Sleepless in Seattle

It was 3 o’clock on Friday afternoon, and I was exhausted. I didn’t realize how much the week’s events had caught up with me. This time, it wasn’t just a normal trip to Seattle to spend with my team. I’d announced that I was wrapping up my nine-year journey with the team. I was the second longest-serving member on the team and had the longest tenure of any team member with the company.

We’d built a business together. We’d chased the market together. We did crazy things with our customers to help grow their outcomes and ours. Maturity is a tricky thing. Why you appreciate the places you’re going through maturity often requires leaving the past behind – even those parts of the past you loved. The business challenges that we are now solving and the ways we go about solving them are different. It seemed like a good juncture to return to my professional roots and spark that creative muscle again working with customers in a marketing capacity.

I never really know what time and what note these off-sites end. I probably could’ve flown home Thursday night, but I’d be rushing out the door and squeezing the team’s time. I decided to fly home Friday so that the team and I had ample time to see the city, hang out, and say our goodbyes. Even though this goodbye is more of a “see you around,”– they are never easy for me as I’m heading to a new team with a very different mission, makeup, and charter.

I felt some edginess heading to the airport. I had a full day planned. I needed to unwind from the business travel, pack for the motorcycle trip, and ride out to Gridley, about 120 miles to the northeast, on a Friday on a holiday weekend. Plus, the temperatures were nearing 100 degrees, and sitting on a motorcycle amongst a sea of parked cars on black asphalt wasn’t a recipe for fun.

As I was wrapping up a conversation with a friend – he pointed out the obvious: “Dan, you’re just tired.” I’d already been through all the scenarios: rushing out early, leaving well into the evening and setting up camp near midnight, or departing Saturday morning. With my friend’s guidance, I planned to meet the group at stop 2. The problem is, I didn’t know where stop 2 was physically located.

Delayed flight -> delayed ride

The Range of Light Gypsy Tour is put on by the Northern California BMW Club. It’s a highly regarded ride and one of the Bay Area’s motorcycling epics. All you know at registration is the starting point. For 2024, that was Gridley. None of the attendees know where the ride is going or where the organizers will end the ride. The last time I did this ride was in 2012 when the organizers wrapped up the ride in Yreka – requiring a long 350-mile hot ride down Interstate 5 to get back home. Someone on the organizing committee had a dark sense of humor.

I reached out to club leadership to see if I could find out where the club was heading for the second night. It’s a closely guarded secret, so it best I’d find out late into the evening or early the next morning, provided there was good Internet where the group was camping. Fortunately, I heard back and was on my way Saturday morning. Where was I headed, you ask? Allow me to share a geography riddle (scroll slowly from here):

• I’m about 769 miles north of Los Angeles, where Alan Jackson might sing “tall tall trees and all the waters in the seas”.
• If you have found it, you’re just south of where I am. You’ve gone too far north if you see a city related to the words waxing and waning.
• I’m not named after a vacuum, and my name comes from one of California‘s wild and scenic rivers nearby, guarded by four golden bears on the bridge near town.

Where might I be?

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Klamath, CA was the destination for today. The organizing committee still had that same sense of dark humor as it was 350 miles from home out to Klamath. We were about as far north in California as you could be and still be in California. I’m sure at some point the true diehards will touch into Oregon.

All rides at some level are about time and miles – today’s especially so. My goal was to keep the wheels moving and my body loose. I had done most of the scenic stuff two weeks before on the La Costa Perdida ride, so I didn’t feel the need to linger too long at any particular stop. I was planning to stop about every hundred miles to maximize distance and keep my back and back side from getting too unhappy. First was Ukiah (130 miles), then Loleta (140 miles), then the final push into Klamath (80 miles).

I hoped a Saturday morning departure would’ve been easier than a Friday night grind with the rest of the Bay Area. Unfortunately, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Saturday morning was equally gritty, with lots of traffic ambling and dawdling all over the road. It couldn’t have been more different than the usual commute here, where traffic knows where it’s going and is ruthless to get there. I could feel my frustration growing as the grind stuck with me through the north end of Sonoma County.

Finding conversations with strangers

When I got to Ukiah, I needed to stop, cool off, and reset. As I pulled into the gas station, I could see a large tow truck camped out on the other side of the pumps from me. It was a large flatbed, like the one that bailed me out of Whistler when my truck wouldn’t start. The driver gave me a curious look, and I returned a similar one to him. After filling up and not quite ready to get back on the bike, I reached out my hand and said hello.

We likely chatted for 20 to 30 minutes – far longer than I ever really expected. I heard a lot about Willits and the community there. He told me about the company’s owner and that he was a good, independently wealthy man trying to do right by his community through a few different lines of business. He was a rider as well (GSXR 1000 (a superfast sport bike)) and gave me some tips on how to explore his area. We exchanged numbers, and hopefully, we will cross paths again.

Heading further north, US 101 starts to show its slightly sexier side with some curves and contours as it winds its way through the coastal range. At this point, I was far enough north that traffic was virtually nonexistent, and it was fun riding (for the 101, lol). I made a quick pit stop at one of the highway’s rest areas and met two twentysomething guys on a road trip from Pennsylvania to discover themselves and life ahead. They wanted to explore the Avenue of the Giants and see the redwoods. One of the guys also rode a motorcycle, and you could see amazement come through his eyes when he talked about riding a motorcycle in California. He lamented that he wished he had his bike out here. I smiled and replied, “You’ll have to come back, as it is pretty awesome out here on two wheels.”

By the time I reached Loleta (just north of Fortuna), I was beginning to feel the day. Loleta is on indigenous land, which sometimes equates to slightly lower gas taxes than the surrounding communities. Today, that was not the case. At this point in the journey and the impending evening close at hand – the heat of the bay area in northern valleys was clearly behind me. The fog’s grip on the terrain was steadfast and unwavering, with gray skies and temperatures in the mid-50s for the remainder of the trip.

The final push to Klamath!

Leaving the gas station, I acknowledged that from here on out, it was new territory. As much as I’ve been to the Avenue of the Giants recently, I did not set foot northward beyond Loleta; it had been years since I had been to Eureka and Crescent City. In these parts, US 101 looks and feels like California 1 with its contouring curves along the California coast with several sections of the four-lane high-speed thoroughfare in between.

As the trip north endured, I could see visual confirmation of how truly far north I was from home, with exit numbers continuing to roll upward. Exit 1 is Interstate 5 in Los Angeles. Exit 200 snakes through the central coast in San Luis Obispo. Exit 400 crosses the South Bay in Mountain View. Exit 500 graces the wine country in Windsor. Exit 600 is deep within the Redwood Country. Here I am, having passed exit 700 near Eureka with miles to go.

Highway 101 doesn’t see exit 800, and neither will I as my time on the motorcycle is drawing to a close at exit 769, right at the shores of the wild and scenic Klamath River. I pull into the sprawling RV Park a touch cold and a little wet, and feel accomplished for the time, miles, and conversation today.

Keep Reading! The journey continues: Day 2

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