When it comes to campers, there is the pack-only-what-you-need, leave-no-trace, love-your-mother variety, and there is the load-up-the-Explorer, don’t-forget-the-cappuccino-machine, outdoorsy-but-not-too-outdoorsy sort. There is also a third category, which fits between the two—motorcycle campers. More Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid than Lewis and Clarke, motorcycle campers pack light because they have to, but they ride because they want to.
Arriving at camp, even if it’s just an RV parking lot, is sweeter to the motorcycle camper because his arrival is never guaranteed. Riders face perils on the road that seldom bother drivers: shunting crosswinds, clouds of bugs, and deer at dusk. Every rider has a tale to tell about the buddy who lost control when his front wheel slipped on squirrel guts in the curve of a shady country two-lane. (No wonder there are so many “Bikers for Christ.”) Despite all this, motorcyclists live for riding season. At camp, they place a crushed can under their sidestands so that, under morning dew or hot tar, they’ll find their bikes upright when they awake, and they’ll be ready to hit the road again.
Now, I don’t know if cowboys (prior to Brokeback Mountain) ever got giddy about their horses. But back in 1999, when I got my 1979 BMW R65 and my pal Joe got his 1982 BMW R65, we were all motorcycles all the time. Old friends separated by ten years and a hundred miles were drawn back together by a love for boxer engines. It was a first-kiss type of excitement, and we were dating Twins.
During our first year as motorcyclists, Joe and I met more and more, often for increasingly adventurous rides. It started with easy, meetcha-halfways between Minneapolis and Winona, where beautiful Highway 61 hugs the Mississippi River skirting dramatic bluffs with dreamy sweepers. We rode whenever we could—day trips at first, then overnighters as we explored the joys (and limitations) of pairing camping with motorcycling. The riding season stretched deep into autumn.
That first winter was interminable. With our bikes frigid under dusty sheets in our garages, we talked about riding and exchanged jpegs of old Beemers nearly every day. We both read the Duluth-based Aerostitch’s adventure-riding catalog cover to cover, twice. Finally, after a week of tantalizingly sunny days in mid-March, we planned a rendezvous. The temperature was thirty-three degrees that Saturday morning. The cold battery resisted but the sleepy engine eventually turned over by the sheer power of my will to ride. It was 7:00 a.m., the roads were clear, and the sun was bright. Wearing long johns and several layers did little for my hands, which were frozen and aching before I had even crossed into St. Paul. By Hastings, I had to stop for a cup of coffee just so the cup could warm my hands, and I bought a second pair of gloves at a hardware store. I was determined to meet Joe at the rest area that overlooks Lake Pepin, just north of Lake City. We would ride along the river together, reveling in horsepower and torque on the highways, and slowing down in the small towns to admire ourselves, mirror images of tandem cafe racers, in storefront windows.
Motorcycling creates a strange bond. I feel no affinity for other people who drive crappy old Subarus, for example. Yet I have an immediate connection with other motorcyclists. Harley-owners groups are the classic example of bike bonding buoyed by branding. And it’s the same for Brit bike riders as it is for scooter lovers and so on. Why on earth do motorcycles draw people together when riding—helmeted and speeding along on noisy machines—is essentially a solo activity?
Ernesto “Che” Guevara, crossing South America in 1951 on a 500cc Norton with his friend Alberto Granado, described their adventure in his famous book-turned-film, The Motorcycle Diaries, as “two lives running parallel for a while … What we had in common—our restlessness, our impassioned spirits, and a love for the open road.” Those currents run deep, and none is more infectious than the lure of the open road. Whitman was inspired by it. So were Hopper and Fonda.
That bond, however, doesn’t mean riders engage in an intimate exchange of thoughts and feelings. (Here’s the narrator of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance trying to talk to his son, riding pinion: “I whack Chris’s knee and point to [a blackbird], ‘What!’ he hollers. ‘Blackbird!’ He says something I don’t hear. ‘What?’ I holler back.”) But when riders go through something—bad weather, beautiful scenery, or close calls—they go through it together. After years of weekend riding, Joe and I felt ready to go through (or make that around) something bigger: Lake Superior.
We spent a year planning the “Supe Loop.” With our first major debate (clockwise or counterclockwise?) resolved, we focused on being properly equipped for the six-day adventure. I drew a logo; Joe ordered it embroidered on ball caps. We agreed that my rank, thirty-year-old Timberline tent would suffice in lieu of buying something smaller, lighter, and fresher. We decided that if Joe could find a way to carry it, a spare gallon of gas was a good idea. I determined that Joe’s travel-size espresso maker was awesome but extraneous. Joe concluded that my tool kit was also extraneous unless I planned also to pack the six-hundred-page repair manual and a prayer card for St. Clymer, patron saint of lost causes.
It bears mention here that the 500cc Norton that Che and Alberto rode fell apart not even halfway through their journey. In the end, the Supe Loop was not a loop at all. I’d had my bike tuned up and prepared in every way imaginable. I had even packed a spare clutch cable should that part fail, as it had so many times in the past. But at dusk on the first day, fifteen miles from the Canadian border, it was a throttle cable that had frayed inside its casing that caused my motorcycle to accelerate out of control. I freaked out while Joe, calm as the placid lake below us, managed to disassemble, monkey with, and re-install the cable. He didn’t trust his tinkering to take us all the way around the lake, but it was a patch-job that could get us back home without a hitch. As we turned around and headed south, Lake Superior spread out before us. My eyes, however, bounced between the road and my tachometer, with nervous glances down at Dr. Frankenstein’s cruise control.
We enjoyed two nights of camping on that trip. Sips of Jack Daniels from Dad’s old camp-stove fuel bottle soothed our heartaches at the campfire that last night, as it primed our spirits for tomorrow’s ride back home. —Adam Demers
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