Eric replaced the rear brake pads and rotor — the ones Woolly’s had flagged on the way up. What he found while doing it was something else entirely.
He ran the VIN and pulled up an open recall on the driveshaft — the same recall I already knew from my 2019 GS sitting back in San Francisco. The driveshaft is covered for the life of the bike. Free inspection every 12,000 miles and a new driveshaft every 36,000 miles. As recalls go, it’s about as good as it gets. Now only if the valves were recalled….
Then he got to the front suspension.
Leaking. The center strut is a non-serviceable part — replaceable, not rebuildable, and apparently due around 30,000 miles. There were 45 in Germany and one in Southern California. Just one. If I wanted to get OEM and that part was snatched up by another rider, I was looking at weeks. Uggggh!
The V-Strom never needed a suspension service in 100,000 miles. Forks never leaked. It was just a part of the bike that faded into the frame, doing its job quietly for fifteen years. Finding out I’m looking at a non-serviceable but replaceable part that runs two grand every 30,000 miles didn’t sit well. Eric noted, gently, that a worn rear brake at 30,000 miles and a leaking front suspension on a bike that supposedly never saw off-road use left some room for doubt about what the seller actually disclosed.
I thought I’d gotten out of motorcycle maintenance debt. Two more bills just landed in my lap.
Eric was straight with me about all of it — thorough, communicative, texts you when your appointment is set and when your bike is ready. He left the suspension call to me without pushing in any direction. I appreciated that.
I headed south with instructions to be gentle on the front end. The one thing I could not do was miss my nephew’s graduation.
Normally I never slab it — Interstate 75 to Interstate 16 is a rough ride getting beat up by trucks and wind for four and a half hours just to be done with it. I’d done it on the way up and had no interest in doing it again. I asked around the riding community in Savannah and Atlanta for a better route and got the same answer every time: 75 to 16. No alternative was ever offered, just some ephemeral guidance to go on the backroads but it was going to take longer. It’s a stark contrast to asking for a route in the Bay Area, where you’d get fifteen different answers before anyone agreed on anything, all of them involving twisty roads and strong opinions. Whether it’s unfamiliarity with the back roads or just a different relationship with the tarmac, the culture here feels different in that regard.
I pointed the GS into downtown Atlanta instead of taking the 285 Perimeter around it. I’ve always been a through-town guy. If you’re in Atlanta, you go through Atlanta. I wanted to see the skyline, run down Georgia 400 waving at the last honest toll booth that got removed when the road was paid for. I wanted to merge onto the connector, go through Hospital Curve, experience all things Atlanta before ducking east on Interstate 20.
The suspension was in the back of my mind the whole time. Every bump through the city, every lane change, led to a quiet accounting of what the front end was telling me.
I pulled into a rest area somewhere east of the city. I was curious to check the front shock — wanted to see if and how much fluid was actually weeping out of it.
A couple of spaces over was a young Indian man smoking a cigar. He caught my eye and walked over and within thirty seconds we were talking motorcycles and travel. He was based out of Dallas and rented a car and was driving all over the Southeast — not altogether different from what I was doing, just on four wheels instead of two. He had this easy, settled quality about him, something close to the Dalai Lama energy you rarely meet in a person — unhurried, genuinely present, completely at odds with my frustration sitting in that parking lot. He talked about wanting to absorb everything he could in the States before it was time to go home.
Listening to him I started to intuit my own situation differently. I thanked him and got back on the bike.
Somewhere east of Atlanta, Interstate 20 opened up and Zac Brown’s “Highway 20 Ride” drifted into my head.
I’ve heard that song a hundred times. What I didn’t know until recently was that Wyatt Durrette — who co-wrote it with Zac Brown — drove this exact road. Atlanta to Augusta, east every other Friday to pick up his son, west every other Sunday to bring him back. The turn at the Georgia line is where the song lives. I’d been riding them for two hours without knowing that.
The song is about separation from the people you love most. His looked one way. Mine looks different — twenty years of career and distance, highlighted by a family lake house I’d just said goodbye to, the people who raised me always somewhere I wasn’t. You tell yourself it’s temporary. Then a decade goes by, followed by another.
I wasn’t riding east to pick up a kid. I was riding east toward people who were now twenty-five minutes away for the first time in my adult life.
Durrette’s narrator turns that truck around at the Georgia line every other Sunday and counts the days back. I didn’t have to turn around. The making-do is over. Now comes the making-up.
Some songs aren’t finished when you first hear them. They’re waiting for the road that makes them true.
I saw the exit for Highway 278 and took it. Highway 278 is two lanes with no transport trucks and the cadence of a county road through farm country. Soon after, Highway 278 folded into Georgia 80 somewhere south — not US 80 down in Savannah, not Interstate 80 back home, just a small two-lane byway wandering through farming communities where John Deere reigned supreme. Big tractors and small tractors dotted the fields. Farmhouses sat way back from the road with the occasional house lit up on a Saturday evening. It wasn’t California with its mountains and dramatic coastlines. In many ways it felt like a long-lost friend to spend time with on a Saturday evening.
My gas light started blinking as I rolled into Wrens. I pulled into a Marathon station and found a gathering — ten or twelve people, either family or close enough that the difference doesn’t matter, spread across the lot in an easy way of people who don’t need to fill the silence. One woman near the pump caught my eye immediately: big, bold laughter, arms carrying a tray full of food, completely at home. I couldn’t help but smile at it. I was the obvious outsider here — different by race, by vehicle, by everything that a German adventure motorcycle screams pulling into a small Georgia town. Somehow, I was made better by the whole moment. Slowing down enough to actually stop somewhere enables me to absorb the moment instead of just passing through it. If I’d taken the slab, I’d have fueled up at an anonymous truck stop outside Macon and never been blessed by Wrens at all.
Time was beginning to become a consideration. My sister had made exactly one thing clear about this whole trip: be dressed and ready Sunday morning at 11 AM for graduation. The lake, the distance, the battery, the brakes, the suspension — all of it had been crowding out my actual job.
Georgia 80 soon faded into US 1 — wider, four-lane, through roads without the aggression of the interstate. Smooth air, spread-out traffic, a truck or two in either direction. This was the best compromise between speed and serenity. About 8:30 as the sun was just going down, I pulled into a Subway in Swainsboro just north of Interstate 16. A young guy, couldn’t have been more than 23, got up from his break to make my sandwich. He was working two jobs, taking care of his sister, and trying to figure out how to make the pieces fit. I got back on the freeway thinking about that. His pieces were different than mine, but incongruent pieces nonetheless.
Interstate 16 in the dark is a different road than it is in the day. The day’s traffic had cleared out. This time I rode the interstate out to the true end, threading through the Saturday night revelers in downtown Savannah across Bay Street, through the industrial stretches, then island-hopping a series of bridges until the road ran out at Tybee Island.
I pulled the GS to a stop, the salt air finally replacing the smell of hot asphalt and exhaust. Graduation was tomorrow. For the first time in my adult life, family was twenty-five minutes away across the marsh. I passed a quick text to the people who’d been waiting, letting them know my kickstand down. Then, I walked out onto the deck, away from the crowds, away from the noise, and let the island take the final weight of the road. My head hit the pillow to the sound of the surf.
Graduation called early, but tonight belonged to the coast.
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