Editor’s Note: The Writer’s Section at Socotra House is attempting to clean house by actually opening the closet/garage/cellar doors to see what is contained within. This afternoon, we share Marlow’s version of something those of you of a “certain age” will recall: Getting Ready to Get Up and Go. His requires two wheels. And a lot of road!

– Vic

May 2001
Detour Version 1.0
Note & Prologue

Scrapbook title page

Author’s Note:  I episodically penned and penciled this on pieces of scrap paper while my motorcycling partner, Steve, and I two wheeled our way across the USA long before 911’s arrival in September 2001.  Later that year, we and the rest of the nation started careening all over the place on a journey that led us to this strange and unknown way station in which we find ourselves today.

The detour I then thought we were taking has now become something more, much much more, than we ever thought, imagined, prayed for, or could have bargained for.

Smoke ‘em if you got.  Tip another one or two back while I whip and wheel this sucker out for all y’all.

One last saved round:  Outside of my riding partner reading the scrapbook version of this back in 2001, these tales have never seen the light of the day until now.

– Marlow

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Prologue

In late 2022 I was weeding out my closets to pare down the crap of 50 years plus on the road and high seas. It had graced me when I came upon three scrapbooks of singular memories.  One was a journal of a fortnight 23 plus years ago I spent caring for my three grandkids while their parents did business in the People’s Republic of China.  All parties had a blast while parental rules and guardrails were lovingly and jollily enforced.  The children learned new sailor vocabulary, songs of the sea and that, upon my acquiescence to their suggestion, a bad word fine jar for their grandfather’s verbal creations could be an immensely profitable enterprise for them.

The second scrapbook piece upon which we embark today is nearly 22 years old and is much more free form, since none of its days had much sameness to or among them, day after day after day.  They only experientially congealed near the end of the trip when our consciousnesses had expanded enough to figure and lay it all out.

Stick around – hopefully you’ll see what I think we saw.

-Marlow

PS: As a way of introduction of how rudimentary and scrappy our analogue photograph and paper journaling technology of those times was, here’re some samples from my opening and closing pages.
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Select Marlow’s pre-Detour gauge readings

Detour journal source material pile

One short week’s work of road grume on my FatBoy’s motor

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