Daley Travels

If you've followed my trail for very long, you've noticed that I love to visit museums. I even view kitschy souvenir shops as museums of modern Americana. In 2008 while I riding my motorcycle around the circumference of the USA it was killing me that I didn't have time to spend in the many interesting stops along the way. What made it worse was that I was also competing in a contest to picture my bike in front of as many museums as possible.

On our travels I am resisting the urge to stop at "every" collection of antiquity, but I am headed out on my own whenever we stop for a day or two.  Resistance was futile when I saw out path was crossing my two weaknesses, motorcycling and museums.

I am a member of the American Motorcyclist Association, (AMA) and for years  I've been reading in their magazine articles about the latest exhibit or attraction at their Motorcycle Hall of Fame.  For all my previous travels I'd never been close enough to able to visit this place.

What the AMA has that other vintage collectors don't have is the ability to collect one of a kind pieces that are not merely restorations but often prototypes built by the greatest racers, engineers, and dreamers that have made up the fabric of motorcycling for over a century.

Not your rare tucked in a barn find, but pieces preserved and kept by prior collectors. Such as this early bike.

Or how about the challenge made by Craig Vetter, designer of fairing and body work for motorcycles, to build a high mileage motorcycle. That challenge resulted in a bike capable of running from New York to California on less than 15 gallons of gas. Yep, they have that bike on display.

 Bikers of my generation, as well as generations after, (thanks to VCR and DVD rentals) will recall the movie, "On Any Sunday".  Rider Malcom Smith played a major role in that movie as it documented the motorcycle sport of the 60's.  Well, that same bike that Malcom rode is on exhibit in the halls of this collection. Cool, eh!

If you haven't watched any of the "motorcycle" genre movie, then perhaps this one will seem familiar.  In the movie, Terminator: 2 it looked like a large police bike running around the streets, even crashing though a large showroom window. (The rider of that maneuver was stunt woman, Debbie Evans, another rider honored in the Hall of Fame.)

In truth, it was a smaller Honda bike with a couple of extra exhaust tubes welded to the front, as well as an extra large front wheel mounted.

The stories behind the bikes were often more fascinating that the bike itself, but then, that is the purpose of the this museum, to honor the men and women of the sport that stand out from the ordinary.

From time to time, they change out the display, so I will be looking for future updates from the AMA magazine, and hopefully, someday in the future, I'll be able to make another trek to "Motorcycle Mecca."



It is interesting what a person can dream of in the middle of a long wet winter.  In the winters of Crescent City there is little else to do except dream of what you will do the following summer. I was reading an article in one of my motorcycle magazines and came on the story of an annual ride that circles Lake Superior. Man, what a ride that would be. I passed the story to a few of my work partners and we dreamed. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do it. I put in for the vacation days off, and began to plan it out.

That was the winter of 2002/03. I had a bike then, but it was a rather untested 1981 Suzuki GS 850 I bought the summer before. Not the kind of machine one would ride solo across miles of open America. Not from the west coast to the Great Lakes. Like I said, there is little to do during Del Norte winters, so I started to go through the old machine to prepare it for a long ride. I spent week-ends catching up on long negleted maintenance items. I replaced parts that would most likely fail. All the while I was also going over maps and routing the best way out that give me campsites to set up a small single man tent in.

That summer I made that trip. I carried the bike title with me in case it broke down with an incurable problem, the back-up plan being I'd sell it and buy a ticket home. That didn't happen, and I returned with a new belt buckle given to riders that successfully completed the tour. I also knew that someday, I'd go back to the Great Lakes for more travel. I didn't expect it to be in a motor home.

Now days, I don't have to plan out my trips a year in advance and hope I can get the time off. Sometimes it's a simple as looking at the national weather picture and saying this is too hot, lets find someplace cooler.  And so it is that I find myself on the North Shore of Lake  Superior seven years later. No plans to make this a circle tour of the lake, but we will be driving along the south shore and re-visiting a few of the spots I rode along on the bike. And I will admit, the motor home is a tad more comfortable to sleep in.

While driving from state to state I have a lot of time to think. Most times I come up with some pretty amazing things. I'd tell you more about them, but like a dream in the night I don't remember the details after I've stopped for the day. It is said that when you wake in the night you should have a notebook by your bedside side to jot down the dream so you can remember it in the morning. I guess I could pull over to the side of the road and jot down what I was thinking, but that  is not really feasible on the interstate in a 33 ft motor home. I do know that in my head I've solved the nation's problems, created world peace, and discovered the ultimate answer to our ecological problems. Alas, it's all gone.

I do recall one particular line of thought. As Pam and I have stayed in the many different cities, we often believe we could live there. The people are friendly, the area is full of interesting places to visit. It would make a wonderful place to settle down. And then we move on, and discover the next town.  I think the way we fall in love with some many different places, is the reason we are able to like traveling so much. If we were coming to town after town, state after state and finding places we would not like to stay, we would not like visiting there either.

It is true that the longer we stay at a place, the harder it is to pull up the stabilizing jacks and drive off. We'd love to stay and get involved with the community. But we are also fascinated with the people in the next place, and we want to have a chance to get to know them.

We faced a similar seemingly disconnect when we were foster parents. We loved the kids who were brought into our house and saddened when it was time to give them back, but we always looked forward to meeting the next baby.  People would make comments that they could never do that, that giving back a baby they had loved would be too hard, too stressful.  My answer to them was that it would make them wonderful foster parents - they cared for the kids. Is it better for folk that do not care for the children to watch over them?

Back to my thinking on travel. If one does not enjoy the places they visit, if they could not see themselves able to stay for an extended time in any one place, then perhaps they are not meant for the traveling life. I'm just sayin'.

There are two common questions people ask us as we travel.  The first is not so easy to answer, so I'll get to that later. The second is, "How do you like it?" Referring to our full-time RV lifestyle.

All I can think of to that is to para-phrase the lyrics to a Trick Pony song...

What's not to love? (What's not to love?)
What's not to fall head over heel in love with?
If (it) ain't perfect, (it's) close enough.
What's not to love? (What's not to love?)
Who wouldn't be carried away, swept off their feet?
Hey, you tell me: what's not to love?

The other question is getting harder to answer the longer we are on the road. "Where are you from?"  Even Star Trek's Capt. Kirk had trouble with similar queries.

Dr. Gillian Taylor: Don't tell me, you're from outer space. Kirk: No, I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space.

I usually answer with fact that we started this trip from Colorado Springs, but that does not really answer the inherent question. Where do I call home?

So this has me pondering this question today. What is 'home'?  Some get sick, as in homesick when they are away from it, some need a nursing home, or group home. I've read of retirement homes, and foster homes.  Heck, I made a career of watching over folk that have made prisons their home.

There are cute posters of birds tucked up under cliff ledges while the sky flashes with lightning, with some phrase about home being a shelter from the storm. Or embroidered fabric wall hanging reminding us that home is where the heart it.  I click on a webpage, and it always starts me at the home page.

As a nomad, (as a certain cousin has taken to calling me) the motor home has these qualities, but still, there seems to be the need for some geographic center of life that we can pin our hearts and minds to. If you live there, you don't notice it as much, but when you are away and return, you realize that the home base is the place that triggers self-reflection. You look at the old tree seedling and now see a 50 foot pine tree. You see the rippling waters over the boulders in the river bed and see a 15 year old boy diving into a a favorite swimming hole.

I've really been on the road for over 30 years, and this longer stay in the Rogue Valley has been fun.  I've seen my nephew get married in my old stomping ground, I've spent hours leafing through my mom's old photo albums. Maybe I do have an answer to this one,.."Yes,  I'm from Medford, Oregon, but travel a lot."



Or does art imitate life, or something like that. I know, old cliche. I asked Pam how that question goes, and she reminded me that this is the question. Actually where I wanted to go with this was a comparison of  video games to our life on the road. Because that truly is what our travels are like.  Like the action games where you gain energy points when you sit out a round with the monster. And as you engage the fire dragon you need to hide to wait for your wounds to heal before your quest can regain.

When we are on the road moving from place to place each day, the travel expenses mount, the motor home burns through the gas, the nightly camping fees steadily chop away at the back account. The bumps on the road, (ok, the hill sides) tear apart the poor Voyager and the many small repair needs turn into higher priorities.

For these reasons, on top of enjoying my visit with family and long time friends, I am glad I have the chance to make port at my mother's property in Southern Oregon. As we were moving this way during the trek up I-5 we jotting down all the things that needed attention when we made port. And frankly, the list was getting pretty long. Some items I knew I'd need to order, so I did, and had them shipped to her place ahead of us.

I am happy to report that many of these repairs are getting done.  Remember the awning that tore off in Barstow, the new one was here waiting, and was one of the first things I hung up.

Even the coffee pot, broke before we hit Laughlin, was replaced with a new model counter saver I found at the K-mart near Santa Cruz.

Way back while we were outfitting the rig for the trip, I discovered that the gas tank overflowed if filled to the max. I tried to get it fixed before we left Colorado, but the shop told me that until the tank was nearly empty, they could not drop it to take a look. So as I neared this port of call, I was slowly letting the tank ride lower and lower. It was with fingers crossed I rolled into Oregon with the needle on empty .

A few days ago I crawled under the chassis and unbolted the tank and took a look. It appears that there is an "O" ring that seals the the fuel pump to the top of the tank that had gotten crimped during the last replacement job. (The one that they did before we took delivery on the RV).

I wanted to get a new ring, but that part seems to only come with the new fuel pump, (I searched all over town) so I'll add some extra gasket sealer and make sure there is no kink in it as I tighten it back in.

The energy bar across the top of my life screen is looking better, and soon we will be on the road again.  But, I really don't see how one could live this life style if they were not very handy.