to be an island. We
stopped talking and allowed nature to teach us.
The evening sky, calm lake and the sounds of the
forest resurrected in us the spirit of man as the hunter. We crouched behind bushes and silently crawled until we could not see any more.
The next morning we felt that the wind had spoken to us. That made us both very hungry so we had a man breakfast of oatmeal and
potato chips.
After
Jawa had a cup of coffee, he spoke the song that he had heard during the night. "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by Lake Superior,
Bayfield is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of your Nobody friends or of your family; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the motorcycle rumbles; it rumbles for thee. "
Whoa! That song hit me like a ton of bricks! So even if I think I am an island; yet am I bound to mankind.
Ok, so we have come to the truth. Good, now we don't have to think any more. L
et's just ride around this island. I prefer to be mindless.
The road out of the state park
Madeline Island has some fine roads.
Some streatches parallel Lake Superior and have beautiful views.
I liked this tree.
I realized that I don't have many pictures of riding in bad weather. This is mainly due to the fact that I am riding alone. I commute to work every day, so that is usually when I encounter the poor weather.
I've ridden in rain as pictured above. My aerostich Darren Suit keeps me dry. If you want to be a bad weather rider, you really need good ride wear or really be into suffering. I am a big fan of aerostich as it is a local company.........but they make great gear. http://www.aerostich.com/
The one type of weather that I have not mastered is snow and ice. In Duluth we get plenty of snow and it gets cold. I have ridden in the 20 degree fahrenheit range and that is nasty. Snow is some thing I have only played in on my duel sport. But I keep saying, I am going to commute in the winter. Maybe this will be the year.
