That first night’s sleep situation was not as bad as predicted, though an extra hour would have been real nice. Dad woke me by walking around the room loudly and announcing the day with a very bright light. “Yeah yeah yeah I’m coming” was the thought of the moment, though my squinty eyes, gravelly voice, and lack of movement was saying otherwise. However I was also ready to get some miles done, so up and out I went.
We headed along the Ohio Turnpike, with clear cool weather and a half moon floating to our left even into the afternoon. Being good Americans, we stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast. I greased up and weighted down, and we were off and cruising again.
My funkadelic shades proved to be even more valuable than they were the day before. They created a new vision of everything that we were passing through. It was amazing how much a “normal, everyday” scene could be transformed by peering through these prescription portholes. The details and shades across clouds were so much more pronounced. I always knew my glasses made the greens of trees and plants more vibrant, but this day I took that a step further and realized something more important. The glasses differentiated greens of different types of trees, giving each a different tone and intensity. Otherwise bland, monochromatic scenes took on depth and nuanced visual interest. The glasses did tend to make the world very dark and contrasty when looking in the direction of the sun. In other words, they were not very effective as… sunglasses. But that created a character all its own. I was just required to be more vigilant and hoped that nothing would jump out at me from the murky shadows.
With regard to the technological contraptions dangling inside, outside, and below our helmets, things were improving. Their intrusion on my motorcycle personal space was still there and forced my thoughts on occasion, but they were gradually fading away into being just another piece of equipment. The miles and solitude rolled on.
The Ohio landscape immediately impressed me with its flatness. This – combined with the lack of trees that were long ago subjugated by farm land – allowed for a deep view away from the road to each side. For some unknown reason, I noticed many more plumes of rising smoke than I had ever seen in other states, except perhaps for rotten egg smelling industrial areas. I knew some were from smokestacks, but I could not see the source of most. Perhaps the flatland’s lack of obstructions granted a view that would have been similarly seen in other states had they also been clear cut and scraped down to dirt everywhere.
The farm land was interesting, especially with the view through my super-shades. Rotting barns reflected off of small ponds, followed by rows of trailer homes as counterpoint. There was even a fading painting of a Middle Eastern guy, with beard and turban, filling up the entire front of an old red barn. I’d like to have known the story on that one.
Around about Toledo we headed up route 23, which eventually merged with 75. The highway became progressively more pleasant and remote as we travelled north. In the initial areas of heavier traffic, Dad brought up a great point: he asked if I had come to any conclusions about the cars in the area. Having not even given it any thought, I responded “no”.
“Count the number of foreign cars that you see.”
Ah. It was unique, from my experience, to see a parade of 99.9% GM, Ford, and Chrysler products flowing the other way. We were entering Detroit country. A union billboard flashed by, instructing us to buy American. We rumbled by on our Suzuki and BMW.
Further up the road and out beyond the hubbub, we cranked out some relaxed miles cruising at around 75 miles per hour. An occasional switch of lanes to pass or be passed broke the rhythm. The warmth of my “poopysuit” – the name given by Dad to our black cold weather riding outfits – mixed together with the wind buffeting, the droning sounds of rushing air, and the spinning engine to lull me for a while. I finally nodded off and the ensuing spurt of adrenaline from the “stay alive” section of my brain did a good job at keeping me conscious for the rest of the day.
The road became very remote, at least in appearance, blocked off from the rest of the world by thick trees on both sides of our two lanes. Even the oncoming lanes were separated by trees and usually out of sight. It was a great stretch of road to rack up miles, flowing forward on the tarmac.
People’s reactions to our motorcycles and to us were always amusing. The combination of our spaceman suits with reflective orange safety vests, heavily laden motorcycles, and signs on each motorcycle telling the world “Alaska or Bust” received so many different reactions. On the road, we got stares, laughs, look-aways, pointed fingers, and thumb-ups. When we stopped somewhere for a rest, gas, or food, a wide range of unique people would initiate a conversation from out of nowhere. These were people we would otherwise have never met if we were in a car and looked normal.
The cashier at a Marathon gas station mothered us and told us our snacks were not nutritious enough, while a friendly man with his family kept elaborating on his trips to Europe. The family life had strapped him down, so he had not taken any extended trips in the prior few years. I wondered why that procreation business was so popular.
We ended the day crossing the border into Canada. It was an interesting change. The obvious differences centered around leaving a bunch of American trees and coming over a high bridge into the Canadian lights of Sault Ste. Marie. Suddenly, we were surrounded by canals and a customs inspection station which I suppose served some sort of purpose for some sort of reason.
The customs practices were so lax between the two countries that I could have easily brought in a bazooka stuffed with cocaine. The more subtle changes caught my attention, though. All of the businesses were different, though the movies were all American. That was interesting in itself, but the choices of store names, items on sale, advertising, and services were all unique to Canada. Even the stop lights, the curve of the intersections, and the shape of direction arrows painted on the road were different.
Dad got a sleeping jump ahead of me again that evening. He wrote a cursory journal entry, and headed off to sleep quickly. No problem with that; just have mercy on my gravelly voiced body the next morning…