Midnight Riders

It all started so innocently, we were just going for a ride. At least that's what we thought when we planned, or failed to plan our weekend ride. It was Friday, sometime around noon when I asked some pals if they wanted to go for an overnight bike ride. I was sure we could just find some forest service cabin to stay in for the night. I was sure we could find one that was not too far off the paved road so we could ride our bikes to it. "Easy peasy lemon squeezy!"  Not so fast. After scrambling around on the web and looking for a cabin that was available, we settled on the Wall Creek Cabin. None of us had been there, but we had directions faxed to us by the gal that took our reservation and credit card over the phone. We knew about where the turn off was just south of Ennis and figured if we got our gear together and got on the road we would be at the cabin before sundown. Had we gone back to the basics (the basics being that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west) we would have realized,"we live in the west".

We got ready and we got riding and we GOT to the turnoff during day light. What happened after that was actually captured (real time) in the cabins log book. That right there should tell you we made it and we weren't killed.

Almost immediately after turning off the highway and on to a dirt road we familiarised ourselves not only with dust, mud and eventually snow, but also the word ambiguity. The directions seemed to fade from a physicians cursive short hand to braille on newsprint from 1925. We tooled around a wildlife labyrinth of sorts, scratching our helmets at every fork (and every forken fork) in the road. Twice, before the night was over, I would swear to seeing Rod Serling in my mirror. The second time was due to us  getting turned around and I actually just pasted him again in the same spot.(awk-ward). By that time we were riding in the dark. We all had fixed headlights, which means, when you turn your handle bars left or right, the head light shines straight ahead. That would prove to be a good thing. (in hind site only). As we worked our way out of one draw and into another, we came across a large barrel, bear trap. The trap, I figure was set by Montana Fish & Wildlife, in order to catch a nuisance bear in the area. I offered the suggestion that we should park our bikes, get inside, close the door and sleep for the night. Heck, if it was designed to keep bears in, it sure as heck ought to keep them out! No one else was buying it. So we rode on.

   

  By now it was midnight. As we stopped for me to unwind the barbed wire from around my front wheel, my pal,JD, managed to get a signal on his cell. In order to keep the signal, he had to hold the phone above his head and talk on the speaker. He managed to get a hold of his wife and she got on their computer and utilized satellite google to figure out roughly where we were and actually gave us directions that eventually walked us right in. It was almost like calling in an air strike if only one of us had uttered the words, "look for the smoke".

We settled for a "goodnight honey and I love you.  Bloody tired, sore, hungry and thirsty we pulled up to the cabin around 1a.m.. I think we stayed up long enough to eat quickly, have a drink and write in the log book. After that? you guessed it, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

    When morning broke, we packed up and headed our for the rest of our journey. On the way down the mountain.\, we stopped and looked back. I asked the other two guys if they would ever consider riding their bikes up those gravelly, muddy, rocky roads, with no guard rails and sheer drop offs, in the day light? No, was common consensus. I remember more than once on the way up, in the dark, doing some real circus stuff in order to just stay on the road. Yikes!

     We motored on; me on my Cop Cruiser, JD on his Harley softail and P.Ditty on his Crotch Rocket. I know what you're thinking, "what were they thinking?" Not one of those bikes was made for even semi-off road.

     If you ever get a hankering for a treasure hunt of sorts, head up to the Wall Creek Cabin an look for our entry into that journal from that night. It was written with raw emotion and left no stone unturned. It's all about the journey and only sometimes about the destination.