Alaska Trip Prologue

Every summer, I take an all-girl motorcycle trip for two weeks. Our little girl gang of four picks a destination, and then we figure out some way to all get the same time off. This year, our destination is so ambitious that we had to increase the vacation length to three weeks. What I did this summer on vacation 2009: rode my motorcycle from our garage in Northern Virginia to Alaska and back.

Cast of characters:

S and K are both firefighters. Their profession hints at their altruistic bent, since if your house is on fire, they are the first ones in to save your family, including Fluffy and Sox. But it goes much deeper than that. When your relationship fails in some spectacular manner and you need to move out, like, today, you call S and K. When you start an overly ambitious home improvement project that requires hacking out a retaining wall with a pick axe and you discover a buried stump that you cannot remove with middle age-softened bodies and simple hand tools, you call S and K. It occurs to me that if this is the nature of my typical phone call to them, I should expect the next time to find that their phone has been disconnected with no forwarding number.

The point is that these two should be first round draft picks for friends in your life. Three years ago when the four of us went to Sturgis, SD, we were less than one hour into the trip when we came across an RV that had overturned just minutes before. There were no emergency responders on the scene yet, so S and K said, sorry girls, vacation delayed. We have to stop.

Everyone was okay, but the three children were taken off to another area by family members while S and K stabilized the vehicle and checked out the driver. K came over to the children a little while later to calm them down. A little girl about 5 was crying from fright and uncertainty while clutching a bedraggled stuffed animal. K bandaged up her arm that had been scraped up, and in her calm, serious voice, asked, “And how’s Bear doing? Does Bear have an owie?” While the little girl solemnly nodded, K bandaged up the teddy bear’s arm in the matching location. That should tell you all you need to know about K’s character.

My partner, L, is a teacher, so she has the whole summer of. Everywhere she goes, she brings the show. She is side splittingly funny, with occasional gusts of drama that she quickly neutralizes into fodder for her own self deprecating humor.

And what’s my role? Well, I’m sure I have my charms, but I’m not exactly sure what they are. Best I can figure is that I’m an old plow horse: nothing flashy, but a solid and faithful companion who is game for anything and pulls her share of the load.

The four of us travel ridiculously well together. Usually, we cut travel expenses by sharing one room at the Hampton Inn. Sleeping four to a room requires a level of travel intimacy that is not for the meek at heart.

This year, we plan to camp 21 out of 25 days of the trip. We are staying with my family three nights and we figure there will be at least one night where the weather is too atrocious to face putting up a tent in the rain. Each pair has a little pop up camper that can be towed behind a motorcycle. It folds out into a nice tent with a king-size bed. The engineering is simply cunning, as it can be popped out and set up in about 2 minutes flat. This can even be done by a couple with a minimum amount of arguing, even when they are hot, tired, thirsty, and hungry from riding about 450 miles in a day. Truly an enthusiastic endorsement.