A Reckless Ending in the Wasatch

You can find yourself in a dire situation of your own making, like losing your wallet and all your cash on a highway, then taking a psychedelic and riding a motorcycle into a winter storm at night.

M4 - #4 of 4 stories, describing certain events on a 12,000 mile motorcycle journey across North America in 1971, including the Trans-Canada Highway, from Victoria to Newfoundland.

I should have known that my luck was running out that November afternoon when I pulled into a Chicago gas station to fuel my motorcycle on my final stretch home to Park City, Utah, which was still about 1,400 miles west. After filling the tank, I reached for my wallet and it was gone.

That is a sinking feeling.

Motorcycle in the mountains - depositphotos.com

I rifled through my gear and a slight panic set in when I realized that the back pocket of my snowmobile suit was unzipped. That’s where my wallet had been. It had fallen out of the pocket somewhere between Detroit and Chicago on the freeway.

I’d worked for three weeks to fill that wallet with money. It had my driver’s license and all my cash from working in Halifax and Rockport, close to $400 in 1971, almost $3,000 in today’s terms. I didn’t have any credit cards. Mobile phones weren’t invented yet. Everything was cash in those days, at least for me.

Now I was at zero. Actually worse than zero. I owed the gas station guy who stood there listening to my story.

I had to come up with something. This was Chicago. Nobody was going to entertain the penniless guy who just filled up his tank and had no money.

Then I remembered…

The Girl in the Grand Canyon

“Just a minute,” I said to the gas station attendant. “Can I use your phone for a local call?”

Dialing.

“Hello,” she answered.

“Celine?” I asked.

A moment of silence. “Whose this?”

“Hi, it’s Jon, from the Grand Canyon. Remember? I’m in Chicago.”

The ice was quickly broken.

Hiking in the Western Grand Canyon - jhg photo

The previous summer I’d hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It was nearly a hundred degrees that day. After sitting by the surging Colorado River for a couple hours I started walking back up to the South Rim. The seven and a half mile long trail, gained nearly a mile in elevation. The climb out was a challenge in the heat. But I had a canteen full of water.

That’s where I’d met Celine. She and her girlfriend. They were from Chicago and had no water. They’d walked down into the canyon and were suffering heat exhaustion. I couldn’t pass them by so I offered to walk them out of the canyon and share my water. They were incredibly appreciative.

I had a good connection with Celine. We exchanged addresses and home phone numbers at the top of the South Rim. I had her phone number in my travel bag.

Within the hour, she was at the gas station. Full of smiles and remembering our trek out of the canyon. She came with her mother, handing me $50 and inviting me to their home for lunch. Her mother didn’t like me. Broke motorcycle guy bumming $50 off her daughter. You met in a canyon? Really?

“She’s got a boyfriend,” her mother interjected. I think she supported the idea of giving me $50 to get me out of town.

It was an enjoyable lunch with Celine, though her mother remained skeptical.

Celine and I shared a brief hug and I was headed west again, with enough money in my pocket to get home. Always interesting how good deeds might pay you out later in life. That $50 was a godsend at that moment, as I imagine my canteen of cold water and words of encouragement to keep moving in the canyon had been memorable for Celine.

I would repay that $50 when I got home.

Nebraska

I woke up at sunrise, outside, at a road side rest stop in my sleeping bag in Western Nebraska. A blue sky late November day. There was a sharp chill in the air, with frost on the ground. But I’d been making good time. And I had that snowmobile suit to keep warm. I only had around 500 miles to go to get back to Park City. I’d ridden more than 12,000 miles on my motorcycle in the last few months. I felt inspired to crank up the bike and hit the road.

If I’d done just that, things might have turned out different.

Instead, I think it was an Easy Rider moment, I decided to take a hit of psychedelic mushrooms, courtesy of my Rockport friends, for an unforgettable end to the journey. It would prove to be all of that.

The first half hour of my ride on I-80 West was euphoric, with the morning light and wind in my face from behind the motorcycle’s windscreen-faring, gliding along at 70 mph. The mushrooms had not kicked in yet. That would come soon enough.

I think my first sense of euphoria fading, was the appearance on the horizon of an ominous, solid dark cloud layer rising up ahead of me in the mountains of Wyoming. The closer I got, the more threatening it appeared. I felt like I was riding into a dark underworld. The mushrooms were beginning to take effect.

Within an hour I was in it, in all aspects, weather and mushrooms.

Wyoming

The sun was replaced with a low, brooding cloud strata that been dropping snow but was now dormant. The road surface started looking like it was paved with diamonds. It was glistening. I became mesmerized. I slowed down, thinking the road surface was solid ice, or maybe diamonds. Pretty soon I was riding on the shoulder of the Interstate at 35 mph. Cars and trucks shot by. They couldn’t see the icy diamonds that were radiating in my mind.

I spotted a small gas station on a side road. Just a couple pumps. I decided to refuel, just to get off the highway. When I pulled up, a woman came out of a small home type-office to greet me. She was surprised I was riding in wintery conditions. Probably not as surprised as I was.

It was then that I realized I couldn’t form complete sentences. Just fragments. Like my mind. The whole place was rolling. Everything was distorted. Mushrooms at work. She asked if I wanted to sit by the heater in her office. She was very nice. I still think about her kindness today.

But I couldn’t handle sitting there and trying to have a conversation when my words were disjointed. My mind was drifting in and out of comprehensive thought. Her face began to appear exaggerated in ways. The gas stop was becoming a Carlos Costaneda experience, A Separate Reality. I was starting to get nervous at my state of mind and needed to get back on the highway.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=147464169

It was mid-afternoon, dark and cold. I couldn’t imagine getting to Utah in this condition. So I just continued riding on the shoulder of I-80 at 35 mph. I could handle that. As I rode west, I even questioned if the gas station had been real, or imaginary. The woman attendant, sitting by a fire in that small dwelling, reaching out to me to help. She could have been one of those angels like I encountered in Halifax.

Pretty soon I convinced myself that the motorcycle was no longer working correctly. That it couldn’t go more than 35 mph. Maybe the diamonds had gotten into the carburetors and were scratching the cylinder walls. My engine was disintegrating. Maybe I could find a trucker who would put the bike in the back of his empty van and drive me to Utah.

Those are the wild ideas that come to you, adrift in the psychedelic realm.

Late day, I came to a truck stop. I needed a break. I was starting to get paranoid. I regretted taking the mushrooms. I stood around in the Wyoming truck stop wondering what to do next. I decided to try soliciting a ride from truckers going west who might have room for a hitchhiker with a 500 pound road bike. It seemed reasonable to me at the time.

The first few drivers wouldn’t engage me. They just brushed me off. One guy asked me what the hell I was doing out there in the middle of Wyoming on a motorcycle? Easy Rider moment again. This went on for the better part of an hour.

Finally, I saw a big box truck driving west as it wheeled into the truck stop. I rallied my resolve and could feel the psychedelic wave starting to ebb. I caught up to the driver as he approached the cafe and asked him if he was going west and had room for me and my motorcycle. I said the bike wasn’t functioning right.

“Let’s talk about it over a coffee,” he said. I was somewhat shocked. At least I had his attention. Now I had to rediscover words.

We sat at the cafe counter. He ate pie and drank coffee. When he chewed it seemed his jaw was dropping down to the countertop, or so I imagined. He was a big guy. My words were coming back. He was still entertaining my request.

“I’ve got room in the truck,” he finally said. His name was Rich. He was from Odgen, Utah. ”Just a piano in there. But we’ve got to figure out how to get your bike aboard.”

The truck’s deck was four feet off the ground. At first, I tried to start the motorcycle and volunteered to get a running start and ride it up the three foot wide loading ramp. Rich cautioned, “You sure about that??”

To this day, I’m so glad that the bike didn’t start at that moment. Probably one of those angels pulled a wire on it. Instead, Rich recruited a couple other guys and the four of us rolled the Honda 750 up the ramp. He lashed it to the inner-box walls of the truck, next to the upright grand piano and shut the rear doors.

We were off, headed west across Wyoming. It was late afternoon.

My whole mind started to clear rapidly at that point and I jumped into an engaging conversation back and forth. Rich was enjoying the conversation as well. After an hour or so he swung into another stop and bought a six-pack of beer. That livened up the conversation even more. The six pack didn‘t last long. I told him I‘d buy the next six-pack. He pulled into Rock Springs for a second beer stop and we continued our spirited conversation, punctuated with laughter and reflective moments. We were making a connection.

My head was spinning again, now from the alcohol. But at least I’d gotten my gift of gab back and was earning my keep by entertaining and engaging Rich. He liked that he wasn’t driving alone. Our exchanges made the time go by fast. Very fast.

Utah

It was pitch black outside, well after 10pm when we reached the dividing point where I-80 splits into I-84 through the Wasatch Mountains. Rich was going home on I-84 to Ogden and I was taking I-80 toward Park City. He pulled the truck over and somehow we unloaded the motorcycle without damaging it or us getting hurt. We were both in shirts struggling with the bike in the dark under the highway lamps, buzzed from half a case of beer. There was two feet of snow on the ground alongside the freeway, it was near freezing, but it had stopped snowing and the road surface was clear. You could even see some stars above the drifting clouds.

Rich felt bad about dropping me off out there in the middle of nowhere at night, but he had to stay on route to Ogden. I was thankful for the ride.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m almost home!”

It was only 30 miles to Park City from the I-84 junction at Echo. Rich and I said our goodbyes and I jumped on the motorcycle. It fired right up, full power. It hadn’t disintegrated at all. That had just been my mind melting down.

The beer was still making decisions. I took off wearing just a shirt at 11pm, feeling invulnerable, full of celebration of the journey that was about to end in the next 30 minutes. I rode about three miles and realized that I was absolutely frozen from windchill. What was I thinking?

I stopped and put on my snowmobile suit to get my body temperature back to normal, then took off again. My next decision would be disastrous.

There was a small sign to Snyderville, a back road into the ranch that myself and three friends were caretakers for outside of Park City, nestled up on the eastern front of the Wasatch Mountain range. It would save me about 10 miles of running down to Kimball Junction and circling around the valley back into Snyderville. Though, in retrospect, that would have been a paved, plowed road.

Snyderville wasn’t a real town. In the 1970’s, it was just a cluster of ranches and rural homesteads, maybe an old cemetery, out in a valley looking west into the Wasatch, a few miles north of Park City.

After three months on the road without a care in the world for time, all of a sudden that night, at that moment, saving 10 minutes seemed like a really great idea.

That would prove absolutely wrong.

Pottawattamie County Night Walks - pottconservation.com

I drove the bike onto the dirt road shortcut that came into Snyderville from the east. Nobody had plowed it. More than a foot of snow covered the road. There was ice under the snow. There was not a single light on this back road, or any homes at all. But I could see the stars out. I gunned the bike ahead and immediately started fishtailing on the ice that was layered under the snow. I stopped the bike and tried to rally my composure, but it didn’t happen.

Beer mind said, “Throttle up and plow through.”

That final moment would mark the beginning of the end of my motorcycle journey. The bike took off and crested a hill. Then I lost it. I started skidding down the slope. The bike careened off the road, crashing down a hillside about forty feet into a snow covered ravine. It pitched me over the handlebars and right through the windscreen, my helmet taking the brunt of the blow. The windscreen snapped off.

I wasn’t hurt. Just stunned and banged up a little. Sprawled out in the snow. I tried to pick up the bike. But my feet would slip out from under me on the ice beneath the snow. The bike and I slid further down into the ravine. That happened twice. At one point I was screaming at the top of my lungs. Then it all went quiet. I was alone out there and nobody could hear me. I was still about two miles from the ranch where I lived, stuck down in this ravine.

I lay there in the snow looking up at the stars and thought, “I almost made it.”

After a few minutes, I grabbed my gear, climbed up the ravine to the road and left my motorcycle in a heap at the bottom of the gully. I walked those last couple miles home with a helmet on, arriving at midnight. Everyone was asleep. The next day we took a truck with a towline and yanked the bike out of the ravine and I rode it back to the ranch. So in the end, I did make it.

It had been an unsuccessful ending to a truly remarkable journey. Though in some ways the journey was not over.

Are journeys ever over?

I had a phone number in my pocket from that motorcycle trip, handed to me in Banff National Park by a young woman at a camp fire. That phone number would influence my life for years to come. But I didn’t know that yet.

jhg - 1971

The previous three episodes of my 12,000 mile motorcycle journey: