Them Ice Cold Blues
Them Ice Cold Blues
LEANINGS
Peter Egan
IT RAINED ALL NIGHT THE DAY I LEFT The weather it was dry.
And cold, apologies to “Oh Suzanna” songwriter Stephen Foster.
Unseasonably cold, and windy. One of those late October days when the dark mood of the sky tells you the party’s over, chum. A distinctly winter wind was raking across our yard with icy fingers, rustling the leaves. I looked at the thermometer outside. Thirty-one degrees. Fahrenheit.
And standing nearby in our garage was my Harley Electra Glide Standard, packed and ready for travel. It was poised for a 640-mile trip from Wisconsin to Nashville, where I would visit my brother and his fiancée, then borrow a new Triumph Bonneville and ride it down to the Mississippi Delta.
I’d been asked to do a Blues Country story for our annual Motorcycle Travel & Adventure magazine, and had been looking forward to the trip all summer.
Except summer, it seemed, was gone.
The overnight low had suddenly dropped 25 degrees, and the Weather Channel showed the Canadian jetstream looping deeply south like a deadly blue snake. So I put on my long johns, wool sweater, insulated touring boots, street leathers and Belstaff jacket. I briefly considered wearing my two-piece Aerostich suit, the warmest thing I own, but decided it was too un-rustic for a descent into the hardscrabble Delta. Can’t have a hellhound on your trail when you’re wearing Gore-Tex. Besides, it might suddenly warm up again down there, and I’d want to wear just my blue jeans and leather jacket.
I walked out of the house like the Man in Black, sweating profusely, but instantly feeling the heat leach out of my being like a horseshoe quenched in cold water.
I went out to the garage and fiddled around my luggage for a while, cleaned my faceshield a second time and then came back into the house.
I got another cup of coffee and looked out the window at our 1988 Buick Park Avenue, the luxurious “winter salt car” I’d bought three years ago for a mere $1800. At 146,000 miles, it still ran perfectly. Leather upholstery, superb sound system.. .heater.. .cupholders...
Barb, who was reading the paper, looked up at me. “I thought you were leaving early, so you could be in Nashville before dark,” she said. “It’s almost 8:30 now.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, “but frankly I'm thinking of taking the car down to Nashville. It’s really cold out there.”
“Oh no!” she said. “You’ve been planning this trip all summer. It’s half the reason you bought the Harley, for those long highway trips...”
I looked at Barb and wondered if I should accept spine-stiffening advice from a person wearing a bathrobe and fluffy slippers with bunnies on them. But she was right. I had planned this ride for a long time. And it might be the last ride of the year.
So I rode off into the frosty morn.
All day I rolled south, down through Illinois, across the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers and into Nashville 12 hours later, just after dark. The big Harley’s batwing fairing protected my upper body well, but my feet and shins quickly went numb. At Bloomington, I experimented with some vinyl lowers I’d borrowed from a friend, snapping them over the crash bars. These protected my feet, but forced more cold air up into my chest and face. A bad trade. I took them off.
By the time I reached my brother’s house, my lower legs were like two blocks of wood. Nothing three hours in a scalding hot shower couldn’t fix, however, and I soon recovered.
I traded the Harley for the Bonneville at a shop called Castle Motorsports, rode the twisting Highway 100 to Memphis in a cold rain, then spent four slightly warmer days touring the Delta. Then it was back to Nashville, and home on the Harley.
Riding north, 1 passed the gates of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where I shivered my way through winter basic training in 1969, and the air was still frigid. I stopped in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, and bought some thicker wool socks from a sporting-goods store.
Just after dark, I stopped for gas in Rochelle, Illinois, bought a newspaper and stuffed it in my jacket for more insulation. The sales clerk said, “I can’t believe you’re riding a motorcycle on a night like this.” I rolled into our driveway at 9 p.m. th a fairly advanced case of them lowdown shakin’ chills, after eight days and 2300 miles of riding.
Nothing three hours in a scalding
hot shower couldn’t cure.
The next day, I went out to the garage to unpack and stopped for a moment to ponder the old Buick. Ah yes, the Buick. Quite a device. Heater, cupholders, windshield wipers, windows... roof. When the weather got bad, you couldn’t beat it. Yet I suddenly realized I hadn’t wished for one moment of the trip that I’d taken my car instead of the Electra Glide.
I have found that cars, unless they are old and funky (MG-TC) or very high performance (Ferrari) or both (Cobra, Etype Jag), tend to dull our memories of travel, while motorcycles amplify them and etch them clearly in our minds
Some years ago, I wrote a column about overnight lodgings and noted that I had never forgotten a campsite nor clearly remembered a motel room. Exposure to weather nearly always sharpens our perceptions. Likewise, I can still remember the two years I spent in the Army, almost minute by minute, because much of it was hard and challenging-and mostly outdoors. But the earlier years I spent in school have been largely reduced in my memory to a handful of highlights and low points.
Road travel is like that, too. What we call luxury is sometimes nothing more than the absence of sensation. Too much ease becomes a sort of opiate. Feels good, but you forget where you are. And where you’ve been.
Which is all a long-winded way of saying I’m glad Barb talked me out of taking the Buick.
Next year, however, I might take the Aerostich suit and wire up my electric vest. In humans, unlike computers, there is such a thing as too much memory.
