Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Today I received an article about roadmaps through life as compared to roadmaps through road trips..

It pretty much summarizes the experience I had while on my first Raven’s Roads trip. You can study maps for hours, but they can’t tell you about construction, 50 mph winds, or the fact that a heart-singingly wonderful thing is going to happen when you wander an ancient ruin on your own.

I thought that you might enjoy it. Here is the Daily Om home page. I rather enjoy the articles that get emailed to me.

My favorite moments

• Sitting in the lush churchyard of the Unitarian Church, making friends with a stray, friendly Manx cat
• Receiving endless generosity from friends: spare beds, drinks, treats and even…Marmite!
• Lunch with Molyneux, Netstation, and Skyring
• Water-releasing with Skyring
• Meeting the Charleston Book Crossers
• Sploshing through puddles as I escaped the hostel, wearing my “don't mess with me” vibe–and clutching my Hello Kitty backpack
• The gobsmacked noise as I told my audience how many snarfs I'd snarfed on my first run round Charleston
• Sitting on the steps with MartiP and Martisman when I got to the hotel after escaping the hostel
• Playing text-message “incoming” with friends as I hopped from airport to airport
• The conga at the quiz night
• Linda the Mule, and giggling about her with the Reggies
• White russians
• Hugs
• My impromptu book signing
• Old friends and new
• Maraschino cherries
• Laughing until I ached
• And…

Tim-Tams.

THE END.

For now. ;)

Don picked me up at SFO, and we strapped vast quantities of luggage onto the back of his bike.

And then it was zoom, zoom, zoom back home, back to the virtual land where our friends are scattered to the four winds, the land of memory, and looking forward to the next time, wherever that might be.

Snow-laden mountains on the eastern edge of Nevada.

To my delight, I was on a Boeing 777 coming home, a flight I'd never done before. These planes have a wonderful feature called A Map. You can see exactly what you are flying over, and it makes a huge difference.

Looking down at the snow-covered Rockies and the White Mountain range which splits Nevada off from Utah, a dreamland of sugar powder and rock, I was glad to not have ridden here this time. Don and I did consider it, but with so much else going on in our lives, decided to tackle one giant adventure at a time.

Crossing into California, we flew right over Yosemite and I saw Half Dome for the first time. Even more exciting was flying over the Lick Observatory and seeing the squiggledy wonderful biker road up there–something I intend to do for the first time before we leave. It is absolutely beyond words to see these things from the air.

The vast San Joaquin valley.

Flying in over the road to Lick Observatory.

Technicolor salt ponds.

About three hours after dropping into bed the wake up call woke me up, and I staggered around until it was time to meet Skyring in the lobby. We were flying at roughly the same time, and while we’d had an offer to go in convoy with the Pedersens, I made a judgment call and went with my own gut, which was to leave earlier than they did. (Bruce and Kipling were on the same flight as me to DC, and they did make it, though they hadn’t done so by the time I had boarded!) At roughly four o’ clock, an obscene time, we were en route to the airport with Skyring exchanging cabby notes and me trying hard not to snore.

The idea was to get a coffee and chat, but that was kind of scuppered when a) Skyring’s airline staff wasn’t even there when we arrived and b) nothing was open yet and c) we were assigned to different concourses. We’d been counting on the airport being small enough to fit everyone in the same lounge, but ’twasn’t the case. Oh well. I checked in my baggage, said a fond farewell, and waved Charleston a merry goodbye as I was ushered through security by a lovely lady from Edinburgh. I spotted Scott (our new CEO) and Rhonda and went to say hello/goodbye to them, as well.

In no time at all I was on my little dinky plane to DC, and just managed to stay awake for the takeoff before snoring my way through the one hour flight.

I ran to catch up with Bruce and his son, said another fond farewell, and then we went to our separate gates. I saw them later, the cutest thing, fast asleep together.

We take your Book Crossers and send them in all directions.

Sunday night there was some sort of a function on at one of the rooftop gardens, and I though it was private and I wasn't invited until Heather wandered up, her usual full-on energetic self, and invited me. But I thought about it and realized that I was absolutely exhausted, so I hung out with my roomie solittletime until such a time as she needed to go and catch her train home, and then I went and took a nap, which did me and my ability to talk in a straight line the world of good.

And that, to be honest, was pretty much it, other than a sense of sadness to be going home and not seeing all these lovely people for a year, sometimes more. We hung out in the bar as a group one last time, and I managed to hold an impromptu book signing and parcel up some books to go to the UK with Netstation and Molyneux. The bar had closed, so with hotel blessing we took out the glasses and our own private stock of booze, and served ourselves. :)

So. Little Time.

According to the mule driver, this monument to Calhoun has an amusing history. There was originally a different monument, which apparently was unpopular in general, and specially would frequently get eggs and rotten tomatoes thrown at it due to Calhoun having been pro-slavery.

The solution?

A 50-foot pedestal.

Lunchtime came around, a scheduled two hours to go somewhere and do something. So, I hooked up with Molyneux, Netstation, and Skyring and we headed downtown to the market area to a nice microbrewery with giant vats of beer bubbling away behind glass, and wooden staircases stretching up into the rafters.

They were a tad slow to seat us and I was grumbling about it and got overheard, thus forever blotting my copybook in that establishment. I still feel a bit bad about that, actually.

The food was good, the company was great. I hadn't had much chance to sit down and actually chat with Netstation and Molyneux and thoroughly enjoyed doing so. I instructed Skyring in the gentle art of rib eating, while we ribbed Molyneux because she had sore ribs herself. Molyneux and Netstation were kind of tired so they headed back to the hotel, so Skyring and I went off in search of fountains for water releasing.

There was a nice fountain with squirty jets that you could (but weren’t supposed to) stopper with your hand, sprinkling anyone who happened to be cooling off there. It was a warm day, blue skies, and several people were. I watched as Skyring did his signature water release, a book in a well sealed plastic bag, floating off. Then we went to the waterfront and the pier, and wandered around there, and by the time we got back, the bag had been removed from the fountain, so Skyring put it back again. ;-)

Taking advantage of a bit of shade from the trees, we wandered up the riverfront, and split an Italian ice which nearest as I could tell is a slushie–crushed ice with bright cherry flavoring. Yum. Found another fountain shaped like a pineapple, and released another book in it. So, Skyring was out of bags and had fulfilled his urge to dunk books in bodies of water.

It was a pleasant, peaceful change of pace, but I was tired and short on words, thinking capacity, and energy. We wandered up a bit further then got a local hotel to call us a cab.

Yup: good friends, good food, good cherry flavored icy things, and good humor.

Goody.