Well, I have failed to get any movement made, yet I do have some major updated on this year’s trip. The entire plan has been torn asunder. No, I didn’t crash or get arrested by Canadian Mounties — I just had a new development that will send me in a totally new direction.
Canada is still the destination, but now it’s Vancouver Island, on the extreme west coast, instead of Newfoundland Island, on the extreme east coast. There is a special event happening in August, which originally had only been announced as “sometime this fall” until recently. It involves an extremely rare and unique aircraft making its final flight.
Hawaii Mars when it was in service, getting engine maintenance while tethered to its mooring in Sproat Lake.
The Martin Mars was originally built in WW2 as a massive flying boat to ferry troops and cargo long distances. Practically every time they flew they would set new records for weight or distance or time from one destination to the next. They mostly flew from the US west coast to Hawaii or the Philippines, doing in a few days what a steamship took weeks to do.
After the war they were extremely expensive to operate and the need to move so much stuff so fast was no longer there. Four of these planes were converted into water bombers, being able to land on water and refill their massive holds, then get back into the air. One was lost in a crash in the 1960’s and one was destroyed by a storm, but “Phillipine Mars” and “Hawaii Mars” continued battling forest fires until very recently (Hawaii Mars was last flown in 2015).
Sadly the cost of operating them became too much for governments to afford, and both planes have sat on special wheeled dollies for years. Philippine Mars will eventually go to a home at the Pima Air Museum in Tuscon: about as far are you can get from the lakes or oceans it used to work in. However, Hawaii Mars is going a short distance to a museum on Vancouver Island, right next to the water. And that’s where the story really starts for me.
The Hawaii Mars sitting on land, being prepared for its final flights. Philippine Mars can be seen in the background, repainted from it’s bright water-bomber colors to its wartime markings.
It was decided the easiest way to deliver the plane was to put it back into flying condition and make the short hop. But with all the work in retraining the crew and refurbishing the plane, why not take a couple hours to do flybys of the many communities it served for decades? If you know me, you know I’m a big aviation enthusiast, and there’s no way I would miss an event of this magnitude. The last ever flight of the largest seaplane to ever serve, making a final flight before retiring forever? Oh yeah. Sign me up.
I don’t have the thousands of dollars you need to get a seat on the plane for one of it’s several short test flights, which will happen the week leading up to the flight. I don’t have the even higher price tag to hold the controls while they do high speed taxi tests along the lake. I do have enough money for a campsite and to park my butt on the shoreline with the thousands of other people who are likely attend.
In The Meantime
So now I have about seven weeks to make an eight-day trip; eight days if I take my time. It’s also back across the “flyover states,” though this time I’ll run along the very north edge: up to Michigan, across Minnesota, North Dakota, and to the Glacier NP in Montana.
That will hopefully give me a place to really absorb some nature and very unique terrain, and avoid a lot of summer heat while doing some hiking and finding a few waterfalls. It might even replace my plans to view icebergs in Newfoundland, but there won’t be any puffins to check out.
After that I’ll have the narrow strip of Idaho and into Washington, where there’s plenty more mountains, small towns, old mines and ghost towns, logging towns, and pioneer history. I’ve never made it to Washington so I’ll do some zig-zagging before running to the coast and hopping a ferry over to Canada.Then I’ll have two weeks to explore there, see if I can peek a look at the test flights happening for Philippine Mars, check out some old fishing villages and shipwrecks, A LOT of coastline, then catch Mars’s final flight.
It just doesn’t make sense to go up to northeastern Canada knowing I won’t likely see 15% of what I originally planned. I already knew 50% would be a struggle in the time allotted, but it isn’t the type of trip to hurry. I will return. The real concern is a common one I have, which is intrinsic motivation and just finding energy to function.
Not the First Time
I have dealt with depression most of my life. It comes and goes and doesn’t seem linked to anything specific. Things are going fine and I just lose interest in everything, stop feeling anything aside from a lack of any feeling, and my energy level drops to where I don’t want to do anything except sleep.
Most my adult life I’ve still had to fake it, mustering up what’s needed to hold down a job, complete assignments in college, keep promises to friends, and function as a bass player in bands or as an officer in the sidecar racing club I competed in. Nowadays there is little to “make” me do anything, so I rely on intrinsic motivation.
Doing it because you choose to do it — not because you are avoiding the consequences of not doing it. Doing it for the doing, not the reward after the doing. That’s intrinsic motivation. And when I have it I’m unstoppable. When it disappears, it’s like a sailing ship in a dead calm. Trying to “look on the bright side” or “appreciate the little things” is similar to playing with the rudder or trimming the sails…the boat still bobs uselessly in the sea.
Like a dead sea, eventually you get wind, seemingly out of nowhere. I just suddenly decide, “to hell with it, I may as well get some things done and be depressed than do nothing and be depressed.” Sometimes an external thing really does come in and get me interested again; that’s what happened when I started planning my trip to Canada.
I have no idea what is going to get me moving this time, but it can’t last forever. The problem I have is — if I continue sleeping too much and not doing anything — my energy level gets lower and lower, creating a cycle. In order to fight against that I’ve been out and done a few things: a couple rides, visited a motorcycle museum, went and saw a movie, went out for a beer with local motorcyclists.
I did manage to get out and see some country, crossed the Kentucky River on a ferry, and visited some historic sites.
In short, I’m trying to get the motor started. Generally nothing I do matters though, but I do feel doing a little bit might cause things to happen slightly faster than just doing nothing. It’s a bit tough to know since it’s all inside my head. Sometimes the best way to get passed something is to surrender to it, much like a surfer who is being tossed by a wave needs to understand the motion before frantically swimming and not know what direction they are going.
Other times you need to grab a problem by the neck and knock it’s teeth in. When you’re dealing with your own thoughts it isn’t readily apparent, since thinking about your thinking is a great way to have a mental breakdown. You can’t think your way out of certain things — they have to be intuited. Feeling your way through feelings, thinking your way through thoughts? Sounds exhausting.
Well, I suppose it is. And I am exhausted. Eventually though I’m going to get back in the saddle (literally) and aim my headlight north, then west, for another big push across the continent. In the meantime I may not have much to update everyone on; I am not working on any new articles or the book right now either.
I just promise myself constantly that I won’t take a page from social media and only show the good times. For every fantastic picture of a sunset there are mosquito bites. For every awesome sunrise there is being woken up by a bear stalking my campsite or a night shivering in the cold. And for the many joys of being on the road and being the master of my destiny, there are also days of simply having no desire to hold the metaphorical rudder and guide my ship through the seas of life.
Once I find some mojo or whatever it is, I’ll have a pretty epic trip to share.
Keep charging those windmills.
Johnny Killmore 
I was watching the Netflix series on the Tour de France while making dinner yesterday. One of the recurring topics of drama is the mental state of the star riders. As hardened professional athletes as any professional seem from the outside, they all are universally delicate when it comes down to them alone, on their own. They all are their own worst enemy when a positive attitude must be plucked from a bad result or mindset or outside drama.
As we have seen with MotoGP riders, NFL, NBA and the rest of the professional sports world, whether a big emotional setback or small athletic failure in competition or personal life can set off a downward spiral in performance. The life coach on the team or PA is there to throw out the safety net. Why do we do on our own?
I have very little motivation to ride my motorcycle anymore. Watching racing doesn’t light a fire or get the juices flowing like it did in my youth. To a small degree I get a little kick from watching the few world travelers on YouTube I follow, though even their content is becoming only a momentary inspiration but ineffective in the longer term. I grab a map and begin to plan, then I reach that point where I’m routing between avoiding heat and tourists crowds. My plans fizzle out.
With the bike in non-running condition, dark thoughts have rolled in.
I’ve countered this with riding my bicycle because, it’s too hot to ride a motorcycle comfortably much more than a few miles from the house.
The bicycle gets the call. I’ve been off it for most of the year thanks to a lot of stuff. Not the least of which was my dither with selling the motorcycle and the preparations for that, then the pending sale falling through and the bike deciding not to start and the resulting disassembly and semi-disarray of where it sits now. The bicycle requires me to be alone with myself for about two hours at a time. I’ve slowed to a pace and state of fitness that is not fun for me for a group ride, so I’m stuck with riding on my own.
I could and have spiraled in the past giving in to giving up on regaining any of the old feeling that comes with riding well.
In there is the nugget of a plan. That plan slowly reveals itself to me as I ride alone along the ocean with not much to do other than think.
My plan is to ride a short route of about 25 miles as many days as I can manage fro two weeks, then, if I feel up to it, add more distance.
Being retired and only having the goal of regaining and maintaining a level of fitness that allows me to walk and enjoy life, chase Oggy a bit now and a again with minimal soreness and of course relive the faded semi-glory days of my cycling with just a whiff of the feeling in my legs and body of that long lost peloton.
I figured out the needed short rides on a repetitive and increasingly boring route is my penance for not riding for so long. My reward for sticking to the plan will be the longer and longer rides and increased fitness.
This cycling revelation has reignited my cycling fire. Watching the Tour de France may be tangentially at fault. Reigniting the old motorcycle travel fire that once sustained me through hours of commuter traffic, is a tougher task. I am spending a good amount of my cycling time thinking time, considering the solution to that problem.
So far I’ve identified a core memory that has always been a key motivation for me to travel by motorcycle. It is only partially captured in a photo I shot back when I was new to riding and shooting my old SLR. It is not of the motorcycle or any vista, but a closeup of a wild flower along the Peak to Peak highway west of Boulder, Colorado. That phot recalls the chill on the early summer day, the firm secure feel of my Norton on the roads. How stiff my ride-chilled fingers struggled to focus, set the f-stop and shoot that photo. It was only one day out before returning to work the swing shift, but it is a memory I’ve held for about fifty years this summer.
I want to travel by motorcycle so I’m closer to that crisp air and those roadside flowers. I want to take the time to stop and enjoy the flowers, views and yes, even warm my hands a bit.
I’m getting there. I’m not there yet, but, I’m working on a plan. Here’s hoping you can find your meadow, memory, motivation and plan.
Cheers man,
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Yeah thanks. I certainly wish there were easy answers. When this type of thing hits and stays more than a day or two, it starts to compound itself. The lack of energy means not eating right or getting outside, which lowers energy even more, in a spiral. The only way out I’ve found is to “fake it,” and just go do things even though they provide no joy or reward.
Of course, what that looks like in reality is just doing house chores and maybe walking aimlessly in a park or wandering around on the motorcycle. That can just as easily reinforce the futility of existence though, but at least you get clean laundry out of it.
A big conundrum of my personality is the only things that make me “feel” are very intense things like racing or working on highly involved projects. That takes a lot of energy and for an extended period of time. One day, perhaps 10yrs ago, I just had the thought of “so what?”
So what to any of the accomplishments? So what to any of it? I delve into the concepts of meaning and purpose often in my own writings (the stuff I don’t publish). From that, I’m aware that meaning is entirely created by us. There is no meaning out there; only the meaning we create and apply. Knowing that, the logical answer is to just pick anything and make it mean something, but that doesn’t make much sense when trying to apply it.
Purpose is similar, where we create meaning over time, toward a specific thing, and call that our purpose. It is also created from within and applied to things externally. While travel, learning, and the search for that which is novel is certainly interesting for a time, it doesn’t somehow beget meaning or purpose. Just because a ship is under sail and moving doesn’t mean it has a course to set… a bearing… a purpose.
So, even when I muster up some wind in my metaphorical sails, I’m still adrift: it’s just different than bobbing up and down with slack sails when viewed externally. But all that to say very little; understanding the problem does not create a solution.
Eventually I will pack all this stuff back up and be on the road, but I’ll mentally be in the same spot. But at least “out there” I have a chance to randomly hit on a conversation with a stranger or have some epiphany while reading some roadside historical marker. Sitting here staring at the ceiling is far less likely to nudge anything loose.
I think the attendant reality for me is this is just how my brain is going to be, and I can expect this cycle to continue. What’s most bothersome is the down periods seem to be more frequent and last longer, while inspiration (or even distraction) seem to be less common over time.
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