Tumbleweeds to Snowflakes⌠Last spring I spent some time riding around Santa Fe and northern New Mexico, handcrafting this Shramrock Tour for @roadrunnermag . I experienced 4 seasons in 4 days, tumbleweeds in the desert and twisty mountain roads that lead to surprise snowstorms.
New Mexico in the springtime offers it all. The tour is now in print in the March / April issue of @roadrunnermag so grab a copy. Subscribers have access to the GPS files to recreate any routes! I had @softswerv_ as my host and chauffeur, offering plenty of local knowledge and taking some awesome photos of me.
#newmexico #santafe #roadtrip #hondamotorcycles #goldwing
< 24 hrs in Abq.
sitting at the buffalo exchange hoarding an excessive number of the most enticing pairs of shoes (all not pictured), I noticed a woman eyeing my pile
âI took all the good ones,â I laughed unapologetically, in an effort to both soften and reinforce my claim
She agreed, emphatically.
âIâm not going to buy all of them though, are you a size 6?â I asked
âYes! I am!â She replied.
âWant to try these?â I offered,
benevolently relinquishing a pair of black leather boots with a chunky grey-green platform heel from my bounty.
âActually, I was looking at those ones,â she said,
Extending her finger longingly
towards my three-year-old sweaty, Tres Piedras-mud-caked personal Chacos in the midst of the stash
this is the same view Iâve been looking out at over and over for the last six years
So much so that I forget this is not what most people see when they stare out their window. I even forget deep in my bones that I havenât always looked out and seen these trees gently waving or rapidly gusting or
Sitting softly in utter serene stillness.
my bones donât forget leaving the curtains perpetually drawn against the neighbors looming decrepit deck and
Punishing vinyl siding mocking me from across the street, framed in the big picture window of my old craftsman home in East Central, Spokane.
Iâve tried to understand how I can still be here and the only answer is that for the first 14 years of my life I woke up in a second floor bedroom with windows cranked open each summer night to the New England air, heavy and humid.
and with screens standing guard for mosquitoes (my childhood phobia), I listened to the frogs in the pond on our ten-acre land adjoining a trail through the forest to a reservoir stream.
It was a strange little pocket of as-yet undeveloped old farmland in a half-rate South Shore suburban town. I had no neighbors to play with, and I walked to the nearby stable to barter mucking stalls and hauling water for bareback joyrides on wayward, swayback ponies.
and for all those years I looked out my bedroom window into the forest, and sat with the silence, and entertained myself
