No pain, well, no pain

What a difference a day makes. The old saw was true today.

And for those of you who may have wondered, no, the road was not a metaphor for me. I felt quite good, actually.

But today was a gift. One of those easy days we sometimes get on a scoot, perfect temps., good roads, clear skies. Most of the day was New Mexico. Damn that's a beautiful State.

Here in the west we have vistas. Too bad I have a lousy Internet connection tonight, have some great pictures - but it's beyond me to get them uploaded here.

Guess you'll just have to take my word for it 'till I can get to the Hub and have one of the youngsters figure it out for me.

So here I sit in Vaga, Texas. Little old West Texas town in the middle of pretty much nothin'. I'm only 585 miles from the Hub, so I could push on through tomorrow. Don't know that I will. May just have to be another lazy, extra cup of coffee, visit with some folks kind of morning like today.

There's no poetry in me tonight. Just sort of laid back, enjoying the memories of an easy day; of big vistas and bigger skies. Of the road just hummin' a slow easy tune.

Think I'll lay me down to that tune and dream of tomorrow.

Mother Nature

We have a saying out here on the left edge of the country. There are four seasons: Fire, Flood, Earthquake and Drought.

Right now we're havin' three of 'em at once.

We've been dry up north and, as a result, the Sierras are ablaze. Big storm pushed up from Mexico in the south, so the Mojave is underwater. All we need is for the ground to shake a bit and we'll have the cannon.

My biggest concerns are always the mountains and the desert. Gettin' over one and through the other. So, I figured I'd give myself an edge and head out a day early.

Glad I did.

Not that it was a bad day - there was Hwy. 99, of course, but that's a given - just that it turns out my window for weather was today and it gives me some time to spare and not have to push so hard.

Good thing too. With the northern routes over the hills either closed or slowed, it was not a pleasant run down 99. Add the construction and - well, you get the picture. Piles of wet loose gravel right in the lanes, potholes that looked like they could swallow the scoot and transitions that felt like they would blow a tire when ya' hit 'em. (I swerved, I zigged, I pulled up on the handlebars, it's all OK)

Getting into the desert, my window held for the most part. Ol' Ma Nature didn't chastise me - just a little love tap now and again. Kind of a "well, howdy do, Tim. See you're back on the road, boy...".

I can't complain. 

But I also can not sing the praises of the day.

Oh, it's good to be on a run again. But it was kind of a just get through it day. I-40 is a mess; big headwind; dodge the trucks; get through the traffic.

So I'm sittin' here, just outside of Flagstaff, without much to say. The big roads can do that to one, they are so often impersonal and cold. They have none of the fire, the vibrant humanity, of the lesser, older roads. Today, I-40 seemed tired. When it sang its song there was no power in it and no joy. It was a song of the old; a song of the discomfort of being.

I felt sorry for it.

Tomorrow, however, is another day. Another story. Another chance for the highway to sing. Tomorrow I'll throw that leg over and roll. And, as I roll, the road will tell its story. And I will do, as I always do.

I will listen for the song of the road.

Crankin' It Up.

I've reached that time of life when most things said to me have the same caveat. "...for someone your age."

As in: "Wow, 67? You're in great shape for someone your age." Or: "You sure do shoot well -- for someone your age."

So it was of no surprise to me when, the other day, a friend, upon hearing I was about to fire it up for a run to Arkansas and Louisiana, said: "6,000 miles? That's a long way on a motorcycle -- for someone your age."

Got news for ya' kids. That's a pretty good run for someone of any age.

Not that I mind it. Figure I've earned it. Gotta be some benefits to gettin' old.

But, yes indeedy, I'm heading out for another run to my Club's national rally. And, unlike the last few years, I'm running solo. Not even my Brother and good friend Pablo is making it this year. And that means one thing: the blog is coming back.

A few years ago, I made this statement: "Ridin' solo is an introspective pursuit." Over the last few years I've found that to be more true than I had ever realized. See riding with others, especially Pablo, means that when I get in for the night I want to hang with my Brothers. I don't want to sit down and pound the keys and dump the words that have run through my head all day on to the page. I want to visit and catch up and just be. Riding solo, my goal becomes the same -- I want to visit and catch up and be -- but I want to do those things with you -- those who condescend to read this blog. The other part is that, because of Club protocol, when riding with other Club members I have to lead. Thousands of miles with my eyes in my rear-view mirrors. Everybody running good? Gettin' too strung out? How much room to get us all past that truck?

Whole different dynamic.

So, on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, I'm gonna throw a leg over the old girl and bust down the highway. One more time onto the Concrete Goddess, she who truly holds my soul.

Just me and the pygmy pony and the wind and the hum of the tires and the rumble of that big V-twin.

I'm makin' a run, Kids.

Wanna come along?

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

I've been banging away on my bass today -- more than usual. Working out some bugs in a simple piece of music which, like so many simple pieces, is easy to play but damnably hard to play well. (The Beatles' "Come Together" if you're interested. Easy piece, but getting those slides and hammer-ons just right; getting that tone fat enough -- well, remember, Paul is a much better bassist than he is given credit for.)

In essence, really, that is the bass in microcosm. 

Oh, I adore Victor Wooten and Steve Bailey. Like every bassist, I worship at the altar of Clarke. I study Jamerson and Radle and could (and do) listen to Jaco's recordings for hours. I stand in awe of Gary Willis. But Lee Sklar is my hero. Perfect notes, perfect tone, at the perfect time. There is a reason he's on over 2,500 albums. He just plain makes the music better.

Simply.

I remember when I truly fell in love with the bass. I was just a kid -- very early teens -- but already committed to the drums, when I heard Paul Chambers playing with Miles. "Someday My Prince Will Come". Chambers was playing bloody whole notes, for goodness sakes, and I thought I had never heard such expression and beauty in any music ever. 

Anyway, got to thinking about the "Boys from Liverpool" as I was playing their music. About how good they were together. And that got me to thinking about how they broke up. And that got me to thinking about The Button.

Somewhere pushing (good Lord!) 20 years ago, my little girl was living in Portland, OR, as was I. She was working in some funky little shop, in Southeast I think, and came across -- and gave me -- the button you see above. I immediately declared it the most perfect button in all of the history of the world and knew I would have it, close, for the rest of my life.

It is, in fact, at this moment sitting where it always does -- right under the monitor of this computer.

The Button is perfect on several levels. Naturally, as my daughter gave it to me, it is precious (heck, I still have the collection of rocks, in its entirety, she picked up and gave me on a Christmas hike of the Grand Canyon when she was 6 or so). But, The Button is also cooler than cool and may just very well contain not only the Great Truth but the reason for all the worlds ills as well.

Think about it. Yoko doesn't mess up John's head -- well, anymore than it was already messed up at that time -- and maybe, just maybe, the Boys stay together. I mean, who knows what they might have come up with?

Yup, the way I see it, if it wasn't for Yoko Ono, we might not have global (sic) warming, would have solved hunger and quite possibly have achieved world peace.

Ah, well, on that note, time to get back to the music (a pun worthy of Takei?).

But not to worry, kids, the more I play, the more I'll remember that I'm

Still

Pissed

at

Yoko.

Aren't you?

It All Started with a Photo.

A view from the hill: Antenna Valley and the Song Thu Bong.

This is supposed to be about motorcycles. And journeys. But, though I ride everyday, sometimes those journeys are in my head.

Sometimes I time travel.

So it was last night. Don't know what started it. I was on-line, looking for something -- truth be told, I don't remember what -- and saw a link. That took me to another; about a Marine and his time in-country (Viet Nam). Seems he was on a little hill. Hill 300 the Marines called it in '67, when he was there. Out in the middle of way-begone and nowhere, it just happened to sit dead astride three things: the north end of the Antenna Valley; the largest coal mine in Viet Nam and; the main northern branch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. So the Marines decided that there ought to be an outpost there and they plunked some boys down and began to build a camp.

Quiet place. Surprising when one considers that Antenna Valley, though not as famous as the Ah Shau, was just as nasty a place from a combat standpoint and that the trail in that area was running steady with NVA Regular Army.

Quiet place. At first.

I guess Clyde (The Viet Cong or "Charlie" were irregular guerrillas. NVA Regular Army we called "Clyde". A much more serious name for a much more serious and professional soldier) took that as a throwing down of the gauntlet or just too much to pass up.

After a while they hit those Marines and they hit 'em hard. Hellova battle on that hill. I do believe one of those Marines won "The Medal" in that one. 1967. The hill was empty once again.

None of that had a damn thing to do with me.

But, in '68 the brain-trust decided we really needed a presence on that hill. And, as luck would have it, they just happened to have a Special Forces OD-A (Operational Detachment - "A") with nothing much to do as in May of 1968, their camp - at the other end of Antenna Valley - a place called Kham Duc, had gotten overrun by two divisions of that same NVA. So they took the surviving members, added a few more and sent Detachment A-105, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, to Hill 300, known thereafter by its real name: Nong Son Mountain. And they set about finishing the camp the Marines started but never got to complete.

That's where the time travel begins. In that link I followed, there was another link. To a photo taken by that Marine who wrote his account of the battle for Hill 300. Of the camp under construction. Of the camp as A-105 knew it at first.

See, A-105 had this skinny little 1LT Executive Officer for a time. Harper, Timothy F., 1LT, INF, MOS: 31542 (Special Forces/Airborne/Ranger Qualified, Infantry Unit Commander). And that mountain was my home for what seemed -- and quite possibly was -- a lifetime.

It was not a quiet place.

We used those trenches you see as the way we got around camp. Stick your head up -- take fire. Most of the camp, that we built with the Sea-Bees, was underground. The view I don't have is to the west. There was a huge ridge line there and they had snipers and .51 Cal. heavy machine guns that fired anytime they had a shot. Hell, we kept an M-1D sniper rifle in the crapper. It faced that ridge line and had no door so you could return fire while you did your business. I shit you not (pun intended). And all this was in camp. Operations were, to say the least, interesting.

The AO was all a mass of NVA and, damn, they were fine soldiers. Those boys were tough -- and good. Though, while I admire their professionalism, I guess, as we used to say, we were tougher and better. I survived, those I faced didn't.

The hard math of war.

So this picture took me back in time. Saw things I hadn't in over forty years. That Marine took that picture from the exact spot where I read the "Dear John" letter from my fiancee, Susie. I remembered how narrow that little "Dogleg left" of a camp was. So narrow a Huey on the helipad had the tail-boom hanging over the edge and I saw pilots drop backwards off the hill (it was about 4,000' straight down on three sides) and kick pedal to get it turned around just to get through translational lift. I remembered all the friends, Vietnamese and American, who made it and who didn't. I remembered bulldozer races down that twisty, narrow, little road we cut in the side of that hill with the See-Bees during monsoon season, when the mud was calf deep and you had to use opposite controls because the track you locked up would skid faster than the one still turning. And one of those bulldozers taking a 3,000' swan dive (the See-Bee Chief dove off in time) because the Chief missed a turn. I remember the little assault boats we had. We kept them down in the town for running river Ops. -- which we never did, but they had big Johnstons on them and swivel mounted M-60 machine guns on the front, so we "requisitioned" a slalom ski from some REMF in Da Nang and would roar up the Song Thu Bong cutting tight turns because they were shooting at us from the banks and the guy up front would return fire. I remembered my students when, as a Viet Namese linguist, I was able to teach my English classes down in the local school and how the kids giggled when I would get up on the desk and roar like a tiger to teach them how to say "R". I remember our rations arriving each month. Three live pigs (squealing in a cargo net below a helicopter), ten cases of dried mackerel and a hundred 100 lbs. bags of rice. To feed the 700 we squeezed onto that hill. Eight Americans, 32 Montagnards, 10 RVN Special Forces and 671 Vietnamese CIDG.

I remembered that skinny little 21 year old 1LT standing in the mud in '69, wondering how he was going to fill the shoes of the finest officer he ever knew as CPT Earl J. Stewart left the team.

    

I remembered it all. The good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. The the sublime and the horror. 

And, after a very long night, I remembered the most important thing of all. Right or wrong, good or bad, valid or not that war may have been -- but, I kept the faith. My country called. I and those fine men with whom I served, answered. My OCS, Jump, Ranger and Special Forces school classmate Roger Lee Johnson, kept the faith. Special Forces kept the faith. Let those who hate us and think us fools do so. They will never know what it is to have: Kept. The. Faith.

And on those long nights, that is enough.

For: Roger Lee Johnson, 1LT, INF, Det. A-105, 5th Special Forces (ABN). KIA: 28 SEP 1968, Nong Son, Quang Nam Province, Republic of Viet Nam. 

Forever, Brother.

My Little World

I have my own little world.

Not some alternate reality or anything (though, as it's mine --  one could make a case...), just my little studio where I spend about 80% of my time. I love it; I'm  grateful and fortunate to have it, but -- sometimes a hundred twenty square feet gets, well,  small. What saves it of course, is that it's really not just a room  -- it's a gateway. It is where I write, work, play music. And when I do those things the walls go away and I'm transported to the places that one goes when pursuing dreams. Kind of wonderful, actually.

But. It does have one downfall.

The Chair.

The Chair has been mine since new, somewhat over 20 or 25 years or so now and if I've learned anything about it, it is this: it is a sleep machine. Don't think I've ever known anyone who can sit in it for more than five minutes and not fall asleep. Damn, I love that chair. I know, one would naturally think: "So, what's the problem?". The problem is, I'm loosing several hours a day to that chair. I'll sit down to read or think or rest -- just for a moment -- and next thing I know, it's two or three hours later.

I'm 66 years old -- I don't have three hours a day to give away. I've music to play, blogs to write, Masonic and Motorcycle Club business to handle and housework to do. Stuff, Kids.

Gotta take care a bid-niss, knowhatimean?

This blog is a perfect example. The Chair really gets in its way. I'll be ruminating on life the universe and blogs and -- just as I'm doing now -- will kind of end up in The Chair. All good intentions, and then ikindasit downandZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.