My second favorite InZane… My favorite, naturally, will always be the one in Asheville, NC, where ALI became ‘our girl’, and she and I were reunited! Dang, it’s hard to believe that was three years ago… Time sure flies, as they say, and so do gypsy biker dudes… Speaking of gypsies…

The thought has crossed the vast, barren expanse of my cranial cavity recently that perhaps I’m not genetically linked to my ‘parents’ after all. Is it possible, I’ve wondered, that a band of gypsies left me on their doorstep, and I was simply taken in and raised by the folks I think of as my mother and father?

Nah, too many physical feature similarities between us for that to be the case, but we do have one stark difference: My people are all ‘home’ oriented. Stationary folks who want to sink deep roots, even though life has often brought venue changes their way. Still, a permanent house and hearth were always the goal, and the comfort that comes from familiar surroundings, people, and life generally always were their end-game target… Not me!

Nope, the older I get, the less inclined I am to stay put. I don’t want to live anywhere… I want to live everywhere! I’ve always been that way, I suppose, but my indoctrination and programming had me assuming all that ‘normal stuff’, along with many other myths, was the ‘right-minded’ thing to do, as is the case with everyone, I guess… Was I then and am I now guilty of wrong-thinking? (A rhetorical question… if I am, I don’t really want to know!)

Ever think about that? I have… a great deal, as a matter of fact. By the time I’d reached the age of thirty, I was wallowing in self-doubt and confusion. By then, many of the ‘pat answers’ to everything that had been ‘given’ to me, were proving to be suspect… I’d already found myself having to turn my back on some long-held ‘facts’ and choose another view…

So many times, what I’d so easily bought-into turned out not to be the case, or the ‘certain’ view of how things are and what life is about simply didn’t work out, or even more confidence-shaking, they proved to be downright wrong…

All the values, beliefs, and ‘fundamental things’ I’d assumed were spot-on were not the product of my own thinking, though, and they desperately needed to be challenged, tested, thought through deeply, and re-done where appropriate. I became determined to be my own person by choice and reasoning, and to jettison where appropriate the simple solutions I’d adopted as ‘truths’, that had been pounded into my thinker muscle throughout my life. However, life greatly complicated that process by overwhelming me with responsibilities, activities, obligations, and other distractions…

I finally stumbled upon long distance motorcycle riding as a near-perfect platform for thinking things through… a magic carpet that would transport me to another spiritual dimension… and the rest is history…

My ‘natural state’, my center of equilibrium, I’ve discovered, is to be alone and highly mobile. That’s not to say I’m a hermit… I do indeed need social contact, just not to the same degree nor in near the same quantity most folks appear to need. And that, boys and girls, brings us to my decision to attend InZane.

What a great event! At no time in my life have I ever known so many good folks or felt like I truly belonged, as much as I do around this group… Only two things bind us that I can discern: Valkyries and riding, and ‘goodness’. By goodness I mean, unpretentiousness and good will towards others. No phonies here, and the generosity combined with unqualified acceptance by each for all others is as palpable as it is attractive.

My journey there had begun with a commitment to attend… skillfully extracted by that ‘smoothie’ we all know as Misfit. Once that was done, the next step was to agree to wander out there with an amazingly easy partner with whom to travel for any distance and for any length of time… Troutdude… now we’re talking!

Following the stop in Tennessee and the escort to Indiana, Dennis and I altered my previous non-plan and decided to just head straight for Colorado. It seemed only logical to conserve time (he was on a schedule) by blitzing through the less scenic areas, and to use it to do a couple of loop-de-loos through what has been fittingly called the ‘American Alps’…

Now, it probably does not need to be said, but that marvel of nature beyond the plains is not a well-kept secret! Nope, one can’t travel around that incredible wonder without encountering busloads of foreign tourists, vans with church groups from other areas, plus rented cars with visitors from all parts of the globe! Hearing three or four different languages spoken at a given stop is not uncommon at all…

The more I expand my contact with ‘folks not like me’, the more I’m convinced our differences appear to be a mile wide, but they are actually less than an inch deep… Scratch the surface and it becomes apparent we’re all just alike, really… I can only conclude from my own experiences, that differences in learned behaviors and adopted beliefs are what separate us. A fascinating discovery that became obvious to me early on, and that belief has only been reinforced over the decades… A marvelous byproduct of traveling, especially solo, is coming into contact with such diversity…

Now, I mentioned earlier that Dennis is a wonderful ride partner… and he most certainly is. I’ve also traveled with some other good ones over the years, but the one by which all others are measured is my dear friend Jim Dorman. Jim finally had to put his riding gear aside recently, and now he is stuck in his own recliner trying to live vicariously through the writings of others. I often think about the many miles we shared, and I do celebrate our time together with an occasional Milky Way candy bar – one of Jim’s favorite treats…