Sage, aka: 1982 Honda XR 100

Rock climbing a few weeks ago, two ski instructor friends, Jordan and Dennis, pulled me aside.  “Susan.  We heard that you’ve been riding a dirt bike.”  Dennis put his hand on my shoulder and stooped to look me in the face.  “Really??”  I bit my lip and tried not to smile.  “It just…it doesn’t seem like you.  You’re such a hippie.”  I could only nod, sheepish but proud.

Chris (my boyfriend, as introduced in my last post) is a versatile outdoors person: skier, snowboarder, hiker, camper, boater, and dirt biker.  I matched him card for card except for the dirt biking (and snowboarding) which was okay with me, but not so much with him.  Suddenly, motorcycling became a frequent topic of conversation.  Chris started introducing friends to me as “Travis, one of those super awesome guys I go biking with,” or “Laurie – man, you should see her tear it up on her bike!”  Carolyn, one of our supervisors at the Brighton ski school, got wind of the game and called several times, pointedly mentioning that her old dirt bike “could really use someone to take it out and play”.  And so, one night I went over to Chris’s house and there it was: Carolyn’s 1982 Honda XR 100.  Chris rolled it out so I could sit on it (“Just to get a feel for it, that’s all.”).  He bit his lip as I swung one leg over and settled onto the seat, and I could see him trying to contain his excitement.  I surrendered.  “Okay!  Okay, I’ll try it.”

There’s a lot to think about on a motorcycle.  Both hands and feet have important jobs, and then there’s the rest of the body, committed to balancing and steering.  The left hand operates the clutch.  The left foot shifts gears.  The right hand has to run the front brake and the throttle, while the right foot covers the rear brake.  The bike’s twenty-seven years old.  They didn’t make electric starters for bikes twenty-seven years ago.  Starting means flicking the gear lever into neutral, holding the clutch in, and then kicking the foot lever on the right side to fire it up.  It takes a few kicks to get her purring.  I was nervous as Chris coached me from neutral into first gear.  The first time I popped the clutch the front wheel lifted, I squeezed the throttle in fear, and with a terrifying roar, the bike flipped out from under me and crashed down onto the landscaping rocks in front of Chris’s house.  That was almost the end of my motorcycling career, but Chris was persistent.  The second lesson came on a Memorial Day camping trip in Wyoming.  The whole motorcycle crew was there, with their motor homes and generators, and more dirt bikes than I could count.  Huge clay hills rose steeply from the border of our camp, and from sunup til sundown, the bikes whined and snarled up and over and around and through the hills.  Except for me.  I put-putted around the camp in first gear, my body tense under the borrowed helmet, elbow pads, chest protector and knee pads.  I slid my feet in my heavy fire boots along the ground for balance.  I was in no hurry to join the crazies at the top of the hill.  “This is fun?”  I wondered.  “I’m a hippie,” I reminded Chris.  “I don’t like noisy, environment-destroying things!”

Susan the hippie's first wobbly steps as a motorcyclist.

“Hippies invented these things.  They make it possible to do more, to go farther.  They’re environment-explorers.”  He gave me his best persuasive grin.  “Come on; let’s try for second gear this time.”

Weeks later, after more lessons and more practice, with Chris as the patient coach, I’ve learned that the bike’s weight is easier to handle when it’s moving quickly, and that the smaller, 4-stroke engine gets better gas mileage than an average 4-cylinder car.  We ride in the desert, not in the mountains, through sage brush, sand, and clay, miles from civilization.  The desert-scape is beautiful, but monotonous.  The terrain I could cover in one long, hot day on foot is less than a quarter of the distance possible on a motorcycle, and the engine’s noise dissipates rapidly in the open air.  Steep hills are still terrifying, as are speeds greater than 30 mph (braking, downshifting, and turning are also challenging), but I’m getting a feel for the interplay of clutch, gears, and throttle, and on the flat straightaway, I enjoy the feeling of being in control of such a powerful machine.  Susan the…motorcyclist?  Perhaps not, but it would seem that my hippie sensibilities aren’t as opposed to riding a dirt bike as I’d thought.

One weekend, Chris and I drove into the salty desert west of the city.  We passed the Great Salt Lake on the way.  The biggest water for miles, it runs all the way into the horizon, and with the smell of salt and the wheeling sea gulls, it’s the closest thing to the ocean I’ve seen in months.  Jack and Jen, other ski instructor friends, were waiting for us out in the desert, near the sand dunes.  They buzzed off in a second, and I waved Chris ahead while I started my bike, slipped it into first, and slowly urged it up into second, then third gear.  The terrain around the dunes was flat and solid, and I felt confident enough to relax and look up from the trail.  Chris, Jack, and Jen were small, colorful shapes ahead of me, dwarfed by the immense dunes which shone golden in the sun.  Behind them, to the east, a storm was brewing and the sky was colored indigo.  Where the furthest dunes met the horizon, the sunlight became refracted, inverting the shape of the dunes into a shimmering mirage: fata morgana, a phenomenon I hadn’t seen since Antarctica.  The warm wind felt good in my face, and I nudged the bike into fourth gear with my left toe.  That’s when I realized I was smiling.

Back in May, I moved northeast out of Sandy into Cottonwood Heights, a stone’s throw from the canyon where I spent my winter.  I’m living with two ski instructors, Tim and Connie, and their two boys (10 & 8), plus three cats, one turtle, and one black Labrador/Great Dane mix.  It’s a house they built themselves, custom-designed to comfortably fit their six-foot-plus frames.  I need a step stool to reach the top shelves of the pantry, and I have to stand on my tip-toes to work at the countertop. The house is full of light, music, and color.  The windows at the front of the house are open to a panorama of the Wasatch Mountains.  There are speakers in every corner, even in the bathroom, and Jack Johnson, Michael Franti, Joni Mitchell, and Bruce Springsteen are regulars on the playlist. Photographs of family and friends plaster the fridge, walls and tables. My room is huge and bright, with six floor-to-ceiling windows.  It’s a room that begs to be decorated and inhabited.  For the first time, my few backpacking possessions seem inadequate, and within a week of moving in I’d already arranged to have my favorite Peruvian rug shipped to me from NH.  Tim and Connie’s is a house that feels like a home.

Though I endure rather than enjoy the city life, staying in Salt Lake through the summer has allowed me to take pleasure in being a part of a community of friends and their dogs, of rock-climbing partners, hikers, strong, creative women and outdoorsy men.  Winter relationships have grown and blossomed.  Chris, or Koogs, my skiing partner, has become my best friend and boyfriend, and partner in most things.  Together we’ve road-tripped to Colorado and to Utah’s Shakespeare capital to see Henry V.  We’ve hiked and biked and camped; gone to outdoor concerts, festivals, barbeques and parties; dog-sat, floated the Weber River on inner tubes, and soaked in the Diamond Fork hot springs.  Having someone with whom to share the summer enriched each moment and experience.

One of the summer’s highlights was a trip to Moab, Utah’s red rock Mecca and the gateway to Arches National Park.  Chris and I left Salt Lake one Friday night in May as the full moon was rising, and spent the weekend camping on top of a rock, with no roof over us but the stars.  On foot and on borrowed mountain bikes, we explored Edward Abbey’s desert paradise.  Early spring in the Utah desert means vivid green life against red buttes and mesas.  Biking before sunset on our second night, we turned a corner and observed a small grove of mature aspens standing in front of a sheer red wall.  Their bark glowed green in the low sunlight, and their slender branches curved gracefully, elegantly, as if frozen in the middle of a slow, twisting dance.  In that cool, potent moment, I believed we had found the lost Ent-wives of the Lord of the Rings.

As the warmth of the summer in the desert west fades and I look ahead to a second winter spent in Salt Lake City, it would be easy to be fearful, to wonder why I’m not moving on, as my custom has been.  Instead, I’m excited.  I feel like a new stage is coming in the life of Susan the Traveler.  The wave of serendipity that I’ve been surfing has become an eddy, a current swirling contrary to the main flow.  Though the pace has slowed, the voyage continues, and I’m happy to float on these friendly waters, trusting the swell to carry me where I belong.  I’ve got a new set of telemark skis and my old job at Brighton back, and I’m ready to make the most out of the winter and enjoy my new community of friends.  Let it snow!

I can’t wait to get spoiled.

Salt Lake City, Utah, home of the Greatest Snow on Earth (they say).  With seven ski areas within ten miles of each other, all less than an hour drive from the city, all averaging 500 inches (12 m) of powder every winter, I don’t care if it’s the “greatest” or only so-so, just as long as they let me ski on it.

Twice a week I work the counter at the Brighton ski school, selling lesson packages and directing harried parents to the rental shop, the bathrooms, the cafeteria.  My uniform is jeans, a fleece vest, and a baseball hat or beanie.  I answer phones and smile at customers and when it’s slow no one minds if I read a book behind the desk or slip out to take some runs.  I love my job.  I hitchhike to work or to ski every day from the mouth of the canyon, me and a handful of other bums.  Yesterday I rode up with a registered nurse who described to me the first time he witnessed a C-section birth.  “Dude, I grew more in that half an hour than I did through all of puberty!”  Today I waited in a line of cars that snaked for ten miles through the jutting canyon walls.  I watched the emergency lights spinning for an hour, on the other side of the trees where a truck had rolled over the embankment.

I live with Kathy, a cheerful massage therapist, and her husband Troy, a construction worker.  Winter and the flagging economy give him plenty of hours to fill playing WWII video games and shouting at the University of Utah football team.  Kathy’s sixteen-year-old, Mackenzie, makes occasional appearances as a dark-haired zombie on a stool in front of the TV on the kitchen counter.  I have a room to myself, furnished, full use of the kitchen and a living room, wireless internet, and the company of a balding cat when I want it.  They’ve also loaned me a bike for the winter.  Not having a car, the bike means freedom, and being able to visit the local library twice a day.  I grin at how much faster a bike is than walking, even as my teeth chatter and my hands turn to ice in the wind.

Beginning a life in a new place is always hard, and I’m a little bit lonely, despite the friendliness of my co-workers and the kindness of the Eaton family (wonderfully gracious friends from back east who gave me a place to stay when I arrived and helped me find work and housing).  I’m still smiling, though, and I can look ahead to a month from now when the slopes will be overflowing with snow, when regular paychecks will be plopping into my checking account, when I know the names of all the ski instructors I work with, when I am too busy to think, when I’m apparating from powder day to night job to day job to drinks at the pub with the other scruffy snow addicts, when all of this is normal, when I forget that I’ve ever lived anywhere else.