North On A Bike. A fundraiser ride for ALS Northwest to Deadhorse Alaska.

I think better when I’m moving, always have…

On a motorcycle, if you have any business riding one, you have to be hyper aware of your surroundings or you won’t last long. You have to be constantly aware of the road ahead, what drivers may do, the feel and sound of your bike. On a motorcycle you additionally become intensely aware of your own body. This state of being leads to what psychologists refer to as a ‘flow state,’ a absorption in the present that leads to an altered sense of time and self.

When you get used to the flow state, every moment that you’re not feeling that you’re waiting for the next time you feel it. Looking forward to it, wishing for it…

Now imagine that you spent several years in that state on your motorcycle, then a disease with no cure promised to rob you not only of your ability to ride but your ability to move your body, eat and breathe. It wouldn’t kill you quickly, it just degrades your body slowly until something external to the disease killed you.

My friend Keith died from complications associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It initially affects the nervous system’s ability to control voluntary muscle movements which degrades your ability to move and walk, eventually it affects the muscles that control breathing, as well as chewing and swallowing food. There’s no cure. It’s going to kill you and take its time doing it. 

And it obviously stops you from riding a motorcycle. 

If you’ve ever been in the flow state before, either on a bike, in a sports-car, while skiing, surfing, sailing, fly fishing… any activity where you’re so in the now that time stands still and nothing else is happening or matters the prospect of losing that would be devastating. Couple that with the prospect of a slow journey to death and as you might imagine you’d find out what you were really made of and who your friends were. 

Keith was into motorcycles his whole life, as I have been. You go through phases in bikes. You start out on mini bikes, ride dirt bikes until you are old enough to legally ride on roads. Then you have options… stick with dirt bikes you can ride on the road, maybe have a few dalliances with choppers or fast bikes. You’ll figure out a way you prefer to get into that flow state. 

As Keith, myself and many others have found adventure bikes became their flow state source. Adventure bikes are a subset of motorcycling culture, bikes that are designed, built and then individually modified to transport the rider on adventures. They can handle days of riding with loads of camping gear that enables you to get multiple doses of that flow state on trips to far away lands or just down the road.

Before Keith came down with ALS he took some time off work and rode his bike down through Mexico, Central and South America. He rode on and around the PanAmerican Highway to Ushuaia, which is located on the Tierra del Fuego archipelago of Argentina at the southernmost tip of South America. It’s essentially the “End of the World”, as far south as you can go on roads in the Americas. It took a couple years. 

He told me once that in retrospect he thinks he started noticing the initial symptoms of ALS toward the end of his trip but chalked those feelings up to having put 70,000 odd miles on his BMW F650GS Dakar motorcycle. He just thought he was tired from riding his bike for the length of the map of South America. Unfortunately he was wrong….

I’d known Keith for years, he worked with my wife and I and I followed his trip progress via his blog (South On A Bike, unfortunately no longer on the internet) and Facebook wishing I was on the trip. Upon his return and diagnosis he set to preparing himself for his new challenges. One of the things that amazed me about Keith and how he dealt so positively with his ALS was his outlook that it was, as he said,” just another problem to solve, just like fixing the bike or dealing with problems on the road. I’m experienced…” He faced his new reality bravely. He had good days and bad days, and he found out who his friends were and always was extremely grateful for the help he had to have.

One day a bunch of us were working on his driveway so he could drive his chair down it and he noticed me looking at his bike. We started talking about it, the trip and what he was going to do with it. He “wanted to find it a good home”. I’d been off of bikes for years and I remember saying that it’d be a great bike for me to throw some gear and a fly rod on and disappear on for days fly fishing with. He said “that’d be good for you” and that good home for the bike eventually wound up being my garage. 

I don’t know if it was obvious or not, but following the most recent pandemic like a lot of people I just wasn’t myself. I struggled to leave the house, didn’t want to do stuff that I used to do to find my “flow state” like fly fishing, backpacking or traveling. Before Covid I’d disappear for days on end chasing trout or the next adventure, but after a year of lockdowns I just wasn’t myself. Between some antidepressants, anti anxiety meds and even some counseling I figured out that I wasn’t completely broken, just beat up. 

Kind of like the bike it turned out…

The bike needed work. Tires, a new battery, wind shield and clutch and although Keith and I disagreed on this I thought it needed a really good bath. Keith was one to spend his time riding his bike, not polishing it. He said “we’ll fix it, you’ll be my hands” When we started working on it we found dirt, dust, rocks and dead bugs of several grades and colors deposited in nooks and crannies that had came home with him from the jungles of Central America and from the Atacama Desert in Peru. We joked that Atacama locktite was holding some of it together probably. 

Although he had a bike lift and tools to mount tires easily he made me change the tires “like if you’re on the side of the road, because one day you will be”(how right he turned out to be). I didn’t just get a bike, I also got a subscription to my own private help phone line with a years of experience keeping it running and riding. I’d call and Keith would answer saying “Dakar tech support, this is Keith…” and if he was having a good day the answers to my questions came with stories. He had a lotta good days… He also seemed really happy that his riding boots and gloves fit me so those came with the bike, along with a bunch of tools and spare parts that “you’re gonna need where you’re going”. 

I asked him once if he thought it was still reliable with all those miles on it and he said “I chose it carefully, it’ll run forever if you take good care of it. I’d ride it ride back to Patagonia tomorrow if I wasn’t in this chair”. Since the bike had already been as far south as it could go I asked “how far north can you ride?” He’d already thought of the trip, and his concise answer was laid out in miles, oil changes, distances between fuel stops, how many back tires and how many days of camping above the Arctic Circle on the Alaskan Dalton Highway it would take. “That’d be a cool trip” he said. 

I started going on rides, each longer than the last. I dropped it but it didn’t matter, it had been dropped before and was set up to take some abuse with aftermarket crash bars, hand guards… Unlike other bikes I’d had it wasn’t meant to be polished, it was meant to be ridden… to carry you to new places. Mile by mile and trip by trip I got my bike mojo back, and with every mile I got a bit more comfortable on it. We got to know each other better on rides to fish in Idaho, the Upper John Day River, the Steens Mountains and a really wet trip up to Cape Flattery, the northwestern most point in the contiguous United States. I started to find my flow state again, started looking forward to the next big ride. 

I started driving Keith to medical appointments, helping out around his house with some of the work he couldn’t do. One day we were talking and I said I’d like to do do a fundraiser for the ALS society someday around that Alaska trip, because they’d been good to him to which he said “eh, just go ride your motorcycle”.

Someday is now…

He’d always said that when the time came he’d avail himself of the opportunity to leave on his own terms like his father had done through Oregon’s Right to Die assisted suicide laws. When I asked when that would be he said “when I can’t eat a cheeseburger anymore”. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but those words turned out to be some of our last. 

I was on a hot summer ride up to Portland to see a friend’s father who was in memory care. My wife called me and told me that he’d died the night before in his sleep. I got off the phone and walked over to the bike and told it what had happened. I know that sounds silly, but my dad had been a fighter pilot and around our house you talked to cars and bikes and they got names. I grew up believing that if you took good care of a machine it’d take good care of you, and after I told the bike about Keith I promised I’d take good care of it and we’d keep going on rides as long as we could. I half expected it not to start, but I put the key in and it fired right up and has ever since. Could be German engineering and good maintenance, could be soul…

Now I’ve told it that since we’re both getting pretty old and we’re both kinda beat up that we’ve got one more big ride to do. We’re riding to Deadhorse on the Caribou, Cassiar, Alaska and Dalton Highways and maybe up the Demster Highway to to the Arctic Ocean in Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territory Canada , I’ll see how sick we are of awful roads we are after going to Deadhorse. And because I said I would and words to dying friends matter we’re doing the trip as a fundraiser for ALS Northwest. 

We’ll be camping the whole way, and you can come along through Facebook, Instagram and blog posts. We’ll post pics, videos and stories from the road and you can tag along through social media, it’s one of the good things social media can do. You don’t have to sleep on the ground, ride through the mud and possibly snow or the eruption of Mount Spurr near Anchorage (which could happen soon), or camp with 3 species of grumpy bears that live along the way. And it won’t cost you a thing, although I’d hope that you’d find it in your heart and wallet to make a donation through a secure fundraising apparatus in place with ALS Northwest in memory of Keith. At a time when funding into ALS is threatened to be cut by 60%, I’d hope though that you’d take the opportunity to donate money to ALS Northwest towards finding a cure and the support that ALS Northwest provides to those stricken with a currently incurable disease. You certainly can tag along on the trip for free, you go ahead and do what you think is right. 

Donate here http://secure.alsnorthwest.org/goto/NorthOnABike2025

Ride on, see ya on the road

Screenshot

Road Karma

Written by

jonathanandrewbenson

in

Blog Day 1.2

I’ve had some dangerous jobs before. Jobs where a bad decision or just bad luck could lead to a bad outcome. Commercial fishing was more dangerous than being in the military, avalanche control work with the ski patrol was probably just as dangerous as swiftwater rescues as a park ranger and raft guide only different. All that has left me with what my psychologist buddy calls hyper vigilance. She says it could be fixed, but I’ve found that it’s worked for me over the years by keeping me safe and it drives my decision making process. It isn’t fun, but I usually come home with all my fingers and toes and everybody I started with. 

When I do a bike trip I don’t count on finding a roadside cafe or hotel. I camp out of my saddlebags like a cowboy who takes good care of his horse knowing a good horse will take care of him. I carry extra food, tools, parts… usually it works out. Unfortunately I’m also kind of a half assed perfectionist, meaning there’s a conscious stage where I say “hell with it, let’s go”. I try to find a balance between hyper vigilance and half assed perfection. 

Sometimes I get caught. 

Couple weekends ago I decided to go for a ride, and since the weather was good (it’s been a long winter) I may have got excited about the prospect of a long-ish ride to a campground I’ve always wanted to camp at on the Oregon Coast, 150 picturesque miles south. Rode down the coast, took back roads, saw new places… everything riding a motorcycle is meant to be. Got a neat campsite, set up my tent I bought for my trip north and thought to myself “a beer would be perfect right now”. Rode into town and grabbed six of my favs, on the ride back the bike began to feel different. Pulled into the campground and the turn off the highway got sporty. Pulled into my spot and figured out the front tire was flat. No big deal I thought, I’m ready for this…

Sorta…

In my haste to get going I’d not been as hyper vigilant as usual. As I pulled everything out of my boxes and bags at my campsite I couldn’t find my spare front tube. When things go wrong, they usually cascade. One thing on a commercial fishing boat breaks or fails and other things start to break or go wrong. On a fishing boat everything is super heavy, under huge loads and waiting to break and hurt or kill you. Now getting a front flat tire in a campground isn’t going to kill you (once the bike is safely stopped) but it’s definitely a pain in the ass. A quick text to my wife confirmed that my spare tube was safely sitting in my garage. 

At least I had beer…

When problems cascade they expand at an exponential rate, and they’re usually linked inexorably to a flawed decision making process, a lack of planning or just rotten luck. My risk management head was spinning, but I knew I wasn’t going to die… just mildly be inconvenienced and possibly inconvenience others. The beer eventually helped me to sleep. Shortly after I got to sleep two animals started arguing outside my tent, loudly. I’ve camped and hunted a lot, but I couldn’t identify these animals by their shrieks. My carefully chosen campsite was as far away from the other campers as I could get and I’d made the conscious decision not to bring a can of bear spray or hand cannon on a trip to the south coast. Unaware that I’d be camping in a chupacabra or howler monkey reserve I’d opted to hope I’d be lucky. One critter would shriek, another would growl back. At one point the growl was loud and close enough that I slapped at the side of the tent and smacked something that took off through the bushes at a pretty fast rate of travel. 

All this left me with plenty of time to question the decision making faults that had gotten me to my present moment in life and also allowed me all the time I needed to figure a way out of my problem. One of the things that amazed me about how Keith ( the guy I got my bike from) was how he dealt so positively with his ALS and all the associated challenges of it.  Keith had he said “it’s just another problem to solve, just like fixing the bike or dealing with problems on the road. I’m experienced…” Thinking about the problems he’d faced, on his trip and with ALS, put my front tire firmly in perspective again. 

Texts the next morning (because phone calls would drop out due to a lack of coverage) revealed options. A coworker of my wife had a meeting south of the campground in two days, so at worst I’d camp for another night until they could bring me a front 21 inch tube. I previously also had specifically called my insurance company to inquire as to the limitations of my towing insurance. I’d said “I’m riding between Fairbanks and Deadhorse soon, it’s the longest distance between gas stations in the USA and hundreds of miles from a motorcycle shop. Tell me my towing insurance will get me back to a repair facility that works on motorcycles.” I was dubious, having used towing insurance before but was told “Yes sir, you’ll be fine”. 

That same morning other campers began to ask me what I thought the animal noises were in the night. A park ranger guessed it could be foxes at best or at worst cougars. At least it was daylight out and I could focus on getting out of my troubles that day without waiting for parts to come. I walked to a spot in the campground where I could almost reliably make phone calls. Several calls to shops in Port Orford revealed that the only place to get a tube on a Monday was miles away. I called my insurance company and found that yes, I could get a tow to a shop but anything outside of 15 miles would be financially my responsibility. When I related the nature of my previous inquiry about my towing insurance with their company they said “well ya we’ll tow you but it’ll cost you if it’s more than 15 miles. Either you misunderstood or that person you spoke with was wrong. Towing you to a shop today will be $1700.” I hung up. I was less than impressed and I let them know this each of the three times they called me back…

I was thinking that I’d be camping another night without beer or much food, but then somethings happened that I wasn’t expecting. 

The evening before I’d briefly met the couple camped across from me. They were in a rental RV and she had a pretty thick European accent, she’d said “my dad rode bikes, his favorite book was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. You remind me of him, he’d camp by himself too” then she’d cried. Her husband explained that her dad had died recently and it was still pretty hard for her. Next morning she came over and asked what animals had been making the noises, saying that she’d wanted to go to the bathroom but was afraid to leave the RV. “I dunno, they reminded me of howler monkeys. They sounded like the monkeys we heard in Costa Rica when we’d do raft trips on the Pacuare River. Could have been a chupacabra too” I said.

“You have those here?” She looked concerned. 

“No, the Park Ranger thinks it was a fox or maybe a cougar. Sure sounded like a howler monkey though” I told her. She laughed… I told her about the flat tire, that I might be there another night and she offered to let me sleep in with them in the RV where it was safe. “No, I’ll be ok” I said.

Another couple were walking their dogs down the trail next to my camp site that led to the beach. They also were concerned about the howler monkey noises and their dogs seemed interested in the smells around my tent. When the guy at the end of one of the leashes saw the compressor attached to my front tire he asked if anything was wrong and I explained I had a flat, my towing insurance was useless but I had a tube being delivered the next day… but I was out of beer. “We’ll be back from the beach in a couple hours if you need a ride to town for groceries”. I didn’t expect that, I thanked them and said I might take them up on that if it wasn’t a bother. 

Then a guy on a motorcycle rode by and stopped. He saw the compressor and asked if I was ok, I gave him the long story about the flat, riding to Deadhorse on a bike that had been as far south as you can go, about Keith and the ALS fundraiser. He hopped off his bike and said “that a BMW Dakar? 21 inch front tube? I got you, here…” and he gave me his spare 21 inch front tube which, unlike me, he had not left in his garage. I whipped out a $20 but he wouldn’t take it. He smiled and said “No, I’m buying some road karma. I’ll probably get a flat now, but somebody will help me”. His name was Thomas, we never got as far as last names. “I’ll look for that fundraiser on the ALS Northwest website” he said as he rode off. I hope he didn’t get a flat, but somehow I think he will be fine. He’d invested in road karma wisely.

I got the front wheel off, got the flat fixed in about an hour. I thanked everybody that had offered to help, “that means a lot to me” I said. The whole ride home up the coast I was in a different mood and I noticed different things. A homeless guy in Coos Bay gave me a friendly wave. Two teenage girls (who usually completely ignore me in my experience) waved and smiled when I waved back. Nobody tried to run me off the road, people seemed nice. I chalked it up to my altered point of view, having been in a vulnerable position and having met some nice strangers. 

Since I got back I’ve totally unpacked the bike so I could change the oil, check it over and can pack it right for the trip. I’m buying an extra tube in case I run into Thomas again, or in the unlikely event I need to gift somebody a 21 inch front tube that’ll save their day (I’ll be carrying two now). While I have more faith in humanity now I’m still shopping for satellite connectivity to my phone and the best roadside assistance coverage known to mankind. A person I know who drove up the Demster Highway last summer to the Arctic Ocean said that “people on that road are persistently helpful and friendly to the point of it being weird at first. Somebody in a native village gave me Beluga Whale jerky. Who does that?” Nice people do…

Although you wouldn’t know it from watching the news, humans aren’t all bad, chupacabras probably aren’t real and there’s a lot of good people out there. I’m probably going to be fine on a bike with over 100,000 miles on the original piston and rings between satellite connectivity, towing insurance that works, tools, parts, lots of freeze dried food and a renewed faith in humans. 

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