I made it back safely and just finished scoring. Don’t know final standings, but think I moved up from #43.

Will write after I drink a beer and take a shower.

The rally rocked!!!!

———————–

3 Hours Later

….well I haven’t showered yet…..I’m sitting here in my own BO yapping with George Zelenz.

However, I feel like I need to say something profound…or at least pithy. Not sure this counts, but here’s a try:

On Day 8 after I had gone to Lick Observatory I was spending the afternoon in San Francisco. I had never driven or ridding in SF before, and as I went over the Bay Bridge I caught my first view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was pretty enough with a bit of low big in the warm, sunny day……..but out of nowhere I started bawling like a baby.

I had just gotten the rally. I had just learned what the Rallymaster intended as a theme. Yes, there was the omni-present Americana kitch, but this other meaning was much deeper and more profound. Mind you, having an epiphany on a major freeway and nominal speeds with tearing up eyes isn’t the best place to do this. So, I moved over to the right several lanes, slowed down a bit, and tried to take it in.

The start of the rally involved 90 or so folks rushing to the St. Louis Arch as a first bonus. Symbolic, absolutely for the beginning, but singular.

Then within several days the majority of riders went to Perce Rock in Canada on the Atlantic. It’s actually an arch rock, but I didn’t get it at that point.

The Golden Gate is full of architectural arches and is the gateway to the West from the Pacific. In the course of 8 days it all struck me in those few seconds. We North Americans have it incredibly well. We have a land mass of incredible geologic and climatologic variety. The heat of Death Valley to near freezing mountains of August in Colorado. The azure quality of the Atlantic and deep green of the Pacific.

We also have people with mixed a wide range of languages and culture. We have French-Canadians deep in New Brunswick that identify more with France than English. We have the Navajo in the Southeast U.S. that really should have a dotted line as a truly sovereign nation within a nation. We have hippies in California ,Volvo yuppies in the mountains of New Hampshire, and Bible thumping midwesterners in Kansas.

We truly are diverse.

And, at the same time one can point a motorcycle in any one of the cardinal compass directions and go that way nearly unfettered. Showing a drivers license still gets you to Canada and back with no cavity search and a friendly smile from both sides of the border.

And after the few days of picking a direction you can pick anothe direction and do it yet again and not see all this continent has to offer.

I’m proud to be a North American.