Storm

Suzanne and I had met at work seven years earlier. I had recently returned from a trip through Eastern Europe and was planning another. I got work in a factory building wooden shipping crates around the heavy equipment manufactured there. Each morning I went into the front office to collect the appropriate forms for the machines shipping that day. Suzanne was working as a receptionist, and each morning I passed her desk. Her smile caught my attention.

She always smiled. Not just at me but at everyone. It was her nature. For months we only exchanged greetings, and then she learned that I was saving my money to go away again. We arranged to meet in the parking lot for lunch one day and sat on the tailgate of my truck as we ate. She had never traveled but had studied French during high school in preparation for the day she would. She was putting herself through school, attending the local junior college at night before transferring to a university. We promised to meet again, but I left shortly thereafter on my trip.

I was gone six months and was arranging to take a job driving new Mercedes transport trucks from Germany to the Ivory Coast via the Sahara when I received news that my father had cancer. My mother asked that I come home, and after his operation I resumed my job crating machines while he healed.

I discovered Suzanne had been promoted to the copy room where she assembled parts manuals and sales catalogs. My job also required that I make copies of shipping labels for each machine that left the factory. Suzanne usually had a big copy job running, so I often had to wait a few minutes to use the machine. We’d fill those minutes with talk. One morning I realized I was anticipating our daily visits, and not long after, Suzanne reminded me that I’d promised to meet with her again.

Our dating began tentatively. I’d been in relationships that had ended because of my travels, and I warned Suzanne that I’d be leaving again. I explained that I had always traveled alone, and I had acquired a routine of visiting odd places and finding myself in dangerous situations. I explained that I couldn’t compromise my spontaneity—the joy I felt to move when and how I chose. It was something I had to do—a compulsion for which I sacrificed bank accounts, jobs, and relationships. I warned her that I craved the encounters that unfolded as I moved through the world alone.

Ten months later I moved out of my small, one-bedroom apartment and into a smaller one-bedroom cottage with Suzanne. It was set at the back of a narrow lot, behind a house, and beneath a towering cork tree that served as a second roof. The cottage was very old. An elderly neighbor told me he remembered it was once a chicken coop. It was crooked and riddled with termites. The whitewashed shingles on the exterior walls were peeling, but it was cheap, and the owner had repaired the place enough to make it cozy for Suzanne and me. Its size required an intimacy that suited our love. There was just enough room for our books and maps.

As we passed through our first year of living together, I considered us very lucky. We suited each other in so many ways. Suzanne even embraced the austerity that was required to travel on paychecks like ours. We scrimped and saved all that first year, and soon we were able to begin planning a trip together.

Our first trip was to Europe. We gambled on the weather and planned it for the late fall to take advantage of cheap airfares. A false winter preceded our arrival, but it was only a bluff. Mild, clear days followed us through Czechoslovakia, where we witnessed the first demonstrations that would result in the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Suzanne liked how I traveled without a guidebook, going to each place without opinion. Our immersion into the life of each village, town, and city to find even the most basic things erased any shyness she may have had. We met Austrian bakers and Italian postmen, French butchers and German road crews, who told us about trails, lakes, beaches, places to stay, and events we would never have discovered within the cover of a book.

We ended our trip in the Bavarian Alps, where it began to snow. The cold crept down from the mountain peaks and froze the little stream by our room. During our time there we discovered that our plans for the future had merged, and everywhere we looked we saw each other. I discovered that the richness of the life Suzanne and I had together was portable and extended as far into the world as we wanted to take it. By the time we left Europe, we knew we would spend the rest of our lives together.

On the plane home, Suzanne and I began planning our next trip. After work we devoted our evenings to reading about the places we wanted to visit. Our list grew impossibly long as one year passed and then another. We pinned a map of the world to our bedroom wall and marked the places we wanted to see. At night we’d lay together and try to connect one place to another and make a route. I found a company that specialized in discounted round-the-world airfares. We counted our money and measured it against the great distances on the map. We edited our list, sold possessions, and measured again.

Finally, we were ready. We gave notice on our place and bought a wad of airplane tickets to Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, and Greece. It felt as though we were holding a million dollars in our hands.

We were gone the better part of a year. Rather than satisfying our curiosity, we realized we’d only scratched the surface. Contrary to the popular saying, the world wasn’t getting any smaller. It was as big as ever. Our list of places to visit was twice as long as when we’d left. We found a place to live, and new jobs. Our world map went back up on our bedroom wall and we began planning again.

I was too excited to sleep that first night in Bremen, and when I finally did sleep, I dreamed of getting on the bike and riding badly. In my dream the bike was out of balance, as if the engine turned an eccentric cam that made the frame twist wildly out of control. Suzanne was screaming in my ear as I tried to make the bike right itself and run smoothly. And after my dreams had exhausted me, I lay awake on the bed staring into the darkness of the room trying to figure out what could have gone wrong.

I could hear the sound of vehicles thumping over the cobbled street outside our hotel room. Suzanne slept soundly beside me, her breath regular and warm against my shoulder. Her calm soothed me, and I began to make a mental list of all we had to do before getting on the road. We had to find the office of the company that had handled the shipping of the motorcycle from California, clear customs, and carefully check the bike over after having spent twenty-eight days at sea. We’d have to get it started, and then, if anything was wrong, find a shop and buy parts.

I was thankful for our experience in the logistics of getting a trip under way, and in our thoroughness. I recounted the surprises and challenges of each trip and how we’d made it through them all, despite engine troubles, floods, political turmoil, and illness. I imagined everything that could happen on this trip and reasoned with myself why I shouldn’t worry: crashing—we were careful; bad weather—it was summer and we had the right gear; mechanical troubles—I’d been over the bike and learned how to fix all but catastrophic problems. Most importantly, we had each other.

The hours passed and the city of Bremen gradually moved toward another day. Our room passed through steadily lighter shades of gray until I heard the sounds of morning traffic in the street below and I could lay there no more. Suzanne stirred as I turned to look at the clock beside the bed. It read five-thirty. I got up and walked to the window, pulled back the light gauze curtain, and opened it. A rush of cold air spilled into the room carrying the sounds of engines and brakes, the rush of a commuter train as it left the station, a blaring horn. The day had begun and I felt as if we were running late.

I leafed through a phone book and wrote down addresses and numbers for motorcycle shops on a piece of hotel stationery. I found a bus schedule and plotted our route to the shipping company. I started to pack our gear. Twenty minutes passed and I turned on the radio beside the bed. The even voice of a woman filled the room as she read the news in German, followed by a pause, and then the first happy notes of a polka.

I wanted her to hurry, to feel the same urgency I did to dress, gather our things, find the bike, and get on the road. We had planned to ride through the flat, industrial north of Germany that first day, to ride the two hundred miles to Denmark. Over the border our map revealed many inlets and coves along the Baltic coast. We knew we’d find a beach there, and on it we’d make our first camp. I wanted us to have plenty of time to select one with fine sand, enough shade to protect us from the afternoon sun, where we could swim if we liked, and make a fire to cook our dinner on and fall asleep as we searched the sky for falling stars.

Two buses and a long walk brought us to the office of the shipping company. As we walked toward the entrance we looked for our motorcycle along the side of the building, but there were only cars and transport trucks. A woman greeted us from behind an immaculate desk. She placed a call and then announced that “Eddie” would be with us in a moment to settle our account. She offered us coffee or tea and showed us into a conference room.

Eddie entered the room, shook our hands, and sat down with a stack of papers he quickly sorted into three piles. He was short and slight with close-cropped blond hair. Eddie assured us the bike was fine. He said it was in the company’s warehouse a few kilometers away and that he’d drive us there when we were finished with the paperwork.

After looking at our passports, he smiled with a twitch and said he’d been to California twice. “To El-Ay,” he said, and pronounced the name as though he knew something intimate about the place. Eddie had thin, pale fingers with inflamed tips. A layer of skin was peeled from around the nail of each, leaving a seared shade of red. As he consulted each document he absently picked at the skin and peeled it off. I wanted to reach across the table with my own hand, lay it on top of his, and tell him to stop. He asked for all our papers, our insurance documents, registration, passports, driver’s license, and then disappeared.

While Eddie was gone, Suzanne and I looked around the room. Along one wall was a large window. It looked onto a parking lot and a tall, brick factory building. The rest of the window framed a perfect blue sky. The sun streamed through at an angle. I took Suzanne’s hand and we stepped into its warmth.

A single cloud floated around the edge of the factory building and drifted into the open sky. It was slate blue and shaped like a cauliflower, its lobes separated by deep, purple valleys. Around it was an armada of sculpted white clouds as fine as those in a German romantic landscape painting.

The door opened and Eddie resumed his place at the table. He picked up a telephone and called customs. “A friend,” he assured us with a wink. Because it was Eddie, the customs officer listened to his description of us, asked a few questions that Eddie answered after flipping through our documents. Eddie laughed, gave us a thumbs up, and hung up the phone. The customs official had waived our inspection.

The bike was wedged between crates of machinery and palettes stacked with hundred-pound bags of fertilizer and sunflower seeds. A long screw auger used for moving grain blocked the way out and Eddie had one of the workers move it with a lift truck. The bike was covered with a layer of fine dust that made it look old. My first thought was to clean it off as I would clean the dust off a friend. I went over to it and was thankful that it didn’t appear to have been dropped or scratched or broken in any way. When the auger was moved I took the handlebars in my hands and pushed. The wheels turned easily, and I maneuvered the bike between several pieces of machinery and an antique Cadillac sedan. Then I sat on the seat and rolled down a ramp into the loading yard.

Suzanne and I checked the bike’s oil levels, the brakes, and the air pressure in the tires. We connected the battery. I turned the key but the lights on the instrument cluster were dead. I wondered if we had let Eddie leave too quickly. Our only way into town for parts now would be an expensive taxi ride. I felt in my pocket for the list of motorcycle shops and then began a methodical check of all the wiring. I found a wiring harness that was loose. I removed it, cleaned the terminals, and put it back together. Before turning the key, I remembered a Russian custom where travelers sit a moment before departing on a long journey. I threw my leg over the bike and sat down. I closed my eyes and gave a silent prayer for the engine to start. I felt for the key and turned it. I heard a familiar click as electricity pulsed through the bike and brought it to life. I opened my eyes and the instrument lights were on.

I touched the starter button with my thumb. The engine turned over but didn’t start. I waited a moment for the fuel to work its way toward the spark plugs. I touched the starter again. The engine caught, then revved.

We attached the two side bags to the bike. I strapped the tank bag to the top of the gas tank. I slid our map of northern Germany and Denmark into the clear plastic envelope that attached to the top of it and pushed our compass into one corner. We arranged our stove, fuel bottles, pots and pans, rope, plates and bowls, lantern, spare parts, and extra tools in a trunk box behind the seat. Then we tied the tent across the back and wound our lock around the fuel tank.

I rode up and down the street alone several times, testing the brakes, the steering, and the balance of our load. Other than an annoying flat spot on the front tire from being tied down on the ship, everything seemed fine. I felt so good riding the bike again. I had missed it for the past month. As I rode up and down that street the familiarity of the handlebars and seat, of the engine’s vibration, of the bike’s smell and weight, made me feel something close to kinship. I’m not a fool when it comes to machines. I did-n’t give the bike human traits like trust and friendship. I knew that a machine like ours would just as surely carry us around a sweeping bend as it would carry us straight into an oncoming car. But as I leaned into each turn and thought of all that was before us, the bike meant everything. It was our vehicle to a new world.

I rode over to where Suzanne waited for me on the side of the empty road. I looked into her eyes, took her hand in mine, and I cleared a place in my mind for all the things we’d see, for the people we’d meet, for every glorious morning, day, and evening in the months ahead.