AFTER MY recent footnote on the Arctic trek, the thing about young Steffi and Karsten, Jens the F800GS pilot, and David the mad Wing rider, readers asked me to dig more people notes out of my journal.
I sometimes do tend to leave the people out, and write mostly about roads, mountains, rivers, glaciers, all the fleeting topography of the traveling life. It’s only because I like to meet people for the sake of meeting them, to find out whatever it is they may know, then I’ll know it.
I don’t want people to get the idea that I’m documenting them.
I especially don’t like pointing a camera at people. The camera changes everything.
Oh, I get ’em now and again, usually when they’re doing something else.
Here’s Jens splitting out of Tok, Alaska, bound for South America.
Here’s Robert, releasing the catch that pops the top on his Land Rover, so he can stand up in it.
Quite a rig.
Robert was a big-time executive type who chucked it all to travel the world solo. He told me his company required him to explain himself in an exit interview, held in an auditorium with a few hundred people in attendance.
Judging by his accent I ask if he’s German. He reflects, then shades his answer thus: “I have a German passport.”
Now there’s a man at home wherever he happens to be.
Early on I was riding one of the blue routes across Ohio. It was a sleepy village lane from yesteryear, now a blacktop straightaway, heavily traveled, people driving way too fast, making near-interstate speed as they brush by pedestrians on what passes for a shoulder.
I pull over by a mailbox to check something on the bike, can’t remember what. In a doorway there appears an elderly woman, tiny, a dandelion tangle of wispy gray hair pointing every which way. Warm smile, contented eyes, here she comes down the walkway between her door and the street.
I’m headed where? She lights up when I say it’s a place I’m sure she’s never heard of—most people haven’t—an Inuit town on the Beaufort Sea.
We chat for a while as traffic whips by. The image that sticks with me is how she looks when she tells me she used to ride a horse down this road when she was six or seven. A dirt road in those days, lightly traveled.
When she speaks of her girlhood, it’s so apparent to me that she’s no longer standing on the side of a too-fast, modern-times road. She’s feeling the sun on her skin as it felt then. The horse moves under her at a village-time walk, clip-clop… clip-clop…
Sweet old lady.
In Inuvik, the last town of any size on the road to Tuktoyaktuk, I met a couple whose house I had ridden by four years earlier, in middle-of-nowhere Quebec. Fancy that.
I was on my way north to ride a different wilderness road at the time. The one across Labrador.
Nathalie and Bob live just east of Lac Manicouagan, the circular lake seen here from space. It’s an ancient impact crater. They live on the only road through the area. Hydro Quebec built the road, I believe. Or most of it.
They live just south of a little outpost called Relais-Gabriel, the last fuel stop before Labrador City. If you want to ride the Trans-Labrador Highway from the west, the road through Relais-Gabriel is the only way to get there: follow the Manicouagan River up from Baie-Comeau, a town on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. You get to Baie-Comeau by road from Quebec City, or by crossing the seaway on the ferry out of Matane.
Bob’s around my age, Nathalie’s younger, a brunette with the loveliest French-accented English you ever heard, and interesting ideas about everything. Bob, a Mainer by birth—Town of Randolph, Kennebec County—is a general aviation pilot and ex-Merchant Marine.
Before he met Nathalie, he spent quite a few years more or less as a hermit, living all by his lone alone out there in the bush on the Canadian Shield.
I don’t know how the conversation got around to newspapers, but he laughed when I told him how my journalism career had ended a dozen years before; how, on an otherwise unremarkable day, one that found me with every intention of going back to work after lunch, I just somehow… didn’t.
Rode off instead. Been riding ever since.
Left a bunch of editors waiting for me to show up in a conference room, where I imagine they worried the clickers on their ball point pens, and glanced at their watches. It was one of those end-of-the-business scenes, a devolution into the ridiculous: two reporters scheduled to meet with…? Was it six editors?
Half of the reporting staff doesn’t show, how ridiculous is it then?
Bob laughed, because he identified. He had ended his Merchant Marine career in a similar inspirational moment of going AWOL. Zigging when he was expected to zag.
He jumped ship somewhere in the wide world. If I noted the port in my journal I can’t put my finger on it at the moment. (Some things don’t get in my journal, depending on what’s going on that day. It’s so much work just to keep moving down the road there’s always less scribbling time than I’d like.)
Wherever it was that Bob had his revelation, we shared that I-know-exactly-what-you’re-talking-about moment. At a karmic fork in the road, fate gave him a mighty shove between the shoulder blades, and his reasonable, practical self watched his body walk down the gangplank and disappear into a crowd. An occupational out-of-body experience, as it were.
The Universe duly records these things in your permanent file, you know; they get filed under F with a duplicate copy to the O folder, as in Fuckit/ I’m Outtahere.
Someone else I didn’t point a camera at, a delightful young woman from the Czech Republic, a petite blonde who somehow found herself working at the only fuel stop between Dawson City, the Yukon, and Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories. She lives and works at a wide spot in the wilderness called Eagle Plains.
There she moves in perpetual motion, as wait staff, cashier, registering muddy bikers for rooms and tent space. Didn’t see her working the grill, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Could you love a job like that? She seemed to. Soft spoken, beaming happiness, one of those women with the light shining out of her eyes.
Every man in the room is in love with her.
I think I wrote something about the KTM riders who were getting bashed up left and right on the Dempster. Easy enough to do on a 150-horsepower dirt bike as heavy as a highway cruiser.
Jeff, a BMW rider from California, got separated from his KTM-riding buddy thataway. His pal got an extra long all-day ride down to the emergency room in Whitehorse, which I guess is better than what some others got, a medevac airlift to the trauma center at Yellowknife, ’cause it means your injuries aren’t life threatening.
Although his were, sorta. In addition to broken ribs he had a brain bleed they missed in Whitehorse. Back at home in the Bay Area, he started to lose the ability to walk and his intracranial leak finally got the attention it needed.
I met Jeff in Tok, Alaska, after his pal had been flown out of Whitehorse. Ran into him again a few days later in Fairbanks, where we split a campsite. I was headed north for the Dalton, he was pointed more to the southwest, toward Denali.
Jeff rode a ’95 Beemer of the Paris-to-Dakar variety. An adventure bike that makes sense. Before they got as crazy tall as dirt bikes.
He told me a funny tale about a service club he belongs to, E Clampus Vitus, a confederacy of pranksters founded in the name of Emperor Norton, king of the gadflies in 19th-century San Francisco. The club’s motto? “We believe because it’s absurd.”
That rings a bell. Is it Kierkegaard? I think so. Kierkegaard by way of Tertullian.
It’s been quite a few years since I’ve had Augustinian monks beating me over the head with books, but some things never leave you.
Midnight’s on the way. I’ve been instructed not to eat beyond that hour.
In the morning I’ll be a guest at Miriam Hospital, where a surgeon will take a whack at the side of my neck with some kind of razor-sharp melon ball scooper I imagine.
Long story short: in the spring I noticed the lymph nodes in my neck were blown up. I’d been out in the woods quite a bit, had dug ticks out of me here and there, didn’t think anything of it. I rode to Alaska thinking the nodes would go down again.
Yeah, except all they did was get bigger. The one on the right you can see from across the room.
Got home 79 days later, saw our family doctor, she said it’s not just your neck, it’s under your arms, your groin, everywhere. It may be nothing, may be serious. Given a family history of lymphoma it makes sense to get the facts, go from there.
Our family doctor referred me to a hematologist/oncologist, who referred me to a surgeon, who I met for the first time today and will see again tomorrow in the O.R. Then the lymph node formerly known as mine will go to the lab for scrutiny under a microscope, and we’ll see what’s what.
Aw, the poor bride. She’s been losing sleep and I’ve been torturing her with such lines as: What are you so worried about? You won’t be on the market long, you’ll get snapped right up you bombshell you.
Today, when I got out of my meeting with the surgeon, she texted me, What’s happening, what did they say, what?—What?
I text back: They told me to go out and buy all the stuff I want on credit, and don’t worry about any balloon payments or interest rates.
More to come…
Tony DePaul, September 18, 2019, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
You know you and Pam are always in my prayers Tony. Keep that positive attitude up – it does help with the healing!
Thanks, Vincent. We had a fun weekend here. The big event was that the 4 year old learned to ride a bicycle. A balance bike, her dad installed the pedals on it yesterday and she just got on it and rode! And rode for miles, going around and around in 30-foot circles in the front drive and parking area. No training wheels, no learning curve…
Tony…I thoroughly enjoy your scribbles and look forward to them as do many others.
I wish you good health…God is good. LU Aunt Eleanor
Hey! Great to hear from you, Aunt Eleanor.
I’m awfully fond of your niece, by the way. Long time now… Can it really be sneaking up on 47 years?
Peace and good health, Tony.
May you shake your medical anomalies off as easily as you did that meeting with the editors.
Cheers, Bullet
Thanks, Bullet. Hey, it’s about time for another barbecue run to Hartford. We’ve got to get John busy organizing the convoy.
May the scalpel be sharp and true. Good luck with everything!
It was so sharp I assumed you had sharpened it.
Hey Tony – sorry to hear you’ve hit a pothole on the road of life. We’re sending our best to you all and want to plan a family reunion when we get back to RI this fall. The grands are like having extra sprinkles, sauce, whipped cream and cherries on a family sundae – so wonderful!!! love, Donna & Tomas
Will look forward to it, Donna. Thanks for following the scribble.
Love all your stories Tony and especially loved this one. Good luck with you surgery and hoping for good news.
Thanks, Linda. Here’s hoping you and Ron are enjoying a beautiful autumn in PEI.
“The Universe duly records these things in your permanent file, you know; they get filed under F with a duplicate copy to the O folder, as in Fuckit/ I’m Outta here.”
That sentence is one of the reasons I love you brother. Classic and just laugh out loud funny. I am always envious of people who are able to put their thoughts into words in such a fashion. Not one of my talents for sure. Let’s hope that the only thing that remains benign about your life are those lumps Tony!
Jeff
Haha, thanks Jeff. The lab’s got the lump.
Just got home. Starved. Sore. & Numb.
As much as I love your previous posts, this one about the people may be one of my favorites. And knock it off with those comments- you are not going anywhere!
Going to Miriam in an hour.
You’re the best, Rocket Man. We need your scribbles. As we say in rugby, “take it to ’em!”
“It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll…”
Salve et vale, Tony….My four years of high school Latin couldn’t translate your phrase. so I headed to Wikipedia and found this entry: “The organization’s name is in Dog Latin, and has no known meaning; even the spelling is disputed, sometimes appearing as “Clampus,” “Clampsus,” or “Clampsis.” The motto of the Order, Credo Quia Absurdum, is generally interpreted as meaning “I believe it because it is absurd;”[1] the proper Latin quotation Credo quia absurdum est, is from the Christian apologist Tertullian (c. 160–220), who rejected rationalism and accepted a Gospel which addressed itself to the “non-rational levels of perception.”
I guess I could look up how Dog Latin differs from Pig Latin but that’s for another day.
Ah! Good catch, Tom. Yes, looking at my notes again I see I mistook the name of the group for the corrupted Latin motto. I’ll fix that. Thanks, and Hi to J.
Hey Tony, you just hang on You have got large living to do yet, and more roads of adventure with the wind in your face bro, and keep making Bronson proud, and maybe even write a novel about the man. Plus you gotta keep our man in purple on the right trail. The Phantom depends on Tony, Old Jungle Saying. Pulling for you man.
Thanks, Terry. Spread the word that Bronson rocks.
Like Duane said, keep your eyes on where you want to go and don’t lift. Lots of us are still out here missing a few things we didn’t need as much as the disease did. Fuck it, hack it off and let the plague have it.
I don’t need to give you ANY more advice. Get busy living.
Gonna. Thanks, man.
🙏😇💕
I always considered editors were just part of the reporter support team. You know a reporter is damn good if it takes three editors to keep up with him.
Buy whatever you want and hand in your expense report to the publisher.
Hmm, I’ll be needing a desk calendar, pack of notebooks, box of pens, and a 2020 Harley-Davidson Road Glide, boss.
Ugh. You don’t really need to add anything to your ‘About Tony’ man-resume.
That’s all I got.
Matt
Adel, IA.
Yeah, Jeez… didn’t think about that.
All the best to you tomorrow Tony. Give that bride of yours an extra long hug before you go in. You know she’ll worry.
Thanks, Gerrie. Yeah my day tomorrow is easy as pie, all I have to do is fall asleep. Hell I do that here when nobody’s looking…
Well amigo, it’s another Adventure, when the bodies start doing weird things and stuff pops out where it’s not ‘sposed to, and you get poked, prodded and diced as they figure out what the heck it is. You roll with it however it goes and stay in the saddle no matter how bumpy the ride gets. You have to hold onto the bars really tight when the trip gets rough, and keep your eyes focused on down the road. Don’t fall off. Make Johnny Danger proud.
Danger was a warrior in your league, D.
Best of luck with the rapid frozen section biopsy tomorrow. After all your Arctic trips, even your medical procedures are COLD. Hope your news is favorable, Tony.
Thanks, Brian. It’ll be good to know the facts, whatever they are.
I feel great. All systems Go. I’m told that’s a good sign but not evidence of anything; that plenty of people feel good right up to the point where the rope snaps and the grand piano plummets 20 stories, ker-BLANGO….
Yeah, buy all you want, and when they’re wrong, send the credit card bill to the doctor’s office… Hey guys, your prescription is due.
You lost me on the Kierkegaard. Ancient secret fraternal society where they wear their kilts on their heads? Hope google can find it.
Hey, did you know that Amazon sells wasserboxers like yours? I just bought one for $28,000. Hope you don’t mind but I gave them your DOB and SS number.
Best of the luck with the Doctor Tony!
Bill! Hey, man. It’s a pleasure to know you’re still out there & following the scribble. Thanks for the good word.