invasion of america - empire

Montreal - New Jersey

It was warm but the sky was grey and threatening as I drove out of Montreal, late Sunday morning. My friend with whom I had been staying was the unfortunate owner of a heavy heart and it wasn't because I was leaving town. A brother was suddenly gone and the mourning was just beginning.. It's always hard to watch someone you care about so deeply suffer in such a way. No one is ever ready for death, but when it happens unexpectedly, it's extremely harsh. It was hard to leave with emotions so tattered, but it was time to go. The bike was eager to work.

The first half-hour back on the bike felt strangely odd and I wasn't very comfortable no matter what re-positioning I worked with. I knew I was going to have to re-familiarize myself with the stresses of long distance riding and quick before I started on the 6000 mile return trip home. When I finally crossed back into America I was in new territory which I was excited to explore. I was filled with a child-like enthusiasm with the "Up state" view that filled my helmet. I almost put the bike down several times due to staring off at the landscape too long and not paying attention to the road in front of me.

I have never... ever... seen a more beautiful and idyllic land than up state New York. I remember the trees were doing their best to hold the green of summer just a little bit longer and they were so tightly packed across the landscape that it looked like a fluffy carpet rolling across gently the sloping hills. Periodically a massive rock formation would cut through the tree tops and thrust toward the sky, like a burst of water from a fountain. Much like the stubborn trees of Minnesota, these trees were fighting the late season molt into their fall finest, however one or two of them was slightly tipping the scale. It wasn't much, but it was just enough.

Hours of beauty. Miles. I left the highway as soon as I could and found the more scenic US highway system more to my liking. It was a bit more dangerous with a few trees dumping some leaves on the roadway which posed a new threat to me on the bike - leaves offer no traction for the bike which is a huge problem when I need the tires to hold me to the road during a curve. I am taking these curves at 70 MPH and one leaf could end this trip in a wink.

Every ten miles, the roads take you through a small New England town that come straight out of Norman Rockwell's dreams. The buildings are three hundred years old and they all contain the same types of businesses; a post office, a small country store, an auto body shop/gas station, a doctor, and an antique shop. Each town is the same. OH, and a plaque for something.

The farms that make up the rest of the area between towns are like a Disney rendering of what New England farms should look like if they were planned out by someone with - Perfect barns with matching houses with fences that stretch on for eternity, past the grazing animals and into the thick woods. Each farm comes equipped with a small stream that flows perfectly through the property and feeds everything around it. "this is why"

I was stuck in a spot about where I wanted to go, originally I was going to head to Walden Pond first and then continue on to Mark Twain's House and then the Baseball Hall of Fame before finally heading into New York City./All of this in two days. Again, time and money aren't on my side, so after some quality time with myself I realized that I was going to have to cut Walden and Twain but I should be able to salvage the Hall. I could have just cut them all out and headed straight into New York, but that would be a "kicking myself" decision. I know it.

I made it to Cooperstown, New York in the late afternoon on Sunday. It was the best four hours of riding I have ever done and the views are so burned in my mind that I could tell you what every curve and what every inch of that trip looked and felt like. Forgive me, but I want to keep it to myself.

Everything in Cooperstown was basically closed but it was still cuter than your town even with the doors locked and the lights out. I stopped in to the one thing that will always been open, even after judgement day - a bar. As anyone keeping up with the news will tell you, Sunday is Football day. Even here, in the most hallowed ground of Baseball, there are football fans. In fact, most of the people in this bar were wearing BHOF shirts, drinking and cheering for their losing New York Jets. Somewhere in the universe this is poetry, but for now it's just dinner.

I found a campsite just outside of town and was treated to the "biker special" by the married couple that own this spot of land. They spoke biker-speak which means that in an early incarnation of their lives, they were riders themselves. It also means that they know what I am doing and they have an unspoken connection to it. Spiritually they are with me. Financially, the cut me some slack. Which is a common theme with that bike. I rarely have to pay for tolls on the road and I get cheaper prices at restaurants, hotels, campgrounds, meth-head hookers, and parking is almost always free. I think this bike could save my comedy career if I let it. It's just that blessed.

The campground was empty save for a few late season stragglers that were zoned out and in mood to share. I chose a nice cozy spot under some trees that was down a shady lane made up of some of the most delicious looking trees I have ever seen. It was also far enough away from the other campers that nudity wouldn't be a problem. It also means that wild animals would have no problem sneaking up behind me and eating me for lunch. I have no idea if there are Daniel eating bears in this part of the world. In fact, I don't know if there are any Daniel eating animals afoot. I must be cautious.

I made a fire.... and it was good.

[this is a bad moment, if you don't want to hear it, read around it]

The camp fire was very good and there is always something purely magical about a fire. Especially one you can poke with a stick and just STARE at for hours. The flames grow and dance and it CRACKS and POPS with each passing moment. It's hypnotizing. My eyes are transfixed on the dancing flames and I can't pull away. This is my fire. Mine, and it's all I have to keep me company in the New York wilderness. I actually talked to it a couple of times. The bike is already sleeping and the gear is all stowed away in the two minute tent (so named for the time it takes to put up and take down) and I am sitting on a stump in front of the fire. I am watching the sun slowly sink behind the trees and I am talking to the flames and my future and my luck and my looks and my sore body and my options and my seemingly endless blessings.

The trees that surround me are the same trees from the side of the road during my trip down here and from up close and underneath, they look like the feeble attempt of a balding man who is using the last few strands of hair to cross the barrenness of his noodle. It's very wispy and linear looking. I don't think you can feel any more sorry for a tree when you describe it as a "balding man".

The fire poking stick is a national treasure that doesn't get a lot of press. I have owned many of these poking sticks over the years and for each stick that I have poked a fire with, I have had the said the same thing to myself, "This is the most perfect stick in the world. I need to take this stick home with me and use it for other fires that I will make in the future." But I never have taken one home. In fact, most of the time, the poking stick has become firewood as a last ditch effort. It would seem that the urge to be a "boy" and to burn anything is stronger than the urge to keep a useful stick. And what a sad ending to such a glorious career - The stagnant life of shading the ground for years and years without anything to show for it, is very suddenly cut short when I appear and feel the need to get in touch with my inner caveman. I use it for hours to stoke the flames that will consume its friends and family, while it watches in horror from the front row. If I am feeling especially evil, I might attach a marshmallow to it and make it suffer the indiginty of living its last few hours with melted mallow on its tip. After hours of this injustice - I burn it in the remenants of its friends and family. I am a demon to the forest people.

[this is the part you might want to skip]
Somehow I found myself seeking out other ways to enjoy this fire and somehow that led me to a country store a few miles down the road trying to buy a pack of cigarettes. If the store had accepted debit cards, I would be smoking right now. Let's thank the stubborn and modest amount of Ludititry that kept my non-smoking streak alive. But smoking with that fire would have been the cat's pajamas. It would be easier to remain a non-smoker if I wasn't allowed to see flames... or lighters.

I made coffee, it was a bad idea. I was "up" with nothing to do.

In order to embrace the moment and face a fear and defy it - I took a walk in the dark woods and filled my head with all of the horror film scenarios that I had ever seen. Needless to say, I was shitting my pants - a cigarette sure would have calmed me down a lot. I was a good bit away from my camp site and deep in the pitch black woods when I came across a patch of moonlight shining down on a simple little patch of grass. There, in the middle of all this living firewood, was a beam of solid moonlight just for me to see and no one else. It was idyllic for witches to do magic, I wish I had brought one along.

The moonlight was a translucent metallic blue cutting through a sea of jet black trees. There was no wind, but there were a few crickets singing to each other and the sound of my excitement pounding away in my head, to fill the moment. I walked all the way around the patch of light before I dared to walk into it. I was treating it a bit like the beam of light in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" where if you walked into it, it would spring a deadly trap and I would be impaled on something sharp and unfriendly.

After playing around with the idea a bit, I just walked in to the light and looked up. I didn't see any moon, just stars. Bright and plentiful against the vastness of space. But no moon. The stars were as bright as I have ever seen them and they were filled with more light than a full moon on a cloudless night. "Yes... This is why."

If you lay down and stare into space, the stars will move. They move for you as your mind wishes them to move. And they move for you as your mind wanders around in your own imagination. A full sea of stars that seem to be looking at you without blinking once. I was really enjoying the stars, for a long long time, until the moisture from the ground and the mosquitoes drove me back to my camp. [I was bitten over thirty times]

Sleeping in a tent isn't always the best way to end a fun-packed night of fire-staring and mosquito feeding. I am in two layers of clothes and the sleeping bag is pretty "gropey" which makes movement pretty restricted. You're zipped in and when you have to pee, it's not always the worth the trouble to get all the way out to do so. Let's just say it took me an hour of laying there in pee-pain discomfort, weighing my options out before I finally unzipped, put on, and crawled out just so I could pee in the frigid night. Sadly, It was pitch black out and I think I might have peed on my tent. Hey, I was tired and I didn't have my graceful aim with me.

I was up, packed and on the bike in twenty minutes from the moment the sun crested over the horizon. I had a full day planned and I needed to get a move on if I was going to see it happen. TODAY!

Plan: Breakfast. Fix the blog post that blogspot had fucked up. Baseball Hall of Fame. Drive down to Orange County Choppers. Drive into Jersey City. Party in New York. OH, and shower.

Breakfast turned into a Powerbar, there was no way to fix the blog in Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame was a complete let down. Yeah, a let down. I only had one reason for coming to see it and when I was in the main room of the hall, I was suddenly struck with the rational argument against that reason. Sadly, this rational argument always appears after it's too late. So I quickly took my photo of the reason I came here (George Brett, #5 Kansas City Royals) and headed out of town as fast as I could. I was enjoying riding over the landscape more than I was enjoying the relics anyway. They're interesting, but the few things that I would have really loved to see where on the fucking traveling exhibit which was most likely in Tacoma at the moment.

Orange County Choppers - was a store. The bike shop is off limits. The town where they have their shop(Montgomery) is beautiful and there were bikers everywhere, which I'm sure pleases the locals to no end. I would imagine that it's tough to keep a low profile in a town this small when you're fame is worldly wide and it rivals that of any major movie star. I'm sure more people could identify who the Tuetuls are faster than they could identify who Gene Hackman is. Ultimately, I'm glad I came here but it wasn't any different from the Hall of Fame - it was just a collection of relics. Except these were fresh ones.

I left New York and entered New Jersey. It sounds just like it felt.

THIS WOULD BE A GREAT TIME TO MAKE A PLEDGE DURING THE BRING DANIEL BACK TO TACOMA PLEDGE DRIVE. EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS...