Mike and Al’s Big Adventure

Story by Michael Poplett// Photos by Michael Poplett
May 1 2008

I figure that once a guy’s odometer rolls over fifty, he gets the chance to become somewhat philosophical about the passions in his life. I have three; a hand-crafted guitar and the wonderful sounds that it makes, a motorcycle that truly is my mistress, and a thirty-five year love affair with a woman who understands me enough to allow me the freedom to enjoy all three without reserve.

What is there to say about the motorcycle that does not involve my brother, Al? We have been sharing adventures together since we were kids. Weekend jaunts to wherever; trips down south, out west or up north, to the mountains or to the lake.

We grew and our trips became family outings with whatever we had—car, van, tent, trailer, motor home. There were wives to include. Kids came along. Careers happened. The process slowed us a bit, helped along by baseball, hockey, basketball, dance lessons, scouts and guides. But it never really stopped our adventures; we just brought others along for a while.

With the kids now out finding their own roads to adventure and a career as much under control as it will likely ever get, my mistress calls me out and revitalizes me. What is it about the feel of that ribbon of asphalt winding its way over there, or the rolling of the road under the tires that is so magnetic, so magic? For me it resonates, like the sound of a guitar string coming into tune.

We call it Mike & Al’s Big Adventure.

It starts with a feeling that comes over two brothers every year, some time between the end of the Christmas season and the annual bike show in late January. Winter is cold around here and I get stir crazy after the pandemonium of the year-end.

It’s the time that we load up the bike hauler and decide where—somewhere warm, with a string of secondary roads just sitting there. We know they are waiting. They have been for years. We just need to go and find them.

Friends think we’re a bit crazy. Riding a bike? All day? You mean for a week? Two? Are you kidding? All that weather! And the nuts in their cars and trucks! How do you find the time? Don’t you get a sore ass? What about the bugs? What do you eat? Where can you stay? How can you make reservations when you don’t know where you will be?

I really don’t think they get it.

Sometimes there is a bit of envy in their words—you can hear it in their tone, or see it in the light in their eyes. Envy for the freedom and for the strength of a relationship that I have shared with my brother since we were young. Envy for the understanding of a woman who can empathize.

Looking back on it all over the years, I really think it’s about heading-down-the-road-a-piece and turning it into three glorious days in the Rockies; about discovering places with real names. Names like Frank, Golden, Creston, Trail and Revelstoke, or The Kicking Horse, The Crows Nest and The Rogers.

It’s about the Island and the ferry.

It’s about weekends of prairie-town discovery adventure and finding the true beauty of the prairie that has to be absorbed as it only can, from the seat of a motorcycle; beauty discarded by others with their disinterested whining about places flat and their get-through-it-quick attitudes.

It’s about going to Red Deer for milk.

It’s about heading off to Yellowstone and hanging a left, running over past Chicago and not turning around until Montreal. It’s about the Great Lakes—all of them.

It’s about Decarie and The Met, the QEW and the Gardner, the Cabot Trail, the Cowboy Trail and the Calgary Trail. C’est la treize et l’autoroute des laurentides, the fourteen lanes of the 401 at the Don Valley. It’s about the Yellowhead and the Trans-Canada.

It’s the Laurentians in late September; Rawdon, St. Sauveur, Jolliette. It’s running the length of the St. Lawrence through to the Gaspe, or the Duffy Lake Road north from Whistler. It’s the Bay of Fundy and the fortress at Louisburg, the Atlantic and the Pacific. It’s the border towns; Beebe, Rock Island and Stanstead.

It’s about 129°F in the shade in Death Valley and the snowstorm in Bryce Canyon. It’s about finding historic Route 66 from LA to Chicago. It’s about the coastal highway in California, Carmel and Big Sur, the Laughlin River Run, the Golden Gate, the Arizona Desert and Mount Rushmore, the cornfields of Iowa and the wheat fields of Kansas, upstate New York, New Hampshire and Vermont, the Florida Panhandle and 3:00 a.m. gas in Georgia.

It’s about the people, the bike, the wave, the formation, the smells, the sounds, the instant change in temperature, the bow wave off the big rigs, the rain and the sun, the wildlife on the highway, the small towns, the gravel in the corners and the brotherhood found with other bikers.

It’s about coffee and donuts, meatloaf and gravy, steamies and poutine.

It’s all about the road less travelled and 90% secondaries. It’s about 34 and not 16, despite what Al might say. It’s about Frankie and the incredible joy she brings. It’s about helmet time; the time to reflect and really think about life as you never have before.

And for me it’s mostly sharing the adventure together with my best friend while we can, and knowing the security in that familiar old tailight up ahead or finding the steady hand of the head-light in my mirror as the road rolls us both away and over the crest of the next hill.

I don’t need the others to get it.

BUY THIS ISSUE

Copyright ©2002-2024 Motorcycle Mojo | Privacy Policy | Built by Gooder Marketing

X
X