Got Me By The Balls

It's December here in the Cascade Mountain foothills.  The cold and damp is seeping into my knees, back, and fingers.  The weather and finances severely limiting my riding time.  All the while, Wanderlust has me by the balls.  Even my dreams lately have been traveling, or perhaps memories of places would be more precise.  Places I've been, or places I want to see again.  Just fragments of memories that stir things and make me get the urge to go.  

Dreaming of waking up under a freeway overpass outside of Junction City, Kansas.  The warm early morning sun shining down and getting me eager to move on.  But then, moving on from Kansas would be a dream at any rate.  Getting stuck there in that flat nothing would be a living Hell.

Thinking about places and times, and things I have done out on the road.  Knowing I am stuck here for the time being.  Unable to hit the road and see what is down between those white lines until Gypsy is up and ready to haul my ass there; I have to see it in my mind.
Little teases from the roads I have been on before, and ones I want to travel.  

It's just a matter of time before I lift the kickstand up and feel Gypsy rolling along the pavement as I let the clutch out in 1st gear.  Heading off on a long cross country ride the likes I havent taken in decades.  Thousands of miles rolling under our tires as we head down the road through half forgotten landscapes that only peak out from veiled and dusty memories.  The final, precise route remains to be determined.  Perhaps it only will be when I finally drop the kickstand down again in my garage at the end of the ride.  I know the basic stops along the route.  Waypoints to friends, family and places I want to see again while on this journey.  But which road will I follow to where?  That lies yet to be determined.

Three weeks, there and back.  It doesn't leave a lot of time to juggle, but enough to at least hit the high points.  I may not spend more than a few hours, or a day visiting old friends along the way.  But I have a job to do, a purpose for this trip.  That has to remain the focus, and everything else is just gravy to enjoy.  Somewhere north of 6,000 miles will be covered by me and my trusty 91 Evo, Gypsy Rose.  My mind keeps going over parts of the route I am familiar with, and building the yearning to roam again.  Waking to memories of the sunrise over Interstate 15 in northern Utah at 80 mph.  Seeing the sign denoting the fact that I am crossing the Continental Divide, while deep inside brightly lit tunnel in the Rockie Mountains on Interstate 70, and many more visions to be sure, seem to almost torture me with the need to ride.  Not just for a few hours, but days on end.  

The kind of riding I haven't enjoyed and endured since I rode for the Club as a Nomad.   It is as if the fires that have been smoldering for so long in my soul are slowly being fanned and banked in preparation for a long run that will burn itself into my memory.  I find myself praying it won't be my last big run, that it will be the reawakening of my traveling spirit.  But, at the same time, this cold dampness has me wrapped tightly in its grip.  The dull ache of it deep in my bones.  I am hoping the ache is my body fighting off the damnable apathy that comes with age.  Either way, something tells me this years run will mark a change in my life.  My instinct is that there is something waiting for me to discover on the road this year.  But until then, I am stuck here, unable to go, while Wanderlust gives my balls another squeeze as it shows me memories of the open road.

Catch ya on the road sometime...