An American Odyssey: A Father and Son Prepare for Sturgis: Part I

Magic Carpet: Where will we go together?

                My father planted the seeds when I was a boy.  Like every man, he relished his escapes, his releases, his outlets.  They often involved internal combustion engines, sleek chrome, and high speeds.  I remember the Beamers, the red Japanese sports cars, the convertibles.  But more than anything, I remember the Harley-Davidsons.

                We wouldn’t ride far; mom probably wouldn’t let us.  He would rev to a roar his ferocious engine, and then I would gingerly approach the bike, thrilled and nervous.  I’d slink onto the back of his seat, and hold on for dear life as my dad would gently cruise the roads criss-crossing our San Diego suburban biome.  It would last just a few minutes, but I felt the rumbling engine, the wind in my hair, my father’s confident presence. 

                It would end too quickly, but I have never forgotten my first rides on a Harley Davidson with my dad.

                Decades intervened, and the allure of motorcycles never captivated my attention.  I appreciated motorcycles indirectly, through the esoteric philosophic meanderings of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, or through the dirty sixties glamour of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider.   Mostly I was unimpressed with motorcycle culture.  Harleys were inevitably loud and obnoxious, often interrupting me mid-sentence as they whizzed by.  They were, and are, irreconcilably dangerous to the rider.  Was the risk truly worth the reward? I thought.  Finally, I didn’t have any real income, and I wasn’t about to spend what I did have on an expensive hunk of metal.  My world was the natural, accessible, soothing sea, for two decades.

               But the ocean wasn’t my father’s world.  He claimed some wave-riding exploits on the New England coast in his salad days, and he once floundered on an egg board in pounding Carlsbad summer surf, but Michael Robert O’Riordan is a landlubber.  If he’s on the water, he’s above it, sailing, boating, or fishing.  He might dip in to cool off, but he’ll be drying off and celebrating his immersion with a Diet Coke momentarily. 

               No, when my dad yearns for freedom, independence, adventure, the unknown, and a complete fusion with the present moment, he envisions himself busting down 101 on a fast, loud, beautiful Harley Davidson.

               Not that I’m an expert as a 31 year old bachelor, but if you’re going to have a relationship with someone, it’s probably a good idea to do things together, beyond eating.  Far better if these activities happen to be some of your favorite things on earth.  The overlap between my dad and I had once been multidimensional: He coached my sports teams, we shredded snow-drenched Western mountains together, and we shared the hundreds of quotidian moments that comprise lives shared together.

                Then, in 1999, thirteen years ago, I left San Diego, not to return.  The quotidian moments vanished.  Family time became scheduled and specific.  A series of unfortunate events made time together and mountain trips far too rare.  We stilled shared common joys- lunches, baseball games, movies- but we were missing the magic of something transcendental, unifying, and adventurous.  We needed a quest, an epic goal, something to call each of us out of the absorption of our individual lives and into a shared mission.  What would it be?

                In 2010 I rediscovered Harley Davidson.  I moved in with a maniacal Harley addict who schooled me on culture, maintenance, etiquette, safety, and the ride.  A series of fortunate events delivered a 2006 Custom Road King into my care, and I began to tentatively ride around my home in West Maui.  The love affair wasn’t instant.  I drove slow, skid on gravel, and laid the bike down on its crash bars.  I proceeded more cautiously.  Yet soon enough, in the quick accumulation of glorious open road moments (and the accumulation of cash in my wallet, as I saved money riding the bike), I began to become a convert.

                Which is likely what my prescient father expected and intended all along.  The bike became my primary commuting vehicle in 2011, which was my training year for the ride dad and I had been waiting twenty years to make together: A 2,500 mile migration from Southern California to the Upper Middle of the great U.S.A.  Ten days.  Father and son.  All possessions packed onto the bikes.  This was the quest my dad and I had been looking for.  On Thursday, August 10, 2012, two hours before sunset, the odyssey began: Sturgis 2012.