Reflections of a Long-Distance Motorcyclist
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Recommended Motorcycle Safety Gear & Training
If you ever decide to buy and ride a motorcycle, please be safe. Motorcycling is a very dangerous activity. Motorcyclists are 27 times more likely to be involved in fatal accidents than car drivers (2017 NHTSA data) and increasingly involving more older riders. At the very minimum, always wear gear designed for motorcycle riding: Full-faced helmet, gloves and boots. A motorcycle jacket and pants with D30 armor will add important protection in a crash—the armor will absorb a large part of the impact, and the jacket and pants will save your skin, literally. I now also wear a neck brace and full back/spine protector to prevent spinal injuries. Finally, I highly recommend taking a motorcycle safety class through the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF). Although I’ve been riding for 50 years, I was so shocked at all the bad motorcycle habits I had. I continue to take motorcycle riding classes and just completed my off-road adventure class. When I ride off-road, I wear additional protection for elbows, knees, hips, thighs, and my back/spine protector also had armor for my ribs. Riding a motorcycle is a total luxury and a lot of fun, but my mantra when I ride is, “Live to ride another day.”
“Thanks,” I smiled back, “but ask me where I came from three weeks ago?” “Where did you come from?” he asked, as his friend comes over and joins him. I replied with a bit of pride: “The Mexican border.” They looked at each other and shook their heads in amazement. Turns out they also rode motorcycles and happily shared stories of their riding adventures in Guatemala. They wished me luck, smiled and waved as we left, “Ride safe!” It is almost a universal code that motorcyclists tell each other to “ride safe.” We know only too well the dangers of motorcycling.
In 2019, after retiring from a university professor career and department chair of Ethnic Studies at Sacramento State University, I gifted myself a BMW “GS,” a Gelände Sport, which is German for a “dual-sport” motorcycle, capable of riding comfortably for long distances on paved roads and also “off-road,” on unpaved dirt and gravel roads. The plan was to travel to faraway places as I transitioned to the next phase of life and meditate on what the entire life journey means.
I had already traveled around the world with a backpack in 2013 and wanted to continue with my long-distance journeys. In early 2019, I was hoping to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, which starts at the town of Campo, right at the U.S.-Mexican border. But due to circumstances beyond my control—my wife had a medical emergency requiring major surgery—I was not able to complete my goal and aborted my hike just before reaching the Mojave Desert. Riding a motorcycle on long-distances is a continuation of that desire for adventure travel.
U.S.-Mexican border town of Campo. The original plan was to ride to the Mexican border and spend the day there, but when I arrived, it was 100°F! At the town’s gas station, I quickly filled up my tank, took photos for proof of being at the border, and left as quickly as I could. When riding in 100°F weather, it is important to stay hydrated. As a safety net, I also always carry a small one-gallon cooler filled with ice water. I never enter a desert without at least having one-gallon or more supply of water and a full tank of gas. If I am at a remote campsite, I will have two gallons.
My youth was spent riding Honda motorcycles in the hills and backroads of Guam, an island paradise with a large Filipino population in the middle of the Pacific. Most of the Filipino men in my southern Guam community worked as civil servants for the U.S. Navy. Women, however, were mostly educators or worked in health care. As a military community, we were all patriotic and definitely conservative. We all had guns in our homes—that was normal life in our small rural towns. A Filipino World War II veteran taught me how to shoot a gun when I was a young kid. Many of our neighbors were selling marijuana and other drugs, but, oddly, except for petty crime, violent crime was very infrequent.
In college, I continued to ride motorcycles. I had a Kawasaki KZ400 during my undergraduate years in Seattle, mainly because, as a poor college student, it was all I could afford. I went on so many long rides to distant corners of Washington state and British Columbia in Canada, visiting many rural towns. I continued to ride until my first year into my doctoral program at Berkeley. I bought a beautiful red Kawasaki GPz 550, a mean-looking Japanese street motorcycle in classic bright-red color with a beautiful faring. It was also the only motorcycle I ever had where women openly made catcalls at this motorcyclist, much to his embarrassment and slight confusion.
However, after a very bad accident where I was rushed to the emergency room at San Francisco General Hospital, I decided that it would be best that I stopped riding a motorcycle.
But it was not a complete withdrawal. I still rode in Palawan when I was in the Philippines, from one end of the island to the other; and, in Manila and the surrounding areas, where I rode out to the Sierra Madre Mountains until I reached the Pacific coast of Real in Quezon Province. Of course, each time I returned to Guam, I rode my brother’s motorcycles: a Honda CBR-500 and Suzuki GSX-R750.
Highway 1 on Big Sur, California. Although the secluded sections were very enjoyable, I was so surprised that there were traffic jams in almost all the small towns and the surrounding areas. Big Sur is a very beautiful stretch of road that is best enjoyed when there are thinner crowds and fewer traffic jams; which means avoid peak tourist days.
Zen & the Existential Act of Riding a Motorcycle
I ride for both the sheer joy of the long winding scenic roads and to experience nature up-front and personal. I also ride to experience solitude, as I attempt to make sense of life.
Riding a motorcycle forces you to concentrate on what’s in front of you, and to forget your problems. Unlike being in a car, you are forced to really concentrate on the road and on the environment.
And feel everything.
The wind and the noise, the rain and the fog, and the fickle and ever-changing weather. I have been to places, where in the morning, it is cold and foggy in the mid-50s along the Pacific Coast—and within two hours I am riding in dangerously hot inland temperatures of 100°F. There is no heat or air-conditioning to turn on to make your ride comfortable.
Riding a motorcycle is very “Zen,” as Robert Pirsig points out in his famous book on motorcycles and existentialism. On a motorcycle, you can feel the wind pass by your entire body, and your concentration has to be focused on what is in front of you, as well as the surrounding area. You can “feel” the ride. And of … “being there.”
Winchester Bay, a small town along the Oregon Coast. I have been riding through small towns since my undergraduate years at the University of Washington in Seattle. My ritual was to take off on weekends and ride as far as possible, and my route often took me through very remote communities. Motorcyclists look for the long and winding roads, and the further away from the traffic jams of major cities the better the ride.
Navigating Social & Political Landscapes
Human beings, however, are not solitary people stuck in an existential bubble. We are, as Aristotle of Macedonia pointed out, also social and political animals. My existential moments are, consequently, peppered with socio-political observations.
Twenty-nine years ago in 1990, one week after arriving in San Francisco, I bought the Kawasaki GPz 550. The following week, with a new full-faced helmet, Kevlar gloves, a used motorcycle leather jacket and high-viz yellow rain jacket and pants, I took off and rode my motorcycle up the Pacific Coast Highway to visit my sister Janette in a U.S. Coast Guard station, outside of Reedsport, a coastal lumber town in Oregon. Every few hundred miles, I would stop by a pay phone to tell her where I was and how many hours before my expected arrival. This was life before cell phones.
After riding 500 miles straight, I arrived at my sister’s house quite late, at 2 a.m. The gas tank gauge was blinking “empty.” I was cold and miserable after riding in the pouring rain and heavy fog. Thankfully, Janette had prepared and saved a warm dinner for a weary traveler.
Oregon campsite at Ocean City. Hallmark of a long-distance motorcyclist: a lot of gear. I carried a tent (double-walled), 32°F down sleeping bag and an insulated sleeping pad for cold nights in the Pacific Northwest, stove for cooking, a cooler for ice-cold water in the deserts of California (100°F at the Mexican border), tool kit and spares (tire repair kit, engine oil, brake fluid, chain lube) and two mirrorless camera bodies with several lenses, a tripod and a laptop. I will be carrying the same amount of gear when I ride across the USA to Maine later in this summer.
The next day, Janette cried when she shared that “People in town are staring at me.” They are not used to seeing Asians. Her husband, who is a U.S. Coast Guard officer, is of Scotts-Irish descent, but he is heavily tanned after living under Guam’s year-round tropical sun for several years. “They do not even think he is white,” Janette explained, between tears.
As a practicing Japanese Buddhist, she rings a bell and a gong and chants daily in Japanese, a language the locals could not understand. “They think I worship the devil,” she said. The good news is, after getting to know them, Janette was able to make friends with some of the local townspeople and bridge the xenophobia.
I continued riding up to Seattle, stayed with close friends, engaged in long conversations over shared meals, and visited my favorite haunts near the University of Washington.
Then I took off again and rode all the way up to Vancouver, Canada. I rode along the winding country roads, away from the busy traffic. To this day, those memories remain some of the happiest moments in my motorcycle journeys.
Victoria, British Columbia. Thirty-five years ago, I started riding to British Columbia, Canada. We did not have GPS in those days and depended heavily paper maps. Those were the days of film cameras. Even though I brought along my Pentax 35mm SLR, I did not take a single photo. In 2019, I had a wonderful brunch at the waterfront area of Victoria Harbor. Behind me is the Empress Hotel, where my wife and I had our honeymoon. British Columbia will always hold a special place in my heart. When I rode back to Washington, to my horror I realized that some of the screws to my windshield had fallen off! Luckily, I had the tools to do repairs and prevented any major damage.
When I returned to the United States, I stopped by for gas in Edmonds, where I used to live —it is a very white, privileged coastal town along the Puget Sound. I was shocked. The price of gas had shot up to a ridiculously high level! I asked a man who was also gassing up: “What happened to the price of gas?” He replied, “Bush just bombed Saddam Hussein and Iraq.” Those were the days when we did not have online news, social media, and information and messaging on our cell phones.
When I returned to San Francisco, I would spend nearly every day for one week attending antiwar protests.
Nearly, 30 years after that first long-distance motorcycle trip, I wanted to reenact the journey. I am retired now, and I wanted to ride from Campos, a small-town right on the Mexican border, just outside of San Diego. This time around, America had elected a patently racist president who had never held or had been elected to public office and who openly fomented anti-Asian racist sentiments. However, having traveled this Pacific Coast route several times now, I did not feel fear. Instead, I felt much sadness at how a majority of Americans could vote into office a multibillionaire who never championed the cause of working-class Americans, and yet it was that very same group that believed in him, in his message and voted him into office.
The majority of the coastal towns along the Pacific Coast Highway—especially as you come closer to Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and San Diego in the south and Monterey, Santa Cruz, San Jose and San Francisco to the north—were economically booming. They served as commuting bedroom communities for workers in the major cities.
As I drove further and further away from major metropolitan centers, the communities were not as privileged. Here, the small towns struggled to stay alive. There were no Starbucks, no Trader Joe’s, no REIs, no Costcos and no gourmet or ethnic restaurants. There were only the ubiquitous fast-food restaurants (if they were lucky), and, in really faraway and isolated small towns, there were hardly any restaurants at all.
As a historian who has written about urbanization and the global economy, I felt sad that many of these small rural communities were struggling for their economic life. Many of the people were on public assistance, and, from a social worker friend who worked in these communities, I learned that drug addiction was a major problem.
“Everyone is cooking meth here,” one New York transplant shared, as he stopped just to greet me on his red Ducati, an Italian motorcycle that was clearly out of place here. We met at a small coastal town in Washington, whose name shall remain anonymous, and he was happy to see someone on a BMW and with California license plates. He moved to the town because his mom was a nurse from New York, who got a job in town and owned a huge home.
I empathized with the suffering that the people faced, caused mainly by economic uncertainty, and their feeling of disenfranchisement and distrust for the government. I understood that this frustration and anger could, at times, spill over into xenophobia, racism, and anti-Asian sentiments. And even violence. This was, after all, what I had studied and specialized in teaching and doing research as an Ethnic Studies professor in America.
It was sad to see the swing to the extreme right fueled by the Trump presidency, the Senators and Congressional Representatives who enabled him, and millions of Americans drinking the Kool-Aid of their racist and fake news rhetoric about illegal immigration, Black Lives Matter “terrorists,” and the creeping specter of “socialism.”
In sum, it was bothersome that I was riding deep into the heart of right-wing conservative America and pro-Trump supporters. It was shocking to see so many pro-Trump flags, yard signs, and car stickers. The ride through these small towns was a meditation on trying to understand why people would support Trump and his vision of America, when, as a historian, I knew he would not fulfill his promise to help working-class rural America. Yet, here they were proudly displaying pro-Trump flags. It was a sight I rarely ever saw in my middle-class communities in Stockton and Sausalito.
Brays Point, Oregon. Heading home I am especially cautious, because that is when motorcyclists often relax and put their guard down. And that is when crashes and accidents often happen. Coming home, it was a shock to return to 98°F temperatures in Northern California and the Central Valley. Thankfully, it was in the mid-60s in Sausalito. Since I did not make it to Alaska, I was planning on trying again in 2020, but all of those plans were cancelled due to the coronavirus.
Class & Culture
I came from a poor working-class family and lived in rural towns similar to the ones I rode through. Now, 30 years later after my first motorcycle journey, I find myself a member of the privileged professional class. And, on top of that, being a Filipino and Asian American.
And one who rides a BMW motorcycle.
I never use the term “biker” to describe myself, because it conjures up images of choppers, bikers wearing World War II German helmets, “Easy Rider” and people high on drugs or alcohol while cruising on their motorcycles. I ride a BMW, fully dressed in adventure riding gear: full-faced modular helmet and armored motorcycle jacket and pants, all in high-viz colors. The type of rider that I represent sends a different message from the “Easy Rider” bikers. In some sense, being a geared-up BMW motorcyclist is my defense mechanism against the xenophobia and racism.
After returning safely to Sausalito, I reflected on how I had seen a lot of America from my motorcycle. As a professor and historian, I know the socio-economic terrain of many small towns, especially those in remote areas. Still, I was shocked at the conservatism of America, especially in poorer areas. Intellectually, I understood what the Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci meant when he spoke of “cultural hegemony” and how capitalism had invaded the consciousness of the working class.
Or, to put it in plain language, the proletariats are in love with the bourgeoisie. Working-class Americans are in love with Trump and his fellow one-percenters. In general, I don’t have a problem with that: People should be able to fall in love with whomever they choose. But the problem is, there is an ideology that comes with that love affair, and it became even more problematic when President Trump and GOP politicians acted to turn those ideologies into law.
Thus, as I ride across America, in my meditations on “being there,” I am troubled by the direction and bitter hostility by which we conduct our political lives. There will always be division in America, but we have also lost our political civility and tolerance. When I started riding in the summer of 2019, there was already a mean-spiritedness in the land. But there is now a steady rise in people openly professing their support for white supremacy. People now are unabashedly proclaiming BLM protesters as terrorists, even though angry white men are the biggest terror threat to America, according to an official FBI report. People are openly hostile to the press, even though “freedom of the press” is a First Amendment Right and was placed ahead of the Second Amendment and the “right to keep and bear arms.”
But I am also deeply saddened because these feelings and beliefs are coming from a people who live in economically disadvantaged areas. In other words, they are coming from the same communities in which I grew up and spent my youth riding motorcycles with total abandon and freedom, on the hills and backroads of my hometown. We were very patriotic Americans and very conservative. With one major difference. We were mostly hawkish Kennedy democrats.
Postscript: This summer, I am riding my BMW 1200GS across America, and, as usual, I will be traveling mainly through backroads along small rural towns.
James Sobredo, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of Ethnic Studies at Sacramento State University. He is a journalist and documentary photographer who lives in Stockton and Sausalito.
More articles from James Sobredo
Recommended Motorcycle Safety Gear & Training
If you ever decide to buy and ride a motorcycle, please be safe. Motorcycling is a very dangerous activity. Motorcyclists are 27 times more likely to be involved in fatal accidents than car drivers (2017 NHTSA data) and increasingly involving more older riders. At the very minimum, always wear gear designed for motorcycle riding: Full-faced helmet, gloves and boots. A motorcycle jacket and pants with D30 armor will add important protection in a crash—the armor will absorb a large part of the impact, and the jacket and pants will save your skin, literally. I now also wear a neck brace and full back/spine protector to prevent spinal injuries. Finally, I highly recommend taking a motorcycle safety class through the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF). Although I’ve been riding for 50 years, I was so shocked at all the bad motorcycle habits I had. I continue to take motorcycle riding classes and just completed my off-road adventure class. When I ride off-road, I wear additional protection for elbows, knees, hips, thighs, and my back/spine protector also had armor for my ribs. Riding a motorcycle is a total luxury and a lot of fun, but my mantra when I ride is, “Live to ride another day.”
