Movie Review: One Crazy Ride

I just got home from watching One Crazy Ride, a movie made by Gaurav Jani, an Indian documentary filmmaker who makes motorcycling adventure movies. I was first introduced to his work by Vagabiker, who lent me Riding Solo to the Top of the World when we first met and I was recuperating from my crash in the Yukon. If his intention was to hasten my recovery by showing me motorcycling movies that made me chomp at the bit to get out and ride again, it worked like a charm.

Riding Solo was remarkable in so many ways. Filmmaking is a profession that is almost unheard of in India for the average person, in spite of the fact that it hosts the biggest film industry in the world. Rarer still is the use of motorcycles for touring as opposed to commuting in busy cities. The idea of combining the two on a barebones budget makes this man and his work truly unique. The movie followed his solo ride from Bombay to Ladakh in northern India on excruciatingly difficult roads unveiling region that most of the world barely knew exist. For someone like me – having led a fairly insular life in Bombay – and rarely having the opportunity to travel within India, it was an eye-opener and a delightful insight into the unparalleled beauty of this country.

In One Crazy Ride, Gaurav Jani takes on a similar challenge, this time along with four friends, all part of a group called 60kph. The aim of this intrepid group of adventurers is to navigate through the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, making their way to the easternmost point without going over paved roads that went through Assam, the state bordering it on the south. Arunachal Pradesh is a state that even most Indians aren’t very familiar with, it being mostly skimmed over in geography books when we were little.  This is demonstrated eloquently as they rode through tiny villages and tribal settlements and encounter local people who had no idea what lay even a few miles outside their village.Â

Most of the route is by necessity off-road on roads washed out by mudslides, some littered with rocks and boulders, some slick and muddy from the rains, and occasional river crossings. On the way they encounter villages and  tribespeople living traditional lives that haven’t changed in hundreds of years. What makes their achievement truly commendable is the fact that they all rode heavily loaded Royal Enfields, bikes and equipment that make the average off-road bike on roads in the western world look like rocket science. It lays to waste the belief in most people’s minds that they need the latest, most expensive bikes in order to go adventure riding – a marketing term if ever there was one, because when was riding a motorcycle ever not an adventure?

The movie is replete with unforgettable sights and gasp-inducing moments. One that stands out is of the group standing at the top of a mountain range and looking down at clouds floating beneath them like ocean waves. One of the stellar scenes of the movie showed Gaurav walking along a long, narrow, rickety bridge high over a river with flimsy woven rails flanking each side. This brief reconnoiter is followed by him riding his motorcycle slowly and excruciatingly over the bridge. The stress and strain of the five long minutes it took him to cross the bridge was so palpable that when he was done, there was a unanimous burst of applause in the audience.

One pleasant surprise that was unveiled during the beginning of the movie was that one of the riders, Nicky, was a woman, something that the movie didn’t make a big deal out of, in itself making it unique. Women riders are so rarely featured or represented in a positive way in the average motorcycling movie that her presence is one to make every woman in the audience who has ever donned a helmet silently cheer. (When quizzed on this by someone in the audience, the director responded that rural India has such an enduring culture of women doing the majority of the work that seeing a woman amongst the group passed without comment, as compared to reactions in more urban, westernized areas.)

To summarize, One Crazy Ride serves up everything that a truly good movie of the adventure motorcycling genre has to offer – good riding, challenging roads, quiet, cheerful camaraderie between the riders, tension and uncertainty brought on by mechanical breakdowns, interactions with people in lost,  remote villages and unique insights into their lives and culture. Almost every motorcycle rider who has gone off the beaten track will feel a kinship with our heroes along with many moments of – “I know exactly what they mean!”

One Crazy Ride: http://dirttrackproductions.com/ocr.html
Dirt Track Productions: http://dirttrackproductions.com/ocr.html
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkb4558ym5w

Riding to Poulsbo…

This past weekend was lovely and quite unexpectedly so. I was planning on going up to Victoria, but changed my plans when I realized that I was riding up to Whistler the next weekend. I decided instead to go with Vagabiker to the “Fall Down” party in Poulsbo held every year by the sales manager of Southsound BMW. Since this meant going over to the Kitsap Peninsula, I figured I might as well make a day of it and bring the XT to go off-road.

Late Friday evening out meant waking up late Saturday morning and we still needed to get packed and ready for camping that night. We also tried to make a GPS route of the route we wanted to take between Lake Cushman and Quilcene. This meant getting a late start on our ride. One of the ferries to Bremerton wasn’t working so we were forced to take the ferry to Bainbridge Island and ride south towards Bremerton. For some reason this took forever. It was raining a lot at the start of the trip and I was a little wary about being rained on and miserable for the rest of the day. Once we got past Belfair though, the rain let up. The road between Belfair and Union was twisty and brilliant. We reached the start of the trail almost at 4PM. I guess we should have checked road conditions because quite a few roads dead ended and led to nowhere and we were unable to find a path that led north. Bummer!

It was brilliant getting to practice riding offroad though. After the initial few roads and hiccups, I even started standing on the footpegs and riding quite comfortably that way. My biggest fear was not being able to react or brake in time, but I think that that will come with practice.

After about an hour of trying to find the route and failing, we got back on 101 and decided to just follow it up north along the Hood Canal and then turn east at the tip across the Hood Canal Bridge to Poulsbo. It had started to get dark by then and the fog made everything look spooky and mysterious. I found myself wondering how it was that I was having way more fun throwing around my 250cc dirt bike around the corners compared to my 650cc sportsbike. :)

We reached Poulsbo at around 8PM and decided to stop at a grocery store to pick something up for the party. We had intended to just go eat dinner at the party, but by this time we were so tired and hungry that we made our way to the downtown area (which was very charming!) and went to a European restaurant that he had been to before. Tizzley’s was great if a bit expensive. He got Jaegershnitzel and I got Swedish meatballs, both of which were very good. Mmm… good food at the end of a good ride, and the night was just beginning.

By the time we got to the party, it was already underway. We set up camp in the dark and headed over to the main area. There were many new faces and a few old friends whom I was happy to see. Whiskey and beer seemed to be the order of the night, but the beer was all gone and we didn’t want to drink whiskey all night, so we ended up drinking the wine we had brought. :P After many good conversations and cuddling by the fire, the night ended with a block of an old Volkswagen engine case made of magnesium getting ignited in the fire. Amid shouts of – “Don’t look at it! Don’t breathe the fumes!”, we headed away from the fire and retired to the tent for a very sound night’s sleep.

The next morning I had a change to actually see where we were. Camping in a field full of motorcyclists is quite something and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it. We lingered over breakfast and coffee and more conversation before saying our goodbyes.

It was a brilliant day out and we decided to ride north to Port Townsend and catch the ferry to Langley and then to Mukilteo before heading back to Seattle. As it turns out, we weren’t able to do quite this because we didn’t plan enough with the ferry schedules, and ended up riding back to the Bainbridge Island ferry, but we did get some good riding in. And hanging around Port Townsend is always lovely. We rambled around Fort Warden a little bit, took a look at some of the old war bunkers and checked out the lighthouse before heading to the downtown area for a good meal at an underground Victorian cafe (antipasto salad, black bean soup and roast beef sandwiches).

The day ended with taking the ferry back to Seattle and home. I was way more tired than I had expected, but that’s the sign of a good weekend, isn’t it? :)

 

Home again…

I am finally home in Seattle after having ridden from Sandpoint, ID – about 350 something miles in a day.

I had originally intended to take the scenic route home by getting on Highway 20 and going west all the way to Rockport before turning south. However, the delay of the previous day waiting at Sandpoint meant that this would be a 500+ mile route and I wouldn’t be able to do it in one day. This would mean staying somewhere in the Cascades for a night and returning home on Monday morning. Now that I was so close to home, this didn’t seem like such an appealing proposition. Jake hadn’t made it to Sandpoint either in spite of his best efforts because of the bad weather and long distance that he had had to cover. The more I thought about it and mapped the distances via various routes, I realized that taking Hwy 2 home would be the shortest possible route and would place me in Seattle on Sunday evening while it was still light out and I would be able to spend the evening with my boyfriend. Somehow it felt that the moment I entered Washington the adventure was over. I have ridden through most of my home state and I didn’t have any desire to dawdle and do any side trips.

Highway 2 it was. I headed down south from Sandpoint onto Hwy 2 and then took a couple of detours via Deer Park and Rearden to avoid going through Spokane. The side roads were nice. They were mostly remote farmlands and forests and I even went through one area with little families of birds – guinea fowls perhaps? – walking on the side of the road.

Then it was back through Hwy 2 again for the next 300 miles. I went through about 200 miles of desert – big sky country again! It started off being pretty with golden yellow landscapes vanishing into the distance. This soon gave way to rough, hostile country with gusts of wind strong enough to create little dust storms. I started having a rough time of it and spend nearly the entire time crouched down and tucked in low on my bike. Not before a particularly nasty gust blew my map window clean off the tank and into the fields. I was too weary to pull over and go look for it, and kept going, feeling really bad at the loss of a piece of what had been a vital piece of equipment on my ride.

I stopped briefly at Coulee City and talked to a bunch of Harley riders who had just spend a very rainy week at Glacier NP. This matched Jake’s version of the conditions in the park the previous day and I was relieved to have missed it after all.

I had lunch at a delightful little cafe at Waterville – a Rueben melt on rye with chips and some bread pudding. It took a superhuman effort to make myself stop for that long because I really just wanted to keep going without any breaks.

Soon I went through Leavenworth and then on to the scenic highway through Steven’s Pass. It was 84 miles of beautiful scenery that was all but lost on me. As I got within 20 miles of Gold Bar, I suddenly got stuck in hellish traffic – the kind where everything is gridlocked bumper to bumper for as far as you can see.

This is when I started cracking. Why was this happening? I’d been on the road for a month and all I wanted was to go home. I was barely 30 miles away from getting to Seattle and this just seemed completely unfair. There were no side roads I could take to bypass the gridlock either.

Some of the locals said that this was pretty normal for a Sunday evening and would get even worse as time went by. Wondering how it could possibly get any worse, I got back into the road. I started seeing occassionaly motorcycles whipping past on the shoulder. While I have never ridden in the shoulder in the past, no matter how dire the circumstance, this time I said fuck it and did the same. I was willing to chance a ticket if it won me any time and got me off the road. I got several disapproving looks and gestures from cars stalled on the highway, including one diesel truck that pulled into the shoulder to block me. I can understand their disapproval but blocking the shoulder seemed a little childish and made me roll my eyes.

After what seemed like an eternity, I finally made it to 522. My GPS must have been had some kind of Welcome to Washington agenda, because it routed me through all the major freeways – 522W to 405S to 520W to I5S. I was tired and very thirsty and running low on gas, but there was no way I was going to pull over even for a few minutes. As the Seattle skyline arose before my eyes, I couldn’t stop grinning.

Very soon I had gotten off the James St. exit and turned onto the street that my boyfriend lives on. I pulled over excitedly outside his house and called him. When I asked him to come outside, he said he couldn’t because he was over at my place. DOH…!

I grumbled and got back on and this time rode to Capitol Hill to my place, riding through all the familiar streets and noting that – unbelievable as it might be – nothing had changed.

I pulled over into my parking spot at the back of my building and Sterling came outside and gave me a big hug. We laughed at the mix up, took some pictures a, unloaded my bike and went inside unable to stop talking and hugging. He had brought me flowers as a Welcome Home present, which made me very happy. Gotta love a guy who manages to get everything right! :) I played with my cat who didn’t seem to have missed me one bit.

On to Top Pot Donuts, ovaltine lattes and more conversation.

Later on in the night he asked me how it felt to be back and I replied that I was too soon to say, but it almost felt like it had been a dream. Everything here seemed so normal and commonplace that I couldn’t quite believe that I had ridden my motorcycle through a continent and made it back home.

And that’s how I do feel. No doubt I will spend some time analyzing my thoughts about the journey and write them down, but right now it just seems like a beautiful dream. It will take me some time to get used to life back home. I cannot wait to see all my friends again and especially spend some quality time with Sterling to make up for my long absence.

Above all, this doesn’t feel like the end of something. It’s more like the beginning of bigger and better things to come. I can’t wait to see what the future unfolds…

Update from Sandpoint, ID

Got a late start this morning after it took almost a half hour wait to get my order of breakfast at Catalyst Espresso where I had eaten at yesterday. They were nice about it though and didn’t charge me so I couldn’t be too upset.

I managed to get out on the road at 10:30AM which I didn’t mind very much because I didn’t have very far to go today – just north 200 miles to Sandpoint, ID.

I got on 93N instead of I90W and within 15 miles, I wished I hadn’t as I ploughed straight into a heavy construction zone. I had reminiscences of Alaska as we followed a pace car through about 10 miles of the worst bits. There was plenty of non-pavement, gravel and some muddy sections. It wasn’t too bad though and could keep a good pace through it all. When it was finally over, I pulled over into a vacant parking lot to unpack my tailbag and bring out my fleece lined winter gloves.

It hadn’t been to cold when I got out of the hotel but now it as freezing. It had started to rain as soon as I had left Missoula. I plugged in my heated vest and put on the gloves. For some reason the gloves kept feeling bulky and clumsy and I didn’t very much like wearing them even though I’ve worn them in the past without any problem.

I rode about 50 more miles before swapping them back with my Helds. My vest was keeping my core warm enough that I didn’t mind my hands getting a bit cold.

By this time I was on MT-200 and about 110 miles from Sandpoint. I figured I’d break it up into two parts and stop once along the way for lunch. The route turned out to mostly connect multiple fishing towns though and I didn’t see any interesting places to stop at. When I saw that I was only about 30 miles away from my destination, I decided to keep going even though it was getting past lunchtime and I could feel a bad headache coming on.

I made it to Sandpoint by 3 and stopped in the downtown area to get lunch – a blackened catfish po’ boy sandwich with a creamy broccoli soup and some decaf cappuchino.

I spent a good part of an hour agonizing over whether I should stop there for the night as I had planned or keep going. After having taken a day off from riding I wanted to keep going and not just stop. The 200 miles seemed like a teaser and I needed more. Also, if I stopped there, it would bring me to Seattle on Monday morning whereas if I kept going I might be able to make it there on Sunday night.

On the other hand, I had agreed to meet up with Jake in Sandpoint and there was no way he could catch up with me if I went another 150 miles further. I had my doubts whether he would catch up with me anyway seeing as he was in Big Timber, MT that morning and headed up to Glacier before turning west to Idaho, but it was the principle of the thing. I also didn’t want to rush through the last two day of my ride and see nothing but interstate. I’ve ridden through almost all of Washington except for the northeast part and now was an excellent chance to see it.

It was a really hard decision to make. Seattle was so close by I could almost smell the coffee. If I just got on I90 and kept going for 6 hours, I could make it home by midnight, see my cat again and spend Sunday with my boyfriend. Of course I knew that he would never let me live it down if I did this and besides it would go against the spirit of this ride, so with a heavy heart I decided to stick to plan and find a place to spend the night.

I was starting to feel really tired too so it seemed like the best thing to do even though I wasn’t happy about it.

After Missoula I got a sticker shock when I started calling around to find a place to stay. This being a resort town nothing was under $150. I finally found a Motel 6 for $57 although it was 2.5 miles away from downtown. When I got there they gave me a room for $45 because the airconditioning was broken, which I didn’t mind at all. Score!

It was also one of the nicest Motel 6 locations I have stayed at. I flopped down on the bed and slept for 2 straight hours.

When I woke up, it was about 6:30PM – I had crossed back over into Pacific Standard Time. I got on the bike and started towards downtown. To my disappointment, everything was closed and the place was a ghost town. I managed to find a cool 1920s mobster themed tapas bar that also served sushi. I got some very good decaf french press coffee and gyoza and a Black Widow roll.

After dinner, I rode back to the motel, stopping on the way to get gas. I pondered over what else to do but there weren’t very many options. Everything was closed except for the nightclubs. I could go to one of those but I wouldn’t be able to drink because I had to ride back. There was a big music festival in the park but it was outdoors and cold and rainy, not to mention sold out.

My evening appeared to have come to an abrupt end and I’m pretty sure that I’ll get the hell out of here tomorrow morning and start heading home.

Day 2 in Missoula, MT

Missoula has proven just the kind of town I have wanted to stop at to take my rest day. It is small, artistic and dwarfed by mountains on all sides. There are coffee shops and art galleries on every block in downtown. And the one thing I cannot get over is how friendly everyone is – I have barely passed a person who hasn’t smiled and said hello.

After breakfast this morning, I went back to the inn and lay in bed for a little bit. I couldn’t fall asleep though, so I took a shower, put on some clean clothes and went walking downtown. South of where the inn is lies a bridge that you can cross over and get to the “Hip Strip”. There were some cool little shops there, little boutiques and cool restaurants. I spent a lot of time in this one toy store that had the most delightful toys like I have never seen. They actually had an action figure of Enid from Ghost World, which made me very happy. I was right in guessing that the store was owned by a woman because there were a lot of cool toys for girls which weren’t pink.

I ate lunch at an Asian restaurant that had a really nice interior. There were some Japanese style tables and seating in the inner room, but I picked a booth instead. I got jasmine tea and a bento box that had grilled chicken with miso paste, brown rice, a spring salad, a salad made with cucumber slices and sprouts and some ripe cherries. It was delicious! I resolved to make my own bento box lunches when I got back to Seattle. :)

I strolled through the shops some more and bought a silver tunic like coat which will look excellent with black leggings and boots, a bottle of purple Butter nailpolish and some sterling silver heart shaped earrings.

I put the earrings on in the shop and as I walked outside I realized that I hadn’t worn earrings for almost a year. The last time I had earrings on was when I had been brought in to the hospital in Seattle last year and they had taken all my piercings out before the surgery. When I went home, they gave me a sealed pill box with the jewelry in it which I had tossed into the back of drawer. I’d occsasionally look at them with mixed feelings of quiet anger and bitterness. For some reason that I cannot put in words, I had never put them back in nor did I buy earrings to replace the ones that had been taken out. Putting on pretty heart shaped earrings today felt like a small victory, like maybe it was time to move on. I don’t know if I’ll get the other piercings done again. I don’t know if I am that person anymore.

I spent the next couple of hours wandering through the museum and little art shops. The Missoula Art Museum had some interesting pieces, as did some of the local artists.

I am now slouched on a big brown leather couch in a coffee shop called Liquid Planet, which in addition to coffee, sells all kinds of liquid beverages like tea, beer, root beer and wine. I even saw an entire display of mead. I felt tempted to buy some and ship it home, but I think I will just wait until I get to Seattle and find a local supplier for the sake of my pocketbook.

I talked to Jake when I woke up this morning and apparently he climbed Devil’s Tower successfully (good for him!) and was heading west. Apparently my strong feelings about Yellowstone resonated with him because he decided against going that way and is heading north towards Glacier NP instead. We are planning on meeting in Sandpoint, ID tommorrow night, from where we will ride to Seattle together. I hadn’t quite planned on riding with anybody on this ride, but I think I am quite happy to ride with him on the very last stretch of my ride through washington. If I were by myself, I’d probably be tempted to take the shortest path home, but with him I might just meander and take the nicer roads.

That’s all for now. I have some rather cool dinner plans. When I came down to the front desk to extend my stay by a night this morning, the guy who worked there turned out to be Indian and he asked me if I’d to join him and his wife and another family for a special dinner they were cooking to celebrate Janmasthami, an Indian festival to celebrate Lord Krishna’s birth. I’ve never done anything special for this holiday before but the thought of good, homecooked Indian food was tempting. He even said that he could bring some food over for me if I didn’t feel comfortable joining them. I was touched at this gesture and gratefully accepted and said that I’d be happy to come eat with them. So off I go to dinner now! :)