Day 8 - The Fog Creeps In
Riders are entering a time during the rally that nobody can really understand unless you've ridden this 11 day monster before. Even if you've done it three times like myself, "The Fog" of Day 8 is a distant memory that's hard to describe. You can't put it in a description, but you can kind of describe around it....kinda what it feels like.
In 2013 I was riding past the many the oil fields of North Dakota and it was an extra-surreal landscape. The best approximation is a video below that also speaks to the larger experience riders are feeling these last three nights. You keep that bike pointed down an never-ending visual of perspective. The road extends to infinity and is 20 feet wide by your elbows. A landscape to your left and right that is of decreasing importance compared to that finish line you know is 72 hours......48 hours......24 hours......12 hours........6 hours......2 hours away. You literally feel like you're clawing your way back to the finish line. It's instinct at this point. Whether it's primal, genetics, or instinct....there's a basic need to crawl...to WILL yourself across that finish line. Yes, you're still snagging bonuses, but mostly autopilot.
Your riding ability to turn left, turn right, and avoid things still seems intact. Your reflexes feel sharp at least. But you wouldn't want IBR riders doing your taxes for you at this point. They've squeezed certain chemicals out of their brains that would make it impossible for them to do a basic high school course, but they're also incredibly cognizant of how 100 motorcycle RPM sounds and feels different, how the flow of air over a windshield is one or two mph different, how 10% humidity differences feel and whether its about to rain or not. You swear you can feel and see every vehicle connected to the pavement in North America.....an old lady just cut off a guy in Florida.....that Hyundai in Tucson is too close to the center line.....Neo just walked by a woman in a red dress.
They're also emotional at this point. In the course of a tank of fuel they can bust out crying for no other reason than they remember something a loved one said to them weeks earlier or laugh deeply as they read a bonus description Earls tacked on. The Garmin lady starts to sound kinda sexy, you've identified the pattern of the 80's channel on XM and know they're going to play a Human League song next.
They're like Forrest Gump running across the country in the movie. They've seen every...single....sunrise and sunset for the past 8 days and will be seeing three more. They've watched the unseen colors of an Arizona sunset, the sprinting clouds below them from a mountain peak in Washington State, and the unexpected brutal beauty of long shadows over a prairie in the evening.
The riders are seeing America...and Canada. They'll be back at their day jobs about a week from now. But they have three more nights of this rally before they're home...safe. Send positive energy to them right now....they need it.
Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes togetherI've got some real estate here in my bag
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner's pies
And we walked off to look for America
Cathy, I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
Michigan seems like a dream to me now
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've gone to look for America
Laughing on the bus, playing games with the facesShe said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said, be careful, his bowtie is really a camera
Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat
We smoked the last one an hour ago
So I looked at the scenery
She read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field
Cathy, I'm lost, I said though I knew she was sleepingAnd I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come to look for America
All come to look for America
All come to look for America
