They slept in a heavenly peace after each consumed a sacred trinity the previous night at Chretin’s: a large 3-way enchilada dinner, 3 dozen nachos and 3 family sized troughs of margaritas. Anticipating a rocket-assisted lift off the next morning due to nacho ingestion, they took several purple pills before commencing their nightly search for […]

Life and Island Times: Three Immigrant Gringos After traversing the Pacific Coast Highway to Los Osos, they were treated to a home cooked dinner and visit with Augustus’s sister in law Flo and her extended family. There was much discussion about politics and the economy but none about what the riders had seen or experienced. […]

The next day and half were off days. Rex’s wife wanted to see him and visit Napa valley and Steve was rejoining the group. This revised their travel schedule. So after much wine and rest was had, “three days of understanding” were on tap down in Monterey. It was easy for Marlow and Steve to […]

The Pacific coast’s volcanic mountains were this day’s west coast riding focus. The first eight miles along their southward US97 trek was a long winding four lane hill climb up from their Columbia River valley floor motel at Biggs Junction to the high plains of north-central Oregon’s wheat belt. Once on the plain they could […]

The coastline from corner #2 to southern California is a near continuous mountain ridge of cliffs and sandy and rocky beaches. In many areas the mountains and coastal sea cliffs are volcanic in origin. When the lava rose along the sea coasts, hot and boiling, great blow-holes formed, and hardened to make caves. These are […]

Over breakfast at Two Dog Flats Restaurant, Augustus reviewed for Rex and Marlow the next two days’ itinerary. It would be two easy segments of mostly straight roads through a park, nature preserves and then the Cascade Mountains and forests along Washington’s northern border with corner #2 being the final stop. Two Dog Flats was […]

They awoke the next morning to slowly clearing skies. They found the land around the motel was a dairy farm with milk cows grazing nearby. One by one they exited their room to survey the scene. This land was domesticated, neat, pastoral and pleasant. This landscape was everything yesterday’s was not. It was after they […]

Editor’s note: In these middle aged riders’ view, the staggering velocity of the 20th century was not just historically weird. It had been unsettling. Second Editor’s Note: Marlow’s tale of the Four Corners has been with me for several years. I am a firm believer that the saga of that epic ride on two wheels […]

Steve and Marlow had the conn for this Sunday drive of scenic landscape worship. As opposed to the Garmin toolishness of Augustus, using paper state maps and Marlow’s old marked-up road atlas they analogue planned the day’s route through three states of national and state parks and sundry attractions. They had visited these places two […]

They were somewhere in western Minnesota when in the far distance a little white church turned onto the road and made its way along the route they were intending to ride. From far away, the church looked like a Coast Guard cutter sailing on the open prairie. Stopping to consider their alternatives, paper maps were […]