It all started one evening on the Chesapeake Bay, sitting on the sailboat my brother-in-law calls home,  enjoying an IPA from the nearby St. George's Brewing Co. We may have been enjoying several crafty brews although he claims his Adkins diet only has room for Micholob Ultra.

I had recently returned from a 10-week excursion on a KLR 650 "enduro" motorcycle through Mexico's fabulous Copper Canyon and Guatemala's Peten jungle, where I celebrated my birthday and the spring equinox with indigenous Mayans at the remote observatory ruins of Uaxactun. Jim had just retired from a career building aircraft carriers at the Newport News Shipbuilding Co.

This was not an easy job and one can understand that a few beers on the back of a sailboat were in order. Our conversation eventually drifted to the notion of his buying a motorcycle himself. This could serve as a relaxing diversion in a life that already included a wife, two dogs, a house four hours from where he worked, a grandchild, a 36-foot sailboat, yacht club responsibilities, and a fly-yellow Austin Healey "Bug-Eye" Sprite which he purchased from me after a very similar conversation,  under somewhat the same 
circumstances, three years earlier. We concluded that were he to sell the sports car, a temporal niche would indeed be created in his life as a retired Southern gentleman. This little hollow could easily accommodate a motorcycle. It would also keep him alert, enhance his balance, and further expose him to the elements sailors so dearly treasure.  Let's have another IPA.

Sometime before turning in, the topic of cross-country travel on two wheels emerged quite innocently and I apparently agreed that it would be a capital idea for the two of us to visit his brother in Colorado next summer and even go out to the Pacific and have a glass of wine with his cousin in Mendocino. The gravity of this "commitment" was brought to my attention by my wife, Carol, the following morning. Her brother, Jim, was a man of few words, acted on his decisions, and did not indulge in idle speculation. Whether I remembered the conversation or not, I was likely to be riding west by June.

Four weeks later, a phone call from Virginia informed me the Sprite had been sold and a dozen two-wheeled replacements had already been researched on Craigslist. Carol suggested I mount a snow tire on one of my motorcycles: her brother would never be able to wait until next summer. Sure enough, the next phone call from Jim revealed he was driving to Charlottesville the next day to look at a classic "airhead" BMW R100RT very similar to a bike I had ridden to Nova Scotia 15 years earlier. I suggested he carefully examine the owner's garage for signs of moto-enthusiasm, tools or other indicators of mechanical aptitude, factory shop manuals on hand, maintenance receipts neatly filed, yard tidy and lawn mower clean. The next call from Jim reported the seller owned a Jaguar and a Ducati, did all of his own work, and was willing to service the bike before the sale. Moreover, the spray cans, oil bottles, and miscellaneous shop supplies were arranged on metal shelves in his garage, and all of the labels were facing the same way. Oh, boy.

By the first of August, Jim had taken the Motorcycle Safety Foundation riders' course, gotten his license, bought a helmet, riding gear, camping supplies, and memberships in the Airheads Beemer Club and the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America. He was riding 100 miles a day "to get in shape," and lurking on various motorcycle internet forums. Carol suggested I forget about "next summer"-- Jimmy would be here any day.