A Life in Waiting

As my lack of writing this week might signify, I have had a pretty busy week.  I’ve been working late, squeezed in a couple of side jobs and spent time stressing over the timing of everything in relation to date of departure and financial status.  However, I suppose it can’t be all that bad considering that I am writing this right now as I lay in my tent overlooking a slow moving stream in the base of the Catskills this misty Sunday morning. 

I really fought with myself on whether or not I should go camping.  It was a last minute excursion that Scotty put together that I felt I needed to attend.  It’s getting closer and closer to my last days here and I really haven’t done much with my friends recently.  So here I am.  The decision turned out to be two-fold.  Since I will be traveling throughout Europe on a motorcycle, including camping at times, why not use this trip as a trial run, so to speak.  So I clipped on the saddlebags, strapped down my backpack onto the backseat and away I went. 

Turns out that it was a great idea to bring the bike.  I have already realized a few things I need to adjust and some more things I need to make this successful.  For one, as large as the saddlebags may seem to be, they don’t hold much.  So I really need to depend on my duffle bag to carry most of my gear.  One of my plans is to find a way to fit all of my camping/sleeping gear into one side.  Not looking like it can be done, but I am going to try.   

But all in all a good night.  Now let’s see how we do on the second attempt.

View from my tent as I wrote this.

There’s a routine Eddie Murphy does in one of his classic stand up routines, I forget whether it’s from Raw or Delirious, where he’s talking about how his family can be so overly dramatic. His example was of his aunt falling down a flight of stairs, and it is so drawn out and long that all you hear is thump, thump, thump followed by “Oh lord help me Jesus”, and then more thumps until her next outburst. Somewhere in the middle, and this part always cracks me up, you hear her say, “Oh, my shoe!” as her shoe falls off. Classic.

That’s exactly how I’m feeling these days. I’m forever falling down a flight of stairs, and just as I feel like it’s coming to an end, I realize that it was my shoe falling off and I still have more to go. As most of you (still just Maria) have noticed, I never finished my motorcycle saga from last week nor have I added anything to this webpage either. And I am sorry. Not specifically to the three people reading this, but more to myself because I really want to document as much of this as possible. I was attempting to go into super detail with the motorcycle buying story, but apparently it was a bit too early to go long, and now I have a half assed story. So I will attempt to sum up as best as I can, as it was over a week ago and I probably forgot most of it by now.

Now as y’all remember, Bo and Luke had gotten themselves in a pickle… Oh wait, wrong series. Seems like that is always the tagline to all of the To Be continues that I remember as a kid. Those two were always getting into so much trouble…

Now as you all will remember, I didn’t feel a kinship to Frenchie’s bike and was now heading deeper into the Manhattan South to see the second bike of the day. As I was a few hours early, I wasted a few hours in a few good ole Starbucks. I finally meet Tarek (yes another European), and we go check out his bike. Bike is beautiful, clean and what I was looking for. Only problem, clutch issues. But for the price he was selling it for, and because of my lack of finding anything else, it seemed like a reasonable offer. So we decide that on the coming Saturday, I would return to the city and check out the bike in more detail with a mechanic (Jimmy) and see if it’s a good deal or not.

So now I’m all excited. I finally find a bike that I feel comfortable with, given that Jimmy approves. It is now Thursday, and during my typical morning ritual, I scour through eBay and Craigslist in search of more BMWs. And lo and behold, there is this cherry 2002 R1150R in my (sort of) price range! It is unbelievable! The too good to be true kind. Not only that, it has all the bags I need, new tires, brakes and all other updates I would have wanted. But it has 75,000 miles. You read that right, not 75 HUNDRED but 75 THOUSAND miles. Quite a bit for a bike. Especially one that I plan on driving all over a foreign land where English as a Second Language is not a course at the local county college, but the norm.

So after I get a hold of the owner Luca (yet another European) and set up a time to look at his bike prior to our other appointment on Saturday, I begin my search to find out how much I should be worried about the high mileage. Long story short, it’s not too big of a deal as long as the bike was well maintained and certain things were checked. So a little more confident, we head down to Manhattan Saturday morning to check out the bikes.

Our objective was to check out the newer, cooler R1150R first, because if it wasn’t what we wanted, then we would go pick up the other bike that needed the clutch work, among other things. We navigate ourselves through East Side traffic and arrive at the bike shop where Luca works and the BMW is sitting out front at. Let me just tell you, it was love at first site. This beemer was impressive! It was clean, flawless and in perfect shape. Hell, it was damn sexy!

After talking with Luca for a while and having Jimmy scrutinize over this bike without finding a single flaw, I had to buy it. We agreed on a price and a pickup time and off we went.

So now I have bought a bike and am picking it up the next day, but I am a few dollars short. So who do I turn to? The one person in the world that has never said no to anything I’ve ever asked (except for that time I wanted to head down to west side docks at 10 o’clock at night by myself when I was 16, but that’s a whole other story) and has been one of the main supporters of this crazy thing I’m attempting, my cousin Jeremy. Not only does he lend me the money that I am short, he also comes down with Maria and myself Sunday night to pick up the bike.

Now normally I would just bypass this part of the story as it is mostly routine stuff, but of course this one has a twist. Well actually I will still bypass it as this is getting long, but I will mention that Luca, in his saddened state of selling a bike that he is noticeably attached to, incorrectly fills out the backside of the title. Not thinking it too big of a deal, we simply correct it and continue the sale. Fast forward to the following day at DMV, where I had busted my hump getting all documentation together to register my new bike, I find out that what he did is a big no-no in the DMV world. Where common sense would normally kick in with a normal human being, the ill equipped DMV wench would not accept the incorrectly filled out title. Just more headaches.

So as this coffee house I am sitting in is closing around me, I will just finish this up by saying that Luca has agreed to meet me this coming Saturday morning in Jersey City to get the title replaced, so I can hopefully register the BMW the following Monday. Wish me luck.

I really need to thank two people here. Jimmy, who has given up two FULL Saturdays and countless hours of phone calls and research to help me find the right bike. He has truly been a huge help and could not have gotten to this point without him. Thank you Jimmy, I really appreciate it all.

And the other is also a cousin of mine. Jeremy has been such a huge part of this whole adventure and has helped me almost every step of the way. I can’t thank him enough, even though he would probably just shrug it off. Thank you Jer, I owe you more than you know.

So here I am six hours later sitting on an express train home. A lot has happened in these past six hours, actually not a lot, but enough to warrant that comment. Actually there was a lot of sitting, walking, web surfing and more walking. Not too far from my typical Monday, minus the excessive walking part. Not to get too far off track, but one thing about this walking thing. There is definitely something about urban areas that makes one want to walk more. Well me at least. I don’t know what it is. Actually I do know what it is. I’m too cheap to pay for a cab. But by walking, you get such a better feel for the area you are in, from the architecture to the people around you. As I have mentioned earlier, I love people watching. Forget the Biggest Loser, just head down to East Village and you are guaranteed to be more entertained. Then for an encore, head down through China Town into the financial district. You won’t see a larger distinction from one part of a city to the next. It’s like there’s an invisible wall. Once you pass through it you are transported to another dimension. Absolute chaos, to controlled euphoria.

Now back to the original subject, the motorcycles. So I expertly navigate myself from Metro North onto the 6 train which should drop me off right onto Canal Street, four blocks from where bike #1 is. But alas, this is me we’re talking about, so it can’t go this smoothly. In case you didn’t catch the headlines this morning, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejah (I actually forgot his name, so I just banged on the keyboard to get something that looked close) is in NY for a cozy little visit and to give a speech at Columbia University today. So of course they need to shut down the Canal Street station. So I get off two stops earlier, Bleeker Street and hoof it down to Canal. This is part 1 of the walking. Turns out, it’s quite a distance to where I was headed to on Canal. Not a big deal, I actually really enjoyed the walk there (yes I know Maria, you were right). So I get there and phone the owner to let him know I was outside.

Now as the owner of the bike has a name that I had difficulty understanding on the phone due to a heavy French accent, we’re going to refer to him as Frenchie. Frenchie meets me outside on the street and introduces himself (missed the name again). He comes down looking exactly as all of us stereotyping Americans assume a French man to look. Lean, long flowing hair to his shoulders, precision stubble beard, and the loose linen shirt and pants to perfect the too cool look. Oh and did I mention the slippers?

We walk down the street to where the bike was parked. Now this is one of the main reasons that I didn’t want to buy a city bike. The abuse it gets from sitting on the curb of Manhattan for years. First thing you see is the seat is completely dried out and cracked. Now in my opinion, the seat and tank are the two most tell tale parts of a bike of whether it was taken care of or not. Even the most neglectful of owners will typically keep these two parts in good condition. After a complete look over of the bike, I decided the money wasn’t worth it. As nice of a guy Frenchie was, his bike just wasn’t destined to join me on my journey.

To be Continued…

As it has been quite a bit since my last update, somewhere around a week if I had to guess, I have much to discuss. The reason for me not knowing the exact time of my last post is that I am currently travelling into the city (Manhattan) via Metro North railways to look at a couple of motorcycles for my trip.

I began my motorcycle search a few months ago with a different mindset than I have today. I initially had wanted to ride through Europe on a vintage Moto Guzzi motorcycle. An early 70’s Ambassador to be exact. After watching such movies as The Motorcycle Diaries, I was captured by the romance and appeal of riding an old classic warhorse through the medieval towns of Italy and the rest of old Europe. Well about a month ago I found one that I thought would be perfect. So I grabbed my cousin Jimmy, who is a certified V twin mechanic, and headed up to Northern Connecticut. Long story short, after spending the entire Saturday stuck in traffic, we find a bike that is not suitable for my journey. The amount of time and money that it would have taken to get this bike up to par, was far too high for me to consider. Forgetting the fact that this thing was beautiful, we hop back into the car and drive back home minus a bike.

(Man, I just can’t wait to be one of those annoying foreigners sitting on the train talking way too loudly, making it extremely difficult for any decent human being to type away their life story)

However, the trip was not as much of a waste of time as I had previously imagined. During the ride home, my cousin did an excellent job convincing me that I was making a mistake with pursuing this type of bike. However cool it might be to ride an old classic through the streets of Europe, it just wasn’t practical. He then spent the rest of the time convincing me that I shouldn’t look at any other bike than a BMW for this trip. Pretty surprising advice for a kid that works in a custom chopper shop, so surprising that I felt like I had no choice but to listen.

The bike I’m looking to buy

So here I am, over a month since this sound advice, going to look at a pair of Beemers on the southern tip of Manhattan. This is far from the first BMW that I have looked at. I’ve gotten comfortable enough with these super dependable bikes that I can pretend I know what I’m talking about while discussing them. Which is probably a dangerous thing. Wish me luck…

Although August did exist for me in the real world sense, it was nonexistent in my virtual life. Every time I decided to sit down and write a quick lil something of what was going on in my preparation for Italy, I ended up staring at a blank screen. What some might call writers block, I call ADD. There was so much going on that I just couldn’t concentrate on one subject at a time. So instead of multitasking I was nothing-tasking by trying to do 50 things at a time and accomplishing none.

If you’ve never done anything like this, believe me it’s no easy task. From trying to explain to everyone around exactly why I want to get rid of everything I have built up over the past years to be a bum for a year plus, to actually getting rid of everything I have built up over the past years to be a bum for a year plus. But I am not complaining, this is all by choice. And the rewards should certainly outweigh the efforts. (I hope)

I do have to say that all of my family and friends have been super supportive and excited for me to be doing this. As a perfect example, my sister Shanon and her husband Tom practically insisting that we stay with them during our transitional period. And let me tell you, this is not a light hearted decision. In a 12’x12’ room, 10’ from their own bedroom, they are allowing two fully grown adults, a full size dog and a cat to stay for 3 months. Oh did I mention that they have 2 full size dogs and 2 cats of their own? For this I will be indebted to them for a long time. Or at least until they throw us out.

This is exactly why I need to start doing this daily, or at least a few times a week. I’m sitting here staring at the computer screen again, and can’t recollect the past month. Well I can, but am unsure of what I want to discuss. All seems relevant and not so relevant at the same time. So I think I am going to leave it a mystery in my virtual life for now and revive it each time I need to refer to it. (doesn’t sound like too much of a cop out, does it?)