How To Disappear Completely
HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY
UP FRONT
EDITOR'S LETTER
THE MOTORCYCLE AS AN ESCAPE HATCH
MARK HOYER
"Lefty used to live on his Knuckle," a friend said to me, pointing across the parking hot at the 60-something white-bearded man in a leather jacket getting on his Street Glide. Lefty isn't his real name, obviously, but it's also not his real nickname, either. Guys who live on their Knuckleheads may not even have real names.
And Lefty did used to live on his Knuckle. He did it during a time when “social media” was showing up at a bar to find friends and a place to crash or calling ahead from a pay phone. We didn’t talk about how he obtained gas money. But Lefty made it work and pretty much disappeared completely.
You just can’t do that in a car. Living on a motorcycle, you are free. Living in a car, you are homeless. There’s just no romance, no impression of freedom, only the stigma of failure. Maybe if you had a badass overland camping machine like a modified Mercedes Unimog or Pinzgauer or even a tricked-out vintage Toyota Land Cruiser you wouldn’t be called homeless, but the complexity and “weight” of such a thing means a far greater burden. And there is no way to disappear completely in a car. How would you hide it? A bike, that you can hide.
No, the only way to be the modern cowboy and live life on the range is riding a motorcycle. Andy Goldfine of Aerostich will tell you to do it on the lightest, simplest machine that can carry the stuff you (think) you need. Other guys go the currently fashionable route of a BMW R1200GS or similar big fella. This is just proof you should get the bike you want. Virtually any motorcycle is a cool motorcycle to disappear on.
For me, riding has been many things in my life: an athletic pursuit; a challenge to my mechanical aptitude; basic transportation; hobby; profession; and
much more. But it has always been about escaping the prison of normal life. Even if normal life is good.
When normal life goes downhill, as it did for Ed Bach, a fellow I know from Southern California, sometimes there’s only one thing left to do.
“The short story is,” Bach said via email from Cambodia, “I got divorced. Dating was not going well. The economy took a dump, and I found myself without work.
I couldn’t afford to keep my house. So, without a job, a house, or a woman, it set up the perfect storm and set me free to travel the world on two wheels.”
As of this writing, Bach has been through 52 countries, chronicling his trek on advrider.com.
“I have disappeared almost completely,” Bach says. “I have no phone or mailing address. But I have a sense of freedom that most people will never know.”
He may be right. But a taste of this freedom can be found even on just a long weekend. Some years ago, my friend Bill Getty and I lashed everything we needed on the backs of our 1950s Triumphs and camped in the Mojave midway through 780 miles of zero obligation.
Everywhere we went, people looked at us and you could see the what-ifs flash through their eyes.
This deep desire is the reason one of the most popular accessories to crop up on cruisers lately is the bedroll lashed to the handlebars.
The symbolism of the right motorcycle, the feeling it evokes, and the true potential for a life of adventure are always there. Even if you only get your bedroll dirty from a weekend of camping. But, please, get it dirty, even if you don’t disappear completely.
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