PICK A ROAD (A LESSON IN WANDERING)

I am not a wanderer. My personality is such that wandering goes against my very core. I would like to think that I am not a typical American, who is driven to achieve and who has little time for leisure, but in some ways I am.

When I relax, it usually means I fall asleep! Now when motorcycling entered my life, I was given a taste of relaxing while on the move. In one sense my bike was my psychiatrist. Biking was exhilarating, stimulating and yet relaxing, offering a time to just be. The feeling I get when riding is that of being connected with the surroundings I am passing through.



When I started taking motorcycle day trips and long distance tours, I discovered I was more willing to interact with people, take in the sights and was interested in the road as much as the miles. Taking secondary highways, county roads, going through small towns, following rivers, ridges and dipping into valleys got me to relax. I started wondering about wandering.

So I am going to try to learn a bit about the art of wandering. Maybe there are principles to be learned, or perhaps there are techniques. I am not sure, but I want to try to find way to cultivate the art of wandering into my motorcycle riding.


This summer Flashback, Puppy, Lizard and myself used a wandering technique I call "Pick A Road".






It is very simple. Just pick a road you are familiar with and ride it until you have to pick another road. It is like starting with the familiar and traveling to the unfamiliar.

We started our wandering after stopping at a motorcycle junk yard 10 mile outside of Duluth. We continued on the "Junk Yard Road", a road we have never traveled on past the motorcycle menagerie.

It lead us to another road that we were some what familiar with. So we continued on that road the Morris Thomas wondering where we would end up.

We continued this technique for a couple of hours allowing ourselves a lunch break in Cloquet Mn.
We did not do any thing unusual. We never got lost, but we had our moments of wondering.

Remember when you are wandering, stop and smell the train along the way.

I would like to get Puppy to lead us on a ride some time. One bark means turn left, two means turn right.

It is easy to know when you are done wandering.......... now to find our way back home.

I'll follow you Flashback.