2018

“Not all who wander are lost,” says the Tolkien poem, the same clarification I offer Brenna when I admit I’m unsure which is the right road. Taking the direct route is overrated.

There always has to be one, a day that keeps the “adventure” in our travels. Fifty degrees and rain is all we get from morning until early evening. That and an unplanned dead-end makes leaving our campsite and reaching the next an exercise in endurance.

We had to come farther down the motorway than planned to find an available campsite, putting us much closer to the night three lake than planned. It still ends up being a ride we’re glad to be done with when finally we pull into the empty campground.

We are on plan, my brothers and I. We camp aside the scenic Selway then finish Magruder Corridor in Montana before enduring some highway miles and turning back to Idaho to ride the Lolo Motorway. The hoped-for campsite doesn’t materialize, however, and just like Joseph and Mary, we have to go searching for a place to lay our heads.

It is a special prime number year, eleven, for the annual Abbott Brother Ride. We finally make good on three years of intention to ride the historic Magruder Road Corridor and are also able to return to the regular five days of riding instead of just four. Let the good times roll.

The time has arrived: our first camping trip together off the motorcycle. Brenna and I ride together from Boise on back roads to Prairie then up and over Trinity Mountain.

My first trail ride on a new motorcycle along Lava Mountain ridge goes about as well as expected. I should be healed in time for the annual ride with my brothers.

Another Memorial Weekend, another desert camping trip with Brenna, this time featuring a venomous antagonist and a Ninja Warrior competition.

The neighbor’s sky scraping poplar tree released its panoply of reproductive fuzzy and crunchy things, cueing the annual emergency pond scooping followed by palliative picture making.