In 1998, before highways webbed the country and before China’s middle class filled the roads with cars, I rode an antique sidecar motorcycle alone across northern China—over provincial borders, into unsigned villages, through dust and doubt and long stretches of silence.

I’m publishing the book here as I write and revise it, one stretch of road at a time. Free subscribers can read selected chapters and follow the journey from a distance.

Monthly subscribers ($7/month) read the full manuscript-in-progress, join the chat, and take part in monthly live conversations as the book takes shape.

Annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript and access to live and recorded conversations.

Patrons ($179/annual) also receive a special-edition print copy of the finished book.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a subscriber. Thank you!

Find the full table of contents here.

Subscribe now

< Previous chapter

Chapter 10: Datong

Coal Dust and the Bù Bù Bù Hotel

The tree-lined road leads straight to Datong where chimney stacks spew coal smoke forming a polluted dome that shines spectacularly red and yellow in the setting sun.

The Yungang Caves, my destination, is an hour north but the Lonely Planet guide says there is only one very expensive hotel there so recommends several budget choices in the city. This is fine, and why I love traveling with my own wheels. I am free to explore, to reach my destination, or to get terribly lost.

The guidebook had mentioned the air pollution in passing, focusing on Datong’s beautiful rammed earth walls, ancient city gates, a drum tower and a marketplace. In my opinion, the guidebook ought to have highlighted it with a red warning label. It hardly seems possible, but Datong is even more polluted than Beijing. After a few short minutes my skin is gritty with coal dust and my nostrils are nearly clogged with it. I try not to breathe through my mouth, but soon my nose is running and I’m sneezing like I have a cold.

The hotel I’ve aimed for is exactly where the Lonely Planet says it is, set off from the road by a huge parking lot enclosed by a chain link fence, with the complete absence of cars, scooters, or taxis. I chug across the lot paying no attention to the white markings meant to guide cars into each space.

Two men, uniformed brilliantly in red with lots of gold braid and gold tassels on their little round caps, stand by the porte-cochère, watching me closely, and suddenly sprint toward me waving and shouting. At first I think this is their special way of welcoming me, but soon realize that their hands make shooing movements. They are actually shouting at me to go away.

Confused, wondering if I in fact am in the wrong place, and as there is no word “Hotel” in Pinyin on the building, I can’t be sure. Still, I maneuver around them and roll up to the doorway anyway. I mean, what’s the harm?

I roll under the shade of the porte-cochère and suddenly they are all smiles. Perhaps they couldn’t imagine I was a guest, and a foreigner, too. At any rate, they start trying to help me with my bags, peeling back the cover on the sidecar.

Well good. It is a hotel after all. I let them know I’m not ready for the bags, and head inside to check the price, and to see if there’s an office service with a fax machine. I’m dying to do some writing, get some email, and post a story to my blog.

Inside, the lobby is enormous with high ceilings and chandeliers, its floor covered with a thin red carpet, lined by a mezzanine with a dozen little shops.

The marble registration counter is staffed by three uniformed attendants. We exchange formal greetings, and all the staff gather around. The young woman shuffles through some papers, and a man with a red badge approaches to supply her with a registration form from the sheaf of papers in his hands.

To my surprise and delight, the form is in both Pinyin and Chinese. Remembering my ordeal of the previous night, I seize the moment, and request a second form. The young woman shakes her head emphatically no, and comes around the counter to stand next to me.

“Bù hǎoyìsi,” she says, the polite way of saying, sorry, but no.

I hold the paper to my chest and turn to her manager, who also shakes his head emphatically no. But there they are, several copies in his hand, right next to me. I deftly pluck one from the manager’s grasp and try to put it in my bag but the woman quickly snatches it back. I insist, smiling and shaking heads and pointing at the paper and my dictionary.

Suddenly, everyone is talking.

“Bù. Bù xíng,” says the young woman, shaking her head. No. Not allowed.

The manager and the bellmen join in with variations of the word no.

“Bù hǎoyìsi, bù xíng,” means sorry, that’s not possible, an especially popular phrase I’ve encountered more than I’ve liked. I learned it when I was trying to get legal permission to tour the country. But here I am anyway, despite the risk of getting caught and kicked out.

“Bù,” they all say, nodding their heads no and then yes, until we are all just bobbling our heads around.

“Yào,” I say, which is all I can remember at the moment. It means need, and I use it with my most pitiful beseeching voice.

But it’s all “Bù bù bù.”

They shrug, shake their heads, and open their hands palms out, to show it’s not possible. They talk among themselves, a lot of chatter I cannot understand except more bù.

I offer coins.

They laugh, but keep shaking their heads. “Bù bù bù.”

The young woman gestures, waves the paper around as she talks, and I don’t know what comes over me, but I just snatch it and quickly stuff it in my bag.

Everybody stops talking, stops moving.

“Xièxiè xièxiè,” I say. Thank you thank you.

This brings on another barrage of bù bù bù. But I play dumb, calm, bowing a little.

“Xièxiè,” I repeat. Smiling, I hold out the coins again.

“Bù bù bù.”

And then finally they give up. Less “The customer is always right” than “Possession is 9/10ths of the law,” I figure, and they cannot possibly have a foreigner in the hotel without an accompanying form.

Thanks to the Pinyin translation, the form is completed in no time. Back outside, I stack the bags I want in a pile and park the bike where they tell me: not in one of the perfectly-marked spots meant for cars, but around the side, next to the bicycles.

Unlocking the trunk, I carry my laptop and camera myself and follow the bellmen, in their bright red and gold uniforms, into the elevator. The door slides open onto the fourth floor hallway where a scowling old woman behind a large wooden desk guards a rack of keys neatly tucked into cubbyholes built into the shelves behind her.

She and the bellman have a conversation. She looks ready to say bù at every request and is probably scowling because she expects, correctly, that I will require higher maintenance than the typical Chinese guest, more towels and extra toilet paper. I know from my visit last year that Chinese hotels eke out toilet paper like it’s made of money.

Reluctantly, and with much discussion, she hands the key to the bellman and glares at me before I follow him to the door. After he opens it I hold out my hand for the key, but he clutches it to his chest.

“Oh no, wait. I don’t get the key?” I say this in English, more to myself than to him.

Read more

In 1998, before highways webbed the country and before China’s middle class filled the roads with cars, I rode an antique sidecar motorcycle alone across northern China—over provincial borders, into unsigned villages, through dust and doubt and long stretches of silence.

I’m publishing the book here as I write and revise it, one stretch of road at a time. Free subscribers can read selected chapters and follow the journey from a distance.

Monthly subscribers ($7/month) read the full manuscript-in-progress, join the chat, and take part in monthly live conversations as the book takes shape.

Annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript and access to live and recorded conversations.

Patrons ($179/annual) also receive a special-edition print copy of the finished book.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a subscriber. Thank you!

Find the full table of contents here.

< Previous chapter

Author’s note: Some of you have been asking: what makes you want to do this kind of thing? What are you thinking when you’re alone and something goes wrong? Don’t you miss home? I hope this chapter answers some of those questions. Please leave your comments and questions at the bottom. I’d love to hear them.

To refresh your memory: this is only my second day on the road, but already it’s been a week’s worth of adventure:getting lost, riding in the dark, nearly hitting a family of pigs, spending the night in what turned out to be a brothel. This chapter picks up where I left off, after two men in a mountain restaurant convinced me to abandon the back roads and head toward Datong and the Yellow River instead. (They may or may not have been Chinese mob. I’ll let you decide.)

Not a subscriber? For the price of a latte a month, you get access to all the chapters. I appreciate your support.

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Chapter 9: The Road to Datong

Yīlù Píng’ān (One Road, Peace All the Way)

Finally, traffic starts to move. The men have places to go, people to see, and with regretful smiles, we stand and formally shake hands. “Datong,” one of them says, with purposeful eye contact as if to hypnotize me into agreeing with him. When I say “okay,” they giggle like boys then morph back into the serious men they are.

The proprietor hurries to hold the door. Xièxie, he says, nodding in respect as the men stride out in their fine suits and designer sunglasses. They disappear behind the tinted windows and the sleek vehicle glides into traffic like a shark in the reef, the candy-colored cars scattering to make way.

Bang bang.

I am truly tired of the mountains. All the twists and turns have made my muscles sore. I don’t worry about my safety, but the scarcity of road signs and reliable accommodation is stressful. At home, friends, family, even strangers worry about robbery, rape, kidnapping, but they haven’t traveled as I have. I’m not just a tourist, I’m on a motorcycle, and the motorcycle is a power symbol. I experienced this phenomenon on my first solo journey in France. There is an impression that the rider is capable and experienced, anything but the usual wandering traveler that might easily be taken advantage of. And here, my high-visibility foreignness is a protective cloak. As my friends in Beijing put it, I’m leaving a wake behind me. Even if I get lost, everyone else knows where I am. It’s discomfiting and reassuring at the same time.

I linger to consider the new plan without the influence of the bang bang guys, referring to what I now know is an untrustworthy map, along with the slim and outdated facts in the Lonely Planet, published before the recent shift. Okay then. Enough with the mountains. For now, at least, I’ll head to Datong and visit the nearby Yungang Buddhist Caves, then ride along the Yellow River and, looking at the map, that will bring me near Inner Mongolia, which I hadn’t thought to explore. There’s plenty of time, I remind myself, and if I find a new homogeny, if villages have been replaced by factory towns and apartment buildings, I can always turn inland again.

Packing up my things, I stop to pay my check. But the proprietor shakes his head and tells me my companions have already taken care of it. It’s a sweet surprise, and I smile as he bows and wishes me yīlù píng'ān, one road, peace all the way.

Back on the bike, I think about tomorrow, my fortieth birthday. The Yungang Caves seem like a good place to spend it.

Down the mountain the landscape opens to a plateau of deep gold, soft-looking, windswept, almost lunar in its bareness. This is loess: fine dust, carried here by the wind out of the western deserts to settle in layers over hundreds of thousands of years. The dust settled and built itself into hills two hundred feet thick in places, and once it was forests, grasslands, with soil rich enough to have fed the first Chinese dynasties. But the trees came down centuries ago, cut for fuel and farmland, and without roots to hold it, the loess has been sliding away ever since, gully by gully, rainstorm by rainstorm, into its namesake Yellow River that carries its color all the way to the sea.

The road is good and I’m flying along, if 40 mph can be called flying, but compared to the last couple of days it seems fast and free. Wow, I’m here, in China I think to myself, and I spent last night in a brothel. Did I? It seems unreal. It seems like last week. Not like yesterday. Not like this morning. I want to tell somebody, but then again, this living in the present, in the now, feels priceless, free. For a moment my mind shifts to home where Ram Dass’s book Be Here Now sits on one of our many bookshelves.

As usual, while traveling, I’ve been too busy, too immersed in taking things in to think about home or anything that doesn’t have to do with the here and now. With my mind looping on essentials like gas, food, and shelter, the state of being absolutely 100% present is effortless.

At home, I can get close to emptying my mind by riding over the Golden Gate Bridge with no particular destination in mind. My thoughts are only on the road, attuned to other drivers, the weather, the new cafe or fruit stand, the pullout at Jenner where you can watch the sea lions frolicking in the Russian River where it flows into the ocean. I almost always end up in Bodega Bay before looping home on the Bohemian Highway, stopping at Wild Flour Bread or the Fairfax Scoop. Yet there’s still room left over in my head to remember I need to pick up toothpaste and coffee filters on the way home, or to loop on triviality that won’t matter by next week.

Here, there’s no room for any of that. Everything has higher stakes. Will there be gas, food, a decent place to stay? I’m not in a constant state of alarm, but a kind of hyper-awareness, senses wide open, that’s become my best traveling companion. It’s the sixth sense, the thing I can’t quite explain, that years of solo travel have taught me to trust over everything, even reason. This sense tells me where to go and where not to, who to trust and who not to. My mind isn’t cluttered with trivia. I’m just here, now, in the middle of all of it when I see a sign and a guard shack standing at the entrance to a big empty parking lot. It must be a tourist site, getting ready to accommodate all the drivers in all the new cars.

Slowing, I see nothing but a cliff face that rises from the ground about 300 feet away. I slow further, my eyes searching for the reason for this brand new parking lot, and finally notice a man-made structure about 100 feet up. Stopping now, the engine idling, I see it’s a temple, or at least the front of a temple, or several temples, pasted onto the cliff face. They’re painted red with the traditional curlicue tiled roofs; but wait, are those bridges that connect the various buildings? They are. But how would one manage to get up there? My eyes straining to find a path, yes, there is a narrow staircase hewn from the cliff.

I'm dying to see it, but it's closed. The low fence around the lot and the sagging chain at the entrance prevent me from riding in. The guard shack, also new, with clean glass on four sides, stands empty. A large sign faces the road in bold red characters I cannot read. Opening soon, perhaps. Or the name of the site, and the ministry responsible for it, and nothing else. There is no way to know. In fact, the parking lot is so black, so smooth, so clean that I wonder if it has just been paved in preparation for all the new visitors with all their new cars.

I can’t quit so easily. Maybe if I get off the bike to walk across to the cliff someone will be there, and if not, I might just walk up those stairs anyway. It could be abandoned, or a guard might be napping there. I think the bike will be safe where it is.

I reach for the ignition key to turn off the engine and grab empty air. The key is gone. Gone. It takes me a moment.

The motorcycle is still running, but there’s no key.

Okay, it must have vibrated out. How stupid, I think. Just absolutely the dumbest thing. The bike is a rattletrap and of course the key would wobble out. I should have attached it to a string on the handlebars, but I didn’t, and now it’s gone.

But maybe it just happened now. I search around the bike. Under it. Nope. Undoubtedly, it is on the road, mashed by a tire, or bounced into a ditch. I can’t go back. I don’t want to arrive in Datong in the dark. I shudder, remembering the cold, dark roads. After yesterday, I do not want to ride in the dark ever again.

And what if the engine stalls? If I were on a hill, I could roll-start it. But it’s flat here, and I can’t push 800 pounds. The only option is to ride on and hope to find a locksmith.

How do you say “locksmith” in Mandarin? I open the trunk to find the parts and phrases list Jim had written out to make it easier for me to communicate with shopkeepers and mechanics. He wrote out the words in Pinyin and Chinese characters: oil, chain, piston, brake pad, brake lever, throttle lever, valve adjustment, tire, spokes, headlight. I turn the pages. It provides every directive, every part, except ignition and key.

I grab my dictionary and find all the words: Lock. Key. Ignition.

Suǒ. Yàoshi. Diǎnhuǒ kāiguān.

There’s nothing else to do but to keep going and hope and practice the words in my head as I ride, guessing at the intonation.

Suǒ. Yàoshi. Diǎnhuǒ kāiguān.

Every once in a while, I glance down at the ignition cylinder. With the loss of the key, I’ve also lost the little rave toy fob Michael gave me before I left, a silly little spaceship keychain, bright orange and green with a fringy tassel that was already getting grimy. The funny little memento had made me think of home.

It’s Sunday in San Francisco, I remember, so we’d likely be at a party or sleeping off one, having spent hours in a warehouse full of music and dancing and art and all the elaborate trimmings of the scene Michael lived for. As a popular event producer and deejay with an innate sense of how to rev up the dancers, he surprised and delighted the much younger party goers, his long graying hair becoming iconic in the scene. He was dubbed DJ Goz (short for his last name, Gosney), and rumors of his appearance were enough to bring a good crowd.

The psychedelics had done their job for me. I’d fired those synapses enough times to know what they had to show me, and though the pull was still there, I could sense it wasn’t healthy to keep going back. More often now I’d skip the parties in favor of an early morning on Mount Tam, a bicycle ride to Sausalito, or point my motorcycle to Skyline Boulevard. I’d come home to find Michael asleep, hoping he’d tire of it, too, yet knowing he was becoming more and more involved in event production and electronic music, and wondering what that meant for our future.

Suǒ. Yàoshi. Diǎnhuǒ kāiguān.

Chanting my words, I observe the stark beauty of the windswept yellow cliffs as I ride through in the sun and the warm air, sad to have missed seeing the cliff temple, but happy in my way, despite my worries. I can push start it, with help. Or hotwire it. It shouldn’t be that complicated.

The road narrows and rises to a higher plateau with low, yellow loess cliffs along each side of the road. The afternoon sun lights up the eastern-facing cliffs which feel like a wasteland, remote, empty, abandoned.

But then I see movement, a man, or a black silhouette of a man, who seems to be walking out of the cliff. Slowing down to look for the crevice or canyon he appeared from, I realize that he’s wormed his way out a hole. A literal hole, barely big enough for him to crawl into. A pile of coal chunks sits at the opening of the hole, and the man is not silhouetted, he is black like a shadow from his face to his shoes. I am too far away to see anything but the hole, the pile of coal pieces, and the coal black shadow man.

Then another man appears, pulling a wheelbarrow, stopping at another hole. And another. And then another man emerges. They speak, then continue their work.

Idling, I contemplate these men and their work. It looks dangerous. The hole could collapse. They are breathing coal dust. A cloud passes and the sun shines upon them, creating shadows from shadows, silhouettes from silhouettes, sharp like cutouts, that mimic their movements against the golden cliffs.

I pull over, idling, making sure not to stall because of the key, yet knowing I could turn the bike around and push start it from the hill.

The man with the wheelbarrow nods and goes on his way, bends, picks up chunks of coal from the pile, and moves on to the next, a wide-brimmed hat sheltering him from the afternoon sun.

I put the bike into gear again and motor on for miles and miles of the same yellow landscape.

And then, out of nowhere, a marketplace. My heart soars, then drops into my stomach. Do I dare hope? Slowing, the engine chugs along as I search among the tables. It’s like a flea market, a disorganized jumble of food and plastic goods and oh my god, tools and wheels and mechanical things set up on flattened cardboard boxes and folding card tables.

Cruising slowly along, I am dazzled, hopeful, yet not yet willing to believe my extreme good luck. I spot a teenager repairing a tire and head toward him. He jumps up excitedly when he sees me. He wears greasy blue pants, two sizes too large and cinched around the waist with a rope. Clearly, he’s thrilled to see a foreigner. When I point to my missing ignition key, he says, “No problem!” or at least it sounds like he’s saying that, and waves me on down the line, shouting to a woman selling pot stickers who, in turn, shouts at someone else farther down and so on until I reach an elderly Mao-blue clad man sitting on a stool next to a wobbly aluminum card table surrounded with boxes of all sizes. The young man in the chain of guides who has led me here shouts and picks up a box, opens it, and shows me the keys. Many keys. A locksmith.

This is unreal. I do not know who to thank. It’s like this place appeared because I needed it. Could there be such a coincidence? Such magic?

Grinning, I click the bike into neutral and leave it running as the old locksmith hobbles over to me. Suddenly, I’ve lost the words for lock and key and ignition, but there is no need.

“Qǐng, xiānsheng?“ I say, the phrase for please, mister. I point dumbly at where the key ought to be.

With the gravity of long experience, the man studies the ignition cylinder and hobbles back to his table. Among the hundred, literally a hundred unmarked boxes on and under and around his table, he selects three.

Impossible, I think, looking around for his tools. There’s no key cutter, no grinder, no generator to run them. Maybe he’ll use a file, I think, once he finds a key that will fit.

The boxes are all small, about six by eight inches, made of heavy cardboard in white, gray, and brown, streaked and dusty with frayed corners. As he picks through their contents, I think, this is too much. This is just silly. And how is he going to match the key without having the original to compare it with? I set the foot brake, leave the bike running, and walk to his table.

Inside each of the boxes are twenty to a hundred keys. They are sorted by size but in many different kinds of metal and shapes. Some of them are rusty or corroded and there’s a significant amount of dirt, metal filings, and even some nuts and bolts lying among them. A metallic scent rises as he scatters the keys with his leather-thick fingers, which are stained gray and blue with metal shavings. The metallic scent mixes with the dust of the road, chalk, coal, soy sauce, grease, onions, and something pungent, like ginger and red peppers.

Around us, other vendors are doing business as best they can with the distraction of a real live lǎowài in their midst. I feel them watching but they don’t crowd us, perhaps out of respect for the elderly locksmith.

The locksmith, after selecting four or five keys, turns to my bike. I stare, hopeful but tense, as he tries one, then another.

The third one fits.

My level of astonishment is so great that I can barely respond other than holding out a handful of small bills and coins. He picks out the correct amount—much too little. Fifty cents worth, perhaps. I hand him a few more bills, about two dollars’ worth, saying xièxiè, xiānsheng, xièxiè, but he just smiles a toothless smile and wags his head.

But I can’t possibly leave without thanking him more, he can’t realize how important this is to me. In his world, this may happen all the time, but in my world, keys just don’t fall out of ignitions and locksmiths don’t just appear when you need them.

He refuses more money and, distraught, I remember my stash of souvenirs to give away, tiny flashlights and keychains with scenes of San Francisco. Perfect! Rummaging through the gray duffel in the sidecar I find my bag of trinkets, choosing a keychain with a scene of the Golden Gate Bridge, brilliant and sparkling in Plexiglas.

He accepts it tentatively, with curiosity, turning it around and around in his leathery hands, the smooth shiny object looking as foreign as a spaceship, like the spaceship fob from Michael I just lost.

The locksmith inspects the keychain so thoroughly that now I realize he has no idea what it is. He’s unlikely to have ever seen the Golden Gate Bridge, even in pictures, and has probably never heard of San Francisco. It’s pleasing, though, and finally, he nods and smiles. And I feel better to have given him something, and maybe someone who knows about it will come along and tell him what it is.

I ride off in a daze, still unwilling to believe my good luck, and it’s not until miles later I realize I ought to have asked him to make me a spare.

I have also forgotten how I lost the original key. I glance down to see the new one vibrating in the cylinder. What a fool I am.

Pulling over, I put the bike in neutral and set the foot brake. There must be a string somewhere, a shoelace, something, but I can’t find it so, for now, baling wire will have to do. I twist one end of the flexible wire around the key and the other to the handlebars. It’s not an elegant tether, but it’ll do for now.

Thanks for reading this chapter of the China Road Motorcycle Diaries, an adventure memoir in progress. Here’s a note about how this area has transformed.

When I’m finished publishing this beta book here on Substack, I’ll release it as an ebook and print book as well. So I’d love to hear your comments about the story—your impressions, your critiques, to make the book the best it can be. Just click the red LEAVE A COMMENT button here.

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Share Carla King Writes

In 1998, before highways webbed the country and before China’s middle class filled the roads with cars, I rode an antique sidecar motorcycle alone across northern China—over provincial borders, into unsigned villages, through dust and doubt and long stretches of silence.

I’m publishing the book here as I write and revise it, one stretch of road at a time. Free subscribers can read selected chapters and follow the journey from a distance.

Monthly subscribers ($7/month) read the full manuscript-in-progress, join the chat, and take part in monthly live conversations as the book takes shape.

Annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript and access to live and recorded conversations.

Patrons ($179/annual) also receive a special-edition print copy of the finished book.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public—but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.

To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a subscriber. Thank you!

< Previous chapter

Chapter 8: A Change of Plan

A million new drivers, two gangsters, and a birthday plan

I take a deep breath and relax into the rhythm of navigating switchback after switchback in the warm mountain air. The rising sun tells me I am heading generally westward. I have time. There is no hurry. Exploration requires patience and a willingness to linger, to push past comfort zones, and succumb to curiosity.

Another valley, another mountain, and another, and another, and halfway down the next descent the tarmac deteriorates into a narrow byway riddled with potholes and then it’s all dirt for 8 kilometers—or maybe the odometer has quit again—and then road—a study in constant erosion and sporadic repair. Mostly, I travel in second and third gears, averaging about 40 kilometers per hour. In the measurement I’m used to, this translates as 25 miles per hour, which seems impossibly slow.

I remember my grandparents, newly married in 1929, who drove their Model T across America, tootling along at a top speed of 35 miles per hour (downhill and with the wind behind them). They started in Boston and west of Chicago the country lacked paved roads and even motels. The automobile needed daily maintenance, and there was the ritual finding of fuel, food, and shelter—if only their tent—to consider. In the west were days of seeing few other humans, and adventure: Mountains, forests, deserts, and frontier towns with curious residents. Their faces turned to my grandparents whose well-worn vehicle with its customizations, its repaired canvas rooftop and battered luggage and layers of dust, begged the question: Who are you, and where did you come from?

They stopped frequently. Repaired and resupplied. Got familiar with the locals. Accepted invitations and ate the food. Didn’t panic when a wheel came off or the engine dropped out onto a railroad track. I loved their stories and I feel them with me. Wherever I am, I silently shout into the heavens, Are you watching?

My road deteriorates into nonexistence at the valley floor, once again leaving me to pick my way across the rocks. I wonder what locals do in the rainy season when the floods violent tumble scatters these huge boulders downstream. Do they stay home above the water line, cozy with their provisions? I see no trace of villages or agricultural efforts, only wilderness. Pondering, I come to the conculsion there must be an alternate route somewhere, and a bridge.

It’s okay. I have a full tank of gas, the auxiliary tank is full, and it’s early yet. There’s no reason to think I won’t find civilization by the afternoon. So for now, I’m happy to pick my way across these dry riverbeds. I’ve become used to scanning the far side of the valley, searching for a worn indentation where truckers have crossed. Sometimes it’s obvious. Other times I’m left to pick my own route, standing up on the pegs to spot the sharpest rocks that could dislodge or crack the skid plate, the protective barrier between the ground and the engine. Pale quartz and feldspar flare across the riverbed, and in the unobstructed sun mica glints like fish scales where water trickles through. The glare flattens the land into blinding white. Shadows vanish. Suddenly it’s impossible to judge the size—or the sharpness—of the rocks.

Because their edges have not yet been smoothed by erosion, I have to be especially cautious. These rocks don’t roll, and the bigger ones simply dig themselves into the riverbed instead of moving, blocking my progress. I’m confident enough to wiggle myself out of most stuck situations, and I’ve got a pry bar to rearrange rocks if it comes to that. Not to mention reverse gear—something most motorcycles don’t have, but on an eight-hundred-pound sidecar rig it can mean the difference between escaping a bad decision and spending an hour wrestling the bike by hand. Still, getting stuck would just be embarrassing. And how long might I have to wait for a blue truck to pass by? And would he help?

Read more

In 1998, before highways webbed the country and before China’s middle class filled the roads with cars, I rode an antique sidecar motorcycle alone across northern China—over provincial borders, into unsigned villages, through dust and doubt and long stretches of silence.

I’m publishing the book here as I write and revise it, one stretch of road at a time. Free subscribers can read selected chapters and follow the journey from a distance.

Monthly subscribers ($7.99/month) read the full manuscript-in-progress, join the chat, and take part in monthly live conversations as the book takes shape.

Annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript and access to live and recorded conversations.

Patrons ($179/annual) also receive a special-edition print copy of the finished book.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public—but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.

To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a subscriber. Thank you!

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Chapter 7: A Country Market

A Country Market 河北省

I turn west, away from the brothel, rumbling past the now lifeless gas station. I give a silent thanks to the woman who helped me find shelter, no matter how strange, and ride up a series of switchbacks. Pulling off to the side of the road at the top of the hill, I look down at the brothel in its U-shaped configuration. There are some other buildings nearby, also cheaply made from concrete blocks and plaster, scattered on the flat area of dry dirt between the canyon and the road.

It really would be a perfect escape, the setting for a fishing lodge or a campground. But the only travelers in China seem to be truckers.

I breathe deeply and then start to laugh. My first night on the road and I spent it in a brothel. A brothel!

Now that I’m on the road again, the motorcycle rumbling beneath me and my westward journey ahead, the brothel has taken on a mythological quality and proof of the axiom that truth is stranger than fiction.

Riding on, the landscape alternates from mountainous to gentle hills and back again. Occasionally, clusters of huts constructed from mud and straw stand like villages you’d see in a movie set of medieval times. Hay-scented smoke rises lazily from clay pipes sticking sloppily out at angles from red-tiled roofs.

At the descent from another rise the landscape unfolds below me. Another farm tucked into a valley, the sun just warming the earth, steam rising from the dirt. An old man pulls a plough through a field jigsawed into the available space. He is too poor even to own a beast, the leather straps are harnessed to his shoulders. I proceed up and around another hill and down the next set of switchbacks, the engine idling easily, and remember the old man at the crossroads yesterday. Where are all the young people? Shouldn’t they be taking on this work?

At the top I can see hundreds of peaks fading into infinity. Where am I? I had no idea there would be all this empty space here. As the sun gradually erases the satiny morning haze it reveals a mountainscape of jagged peaks that bite into the skyline like pointy crooked teeth. Down another set of switchbacks the teeth fall from view and then the crazy crooked mountain peaks stab the sky again, then there’s another valley, and another roller-coaster rise with a view of the peaks, and more of them, fainter beyond. I’ve ridden forty kilometers, the odometer says, and I realize it has started working again, for now.

I pass another old man in the uniform of old men in China—indigo blue pants, jacket, and cap. He holds on tightly to a wheelbarrow piled high with neatly-stacked twigs, straining backward to prevent it from rolling too fast down the hill.

Another whiff of smoke, and then all wilderness again—only mountains and trees. I had imagined China as one continuous mass of humanity, farms, factories, and cities from east to west, north to south, and a continuous stream of people. Here it is a simple life. Harder, poorer, limited in every way. It feels centuries from the time I am from. I allow myself, for the moment, to enjoy it. After all, I am just passing through. A time traveler, smug in her assurance.

Navigating still more zigzaggy roads, I finally crest a summit over a vast, curving valley with a floodplain a few miles wide at its widest point, littered with rocks—some boulders the size of suburban family homes—giving a hint of the power of the previous season’s flood. The sun reflects on a few trickles of water that nourish the young plants that glow green in the vast field of white and gray.

Below me, a very new, extraordinarily massive concrete bridge—four lanes wide—spans at least 200 meters of an arroyo. From the south, a ribbon of shiny black tar pours from the crevice of a mountain pass, intersecting the bridge and my small, rough byway, and proceeds importantly westward. The road is so newly laid I can smell it from here. I think of what’s coming for this valley— the trucks getting larger, the middle-class buying cars, this rough byway eventually smoothed into something efficient and forgettable.

Distracted by the surprise of the big new road and the big new bridge, it takes a moment to process the activity on the flat rise on the other side of the bridge, next to a stand of enormous shade trees, dwarfed by distance. The adjacent flat is crowded with five neatly spaced rows of tables—perhaps a dozen tables per row—piled with goods and produce. From here the scene is in miniature, I can only see colors and shapes that may be vegetables and animal cages.

I wonder how all these people got here when a shiny new gray bus emerges from the south-curving valley to answer my question. It comes to a slow stop at the bridge, letting off thirty or forty people to shop at the market.

With a sigh of relief, and a sympathetic rumble of my stomach, I realize I’ll be able to stock up on supplies for the road ahead. I ate my last banana and mung bean cake this morning.

Waiting for the crowd that just arrived by bus to disperse seems prudent before I make my appearance, which is sure to cause a commotion. I turn off the engine, enjoying the silence and the sunshine, and the scent of sweet dough that rises to mingle with the smell of tar and smoke and manure and dust.

Nobody seems to see me coming as I putt over the bridge and into the shade of the stand of trees. I back the motorcycle in—it always seems prudent to face out for a quick getaway—between a dilapidated three-wheeled diesel truck and a donkey hitched to a cart. The sound of the unfamiliar engine makes the donkey nervous, and it prances in place, rolling its eyes, then brays and bucks, lurching backwards and knocking the cart into a tree.

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In 1998, before highways webbed the country and before China’s middle class filled the roads with cars, I rode an antique sidecar motorcycle alone across northern China—over provincial borders, into unsigned villages, through dust and doubt and long stretches of silence.

I’m publishing the book here as I write and revise it, one stretch of road at a time. Free subscribers can read selected chapters and follow the journey from a distance.

Monthly subscribers ($7.99/month) read the full manuscript-in-progress, join the chat, and take part in monthly live conversations as the book takes shape.

Annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript and access to live and recorded conversations.

Patrons ($179/annual) also receive a special-edition print copy of the finished book.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public—but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.

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Chapter 6: The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I wake at dawn in a brothel in the mountains of northern China and lie still, listening for trouble.

There is none.

No boots in the hallway. No fists on the door. No whispered negotiation outside my room. Only the distant rush of the river and the faint ticking of cooling metal from the motorcycle below.

I had wedged my alarm in the doorjamb before sleeping, as I always do.

No one had tried it. No one had knocked.

I had been told, more than once, that if I disappeared it would be an international incident. China watched its foreigners closely. I had arrived loudly the night before, in a roar of steel and exhaust and foreign plates. I am not invisible.

Now the building feels less menacing than shabby.

I reach for my flip-flops, careful not to make contact with the floor—a puzzle of dark splotches on thin blood-red carpet. The morning light reveals yellow stains from moisture on the walls and mold caked on the bathroom tiles. Shattered tiles mark where the plumbing was routed through to the sink and shower. Drowned bugs fill a puddle of stagnant water in the opposite corner of the basin because the drain, inexplicably, sits at the highest end.

I uncork one of the green plastic thermoses of hot water the girls fetched for me the previous night, and smile when I find it is still steaming hot. I grab the coffee-making paraphernalia and, lacking a table, set things up on the floor. I'd picked up ground beans at a Beijing Starbucks and carefully pour a little hot water into the filter to let it soak, enjoying the ritual and the aroma of normalcy, before adding the rest to drip into my thermos.

In the bathroom, where the fluorescent light is the brightest, I check my skin for bedbugs, pleased to find no telltale bites or rashes, though I’m shocked at how puffy my eyes are. Riding a motorcycle for so many hours in one stretch is never healthy, and I am also still recovering from the effects of Beijing’s coal dust pollution.

My mind drifts back to Beijing, where my expat friends are probably still tucked into their luxurious, American-style beds—filtered water and filtered air at home, filtered water and filtered air at work. Maybe they will think of me on their way to the office today, or this weekend when they ride out to the Ming Tombs on another of their forays into the countryside. I’m sure they will check my website and their email for news, but they won’t find anything from me today.

I dress and carry my coffee down the hall, passing other rooms where pairs of male shoes sit neatly outside each door. They are black leather and so carefully polished that I think they cannot possibly be truckers’ shoes, though I have seen that people are oddly formal here. The little yellow pots of water are now on the other side of the hallway. I peer in cautiously. They don’t look like chamber pots, but there is something in them. What can it be? I look closer to see globs floating on top of the water, and realize they are spittoons.

Suppressing a gag, I hurry outside. The courtyard is empty except for a Chinese motorcycle leaning against the opposite wall. There are no trucks in sight. No other vehicles at all. I surmise the drivers pumped themselves back up with amphetamines and continued on their route, which does not bode well. But who belongs to all those pairs of polished black shoes?

The sound of rushing water calls me. It takes some exploring, but finally I find an unlocked door that lets me out of the enclosed compound. It leads onto a natural terrace where a powerful river rushes below my line of sight, having carved, over millennia, a deep horizontal gorge. Straight across, a cliff rises hundreds of feet above my terrace. The morning sun catches streaks of gray, brown, and rust where constant moisture drips down the stone into the canyon. The cliff is topped with a forest, its greenery lush and trembling in the moving air, which makes the canyon seem to undulate as it curves away and disappears into dense vegetation. I gape at it, a little dizzy, and mesmerized. The edge calls to me and I approach as near as I dare—there are no guardrails—and breathe the ionized air deeply into my lungs. I have a strong desire to crawl to the edge and look down upon the rushing waters, but suddenly I fear it, or something, and an impulse to leave overwhelms me.

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In 1998, before highways webbed the country and before China’s middle class filled the roads with cars, I rode an antique sidecar motorcycle alone through the north—across provincial borders, into villages without signs, through dust and doubt and long stretches of silence.

This…

Read more

In 1998, before highways webbed the country and before China’s middle class filled the roads with cars, I rode an antique sidecar motorcycle alone through the north—across provincial borders, into villages without signs, through dust and doubt and long stretches of silence.

This book wants to be told the way it happened: in real time, one stretch of road at a time.

So I’m publishing it here, chapter by chapter, as I write and revise it. The work is reader-supported—made possible by the people who want to be alongside the story as it unfolds.

If you’d like to read the opening chapters and follow the journey from a distance, you’re welcome as a free subscriber.

If you want to read along as each chapter is written—seeing the book take shape in public—you can join as a monthly subscriber ($7.99/month), with access to the full manuscript-in-progress, chat, and monthly live conversations.

If you’d like to help bring the finished book into the world, annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript.

And for those who want to stand a little closer to the road, Patrons ($179/year) receive a special-edition print copy of the final book, along with access to live and recorded conversations.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public, but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.

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Chapter 4: Seeking Shelter for the Night

It doesn’t matter if I’m lost. I need only head west. And it’s not like I’ve never been lost. Getting lost brings good things. I remember my first solo motorcycle journey, so long ago, when I put my maps away and followed the sun, turning off onto small roads that led to dead ends or wonderful crumbling medieval villages. But that was France. I was escaping a marriage gone wrong, wandering in defiance, in self-defense. Still, it was a revelation. The smell of lavender, the bustle of village markets, coffee, campgrounds filled with European travelers, and the freedom to change my mind, to stop for a while, to turn down an interesting-looking road, without having to negotiate with anyone else. There were beautiful, remote places to explore in France, but people everywhere. It wasn’t anything like this, in China’s Hebei province.

Rockfall from a cliff above surprises me—my god, this is the same road, now so far above me, that I rode just minutes ago. My wheels must have loosened the rocks, or the sound of my engine, which ricochets and reverberates in this narrow canyon. At the bottom, the road deteriorates into rubble and a muddy creek that would have been difficult to cross on two wheels, but on the motorcycle I simply bump and skid along, confident on the three wheels.

Then the mountain pushes me around a bend and onto the banks of a dry riverbed sparkling with mica-dotted granite that strikes my eyes, painfully bright, even through my sunglasses, under the clearest, palest blue sky. I sneeze, the rock dust irritating my nose. This could be anywhere. Mexico. Arizona. Morocco. Greece. There is nothing here that screams, China! It is wilderness, but still silent. The lack of people, birds, mammals, reptiles—it bothers me.

It’s a half a mile of nothing between me and the next mountain range rising just as steeply as the last, where the road must continue, mustn’t it? The floodplain stretches wide and flat, deceptively peaceful in the dry season. Its center is scattered with fist-sized stones and the occasional car-sized boulder, remnants of flash floods that must roar through here during the rains. The sandy banks are etched with the memory of moving water—wind-blown, crusted, and tufted with dry grasses and scrub. The far range looms ahead, granite cliffs blurred in the pale sky, and I scan the banks for any sign of a road threading its way up and out and a movement catches my eye, a blue supply truck emerging on the other side of the riverbed. My first emotion is relief. People exist! The world hasn’t ended, after all. I turn off the engine and watch where the driver crosses. If this is the main road through Hebei Province I may be headed for a more arduous adventure than I’d bargained for, a thought that both frightens and thrills me.

I keep my eyes on the truck as it skirts the edge of the riverbed, noting where it lurches over the rocky bank. I wait as it begins its slow, monstrous crawl toward me, tilting jerkily left and right, its tires slipping through river rocks—many the size of basketballs. The clatter of stone against metal nearly drowns out the groan of its overburdened suspension. Medium-sized by American standards, this truck is the backbone of the rural Chinese supply chain—small enough to navigate narrow roads, tough enough to muscle through terrain like this. I saw trucks twice this size on Beijing’s ring roads, but since leaving the city, only these.

The driver, close now, guns the engine and roars up onto my side of the riverbank, scattering rocks in every direction. Once the danger of scattershot passes, I toe down into first gear, chug around him, and give a wave. He doesn’t wave back—just brakes to a stop and stares, a cigarette drooping from his lips, one hand on the wheel, the other casually patting the side door like it’s a well-behaved horse.

But he’s shown me the path to the road up the next mountain. I let my three-wheeled steed lumber over the edge of the bank, with scattershots of rocks ping against the engine guard and the bottom of the sidecar. The rear tire slips in a pocket of sand and spins, but with a quick jerk of the handlebars I get traction and accelerate, heart racing, to jounce over another stretch of rocks. It is a long and bumpy ride to the other side. I aim for the same spot the truck entered and accelerate up and over, spraying glittering rocks behind me in a clatter.

I’m not a stranger to this kind of bike, having blogged about my trip around America on its Russian cousin, the Ural, only two years ago. Since the age of 14, motorcycles have been my escape vehicle. In the 80s, I made a living as a freelance technical writer and spent the time between contracts traveling by bicycle or motorcycle. Thanks to my rural upbringing and position as first-born child to an engineering and mechanical father, I was also well-versed in simple engine mechanics and problem solving. So I’ve never experienced that barrier of fear about breaking down, helpless by the side of the road, though it happened plenty of times on my trip around America with the kindness-of-strangers type of results.

A few breaking down scenarios run through my mind as I make my way across the riverbed, hoping one especially big rock didn’t puncture the engine guard, because a hit to the oil pan could empty the crankcase and definitely get me stuck. And who knows when the next truck might pass this way?

It’s a tension-filled heave ho over the edge and out of the riverbed and onto a very bad road but a road nonetheless, formerly paved but now cratered with asphalt ridged potholes. I stop to wipe the sweat from my eyes, and unsnap the first few buttons of my leather jacket. I know it will be cooler at the top of this set of switchbacks.

It’s slow-going, mostly in second gear, as I crest one ridge, then another. At each summit I see that the landscape is endless: mountains upon mountains, their slopes thick with deciduous trees of emerald green, others topped with bare rock cliffs, with sharp granite claws scratching into the pale blue sky. I cut the engine. Silence envelops me. Again, no sound, no car engines, no tractors, no bleating goats or lowing cows. No birds, no insects. Not even a trembling leaf. I peer into the woods—no peasants gathering sticks, no signs of life. A sweaty chill prickles up my back. I crave the screech of a cicada, a chirp, the shape of a turkey vulture overhead. But nothing moves. The absence of fauna in all this flora strikes a jarring chord—something here feels off-key.

I feel a kind of loneliness I don’t usually feel when I travel, and I want to name it. Over the years, I’ve learned to trust my intuition, to follow it without question. But this isn’t danger I’m sensing. Just... discord. Not a threat, not yet. But something worth mulling over.

Dismounting, I walk around to the sidecar for some water and a bite of mooncake purchased that morning, a substantial snack of pastry and mung bean paste and sugar that I’ve come to enjoy. I like the thick buttery crust and the slightly gritty feel of the sugared mung bean paste. Fat, sugar, protein: it’s China’s power bar, and it gives me an instant energy boost.

And then I name the threat. It’s not people—it’s nature. Sure, almost everyone is afraid of people. The warnings roll in like clockwork the moment I mention a solo journey: Be careful. You’ll get robbed. Raped. Kidnapped. Sold into sex slavery. Axe murdered. Don’t you know how many bad people are out there? But the truth is, statistically and experientially, it’s not people I fear. It’s terrain. Weather. Disease. In Switzerland, I was hospitalized during a bike trip for a bladder infection that turned serious. In West Africa, I got a life-threatening case of malaria. The data backs me up: travelers are far more likely to be injured or killed by road accidents, drowning, exposure, or plain old biology than by crime. But crime makes the headlines. Nature creeps up on you slowly, quietly, and with total indifference.

Before I set off again, I check the fuel tank. The Chang Jiang holds nearly six gallons, and I’ve got a 2.6-gallon auxiliary can bolted to the sidecar. This is as good a place as any—and while there’s still light—to transfer it. I hoist the metal can from its holder and splash the precious liquid into the tank. The scent of gasoline, sharp and slightly sweet, hits me like a balm. Safety, in a can.

Back on the road, I do the math—not because I love numbers, but to ward off panic. If I’m getting about 30 miles to the gallon, and I’ve already burned through five, that’s 150 miles—in eight long, bone-jarring hours. With the two gallons I just poured in, I’ve got maybe 60 miles left. Two more hours, if I’m lucky. And then what?

It’s getting dark, and I’m sure that the town I’ve targeted for my first night is so far away I might as well just stop thinking about it. The going is slow not only because of the potholes and badly banked curves but because the asphalt occasionally ends without warning.

Where could I be? I could have looped back to where I began. I could be far away. I remember how the land looked in daylight; the jumble of pyramid-shaped mountains covered in soft green foliage jutting through the landscape, the crumbling hillsides, the plunging cliffs.

I pass a tiny village where the windows of mud huts are covered in thick, oiled paper glowing orange with the flickering light of cooking fires. Exhausted, I consider stopping but are they friendly? I might cause an uproar. Do they have food to spare? A bed? Certainly not. Gas? No. Not a vehicle in sight. My thoughts loop on the problem of where to sleep that night and on the problems that haven’t yet arrived. In the background the engine rumbles. I’m still working out its idiosyncrasies. I don’t yet know this machine well enough to take comfort in its working noises, its hard clunk down from third gear, its slight pull to the left.

Shadow trees fly by and another small village appears. This one is more promising. Civilization, finally. I shift down, slowing in anticipation of the many potholes a village brings, and a small animal suddenly bursts into the road. A rush of adrenaline prepares me for hard braking, for swerving or impact.

I hold my ground, trusting my instincts. I can’t tell if the side of the road dives off into a five-foot ditch or heads straight into a two-foot wall. Staying my course, the animal races alongside me. Improbably, others join in. Finally, I recognize them as piglets. We travel together down the road for several long moments of dark indecision. I hold my breath while they grunt and squeal hysterically, invisibly. Several times it seems that they will move off the road and out of my way, and several times it seems they will run under my tires. Finally, I gently let pressure off the throttle, decelerating very slowly. The engine noise changes, and in response, one piglet lets out a sudden, long, high-pitched squeal. The others squeal in response and follow it off the road into darkness.

Heart racing, I’m alone again. If I’d hit a pig, if I’d killed it, I’d certainly be willing to pay, but what kind of excitement would it bring? And what is justice like in this remote country? I take a deep, calming breath and put a fleeting image of angry farmers surrounding me with pitchforks out of my mind. Did anyone witness this near miss? Probably not. The village turns out to be as tiny and poor as the last, so I pass it by.

Finally, the dirt road smooths out. I dare to accelerate, nudging into third gear despite the thickening night, eyes scanning for anything that might jump out from the shadows — pothole, piglet, person. Where is the moon? I realize I haven’t seen it since I arrived. Not in Beijing — the smog swallowed everything.

Miles slip by, and suddenly I notice my fingers still locked in position, hovering over the brake lever like I’m bracing for disaster. I force myself to breathe — deep, deliberate. I’m forgetting to breathe. I’m cold. The icy night air leaks up my sleeves, down my collar, between my helmet and neck like a thief. My hands throb from hours of gripping the clutch and brake of this stubborn, dragging beast of a machine. I’m alone in the pitch-black backwoods of Hebei Province, and I’m starting to feel it in every joint, every nerve.

That near miss with the pigs makes me question the intelligence of my decision to make this trip at all. Now that I’m really doing it, it does seem more than a little crazy to be traveling alone, illegally, on an unreliable motorcycle in a country where I can’t speak the language. My rudimentary Mandarin worked in Beijing, but if that peasant was any indication, it won’t be doing me much good here in the countryside.

“I’ve been here before,” I say out loud. “I’ve been here before.” Not this road, not this night—but this feeling. The doubt. The questioning. That old familiar ache: Why do I do this? Why leave comfort, predictability, love? Why push into the unknown again and again? It’s a thought groove, worn deep over the years. And yes, it’s been hell on relationships. But I don’t want to go there right now. I can’t afford to go there—not with Michael, not with the weight of his ambivalence and mine. Not here, not now.

All of me needs to be focused on this road. On staying upright. On staying alive. And maybe that’s exactly why I do this. Why I keep doing this. Because out here, there’s no room for anything but the present. And living fully in the present—that sharp, electric moment—is rare. People spend thousands of dollars and thousands of hours on retreats trying to reach this state. I want to say: skip the yoga mat. Head out into a country you barely understand, without a plan or a safety net. You’ll start living in the now really, really fast.

Ten kilometers of empty road passes between villages and the road is suddenly beautifully paved, then just as suddenly narrows, deteriorating into dirt and gravel with a stomach clenching thunk. I wasn’t ready for that, and I slow down. The dark shapes of trees hover above on either side. Long ago Kublai Khan traveled through China and was dismayed at the unbroken monotony of the roadways. He ordered that trees be planted along every roadside to give solace to travelers.

The trees do not give me solace as my headlight shines on one after another after another white banded tree trunk giving me the impression that it’s they who are moving past me and I am sitting still like an actor on a movie set, the wind machine blowing in my face.

What does give me solace is the sudden appearance of two gas pumps under a brightly-lit shelter. Is this heaven, or just fluorescent lighting? In the distance beyond stands a building strung with white lights that I pray is a hotel. I pull up to the pumps and cut the engine. With some effort, I twist off the gas cap, hoping the station is not closed, and after a long, tense moment a woman peeks out of the doorway of the shack at the edge of the concrete pad. She hushes the two small children that peek out behind her and walks toward me. Garishly illuminated under the fluorescent lights, she approaches, slowly, but not timidly. She wears pink rubber pool sandals with opaque knee-high hosiery that leave a sharp dent halfway up her calves, and a boxy lime green dress sprinkled with large white polka dots.

I dismount, trying to decide how to talk with her. It seems my vocal cords are frozen, and I’ve forgotten every word of Mandarin. She smiles and, without asking, chooses the 85 octane, as the only other choice is diesel, and inserts it into the tank. With a hard metal click, the liquid splashes with a sound that tells me I was very close to empty. Ahhh. The sweet smell of 85 octane.

“Luguan?” I finally ask. I’m drunk on gas fumes and relief, and I think I might have asked her three or four times by now. Yes, she nods, still nods, still smiling, but she’s saying “binguan,” not “luguan.”

A luguan is a trucker’s dorm. A binguan is more like a motel, and usually more expensive. I have little choice, but ask about the price anyway. I’m on a tight budget, counting on spending less than five dollars a night, which I was told to expect.

Yes, yes, she says—twenty yuan.

I’m surprised. That’s about two and a half dollars. Good news.

I pay her—about the same as a gallon of gas in the U.S.—and head down the road. She explains carefully, using both words and gestures, that it’s important not to ride straight toward the lights. I should follow the road to the left for a while, then cross right at a bridge.

I trundle off in the direction she showed me, following the invisible path her hands had traced under the buzzing blue glow of the gas station lights. The land is flat and indistinct—no markings, no contrast, just the soft press of darkness in every direction.

Then I feel it before I hear it—a sudden wetness in the air, cold and unmistakable, like the breath of something moving below. A moment later, the roar rises—low and furious. I ease off the throttle.

I’m on the edge of a gorge.

A deep one. A sheer drop, straight down into blackness. I come to a full stop. My heart kicks hard against my ribs. I would never have seen it. Not in this darkness. If I’d ridden straight toward the lights, I might have sailed right off the edge and never known what hit me.

Shaking, I continue forward, scanning for any sign of a crossing.

And then I see it.

The bridge.

Wooden. Narrow. Barely wide enough to carry one of those big blue trucks. It stretches across the canyon like a dare.

I hesitate. It looks rickety, unfinished—more suggestion than structure. The River Styx comes to mind. Will I ride my steed into the arms of Hades? It feels like a choice, but I have no will to argue. The only way out is through.

I rev the engine and go—fast, tense, gripping the bars as if they’re the only thing tethering me to life. I brace for the collapse, for the fall, for the scream that would follow. But it holds.

Wind lashes up through the gap, cold and wet, wrapping around my ankles, crawling into my sleeves, needling into my face. The river below thrashes and roars.

And now it’s over. Solid ground again. Quiet. The hectic fury of the river is trapped behind me, contained in the gorge.

I’ve crossed over. Ahead is a long wall and an enormous gate, swung open, welcoming me in. I ride slowly under a concrete archway into the compound of the binguan. The parking area is a wide, flat expanse—enough for several trucks to turn full circles. At its edge, a long, L-shaped stucco building sits low against the dark.

On the long side, a glassed-in hallway reveals motel-style doors in even intervals, each one painted a garish, glossy red, glowing under bare white light bulbs.

I switch off the engine and unfasten my helmet strap with cold, stiff fingers and sigh happily, though my back aches and my left ankle throbs from the constant shifting. I tuck my helmet, gloves, and scarf under the sidecar cover and dismount, only vaguely aware of the rush of people emerging from the door in front of me, which must be the office.

I step away from the bike, allowing several people to push it closer to the building. They’re women, and I’m surprised, because they’re dressed so nicely and still, pushing and shoving the heavy bike with quite some expertise, one of them even pulling in the clutch and clicking it into neutral, with another working the brake as they rock it backward and point it to roll away from me.

This makes me a little uneasy but right now my senses are overwhelmed. My forehead itches, my hair is stuck to the skin. I scratch my scalp, feeling a profound gratitude for having found this place, for the reward of having pressed on without panic. It’s dark, and cold, and smells of dirt and cigarette smoke, but I’ll soon be safe and warm.

Two more women gently clasp my right arm, and talk excitedly to each other. Now, here it is. This is the excitement I expected would greet a foreigner in such a remote place. They look up and smile at me and I smile back down at them, all glossy haired and lipsticked.

Turning back to the motorcycle, now all the way across the enormous parking lot, the women are arguing about its placement. They shout, point, and finally come to a decision, and park it into the elbow of the L in the L-shaped building. Then, all four moving as one, they turn and head back toward me. I remember not to worry. I have all the important things with me in my jacket pockets and a waist pack. Passport. Credit cards. Cash. Lip balm. Sunscreen. Phone numbers.

Rolling my shoulders, I take a step toward the door, only to meet the gaze of a dozen more young ladies dressed in the same pyjama outfits. This is just too funny. They really overdid it with the maids I think. They stare, I smile, and they burst into giggles, covering their mouths with their hands.

I hear a man’s voice inside, and several of the women turn to call out to him excitedly, between more giggles and shy glances. I must look terrible. My skin must be so dirty, my eyes racooned from my goggles. Dry lips. Flyaway hair, most of it out of its braid. No wonder they’re giggling.

They come closer and I can feel the heat of all their bodies and their smell, which fresh, like jasmine and mint above the cigarette smoke. It’s impossible not to smile at them. So pretty. Their black eyes flash. But so much makeup! Young women love their makeup. They don’t need it, but it’s a fascination. A ritual. I remember doing this with my friends in high school, and work friends, in the bathrooms, trying out lipstick colors, helping with eyeliner. These young women must do their makeup all together before work.

They laugh some more, and then there’s the man’s voice again, and suddenly they grow quiet, and lower their eyes, heavy with liner and false lashes. The lipstick is ridiculously thick, and their satiny pajamas are a lurid shade of peach.

A horn blares across the river and the man inside the office shouts. Then comes that strange, hollow quiet—the kind of silence that follows when a very loud television is abruptly turned off. My ears are ringing. From hours on the motorcycle, maybe. Or from the roar of the river I thought I’d left behind.

I feel confused, dull-witted. My body is in shock from the long ride, from the sudden stillness after motion, from the relief of finding gas, the tension of the bridge, and now all these people, all at once—the perfume, the cigarette smoke, and maybe the lingering gasoline fumes from my tank, which might be overfull, or from the auxiliary can, which I’m suddenly not sure I tightened properly.

And then it comes to me.

These young women aren’t maids at all. And this isn’t just a truckers’ motel. Well, it is—but it’s also a brothel.

A brothel, I repeat to myself.

I’m spending my first night on the road in China in a brothel.

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NOTE: Non-credited images generated using AI from the author’s original description.

The art that actually changes you—the stuff that crawls under your skin and messes up your equilibrium—is almost never the pleasant kind. It’s the piece you don’t like on first contact. The one you would never hang on your wall. The book that unsettles you. The music that vibrates at a frequency you weren’t prepared to hear. That’s what I found at the Portland Art Museum a couple of days after Thanksgiving, though I didn’t know I was looking for it.

I’d traveled to Portland to spend the holiday with my sister and her family, and it was a lazy, drizzly, post-holiday afternoon. If you’d asked me why I wanted to go, I probably would have said something about relaxing, restless from being inside too long, just wanting to take a stroll through the new Portland Art Museum, which re-opened last year after a 100,000 square-foot upgrade. But subconsciously I think I knew I needed a mind shift. My equilibrium was off. I was seeking balance, or maybe I was seeking to tip further off-balance in a useful direction.

I was still reeling from the message our president had spewed out to the entire country—a Thanksgiving greeting that wished happiness to everyone “except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything America stands for—you won’t be here for long.” A shocking holiday message directed at millions of Americans.

Perhaps I needed a widened perspective, exposure to ideas that challenged rather than confirmed, a visual reset button as an antidote to a country contracting into itself, closing doors that had taken generations to open. And I got it big time, walking into Rick Bartow’s world.

His work stopped me cold. The first painting that greeted us was “Crow, Song, Bear” (2014). I walked toward the painting slowly, trying to understand what had drawn me besides the sheer force of color. It felt like encountering a new language I was suddenly desperate to learn.

The painting’s vivid orange backdrop immediately commands attention, an aggressive vibrancy that refuses to let viewers pass by. That intensity pulled me forward to examine the transformational ambiguity at its heart: the bear-human hybrid caught mid-metamorphosis, the multiple faces layering and emerging, the red hand pressed flat as if the figure is simultaneously pushing through and being absorbed by that luminous field. The crow overhead watches this threshold moment, this unstable instant where boundaries dissolve. What Bartow captures is the disorienting vertigo of becoming—not the before or after, but the uncomfortable, electric present of change itself.

On the other side of the wall hung two paintings in a completely different mood but equally uncanny. Thought provoking.

Bartow (1946-2016) was a member of the Wiyot, a Native American tribe from Northern California, and a Vietnam veteran. Much of his work sits inside an intersection of human, animal, trauma, resilience, and spiritual permeability. You can feel it. His canvases insist that the boundary we like to draw between animal and human is much thinner than we pretend. I kept thinking: this is what I mean by “disturbing in a constructive way.” Bartow’s art doesn’t just show you an animal spirit; it shows you the parts of yourself that remain half-wild, half-spiritual, half-wounded, half-transformed. There’s no polite separation.

And that disturbance—being forced to confront your own in-between-ness, your own ambiguity—was energizing. I welcomed it. I could feel my spirit moving.

In a corner of the exhibition, a video of Bartow performing music with his band was looping. A reminder that he wasn’t just a painter who also played; music ran parallel to the art, braided through his life the way his animal-human figures braid identities on the canvas. He had been drawing since childhood, but the guitar came in during high school, and by the time he was in Vietnam he was literally playing in military hospitals for wounded soldiers. The Army even gave him a Bronze Star for that.

I didn’t know anything about him and the music aspect of his art made the paintings feel different—not softer, but more dimensional. The urgency in his lines suddenly had a rhythm to it, like improvisation. The fragmented faces and animal forms, the crows perched on shoulders, the eyes that look both startled and ancient—they carry that same pulse you can hear in someone trying to play their way out of grief.

Yoshida Chizuko: The Sound Inside Color

When we stepped into the Yoshida Chizuko exhibition, everything suddenly clicked. I didn’t long for the old masters or even the impressionists so beloved to me most of my life. Museums can serve two purposes: they can offer comfort in beauty you already understand, or they can disturb you with what you don’t. I’ve needed both at different times. That day, I needed disturbance.

My sister and I hung out there for a long time, enjoying the layers of the artist’s compositions, reading all the plaques, and listening to the audio whenever QR codes were offered. We marveled at the disturbance, energy, process, pattern, and performance of every piece. My favorites were on a cobalt-blue wall—two of her 1956 prints: “Mambo No. 1” and “Mambo No. 2.”

These are electric. Bright oranges. Yellow slices. Purple sparks. Lines like musical staves gone rogue. Shapes that behave like sound hitting the air at different angles. And the wall label confirmed exactly what I thought I was seeing: “Mambo is Chizuko Yoshida’s interpretation of a South American–influenced jazz style that became popular in Japan in the 1950s. These prints capture the rhythms and movements of the music.”

So my brain hadn’t invented the musical reference; it was built into the work.

Chizuko listened to music and tried to translate what she heard into color and shape. She was literally making a visual score. I stood there trying to figure out how she got her colors so bright. It’s printmaking—pigment and metallic inks on paper—and yet the thing seemed to buzz with a frequency that felt louder than the room. It’s not that the prints depict music; it’s that they behave like it.

This made me think of something I’d seen earlier in one of the photography rooms. A small placard beside an Ansel Adams print reminded me that Adams was an accomplished classical pianist before he became a photographer. The musical training never left him; in fact, it structured his whole sense of what a photograph was. He said: “The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance.”

Meaning, the decisive moment with the shutter click is just the beginning. The real art is in the printing, the layering, the interpreting, the printing again, adjusting contrast, manipulating shadow and highlight like you would voice or volume. The finished thing isn’t the point—the process is. The performance is. Chizuko seemed to have understood this: the way the print becomes a performance of something behind it. The way the process and the result refract each other.

This disturbed me too, in the best way—because it challenged my idea of what printmaking is supposed to do. I realized I’d been limiting myself. I’d been thinking too small about color, texture, mark-making, and the way visual work can carry vibration. It made me want to rush home and paint my walls in some unruly color and then scrape and sand and glue and draw into it until it held some life. Not a soothing life—an awake life.

The Bathroom

Before moving to the next exhibition we passed the restroom. The “All User” sign was a simple icon of a toilet, a piece of art, itself. Where I live, as in Portland, this is unremarkable. But I stood there for a minute, waiting for my sister at the water fountain, and felt the weight of knowing that somewhere, someone is terrified of this door. That legislators spend hours debating who can use which bathroom while actual human beings are being told they “won’t be here for long.” It wasn’t that long ago that bathrooms were segregated into white and non-white. The fear never really changes—just the target.

The museum is full of work that questions the very idea of fixed identity—work that celebrates cross-cultural exchange, that treats difference and foreignness as essential rather than threatening. These works are decades and centuries old, and modern too, yet the world outside still fixates on bathroom signs as if rigid categories are the only thing holding civilization together.

Jiseon Lee Isbara: Learning and Erasure

A little later, I almost walked past a glass case holding a book—open and fanned out like an explosion of pages, with long ribbons trailing downward like roots or tendrils or nerves.

This was Jiseon Lee Isbara’s Jane Eyre from her series Top Ten Books to Read Before You Die. A real book, opened wide, pages stretched and fanned, with long ribbon markers dangling like tendrils. But the real shock was the stitching. Thread sewn through every word she didn’t know while reading these classic novels as a foreign-born U.S. citizen learning English. On one side, the stitches are the exact record of not-knowing, of stopping, of struggling. On the reverse, they’re arbitrary erasure. The same action becomes learning from one angle, censorship from the other.

That struck me: the same action can be learning from one side and erasure from the other. Assimilation is like that. So is censorship. So is misunderstanding.

Standing there looking at Isbara’s Jane Eyre, I kept thinking about the panic over books now—the way certain people insist that stories they don’t understand are too dangerous to be allowed. That novels about queer kids, or immigrants, or racial history, or gender complexity, or anything outside the majority curve, need to be pulled from shelves to “protect” children.

But protect them from what? From the feeling Isbara recorded so honestly—the moment of not knowing, of having to pause, of being humbled by unfamiliarity?

Because that’s what reading actually is: a long sequence of not-knowing, stitched together by curiosity.

And I realized how honest Isbara’s piece is about what comprehension costs. She doesn’t hide her struggle; she exposes it. She shows exactly where meaning faltered. Imagine politics that allowed that level of honesty. Imagine leaders who could say “I don’t understand this yet” or “This makes me uncomfortable but I’m willing to learn.” But we don’t. We erase. We ban. We refuse conversation. It’s the adult version of stitching over all the hard words—not to learn them, but to make sure no one else can read them either.

Gazing at that book, I felt something breathing—like understanding itself needs space, needs air, needs exposure. A book or a painting or a print cannot change you unless you are willing to be unsettled. Unless you come to it with the willingness to be wrong, to be surprised, to feel something unfamiliar.

Cross-cultural understanding has always involved this kind of discomfort. You have to let another person’s story pass through you, even when it contradicts your assumptions. You have to listen to rhythms that aren’t your own—like Yoshida Chizuko listening to South American mambo in postwar Japan, translating it into sharp color and metallic percussion on paper. That’s what cultural encounter looks like when done honestly: curiosity, absorption, adaptation. A willingness to sit inside someone else’s pulse for a while.

The Beige Problem

Which got me thinking: I’m in the process of painting my walls, considering neutral tones—beige, greige, sage—for calm, something stable and easy on the eyes. And sure, home should be comforting to some extent. My home—currently a 34-foot fifth-wheel parked on my parents property in California—does a good job of giving me both the stability and the freedom I need. High ceilings, little kitchen island, a cozy bedroom with a queen bed and a big closet, a decent sized bathroom. It’s an ideal living space for someone who has always valued going places over staying places.

I’ve always been itchy to explore, to learn new things, to see how other people live, to test myself. I’ve never been good at staying put. For me, mobility is stability. The fifth-wheel isn’t a compromise or a way station; it’s the point. It lets me stay exposed to whatever comes next. It keeps me from settling into one answer, one view, one version of how life should look.

But nothing in my home currently disturbs me in the way that Bartow or Chizuko’s work does. Nothing wakes me up.

I’m rethinking the use of beige and greige and sage for not disturbing me, because they don’t ask anything of us. But I’m wondering if a home that inspires is one that pushes back a little. One that says: wake up. Be here. Pay attention. Maybe a bold turquoise wall with scraped white showing through would do that. Maybe sketching on the walls themselves might do it, too. I’ve always been drawn to drawing, but at some point I chose writing, so I’m not terribly skilled. But why not? I might hate it. I might repaint. But the point is the attempt.

Living as Performance, Not Product

I’ve lived this in my own way. Riding motorcycles across countries alone, as a woman, was not soothing or safe or beige. It disturbed people—including me. It showed readers something about what was possible. I’ve gotten emails from women (and men, too) who said my travels made them rethink their own limitations.

In 1998, riding solo through China, I got lost in remote mountains hours after dark. When I finally found shelter, it turned out to be a brothel. I stayed anyway, because my only other option was to camp beside the road in the cold and the dark.

I lived through it. Laughed about it. Learned a few things about what happens when you let yourself be that exposed, that vulnerable, that far outside the map of what you thought you knew. You don’t get to choose your comfort. You get what comes.

That’s the same energy I felt looking at Bartow’s orange morphing figure and Chizuko’s explosive Mambo prints. They weren’t trying to comfort. They were showing truths—unpredictable, electric, raw. I guess you could walk away, but why?

What Art Demands

So maybe the question isn’t “Do I like this painting?” or “Would I hang this above my couch?” or “Does this fit with my color palette?”

The real questions are: Why does it disturb me? What is being awakened? Does this make me think?

If the answer is yes, then that’s the piece you need to stand in front of longer. That’s the one that wants to change you. That’s the one worth letting in.

Art is not decoration. Art is exposure. And exposure—if you let it—is how you change.

Every time I’ve let myself be disturbed—quitting the steady corporate gig for short-term contracts, taking a job in France, moving to Baja, choosing the fifth-wheel over the apartment, leaving relationships and leaping into new ones, pointing a motorcycle toward a country I’d never seen—I’ve grown. Every time I’ve chosen beige, I’ve shrunk.

I’m thinking about turquoise walls again.

In 1998, before highways webbed the country and before China’s middle class filled the roads with cars, I rode an antique sidecar motorcycle alone through the north—across provincial borders, into villages without signs, through dust and doubt and long stretches of silence.

This book wants to be told the way it happened: in real time, one stretch of road at a time.

So I’m publishing it here, chapter by chapter, as I write and revise it. The work is reader-supported—made possible by the people who want to be alongside the story as it unfolds.

If you’d like to read the opening chapters and follow the journey from a distance, you’re welcome as a free subscriber.

If you want to read along as each chapter is written—seeing the book take shape in public—you can join as a monthly subscriber ($7.99/month), with access to the full manuscript-in-progress, chat, and monthly live conversations.

If you’d like to help bring the finished book into the world, annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript.

And for those who want to stand a little closer to the road, Patrons ($179/year) receive a special-edition print copy of the final book, along with access to live and recorded conversations.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public, but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.

Subscribe now

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Chapter 3: Lost in the Hebei Province Mountains

I am lost. Not just turned around, not just briefly disoriented, but profoundly, viscerally, truly lost—the kind of lost that rearranges your sense of time and place. I’ve wound my way through narrow canyons and over jagged peaks, across dry riverbeds wide as boulevards, and up to this high, lonely mountaintop. Here, I finally switch off the engine, and pull off my helmet. The sudden silence roars in my ears., and all I hear is the soft ping of metal cooling, the whisper of wind in through the trees.

The sun is bright but the air is crisp, and my black leather jacket begins to trap the heat of exertion and rising fear. Sweat prickles at my back. I sit still, perched on this antique beast of a sidecar motorcycle, surrounded by the vastness of northern China. And yet—no people. No distant voices, no truck engines, no farm dogs barking. Just trees, sky, and silence.

This is China, I remind myself. The most populated country in the world.

So where the hell is everyone?

It’s terrifying. And thrilling. Like slipping into a dream you can’t control—both liberation and trap. I’m unmoored, and it excites me, this blankness, this sense of being dropped into a story I haven’t read yet. It’s rare, this feeling of complete unknowing, and I’ve chased it across continents. And I’ve caught it again. I stare at the roads ahead. And they stare back, indifferent.

I exhale, a nervous laugh escaping my lips, trying to decide among the three roads that branch from this point. No signs. No clues. Just alternate futures, unpredictable, each of which may change the trajectory of my life. The three roads are unmarked, and not one seems more or less traveled than the other. One thing is clear though. Each road winds farther into the mountains. They may even meet again at the valley floor. For now, my map is useless. The last village is too far behind to turn back. The gas gauge hovers near empty. The sun is sinking.

It’s not a disaster. I have a sleeping bag, food in the sidecar, and China is safe—or so I’ve been told. But I don’t want to spend my first night on the road camping in a ditch or picking my way through the forest to find a less exposed place to sleep. I need to keep moving. To find a real place to settle in. I laugh aloud. It seems ridiculous. What now?

The roads are a network of crumbling asphalt meandering through mountains that rise sharply in lopsided humps, baring their jagged rocky teeth to the sky. Spring-green foliage crawls up even the steepest slopes, as if creeping away from the shadows already growing dark in the crevices. The air is fresh with all the green smells of a forest, but no sound. Did the sound of my engine frighten the birds? I haven’t seen even one bird, a squirrel or, come to think of it, any of the typical roadkill of home, in Europe, Africa, Mexico.

I’ve left the coal-soaked atmosphere of Beijing far behind me—farther behind in spirit than in distance—separated by the Hebei province border and these ever-deteriorating roads that prohibit all but the sturdiest vehicles from passing.

The air is fresh and cool in the sparkle of a sunny spring afternoon. It should feel benign, or even cheerful, but the viridescence feels like a creature. I keep looking around me and behind, scanning the mirrors, searching for something unseen. A while back, a single blue supply truck picked its way through the potholes and passed by. The driver, chewing a cigarette, stared and did not return my enthusiastic wave. But still, it was a small reassurance—I was not alone.

The last village, hours behind me, is now swallowed by the jagged mountains, as I am, as the sun begins its slow descent. I take stock. The gas gauge is dangerously low, but there’s a four-liter fuel tank affixed to a holder on the sidecar, just in case. Now, ahead of me, those three vanishing threads snake around the mountain, none seeming a more likely candidate than the other. I don’t want to turn back.

I pull the map from the sidecar and smooth it out across my knee, tracing my route with a gloved finger. My map shows no indication of this three-pronged fork in the road, at least in the area I thought I was traveling. Thinking back to my last turn, where I sat laboriously comparing the characters on my map to the characters on the road sign, did I choose the wrong way? I search the topography for clues. Nothing on the map matches the landscape before me. No crossroads. No markers. Just mountains and more mountains, stretching endlessly in every direction.

The creak of a wheel pulls my attention to a figure approaching from the road farthest left. Or perhaps he just stepped out of the woods. It’s a peasant, shirtless despite the cool mountain air, dragging a wooden handcart piled high with freshly cut branches. His cotton pants are ragged, his cap is tilted low over his deeply lined face. His muscles, lean and corded, strain against the weight of his load as he inches forward.

At the sight of me, he halts mid-step, his grip tightening on the long handles of the cart. I am an alien in his world, an apparition in a black leather jacket, jeans, and sturdy motorcycle boots, straddling a hulking black motorcycle with sidecar packed for a months-long journey.

I raise a hand in greeting and carefully intonate, “Nee how ma?”

He lets go of his cart and walks carefully toward me, staring, and I push my visor up, speaking more slowly. “Nee how ma.”

Still nothing. His eyes, bright but sunken, rake over me, expressionless. His gaze lingers on my jacket, my boots, my gloves. He circles the bike, taking in every detail—the thick tires, the smooth black lump of the sidecar, the rare black license plate that allows me to cross provincial borders.

I clear my throat and hold up the map. “Wah may loo la?” I try. “I’m lost.”

No recognition. Either he doesn’t understand me, or he doesn’t care to answer.

The silence stretches. He steps closer, peering up into my helmet as if trying to see my face properly. I realize suddenly that I am not just lost in his country—I am lost in time. This man is a relic of a China that the cities have left behind, a world untouched by progress, where strangers do not appear on roaring machines and women do not travel alone.

The man is tiny, a miniature, well under five-feet tall. I do the math. It is 1998, and the famine was at its worst between 1959 and 1961. If he was 5 years old in 1958 then he is only 55, but looks much older, shrunken and bent from work and nutritional deficiencies. Citizens of this age are survivors of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward—misguided policies that led to the starvation of between 30 and 50 million people. This man and his peers somehow lived through it, and the hardship and malnutrition show. His face is deeply lined, his eyes watery and bright, sunken in his skull, something I notice when he steps closer to peer up into my helmet.

I repeat my question, rattling the map as I tap at a town name in Pinyin—the Romanized characters printed beneath the Chinese pictograms. But I can’t pronounce it correctly. It finally occurs to me that it is very possible the man can’t read. Still, I shake the map again, pointing and repeating: ‘I’m lost. I’m lost.’ But he doesn’t even glance at it. He stares at me with the bald curiosity of a child, yet without any seeming desire for interaction. It’s unnerving. I’d been stared at in Beijing, but this is absurd. The man acts as if I am a statue in a wax museum. As if I am not even real. After peering into my helmet, he studies my jacket, then bends down to examine my jeans and my boots, and straightens to inspect my gloves with the same intense scrutiny. When he finishes this inspection, he inspects the motorcycle.

After a few more tries at communication, which he ignores, I stare back. I am beyond frustrated. He won’t answer me because he’s put me in the category of alien. And I feel alien. Androgynous. Possibly even inhuman. I might have arrived in a flying saucer instead of on this machine. Well. Why not take the opportunity, I think, to study him as thoroughly as he studies me? So I stare, memorizing him.

His face is brown and leathery and sags from his cheekbones. His lips are full, his skin is sunburnt and wrinkled, and sparse long hairs sprout unchecked from his upper lip and below his chin. The blue cotton shirt he wears is worn to veil-like transparency and, unbuttoned, exposes a thin collarbone, defined ribcage, and impressively muscled abs. His blue pants are frayed, landing just below the knee and cinched at the waist by a dirty rope. He wears a faded blue cap, a relic of Chinese military surplus, its shallow visor shading his eyes. On his feet are imitation leather slides, cracked and thin with wear. His ankles are heartbreakingly delicate, even fragile, as are his wrists. His fingers are gnarled and stiff with age, yet he is clearly strong—his ropy muscles a testament to a lifetime of labor. The cart is piled high with small tree branches, their limbs tangled into each other, perhaps to be used for kindling or for garden stakes. The sweet smell of the freshly cut branches mingles with the acrid scent of the man’s sweat.

I exhale and fold the map, shoving it back into the sidecar. If he won’t help me, I’ll have to choose at random. I tell myself it can’t be far to another village, no matter which direction I’m headed. After all, this is China. The country is only slightly larger than the USA but has over four times the population. There has to be a town of some size somewhere nearby, no matter which road I choose.

I hop onto the seat and give the peasant an enthusiastic “bye bye”—a phrase that sends Beijing teenagers into fits of giggles and mimicry. But the man only stares, jaw slack, mouth open, unmoved by my attempt at humor or connection. The Chang Jiang roars to life, shattering the silence as I steer onto the middle road, chosen for no reason other than it seems marginally newer than the others.

In my mirror, he remains motionless, still watching. I’m shrinking in his view—and he in mine—as if two timelines briefly intersected, brushing past each other before veering into separate futures. For a moment, I imagine we’re time travelers, catching glimpses of alternate lives we’ll never live.

In my mirror, the peasant remains motionless, still open-mouthed, still watching. I’m shrinking in his view—and he in mine.

One more look as the road bends again. Gone.

He’s disappeared from my world and I from his, and I feel like a time traveler whose navigation system has gone awry.

The mountains envelop me once more in their deep green shadow, muffling the sound of the engine. Its strong, regular cadence lulls me into a meditation and I wonder, will my intrusion here create a cosmic ripple that, like the proverbial butterfly, has the potential to balloon into a typhoon? My worldview is reshaped now, by a single, conversationless meeting of a living being who without doubt survived the history book horrors of the cultural revolution. It is a first quiet shock of many that will occur on this journey through a world so far from my own in distance and in spirit. What does he make of me? Perhaps for him, I am a ghost from the future on a machine from the past.

Will he sit at his table tonight and tell the story of the alien he saw at the crossroads? I have no one to tell, besides my journal tonight. So I tuck our encounter in a corner of my mind that is safe and pure, so as to record it on the page, and return to the wonderment again and again.

Next chapter >
Find the full China Road Motorcycle Diaries table of contents here.

But before you click to the next chapter, I’d love to hear your thoughts about this chapter. I’m publishing the unedited beta book here on Substack, and welcome comments, questions, and critiques now, so I can make this book the best it can be. Just click the red button to leave a comment. And don’t forget to subscribe!

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In 1998, before highways webbed the country and before China’s middle class filled the roads with cars, I rode an antique sidecar motorcycle alone through the north—across provincial borders, into villages without signs, through dust and doubt and long stretches of silence.

This book wants to be told the way it happened: in real time, one stretch of road at a time.

So I’m publishing it here, chapter by chapter, as I write and revise it. The work is reader-supported—made possible by the people who want to be alongside the story as it unfolds.

If you’d like to read the opening chapters and follow the journey from a distance, you’re welcome as a free subscriber.

If you want to read along as each chapter is written—seeing the book take shape in public—you can join as a monthly subscriber ($7.99/month), with access to the full manuscript-in-progress, chat, and monthly live conversations.

If you’d like to help bring the finished book into the world, annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript.

And for those who want to stand a little closer to the road, Patrons ($179/year) receive a special-edition print copy of the final book, along with access to live and recorded conversations.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public, but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.

Subscribe now

< Previous Chapter

Chapter 2: The Reconnaissance Trip

In Beijing, there’s no sign with my name, no smiling face. Just cold gray concrete and the hum of unfamiliar voices. Rick has an important meeting, Jim is out of town, and Teresa is out of the country. But I have instructions: Take a taxi to the Subway sandwich shop franchise Jim owns. Get the motorcycle key from the cashier. Ride to Teresa’s. Get the key from the shopkeeper in the little store on the ground floor.

At the Subway sandwich shop, the taxi driver giggles as he helps me put my bags in the sidecar. Inside, it looks just Subway at home, but with Chinese characters and an odd, not-quite-Subway smell. The girl behind the counter hands me the keys. Curious about the food, I purchase what I think is a turkey and cheese.

Back at the bike, I don my warmest jacket, gloves, and strap on my helmet. To my relief, it starts right up, and I head out onto the empty four-lane road.

My map of Beijing is tucked into the sidecar, but I don’t really need it, as Rick’s directions are good. Teresa’s building is the tallest in the area, I can easily see it in the distance. It gives me the confidence and leeway to wander a little and get lost. I’m careful about the bicycles—there are a gazillion of them—but they weave around me gracefully and predictably. Boys pedal three-wheeled bicycles stacked with coal pucks, or jerry cans, or vegetables, or snacks, or bales of hay. A strange, frequent sight is the old men who sit in twos and threes on park benches, each of them with a caged sparrow, listlessly watching traffic.

Beijing was made capital of all China in 1267 under Kublai Khan. The Forbidden City was built back then, too, but everything else is of 15th century vintage, with constant additions and alterations. Beijing in 1997 has five ring roads and the sixth is just starting construction. The roads seem strangely empty, but I remember that few of its 13 million citizens own private cars. There are lots of trucks, some buses, taxis, government cars, and on the inner ring roads, the millions and millions of bicycles.

A few signs are in English, and I pass by the wide expanse of Tiananmen Square before I even realize it’s Tiananmen Square, distracted by the hundreds of tourists divided into groups of ten to twenty people. Every group member dons color coded caps and the place is awash with bobbing heads of yellow, red, blue, green, purple, turquoise, white, navy, lime, peach, or lavender. They move like pseudopods around the nucleus of each guide, orbiting in a colorful ballet of order and oblivion.

Despite my Subway sandwich tucked into the sidecar, I can’t help but stop when I smell steamed buns, and pull over to buy some from a vendor on the sidewalk, who is almost invisible behind a curtain of fragrant steam.

I buy six, and have no idea how much they cost, so I simply extend my hand with some coins exchanged at the airport. Later I’ll figure out I paid about 25 cents, and they were delicious, much better than the Subway sandwich.

From there, Teresa’s high-rise is only about five minutes away on wide streets designed for cars, trucks, and busses, that still seem eerily deserted except for the ubiquitous bicycles. I circle a couple of times around the building before I spot the narrow entrance down to the basement garage, which is so dark I have to pause and let my eyes adjust. In the US this would be unnerving, but apparently crime in China is rare. Especially crimes against tourists. I was told that the risk of being caught is too high, with a common punishment the loss of a hand for a thief. This gives me an uncomfortable reassurance.

The apartment building is enormous, with a central atrium rising all the way up to the top floor, and balconies prettily planted with vines. I find the bodega, and the busy shopkeeper sees me and grabs the keys, simultaneously ringing up a customer. Briefly, I wonder how she knew it was me, but then, doh, really, who else could I be?

The elevator is fast and my stomach lurches and in seconds, I’m in the hallway of her floor, with gray carpet and identical white doorways that give it a sterile feel. But entering Teresa’s apartment is entering a different world, a warmly furnished world full of Balinese treasures and fabrics, mostly from Asia. It makes me even more eager to meet her when she returns in a few days. For now, I just want a shower and a nap.

In the bathroom mirror I’m shocked to see a layer of black sooty grime on my face, and remember that a few people had mentioned the sticky pollution from coal smoke. “Wear a mask,” they advised. “Or you’ll be coughing and snorting black gunk the whole time you’re there.”

The next evening, I met a few members of the Chang Jiang gang at a German hofbrau near the embassy district. Rick turned out to be exactly what I’d expected from his emails: a likeable midwesterner with a boy-next-door kind of vibe. We sat at one of the rustic picnic-style tables, and someone ordered a pitcher of Heineken.

“You could ride around the countryside and talk with people about Hong Kong,” one man said. “But Hong Kong isn’t all that’s going on here. It’s overshadowed by much more dramatic changes.”

“There’s going to be an explosion of new cars on the road next year,” another said, describing how the countryside would change once that happened. Rick had already explained this to me, but I let them tell me, and relate their experiences. Rides to the wall, to the Ming Tombs, to the coast. I loved hearing about the rural areas, the small roads, the slow pace, getting glimpses of village life, and I was eager to go.

The other guys were half-apologetic that they couldn’t come with me. “We’d love to do this ourselves, but we’re not writers, and anyway, we don’t have the time, with our jobs,” one said.

“So we saw your American Borders trip and said, hey, that’s the woman for the job,” said another, clinking my glass.

Still another said, “We figured if anyone could handle a Chang Jiang and Chinese bureaucracy, it’d be the woman who rebuilt a Ural with a Leatherman.”

I was about to remind him I had a full toolset on that trip, as I’d expected to stop for all kinds of repairs, but decided to let him keep the fantasy. I liked it, myself.

Then we talked about logistics. Yes, they might be able to get me a Chinese driver’s license, but even if they couldn’t, I should go anyway. The black plates Rick mentioned were for important government officials only, who were allowed to cross provincial borders. The normal blue license plated vehicles were restricted to operating in their province only.

“The black plates give you guanxi,” one guy explained. “You’ll be perceived as important, and local authorities will be scared to confront you.”

“Except in the Shanghai area,” Rick was quick to add. “Beijing is backwards compared to Shanghai right now. Shanghai is savvy to laws regarding foreigners, and I know riders who’ve had their bikes confiscated.”

All in all, despite the risks, I was very happy they’d invited me, and it still felt like a dream.

And then they told me we’d be camping on the Great Wall this weekend.

“Wait,” I said, nearly choking on my Heineken. “On the Great Wall? As in literally ‘on’ it?”

Rick’s grin widened. “You’ll see,” he said, and the rest of the Chang Jiang gang burst into laughter. “This is going to be good.”

We motor up and out of Bejing and into the countryside, where villagers are busy harvesting and selling their autumn produce by the road.

And now, at the wall, I’m standing under a section of the Great Wall empty of tourists, as we unload our tents and sleeping bags and camp stoves from our sidecars as if this is the most normal thing in the world.We’re about three hours northwest of Beijing, on a stretch of wall that curves along mountain ridges like a stone dragon frozen mid-flight. The watchtower beside us is crumbling but solid, its ancient bricks worn smooth by centuries of weather. Below us, the valley disappears into evening mist.

From where we’ve parked at the base of the tower, we climb the dark steps inside and up to the top of the wall, which is as wide as a narrow country lane. And this is where we set up our tents.

“Remember that camping trip Jiangshan organized?” Rick says quietly as he sets up his tent. He glances over at Jiangshan, who’s busy with his own gear but might understand more English than he lets on. “Beautiful mountains, clean air, perfect ride...”

The others nod and smile, remembering.

Rick continues. “Up in the mountains he took us to this abandoned asphalt parking lot surrounded with working streetlights. Couldn’t understand why our faces fell flat when we saw his ‘perfect campsite.’ We were all standing there with our sleeping bags, staring around at this well-lit pavement, while he’s gesturing proudly at how level and convenient it was.”

“Very Chinese solution,” one of the other guys adds quietly. “Why would crazy foreigners want to sleep on bumpy ground in the dark when there’s perfectly good flat, illuminated space available?”

“Camping is completely foreign to Chinese villagers,” Rick explains. “Most of them are already roughing it with coal stoves and hand-carried water. The idea of sleeping outdoors voluntarily makes no sense to them.”

But this—sleeping on the Great Wall itself—makes perfect sense to us.

The wall here is about twelve feet wide, with plenty of room for our small camp. The surface is uneven ancient brick, worn smooth in places, crumbling in others. I pitch my tent alongside the others, on the flat top of the tower.

As darkness falls, the temperature drops dramatically. I layer on everything I brought—fleece under my leather jacket, neck warmer, gloves—but the cold still seeps through the stone beneath me. It doesn’t matter. This is stunning. I keep looking around at the miles and miles of wall, the miles and miles of mountains, and the sky as the sun sets and the dark falls, with the moon, not yet visible, but making itself known with a shimmering white light at the horizon.

The group busily sets up cooking areas for chopping vegetables, frying, boiling water, and grilling. I look forward to dinner, which is obviously going to be some kind of Chinese-American-Euro fusion. The group speaks mostly in English, but there is Dutch too, and Mandarin.

I’m not the only one who gazes out in awe and wonderment at the view, at the isolation and desolation. “In winter, this place is brutal,” says David, a teacher who’s been in Beijing for three years. He startled me a little, and I jumped. I was so deep in imagination, and shivering a little, too. He must have seen it.

“We came out here in February once. The wind cuts right through you.”

I can believe it. It’s early autumn, and the mountain air has teeth. I move to the cooking area, next to a grill, to get warm. Everything smells so good. Everyone is happy, enjoying the outing. There’s something magical about being here after sunset, in this secret location. I suddenly feel a great affection for this group of people I don’t know at all. It’s a familiar feeling, unique to travelers, I think, who know they will only be together for a short time. Relationships are accelerated. Small talk is nonexistent, and you get to know people quickly.

We gather for dinner, standing along the edge of the wall, which serves as a natural counter. Dinner is a melange, as I’d suspected, of cuisines. There’s a delicious stir-fried lamb dish with green peppers and onions, a dish of chicken wings, another of ribs, and a stack of hot dogs. For dessert, I’d brought a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and a velvet bag of Ghirardelli chocolate. We drink and laugh and watch the white moon rise above the horizon, its ghostly white light resolving into a bright ball growing huge and making the sleeping snake of the wall visible again.

We sit quietly for a while, appreciating the moment and I become ever more aware of the weight of history—soldiers, peasants, emperors, ghosts. The air buzzes with dreams and echoes.

We clean up and crawl into our tents, and soon, the silence is profound. I lie with my head at the zipper of the tent, looking up at stars that are visible away from Beijing’s light pollution and coal dust, I try to imagine what this place was like when it was an active military fortification.

Soldiers would have slept in the watchtowers, taking shifts on watch duty. They would have lit signal fires to communicate with distant outposts. In winter, they would have huddled around braziers, fighting off both the cold and the constant threat of Mongol raiders.

I knew from my research that the wall didn’t actually keep the Mongols out. Genghis Khan’s army just bribed the guards to let them through. Then the real bloodbath began.

I shiver, and not just from the cold. Lying here on stones that have witnessed centuries of warfare, I feel the weight of history in a way no museum or textbook could convey.

Around midnight, I wake to perfect stillness. The temperature has dropped even further, and I’m warm in my sleeping bag. But the silence is profound—no wind, no sound at all except my own breathing.

What woke me? Was it the moon, nearly full, on the wax or wane? I don’t know, but I feel the pull. I wrestle myself out of the sleeping bag as quietly as I can, tug my boots on, and crawl out of the tent. The cold takes my breath away, and so does the view.

Moonlight illuminates the wall as it snakes across the mountains, each watchtower a dark silhouette against the sky. The entire landscape is silver and black, ancient and eternal. This is what those soldiers saw on their night watches—this impossible construction crawling across impossible terrain, testament to what humans could accomplish when they decided something was necessary.

I had no idea one could just ride up to an abandoned section of the wall and set up camp. Somehow, I figured the rest of it, beyond Badaling, was crumbled away. That evening, we’d talked about The Wall a lot. How it was built in sections to protect cities, and later, connected. How you really cannot see it from space, as it’s too narrow and follows the contours of the mountain ridges. You can’t even seen it from a jet plane. It’s made from local stone, so it blends with the surroundings. But that doesn’t make it any less impressive.

I walk to the next tower, and then the next, thinking about the workers who built this section—peasants conscripted for the massive project, many of whom died in the process. Their bones are said to be buried in the foundation itself. I’m literally walking on their graveyard.

My boots echo on the stone as I walk to another tower and stop again, though I feel I could walk forever, with the wall pulling me onward, its a long gracefully journey to the east, snaking atop the mountain ridge, undulating into the distance. The light of the moon reveals each tower as a human construct crossing eons of mountains.

The early walls were built over 2,000 years ago, before Jesus was born, and when the Roman Empire was at its peak. They were connected in stages up to 400 years ago, when the Ming Dynasty fortified and rebuilt most of the sections we see today to defend against Mongol raids from the north. At this time in England, Shakespeare was writing his plays, and in the Americas, the Aztec and Inca empires were being conquered by Spanish conquistadors, while further north, indigenous peoples had no contact yet with Europeans.

I am a time traveler. I am one with the soul of the wall and all the beings who have been here before. My mind travels, to all the walls I’ve seen before. The cruelest walls. The Berlin Wall and the wall at the Mexican border. All the walls, all the borders, with their intentions to keep people out or in. The physical embodiment of an unwillingness to dialogue, negotiate, to share. I have always struggled with the concept of borders, knowing that in some cases, they are necessary to protect against the forces of evil, but also knowing that in most cases they are there to keep others from the natural migrations that drive people from places of scarcity to places of abundance. I know that here, Kublai Khan led a bloodthirsty quest of acquisition, and I didn’t blame China for wanting protections, but still it makes me sad. It makes me think of war. Still, it is awesome, in the sense of the word that inspires both wonder and dread—a monument to what humans can build when driven by fear.

Finally, I make my way back to my tent, crawl in, and sleep peacefully. In the morning, we pack up camp and have a leisurely breakfast, enjoying the warmth of the sun.

And then we head down, to pack our sidecars. There to greet us, are a group of deceptively shy women in “I Climbed the Great Wall” sweatshirts, to sell us the kind of tourist junk nobody really wants. We understand that this is our price for camping on the wall, and join the game of negotiations.

Finally, I see something I want. A tiny, toothless elderly woman has a big basket of gourds carved beautifully and inked with characters from Chinese legends: pig-men, goddesses, robed women with triple-stacked coils of hair. The gourds are small, and fit in my palm, and the carvings are intricate, elegant, and skillful. I agree to buy a few, and then another few, and we bargain.

I think I have done a good job of negotiating, a skill honed from years of traveling, and gotten the best of the deal. That is, until the old woman grins so broadly that her top and bottom gums show pink and wet, and all her wrinkles become deep crevices in her sun browned face. Still, her eyes are bright, as she laughs, shaking a gourd I’d rejected, and places it against my chest, a gift to carry home, more than just a trinket—maybe a story, or a memory, or a bit of her spirit.

Yes, I over paid. And yes, it was worth it.

Over the next days, I wander Beijing, seeing the sights, picking my way around the new Olympic stadium just being built. When Rick can get away, I ride with him through the countryside where villagers are threshing corn by laying it on the road for the trucks to run over.

Time passes quickly. Teresa comes home and we become fast friends. She dreams of joining me, but President Clinton will visit next year and the whole embassy is busy with preparations. On top of that, Madeline Albright will arrive ahead of the president, and Teresa will be her guide. So it’s impossible. And besides, my trip will be somewhat or entirely illegal, and a State Department employee can’t be part of that.

I meet Jim at his shop on a Beijing back street, and see his fleet of Chang Jiangs—some in full restoration, being outfitted with BMW engines. His wife is Chinese, and they have a young son. He’s ridden his BMW-Chang Jiang all over China and Russia.

I love being part of this group of expats. Between Jim with his local connections, Rick at General Motors, and Teresa at the embassy, all with their insider knowledge and networks, surely they’ll be able to get me some sort of special permission. We decide on spring—only six months from now—for an open-ended journey of two to four months.

The Chang Jiang gang has been wonderful hosts, and now I am consumed with the idea of seeing the China they describe: stunningly beautiful landscapes, primitive, full of history. There is so much to do, and if winter wasn’t coming, I might have taken off right then, damn my life in San Francisco and Michael, all of which now seems so far away and, I fear, destined for disappointment.

Damn the objectors. This is me. And I will always, always choose adventure.

And sure enough, six months later, I’m back.

Next chapter >
Find the full China Road Motorcycle Diaries table of contents here.

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Here’s the first post, and here’s the second post. If you haven’t read them, you might want to read them in order.

And oh… change the batteries in your smoke alarms!

Now, on to the third post, which includes practical advice on surviving a fire in your house at the end.

Part I | Part II | Part III…

March, 2020

Remembering now… I heard the alarm, saw the fire, and yelled at my mom to get out. She woke up. Put her bathrobe and slippers on. Grabbed the dog. We kept calling to each other. She walked out her door but I had to crawl through the house and out another door. You know the story.

Here’s the thing. I heard the alarm. The batteries were good. We are alive.

My mom and I meet at the front of the house, so relieved to be out.

I don't feel like a heroine, or brave, or level-headed. I feel like I acted on instinct. But if I hadn't been there... oh, it's terrifying to contemplate. (See the end of this post for a link to a super-loud, bed-shaking smoke alarm that would have wakened my mom.)

House Fire Statistics

Before I go on with my update, I'd like to share some information from some research on house fires.

According to the latest data (2018) from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA, a global organization) 27% of all fires occur in homes. Four of every five (79%) fire deaths and three-quarters (73%) of all reported injuries were caused by home fires. (See National Fire Protection Association 2018 report).

According to FEMA's National Fire Data Center, "Cooking, at 52%, was the leading cause of residential building fires. Heating caused another 9%. These percentages (and those that follow) are adjusted, which proportionally spreads the unknown causes over the other 15 cause categories."

In the NFPA Fire Loss in the United Status During 2018 report, US public fire departments responded to 363,000 home fires, with a US fire department responding to a fire every 24 seconds on average. In 2018, 2,720 (74 percent of all fire deaths), occurred in the home. They have recommendations for prevention:

There are five major strategies for reducing the death toll in home fires. First, more widespread public fire safety education is needed on how to prevent fires and how to avoid serious injury or death if a fire occurs. Information on the common causes of fatal home fires should be used in the design of fire safety education messages. Second, people need to install and maintain smoke alarms and develop and practice escape plans. Third, wider use of residential sprinklers must be aggressively pursued. Fourth, additional ways must be sought to make home products safer from fire. The regulations requiring more child-resistant lighters are a good example. Finally, the special fire safety needs of high-risk groups, such as children, older adults, the poor, and people with disabilities, need to be addressed.

NFPA Fire Loss in the United Status During 2018

Though the cause of our fire has not yet been officially determined, Dad said the forensic firefighter pointed to the spot where I saw the flames and said, "That's where it started." So we're thinking, electrical, maybe from the lamp cord.

Cleaning Up

At my brother’s house in San Jose.

At Jeremy and Lisa's house we showered and we did laundry. There were three items in the washer: my dad's sweatpants, my tank top, and mom's bathrobe. Lisa had thrown them in while we showered.

We stood at the door to the laundry room waiting for the washer to switch off, still shaken and tallying the losses.

"My passport. My driver's license." I said. "And more than 500 dollars... and I had pesos, too. I don't know how much."

The wash cycle ended and Lisa bent to open the door.

"I have no idea what was in my purse," Mom said. "I think it was a lot."

"Well, they smell clean," said Lisa. We'd been worried the smoke smell would linger or worse, contaminate the washer. Lisa, her head still in the drier, handed back a roll of cash.

"Is this yours?" she asked. "I know it isn't mine!"

Mom grabbed the roll. It was secured with a paperclip.

"Oh! Oh!" she said. "It must have been in my bathrobe pocket."

We laughed. "Who keeps cash in their bathrobe pocket?" said Lisa.

Mom shrugged. "I don't know. Just for emergencies, I guess."

"Here's another one."

It was exactly like the first, a roll of five twenties secured with a large paper clip.

"And another one! Gosh, Mom, how much cash do you need when you're in your bathrobe!?"

We laughed harder when she found another roll, and then another. She kept handing them out with a final count of $1000 in twenties.

My parents are of what's called "The Silent Generation," the children of The Great Depression. They were taught to be frugal and grew up practicing nuclear bomb drills at school, hiding under their desks. They migrated from the cities to the suburbs. They were silenced in the McCarthy era and worked within the system, obeying all the rules. They married young and had children, with Doctor Spock as their guide. They like to be prepared for emergencies, so I guess they keep cash tucked here and there. Just in case.

Aftermath

We went back the day after the fire. My dad and my brothers collected all the wet clothes and items worth saving from the closets and bureaus in the rooms at the far end of the house that didn't burn completely. It got very hot in there even before the roof fell. In the guestroom something had exploded and spattered glittery goo all over the place.

This was the least important side of the house in terms of contents. Mostly clothing. We soaked them in tubs of vinegar and baking soda which got most of the smell out.

It didn't work as well as we'd hoped, but with a more thorough internet search we learned that natural fabrics can be cleaned but not the synthetics. So we separated them into piles, put them into a cooler, and drove them a cleaners nearby. The owner accepted the smelly mess with grace after another customer, who had been chatting with her, wrinkled her nose and fled.

A few days later the clothes came back but they weren’t as clean as the clothes we’d soaked and washed ourselves. We had sorted through everything and thrown out the ones with scorches and burn holes.

In our family, shopping for clothes is our least favorite activity. I have replaced most of mine at online shopping sites, but I keep remembering things.

My suitcase had protected some of my things, like my laptop with its scorched screen and a piece of window-glass melted to the case. My audio recorder, an expensive one, survived, and my interviews from the San Francisco Writers Conference are intact.

My purse melted to form a protective case around my wallet with my passport, driver's license, bank cards, and cash, along with my cosmetics bag with lipstick and eyebrow pencil and concealer, all of them intact but smoky.

The next day, my brothers and Dad donned masks and boots to sort through the rubble. They found the oddest thing; a pristine plastic bottle of margarita mix in the liquor cabinet among the various exploded and melted beverage containers.

A row of books on a lower shelf didn't burn. And a photo of my great grandfather, who was an editor at the Boston Herald at the turn of the 19th century, survived, just a little crispy around the edges.

The shower in my dad's bathroom looked like this.

Depression

My brothers were in ninth grade when the family moved to Morgan Hill. Other than the loss of the house they are particularly broken up about the photo albums, as they've been meaning to digitize them for ages. I've never seen them so depressed so I was glad to see Jeff on Find My Friends on his mountain bike the morning after.

Which reminded me to do something good for myself too, like go on a hike, but I couldn't put shoes on because of my broken little toe. But later, my niece Dana came over with a pair of her old Birkenstocks and we took a slow walk in Almaden Quicksilver County Park nearby. It felt nice to get out in the sunshine with the old oaks, the wildflowers and the bay trees in bloom.

I'm feeling better. Sharing these posts has been really good for me. Writing helps me process, organize my thoughts. The process of writing slows down my thought process. I'm not good at snap decisions and need to remember to ask people to give me a little time to process before any big decision.

I haven't had the fire nightmares in a few nights in a row. Maybe it helped that my mom told me the living room sat on a concrete slab so there couldn't have been a fire raging under the house. But wow, that means the little armchair-sized fire I saw moved so fast. So much faster than I ever could have imagined.

And I'm really glad I could share my experience with you so that you stay safe, so you can get louder alarms if you need them and practice exit routes. Hundreds of you have written to tell me you have done just that.

Moving Forward

There is so much left to do. Mom and Dad have found a rental house near my brothers which will be furnished in "modern neutral" and equipped with all the necessities. For now, they will only need their (mostly new) clothes and groceries as they slowly replace the furniture with things they really want.

They are making plans to rebuild. Inventorying its contents. Purchasing clothes and laptops and toiletries and earbuds and laundry soap and replacing meds and all the little things. For now, they are surrounded by nothing but love.

What we wish we knew…

Take a complete inventory of your home. Lists and photos are great. The easiest thing you can do now is go room-by-room and videotape EVERYTHING in every drawer and cubby.

Here’s the home inventory template from my parents’ home insurance company.

Check out this bedside alarm that hears your smoke detectors and shakes your bed.
Lifetone HL Bedside Fire Alarm and Clock.

Practice evacuation strategies. My mom left the door open when she ran outside, and the outside air accelerated the fire inside. I left doors open between the kitchen and the hall and then also in my dad’s bedroom, which did the same. If we’d closed all the doors behind us, the fire would have been contained at one side of the house. Do the exercise in various scenarios, so that you are habituated with the practice. What would you do if the fire started in the kitchen, den, upstairs bedroom? Practice opening the windows and actually getting out of them. I almost died because I didn’t know how to open the back security door.

Building with Insulated Composite Concrete Forms (ICCF) I think it’s dumb that the carpenters or builders union blocks the use of this material. It’s faster to build with, easier to build with, and completely, absolutely fireproof. If you need to, you can actually shelter in place in a house built with this stuff. Rebuilding with wood is stupid.

Check your smoke alarm batteries. Get rope ladders for your second floor windows. Figure out if you’ll stay in the room with wet towels under the door, or use those ladders. Practice your escape routes. Decide what you’ll grab if you have time. Decide that life is worth more than any priceless item.

I hope you don’t ever have to go through this yourself! ❤️

PS: If you’re a writer, I have a Summer Critique Group happening May-August. We’ll have a whole-group meeting weekly but work in small pods of 3-5 writers to concentrate and critique each other’s work. I’ve set up a structure for this group that includes a community discussion area and small group (pod) areas, plus a google docs folder where you can submit and collect feedback on your stories and chapters. Here’s more about it and how to join.

In 1998, before highways webbed the country and before China’s middle class filled the roads with cars, I rode an antique sidecar motorcycle alone through the north—across provincial borders, into villages without signs, through dust and doubt and long stretches of silence.

This book wants to be told the way it happened: in real time, one stretch of road at a time.

So I’m publishing it here, chapter by chapter, as I write and revise it. The work is reader-supported—made possible by the people who want to be alongside the story as it unfolds.

If you’d like to read the opening chapters and follow the journey from a distance, you’re welcome as a free subscriber.

If you want to read along as each chapter is written—seeing the book take shape in public—you can join as a monthly subscriber ($7.99/month), with access to the full manuscript-in-progress, chat, and monthly live conversations.

If you’d like to help bring the finished book into the world, annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript.

And for those who want to stand a little closer to the road, Patrons ($179/year) receive a special-edition print copy of the final book, along with access to live and recorded conversations.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public, but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.

Subscribe now

< Prologue

Chapter 1: Departure

With some difficulty, I navigate the bags into the terminal doors, one in front of me, one behind. Wow, I think. Just wow. I really cannot believe Michael just kicked me to the curb like that.

But I have a job to do. First up: get these massive bags checked in.

Motorcycle gear is bulky and awkward—it requires an extra-large bag to carry it all plus normal clothing. It’s cold in Northern China, so I’ve packed for that, which adds to the bulk. But I also have a second extra-large bag because Jim Bryant, the man lending me his motorcycle, asked if I’d bring him some parts. The box he sent is heavy and shaped weirdly, requiring another suitcase. Luckily, I found a huge gear bag on sale at REI—perfect, with a spot that seemed made for a motorcycle helmet, sturdy zippers, and a wide opening for awkward gear. I’d brought all the cash I felt comfortable carrying, expecting a hefty overage charge.

The SF International terminal is enormous—hard floors, sky-high ceilings, everything echoing. Voices, announcements, footsteps, roller bags. Everyone seems to be yelling at each other. Chinese is a tonal language, and I know from living near Chinatown they aren’t really arguing, it’s just the inflections needed to be understood. Still, they sound angry. Then punctuated by laughter and hugs and obviously tender goodbyes.

The line is short—I’m early, as usual. I’m a head taller than all the shiny black heads around me. By the time I drag my bags to the counter, my heart is pounding from effort and nerves. I’m the only non-Chinese in this part of the terminal.

The China Air woman glances at the two enormous bags, looks around for my companion, then raises her eyebrows. “Lone?”

I nod. She nods, accepting without apparent surprise.

As we go through identification and destination, I attempt to understand her broken English and try out a little Mandarin, which results in a smile and a sentence that makes no sense to me. I’ve studied Mandarin but can’t decode anything I’ve overheard in line. Well, I’ll have a few more months before I return in spring for the solo journey—if this trip works out.

She tags the first bag, weighs it, and despite her tiny stature, hoists it onto the conveyor without effort. Then she tags the second bag. I’ve practiced my explanation—motorcycle gear, protective, essential, not negotiable. But she doesn’t ask. She sends the second bag down the conveyor without comment.

“Bye bye,” she says, as if testing out her English, and waves her tiny pale hand at the next traveler.

I’d been so ready to pay the hefty fine, to beg for an exception. I can hardly tear myself away. Thank you! I want to say. Thank you! And still I wonder, why am I able to pack two oversized bags without paying extra? If everybody did that—and clearly, everyone has—there’d be no room in cargo.

I think back to a 1993 trip to West Africa, where my brother and I had to wait two weeks on a beach south of Dakar because our bicycles hadn’t been loaded on the plane with us. Would that happen on the other end of this flight? That would be a disaster—I only have a few weeks to test out this idea.

I can’t worry about it. I’m sure somebody would have gear for me if that happened. If I’ve learned one thing from all my travels, it’s that I can do without most of what I think I actually need.

Suddenly alone and physically unburdened, it hits me—I really am going.

Standing on the marble floor of the huge international terminal, with the echoing voices of families and couples and groups chattering excitedly in Chinese, I feel the jolt of real solitude and a growing excitement. I’m stepping off the edge of my life and into something unknown—my favorite thing to do.

Michael’s cold kiss still stings. But my disappointment doesn’t linger. I’m already immersed in a different world.

I head upstairs to the champagne bar, needing at least a little fanfare for this departure. The bubbles, the dry sweetness—it’s exactly what I need. The closure of one reality and the opening to another.

After the second glass, I doodle in my journal and find myself making a sad little list of relationships that have failed because of this itch for exploration. It’s a longer list than I’d like. Turns out, not many men want a partner who keeps leaving, even if it’s only for a few months every couple of years.

My first marriage ended when my husband changed his mind about the life we’d planned together—the travel, the adventure, all of it. For four years he found excuses not to take that motorcycle trip to Europe, so finally I went alone. I was afraid, and angry, and I guess, stubborn, because I went anyway. And it changed my life. By the time I came back, I’d learned to call that feeling excitement instead of fear.

I should have known then. Most people want a life that stays put. I never have.

Michael knew that. I thought he celebrated it.

I drain my glass and head to the gate.

The boarding process is chaos—everyone pushing forward despite section numbers, despite announcements, everyone trying to get ahead of everyone else. I’m shoved, poked, elbowed, and even kicked by tiny old ladies. But having lived in the city, and shopped in San Francisco’s Chinatown for years, I am used to it, and hold my ground.

The Boeing 747 holds about 500 passengers and it is packed. I have an aisle seat so I can get up and walk during the long flight. I’ve brought books—a novel, a travel guide, a tome on Chinese history—but I can’t concentrate. I’ve over-researched, as usual. It’s a compulsion.

Someone lights a cigarette. Someone else opens a bottle of nail polish. There’s yelling, then laughter. Flight attendants intervene. Everyone settles down.

I think about the plan. I’ll stay in Teresa Howes’s apartment. She’s the Agricultural Attaché at the American Embassy and rides in the gang of Chang Jiang sidecar motorcyclists. She won’t be home, but has invited me to stay anyway, in her thirty-eighth-floor high-rise downtown. Rick Dunagan, the General Motors executive, is the master organizer. Between them, they hope to figure out how to get government permission for my solo journey.

The bike belongs to Jim Bryant, an American expat whose shop specializes in BMW–Chang Jiang conversions—prized by expats and nouveau riche Beijingers with a taste for retro military style.

But there’s a cascade of problems. China requires anyone driving to hold a Chinese license. To get a license, you need legal residency. To get residency, you have to get a sponsored job. Then you can take a written driving test—in Mandarin—along with a behind-the-wheel exam. Obviously, that is a bureaucratic wall I can’t scale.

The alternative? Hire a government-approved guide. But that defeats the entire purpose of the trip. I’m not going to check off tourist sites with a minder at my elbow. I need to see real life—the dusty alleyways and hand-tilled fields of rural China—the very places the government works hard to keep foreigners away from.

Why? Because in 1997, rural China is an inconvenient truth. While cities like Shanghai are sprouting skyscrapers and seducing foreign investors, vast swaths of the countryside remain frozen in a Maoist time capsule: no plumbing, no modern conveniences, no private property. Families live on less than a dollar a day. And they are stuck—literally. The hukou system, China’s internal passport policy, ties residents to the place they were born. Without official permission, you can’t move to another province. But many do anyway, leaving illegally to seek work in the booming eastern industrial zones.

Factories need labor, and the government, while officially discouraging internal migration, mostly looks the other way. Industry means money, and money means control—the social contract of the new China. Economic growth brings compliance, and as long as the factories keep producing and the people keep quiet, the Communist Party can maintain its grip while experimenting with capitalism.

This uneasy balance isn’t something they want outsiders to see. Not the labor camps dressed up as factories. Not the shantytowns of unregistered workers. Not the barefoot villagers hauling buckets from communal wells. That isn’t the story China is trying to sell to the West—not while bidding for WTO membership and rebranding itself as the next global superpower.

I was careful to put “teacher” on my visa application, and not “writer” or, god forbid, “journalist.” As a solo foreigner on a motorcycle, poking around places where even Chinese journalists aren’t allowed to report? That was definitely not part of the government’s tourism plan.

Also, it isn’t as if I would get lost in a sea of motorcycles and cars. With only about 10 vehicles per 1000 people—and that includes trucks, buses, taxis, and government vehicles—I’d be quite visible to the population and to law enforcement.

Hukou creates an additional barrier—the law that drivers in Beijing—residents or not—cannot cross the border into other provinces without government approval. “Don’t worry about it,” Rick had said in an email. “There are other solutions. We’ll have it figured out by the time you get here.”

I trust them. This is only a test visit, anyway. I’m excited.

The in-flight map shows us flying over Siberia. A baby cries somewhere in the next cabin. The smell of our dinners wafts through—a slightly revolting aroma that I can’t quite identify. Flight attendants pull carts into the aisles. I order a Tsingtao and try not to think about what Michael will be doing tonight.

This is the last thing I want to be thinking about.

I should be thinking about maps and routes—not the man who doesn’t want me to go.

I can’t get comfortable in the scratchy seat. Finally I put in my headphones, tune in to a romantic comedy on the tiny screen, and fall asleep.

Next chapter >
Find the China Road Motorcycle Diaries table of contents here.

In 1998, before highways webbed the country and before China’s middle class filled the roads with cars, I rode an antique sidecar motorcycle alone through the north—across provincial borders, into villages without signs, through dust and doubt and long stretches of silence.

This book wants to be told the way it happened: in real time, one stretch of road at a time.

So I’m publishing it here, chapter by chapter, as I write and revise it. The work is reader-supported—made possible by the people who want to be alongside the story as it unfolds.

If you’d like to read the opening chapters and follow the journey from a distance, you’re welcome as a free subscriber.

If you want to read along as each chapter is written—seeing the book take shape in public—you can join as a monthly subscriber ($7.99/month), with access to the full manuscript-in-progress, chat, and monthly live conversations.

If you’d like to help bring the finished book into the world, annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript.

And for those who want to stand a little closer to the road, Patrons ($179/year) receive a special-edition print copy of the final book, along with access to live and recorded conversations.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public, but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.

Subscribe now

The email arrived on a morning when San Francisco felt like the center of the universe.

Michael was still half-asleep beside me, his breath slow, his hair tangled against white down pillows. Outside our fourth-story apartment in Russian Hill, the city hummed with its usual symphony—cable car bells, distant sirens, the occasional early riser navigating the steep fog-soaked streets that rolled down toward the bay.

Last night’s party still buzzed in my bones. The Anon Salon had been particularly electric, the monthly gathering of artists, writers, tech visionaries, and misfits colliding in a crumbling Victorian mansion on 9th and Folsom. I’d worn a white beaded floor-length halter gown (a bargain found in a Pacific Heights consignment shop) and my great-grandmother’s fox fur stole, moving through rooms where the future was being invented—Craig Newmark refining what would become craigslist, Larry Harvey envisioning Burning Man’s evolution. It was late 1997, where pioneers charting parallel courses in the emerging digital frontier lived at the intersection of technology, the arts, and a socio-political counterculture.

Michael and I had been together two years now, drawn together by a shared love of adventure and exploration, though in fascinatingly different realms. While I was discovering how to coax unreliable indigenous motorcycles to carry me across continents, he was discovering how digital systems could connect minds across cultures. In San Francisco, we’d become part of a magical world of a community working in literature, art, theater, technology, philosophy, science, and music. We worked together and played together, and it was joyful and endlessly surprising.

I rolled onto my side, extracting myself from the tangle of his long limbs, to watch his face in sleep. He was tall, lean, magnetic—not conventionally handsome, but with a presence that turned heads. His long wavy hair, streaked with gray, made him look like a rock-star professor.

Padding to the kitchen, I put on a pot of coffee and slid a couple of almond croissants in the toaster oven. Sunlight streamed through our windows, offering a view that stretched west toward Ocean Beach, interrupted by the gold onion dome of the Russian Orthodox Church that gleamed in the distance. To the north was the Golden Gate Bridge, which was, as usual, shrouded in fog.

At my laptop, I scrolled through emails, deleting spam and quickly responding to work queries, from the Silicon Valley company I was working with to produce repair manuals for their mainframe computers. Then I stopped.

The subject line read: “Motorcycle Adventure in China?”

From: Rick Dunagan rdunagan@gm.com
To: Carla King sidecarla@yahoo.com
Subject: Motorcycle Adventure in China?

Carla,

I read your American Borders dispatches online. Incredible journey. We have a proposition for you.

Come to China. We’ll give you a Chang Jiang sidecar motorcycle—it’s the Chinese cousin of your Russian Ural, both descended from the 1940s BMW R71. It’s as cranky as the Ural, but nothing worse than you dealt with on your cross-country trip.

We want you to publish an American Borders-style series of dispatches. The country is changing fast—villagers are migrating to industrial hubs at the coast. Life in the countryside needs to be documented before it disappears.

We’d do it ourselves, but we have jobs, and besides, we’re not writers.

Interested?

Rick Dunagan General Motors, Beijing

I read it twice, then a third time. I wasn’t surprised by the invitation. I’d already documented a trip around the United States border on a cranky Russian sidecar motorcycle, sending dispatches to the internet in what later became known as blogging. It had been a John Steinbeck, William Least-Heat Moon kind of journey, that turned into the story of a series of breakdowns in small towns around the USA. I was test riding the motorcycle for the American importers, and my purpose was to find the flaws so the company could get them fixed at the Russian factory. And there were so many flaws, and so many breakdowns, and that gave me a chance to fulfill both my jobs—helping Ural America build a quality bike and sending interesting stories to the internet about life in border towns around the country.

But China? I’d never even considered China. I’d grown up in the seventies, back when a country could close itself off and simply disappear from your awareness. We weren’t taught much about it in school. It wasn’t in the news in any sustained way. It wasn’t anywhere in daily life.

China was sealed shut—not metaphorically, but practically. No clips on the evening news, no constant drip of information. Just distance and silence. Maybe Washington had satellites orbiting overhead, and maybe somebody somewhere had a source inside the country—but that kind of knowing didn’t belong to the rest of us. For ordinary Americans, China was unknowable. A place that existed, undeniably, but out of reach—like a planet behind cloud cover.

Nixon went, of course. The headlines flared, then faded. Even after that, China stayed mostly offstage—especially if you weren’t the kind of person who read foreign policy journals for fun.

And then, years later, Tiananmen Square hit like a punch: tanks rolling toward students, bodies carried away in bicycle carts, the world watching in horror. After that, China receded again, a closed country behind an impenetrable wall.

So the invitation was surprising, and immediately fascinating. Even better, it sounded legit, coming from a General Motors executive.

“What?” Michael’s voice came from the bedroom. He had an uncanny ability to sense when something was happening, even in half sleep.

“You’re not going to believe this,” I called back. “Someone wants me to ride a motorcycle across China.”

I heard the bed creak, his feet hitting the floor. He appeared in the living room doorway, running his fingers through his hair, wearing boxer shorts and a black T-shirt he’d had made for one of his events that read, in rainbow colors, THE 90s ARE THE 60s UPSIDE DOWN.

“China? Seriously?”

I turned the laptop toward him. He read silently, his expression shifting from curiosity to something I couldn’t quite identify. Not excitement. Suspicion? Disapproval? Certainly not the enthusiasm I’d expected.

“Wow,” he said finally. “That’s... that’s big.”

“I know.” I studied his face. “What do you think?”

“I think...”

He stood up to pour our coffees, handed me mine, then added cream and sugar to his own. I waited as he stirred, the spoon tinking against the ceramic.

He set the spoon aside and said, “I think you should be careful. China’s not like Europe or Australia. It’s communist China. What if something happened? You’d be alone, right?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “At least most of the time.”

I considered it. Not knowing anything about Rick or the others involved, I suspected they might want to escort me the first few days—make a party of it. But as he’d written, they would have jobs, and probably families, to go home to.

Besides, I needed to be alone to do my thing. To explore. To write. To take photos. To post stories.

And I wasn’t naïve about risk. I’d been riding motorcycles since my early teens, long enough to understand that safety is never guaranteed—not in China, not in California, not anywhere. You manage it. You plan. You pay attention. And you go anyway.

There is something about a motorcycle that lets you fly through the landscape and still be a part of it—part of the machine, part of the weather, part of the road. Your hands gripping the bars. Your body leaning into the turns. Steering it, dancing it around the corners and curves, gliding up and down hills—tuned to the engine, tuned to your body, tuned to the surrounding sights and smells.

The tickle of a pine forest. The taste of the ocean. And the thrill of a series of whoopdies—a motorcyclist’s word for those up-and-down hills that feel like the rise and fall of a roller coaster. You only get that on a motorcycle.

It was on a motorcycle trip to France years earlier that I’d discovered the joy of long solo journeys—though it was meant to be a vacation with my husband, also a rider. He bowed out because of work pressures (for the third year in a row), and I went anyway: angry, reluctant, and slowly realizing, somewhere between mountain passes and small villages, that I wasn’t married to the right person.

In 1988 we still traveled with guidebooks and folded paper maps. One day I put them away. I stopped obeying the plan and started following my instincts—turning left because the road looked beautiful, stopping because the light was right, staying because I wanted to. Unfettered by someone else’s schedule or preferences, I discovered the strange, intoxicating empowerment of going my own way.

Michael knew all this. I thought he understood. So his reaction now wasn’t just disappointing—it was disorienting.

He’d always been my biggest supporter. He celebrated my travels, my adventures. We’d spend hours after dinner talking about our projects, our ambitions, our ideas—our bare feet meeting on the middle cushion of the couch, me with a glass of wine, him with a hand-rolled joint, our conversations flowing late into the night.

“But that’s what makes it interesting,” I said. “It’s opening up. This could be historic.”

“Or it could be stupid.” His words came out harsher than he meant. I could see it in his face as he caught himself, and he softened his tone. “I just mean… why China? Why now?”

Did I really need to explain? If China was open now, then I wanted in.

The email had grabbed me and shaken me awake in a way I hadn’t felt in months. San Francisco was amazing. Our life together was rich and full—adventure of a different kind. But I’d been getting itchy to travel again. The work, the writing, the intellectual explorations—it was all exciting, but underneath it I felt the familiar urge for something beyond my comfortable, known world.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But doesn’t it sound incredible? A country that’s been closed for decades, just now opening up. Villages that haven’t changed in centuries? And they want me to document it before it all disappears.”

Michael stared out the window toward the bay, where morning fog was beginning to lift. When he turned back to me, his expression was unreadable.

“What will you tell them?”

I looked at the email again, at Rick Dunagan’s straightforward proposition. Come to China. Document a changing world. Ride into the unknown.

“I’ll tell them I’m interested,” I said. “I’ll ask for more details.”

“And then?”

I didn’t need to think about it. This had my name written all over it.

“And then... I guess I’ll go.”

Something shifted in Michael’s face—disappointment, maybe, or fear. But he nodded slowly.

“Then you should write back,” he said. “You should find out more.”

But his tone suggested he hoped I wouldn’t.

I typed a response:

Tell me more. I’m very interested.
Carla

Within days, the details came flooding back. A scouting trip to Beijing. A motorcycle ready for me to ride. Members of the Chang Jiang Gang eager to show me around. Rick arranging government permission for my solo journey across the country.

It was real. It was happening.

A few months later, Michael drives me to San Francisco International Airport, sulking all the way. I’m still trying to make light of it.

“I’ll probably get there and get pulled over for driving without a Chinese driver’s license. They’ll deport me in a week,” I joke.

Silence.

It’s a bright autumn day in San Francisco with the fog, as usual, hovering a mile or so out to sea, ready to muffle the city when night comes. On 101, the Pacific Ocean laps gently right up to the edge of Highway 101, deceptively, today, like a huge, harmless lake.

This isn’t the sendoff I’d imagined, and his refusal to clarify the reason for his anger—which I think it is, though he hasn’t expressed it that way—remains confusing. I wonder if he knows the reason himself. Is he afraid I won’t come back? That I’ll return changed? Has something else happened to cool his enthusiasm for our relationship, and this is just a coincidence? I’ve had to stop trying to guess.

“Okay, listen,” I say. “Like I said, this is a two-week reconnaissance trip. The big trip might not even happen.”

But even if it does, I’m thinking, if he’s making such a big deal about this little trip, what the heck is going to happen if the big trip is real?

“Just have a great time,” he replies.

“Uh huh.”

The weather changes at the airport, as it often does. I always wonder why it was built there, in the foggiest spot in the San Francisco Bay Area. SFO flights are constantly plagued by delays, and today, I hope mine won’t be one of them. It’s like a double-whammy for my mood.

He pulls up to the curb at the international terminal, and if I thought Michael might rise to the occasion at the last minute, I was wrong. His kiss goodbye is the opposite of what I yearn for. Not warm, passionate, and lingering, but a hard, cold peck.

It feels like a slap, and I jerk back in revulsion. Finally, he looks at me. Really looks.

“I do want you to have a great time,” he insists, with sincerity. “It’s important work.”

Which, of course, explains nothing. I mumble a goodbye. I love you. I’ll miss you, and try to hide my tears, and then it’s goodbye for real. He doesn’t even get out of the car to help wrestle my huge bags out of the trunk. I haul them over the curb myself as his car disappears into the chaos of the departure lanes.

So it’s already begun—the letting go of the status quo, the embrace of the new. Wow, I think. Just wow. But my disappointment doesn’t linger. I am immersed—already—in a different world, with a job to do. First up, get these bags inside the door.

Next chapter >
Find the China Road Motorcycle Diaries table of contents here.

Last week marked the fifth anniversary of a fire that completely burned down my parents home. This is part 2 of 3 stories I wrote after the fire, chronicling the physical, emotional, and financial aftermath. [Go to the first story.]

It’s been over a week since the fire and the nightmares have not subsided. The cause of the fire has yet to be determined but there are many theories. One theory is that the fire started in the wiring under the living room, Was that whoosh I heard caused by the collapse of the living room floor, releasing the burst of black smoke and soot that engulfed the dining room and the kitchen? Had I been seconds earlier to wake I might have been standing the middle of it.

So now my nightmares have expanded to include falling through the floor into an already raging fire to land on flesh-searing embers. As I try to scrabble out my sweatpants are burning, my synthetic tank top has melted to my torso, and I cannot breathe in the searing, sooty air. Over the crackle and the wind I hear my mother outside screaming my name as I become a whirling energetic disembodied being dissipating into… where? Christianity would put me in heaven or hell. Quantum mechanics posits an energy merge. Buddhists believe in bardos and reincarnation.

This nightmare triggers the memory. Shortly after 4:37 am on February 26, 2020 I am trapped by the security door in the kitchen while the black smoke thickens and the crackling sound of fire grows closer and louder. I twist the locks, push, pull, and twist the locks again with no effect. I realize there is no more time to waste flipping locks and that I might be losing cognition. I shake the door in frustration then drop to the floor. A fraction of a second of peace and acceptance washes over me and I feel light and free.

A fraction of a second after that I am scrambling across the floor with my sweatpants over my face.

A week later, I know what PTSD is. Yes, I have always known that PTSD is real and horrible but I have had no idea until now. If this is me a week later having nightmares and short, sudden verbal outbursts in the course of my day, I try to imagine the level of PTSD of someone traumatized by war or abuse or chemical imbalance. I have never been one to scoff or blame or laugh at the guy in loud conversation with himself as he plows through pedestrian traffic with his shopping cart. Or the homeless woman holding a sign at the traffic light. I have tried to help with a smile or a short human interaction or some cash or contributions to a local charity. It isn’t enough, especially for those who are alone and without support.

The person standing next to you may be in crisis. It turns out hospitals in California are required by law to offer homeless patients a meal and clothing. The nurse asked us if we wanted to take advantage of their “closet,” assuring us there were some very good clothes there. We said no, knowing we could afford to purchase anew. In retrospect we probably should have accepted.

Dad, having just flown back from Dallas, now owned the clothes on his back and the items in the suitcase he’d packed to visit my nephew. My suitcase had been burned up in the fire, so I was was dressed as a teenager in my niece’s clothes. My mom wore my brother’s sweatpants and my sister-in-laws shoes.

Under the bright lights of Costco, trying to think of every little thing was difficult and disorienting. Underwear, pants, shirts, socks, shoes, sleepwear, toothbrush, moisturizing cream, and all the little things like nail files and tweezers and eyebrow pencils and lipsticks and purses and cases. Other shoppers deliberated over a single purchase. A woman holding a shirt up for scrutiny shrugged and smiled at me. I tried to smile back. I’m not sure I succeeded.

We didn’t deliberate much, flinging the basics into a shopping cart, Jeremy trailing behind with his credit card. As I was choosing a purse my peripheral vision started to close in and I sunk to the floor. Shoppers wheeled by, my brother, I think, saying she’ll be fine in a minute. What do people do, I wondered, when they don’t have the resources we have?

My parents have great homeowners insurance. They’ll move into a comparable rental property while they rebuild their home and replace their belongings. But we know that the journey ahead will difficult and disheartening. We are alternately joyful and depressed.

It has taken me three days to list the contents of my suitcases and fill out the columns with item, purchase price, purchase date, replacement price. I have re-purchased most of my things online but I keep thinking of other missing items. Today, I was looking for my business cards and realized I had packed them for my conference.

The insurance company sent us an example spreadsheet with a list of contents for each room. We’ve customized it and put it on Google Docs so all of us can work on it. Beds and linens and desks and clocks and computers are easy to list. But imagine how depressing it is to list items like antique desk, heirloom, est value TBD. Each irreplaceable item must be researched to determine cash value for the insurance company. And how do you determine cash value for dozens of old photo albums?

Plans to replace the house must be made. There’s property testing—asbestos and toxic wastes—and cleanup. At 85 and 86 years old my parents just want to get back on the property fast. Traditional building takes too long so we’re discussing prefab. Building with Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF) is a new option. It is fireproof, earthquake proof, warm in winter, cool in summer (energy savings), non-toxic, made of recycled materials, is noise-insulating, and takes less time to build so labor costs are less.

Recently this “Legos for adults” material was approved for building in California—the US is years behind Europe in adopting it—but not a lot of builders know how to build with it yet. It’s not complicated, in fact it’s easier than the nail-banging method, but there is resistance to change. Contractors, lumberyards and big stores like Lowes and Home Depot are resistant, too, though they could easily become suppliers.

What a life-changing event. And wow, it sure is good to be alive. Still, my parents have a long year ahead. Our entire family has a long year ahead! And we realize how very fortunate we are in our family and network of friends. Speaking of which, thank you for the outpouring of real offers for help, for your condolences, and for just checking with a virtual hug via the blog comments, email, and on Facebook. And thank you for writing to let me know you’ve been inspired to check your smoke alarms, create and practice exit routes, purchase fire extinguishers and second-story rope ladders. I love technology for its ability to keep us connected no matter where we are in the world.

Part 3 coming soon.

Your thoughts? Have you been through a fire? Any event that has caused you PTSD? Now, five years later, I rarely have the PTSD nightmares any more, maybe every three or four months, now. Will they ever stop completely? I wonder.

This week marks the fifth anniversary of a fire that completely burned down my parents home. (Later, investigators concluded it was electrical.) I published this story a few days after the fire, and I re-publish it annually to 1) remind myself how lucky I am to be alive and 2) to remind everyone to check the batteries in your smoke alarms and rehearse escape routes. The batteries saved our lives but rehearsing an escape could have saved the house.

My iPhone tells me that it was 04:27 am when I called 911. More irritated than alarmed, I leapt out of bed from a dead sleep when I heard the smoke alarm go on. It had been beeping repeatedly a couple of days ago unnoticed by my parents who were talking in the next room. I dragged a small table nearby to yank the battery and stood there waiting for a break in the discussion to ask where the replacement batteries were. Finally, I gave up, set it down, and filed it away in my mind to fix later.

This house and the shop and the shed, like the property I grew up with, remained far from perfect, and that’s the way they liked it; charming in its idiosyncrasies.

The alarm wasn’t beeping; it was screeching. I strode down the hall in a tank top and my dad’s sweatpants, because I forgot to pack my pajamas. Earlier that night, I woke up cold and raided his bottom drawer. I chose the soft, gray cotton pair with the crosshatch on the knees. When Dad had his stroke we got him a wardrobe of sweatpants as he recovered from bedridden to wheelchair to walker and then back on his own two feet, so there were lots of cushy sweatpants in that drawer.

Dad wasn’t home because he was visiting my nephew in Dallas, so it was just me and my mom and their big old dog Tucker, more gray than black and in good health but like my parents getting a bit deaf and creaky and slow. In fact the whole reason they kept their old minivan in the drive between the house and the shop was because they were sure that “when the time came” they wouldn’t be able to haul Tucker’s 75 pounds into the SUV to take him to the vet. The minivan’s slider door is just inches from the ground so they knew they'd be able to drag him on a blanket into the back.

My parents' house sits at the end of a dead end road in an underdeveloped neighborhood above a creek that runs year round. One side of the house is half buried into a hillside studded with pines and oaks glowing evergreen in the golden grasses humping higher into the landscape, peaking and diving and undulating. Formerly chicken farms and apricot orchards, this land is now vineyards and McMansions and standard issue developments all culminating into the downtown where the annual Morgan Hill Mushroom Festival is held, sister to the Gilroy Garlic Festival. The roads are narrow and winding and sparsely trafficked. Bicycle clubs are a local nuisance in neon but that is the price you pay to live in a place of beauty and isolation. It is paradise at the dead end of a one-way lane that ends just one house short of a Christmas tree farm.

I walk fast through the narrow hallway, dogleg right and then left around the stairs to the basement, past my dad’s office, veer left again at my mom’s bedroom door, then turn into the kitchen and through the dining room and finally into the living room where, oh shit, there really is a fire.

It is a cheerful little fire dancing bright orange and yellow about waist high in the far corner of the room behind my dad’s easy chair next to the wood-burning stove. It gives off a bright clear light and I can see everything as if the lights are on; the chair and the stove with the front door exiting to the porch, the television and bookshelf lining the opposite wall shared with my mother's bedroom, the couch and the carpet, yards and yards of old carpet between it and me and the linoleum in the dining room and kitchen. My mind briefly attempts to resolve the why and latches onto the possibility that an ember had jumped out, forgetting that the wood-burning stove hasn’t been used in a decade or more.

I look down at my iPhone, which I had unconsciously picked up from the night table, and punch 911 while screaming at my mom in the adjacent room.

FIRE MOM! GET OUT! FIRE! GET OUT!

I hear her say WHAT? and I yell, FIRE! FIRE! WHERE'S THE FIRE EXTINGUISHER!?

IN THE KITCHEN BY THE REFRIGERATOR she yells back. My mom wakes up fast and early, at 6 in the morning or earlier.

OKAY BUT GET OUT. GET OUT!

I sprint through the dining room to the kitchen to grab the fire extinguisher, but in a whoosh that sounds exactly like the word whoosh, the kitchen fills with smoke and I am blind and choking.

MOM GET OUT I scream again because now I know the fire extinguisher is no longer an option and I have to get out, too.

The space between the refrigerator and the back door is about the length of the span of my arms spread wide. I am there in a second and twist the knob to the old wooden door and it opens, thank god because my eyes are burning and I can’t breathe and there is clean, cool air outside where I can be in a second. I can see it despite the smoke rushing out attracted by the same clean cool air I am desperate to reach.

Except between me and outside is the door with the heavy security screening and I fumble to find the lock as I drop to my knees where I instinctively know there is more air. It’s a deadbolt and I twist left and push.

It doesn’t budge and I remember, oh no, it’s this damn door, the door that’s hard to figure out even in daytime and there are two locks; one’s higher and you have to get them just right to open, one left and one right, or one first and one second, or something, click click twist. I reach up again and twist one and then the other. The tumblers turn easily and click smoothly into place and I push, and I turn them again and push, but nothing, again.

Breathing is taking more effort and I waste energy to shake the door in frustration, then, scolding myself, turn the locks again this way and that. I'm thinking, trying to visualize them, consciously slowing down, not rushing, systematically thinking, right right, push. Left left push. Right left push. Right left push.

Why the hell is this door even here with no crime and driveway alarms and a dog and nothing to steal, only some old computers and a television worth nothing, antiques and art and tools. But the tools, almost the only things of real value, that is to say, the only things a thief could resell, are all the way down the sidewalk and the stairs and across the gravel driveway in a different building altogether away from the fire.

My cheek is now pressed against the bottom of the door and I am trying to breathe but inhaling only the smoke flowing out, then I slide even further down on the tile on the floor so cool against my cheek brick red with its cream stucco or was it the fake wood now that looks so real like real wood or was it just what they were talking about for a while before they decided on the tile and then there is no more air, just hot dirty smoke that hurts my throat and my lungs don’t want.

Without knowing how, I’ve got the sweatpants off and tied around my face and I am crawling, slithering on the floor by elbow, knee, elbow, knee, bleeding but I don’t know it yet, toward my mom's room and closer to the fire, into the smoke and to the hallway, the only option out now, and under me the floor is made from smooth tile or fake wood that replaced the flooring that came with the house. Chosen because it’s easy to mop up as I remember from the many conversations and samples spread out on the kitchen table, and it doesn’t wear and the floor underneath is wavy so if we decided on real tile we would have had to level the whole thing and make it flat enough so the tile wouldn’t crack, though terra cotta would be nice but then there was the living room which is a step down and that’s harder to do with tile and my phone in my hand has a woman in it saying loudly and with authority “What is your location? What is your location ma’am what is your location?” and I am surprised there is somebody talking and so pleased that she called me.

I yell the street number and the city and MOM WHERE ARE YOU GET OUT GET OUT! And I hear her say I’M GETTING OUT! And I scream ARE YOU OUT? DO YOU HAVE THE DOG? and you say I HAVE THE DOG I’M GOING I’M GOING but you haven’t said you’re actually out so I stop by your door leaning in to look into the room where you were sleeping and ohmygod there is only black and your voice so far away and sparks and we’re screaming both of us and I have to turn my face away from the heat hot and black dark and smoke.

I can still hear you and have to trust you are out on the porch now heading to the stairs so I crawl the other direction on my elbows down the hall with my left hand keeping the sweatpants over my nose and my mouth and my right hand holding my phone with my elbow hitting the floor and my eyes burning in the smoke past my dad’s office into the narrow hallway.

I know I'm at the jag around the basement stairs because I hit my right cheek and then my shoulder so turn right elbows and knees past a few paces more and veer right by the guest room where I was sleeping minutes ago and another turn left before I hit the other wall hard with my head and then my right shoulder again and finally into dad’s room where I don’t see the phone glowing any more. I hit something with my thumb and it glows and a woman is on loud and saying, “Ma’am, ma’am, what is your location?” and I am so grateful for the white glow and maybe it was in sleep mode and I'm yelling the street number and the name of the town and not the street number and the name of the street. So I yell the street number and the street name and I spell it twice because it is hard to understand and I add the name of the town again and now I am reaching up to the lock on the sliding glass door and it opens and I am out and breathing, coughing in the cold air.

Somehow the sweatpants are on again and I still have the phone in my hand as I run down the stairs onto the gravel driveway to the other side of the house screaming for my mom and finally I see you mom, walking slowly, so slowly, hobbling down one step at a time down the stairs bent over with your hand on the dog and I am so relieved, you have him by the collar and I meet you at the bottom and I grab you by the elbow hard despite your tennis elbow but I don’t think about it or my bare feet on the gravel or the dog collar choking the dog too hard and dragging you both too fast because I am thinking about the car at the top of the drive next to the living room where the fire started and if it catches there might be an explosion.

We get to the white SUV that I used to go drive to the writer’s conference in San Francisco last week but I had parked it outside the gate and locked it and you are saying you never lock it why did you lock it? And she is saying I’m not used to leaving cars unlocked so the keys are in my purse inside the burning house.

But there is another car, the dying dog minivan, and I know the keys are in it because I moved it before I left for San Francisco and it is parked behind the gate. So we walk there me with bare feet that are being cut by the sharp gravel but I don’t know it yet and I slide the minivan door open and we push the dog in and I you are saying How did you know that the keys were in the middle console and I say MOM GET IN WITH TUCKER and you say No I'm going around to the passenger side and I yell JUST GET IN WITH THE DOG! and still you want to walk around to the other side but the other side is blocked by the wall so finally you walk around to the dog side again and then gravel is flying under the tires up and over the little rise past the garage and the house and down the driveway where we turn around by the mailboxes.

We made it.

We have shelter. Maybe that was my unconscious goal. Shelter and mobility and communication. We are shivering in inadequate clothing at the end of the road like refugees with sooty faces and bare feet waiting to be rescued but we are safe and we are self-sufficient. Is self-sufficiency the reason I dragged us the other direction all the way over the rise on the gravel driveway past the shop and the now raging fire to the shelter where the van was parked? My mother did not argue the point and I think I would have done it anyway had she objected but my thinking process is lost to me now.

In the minivan, in the shelter of the vehicle, in the relative quiet, I look at my phone and it’s dead because now I remember my service doesn’t extend to this very rural area and I was using your WiFi at the house and the electricity is probably burned up or dad’s office is burned where the modem is melting on his desk.

I turn the engine off and there is silence. We stare at the house watching the smoke and flame and my mind is still racing on what needs to be done. I think who is closer, which brother, and because my phone doesn’t work I grab your phone. And then we are wrestling for your phone, you say Use your own phone and I say My phone doesn’t work without WiFi here and wonder for a second why we both grabbed our phones and still have them gripped in our hands. They are our lifelines to the outside world. Not our shoes or shirts or pants which are extraneous but our phones.

It takes a moment to let my brother know it’s the house only and my sister-in-law Kathy is saying what, the town what? and he says, “Can I come?” and I say "Yes! Bring clothes we have no clothes and we’re hungry” setting off a chain of events with his family gathering clothes and food that will delay his arrival.

Finally there is nothing else to do and in the quiet we turn to each other and I say “We’re out we’re alive,” and we hug and then look out again at all the house burning down, the flames shooting out the windows, and glass breaking, and black smoke billowing into the sky. I look at our phones and think maybe it isn’t so bad that we’re so joined to these devices that we pick them up unconsciously rather than leave them too far away from us because that would be disconnecting from everything and maybe no trucks would be coming now until somebody woke up and not a chance would that be Phil next door who is 90 and lives alone now because he lost his wife last year to Alzheimer’s.

I check my recent calls to look at my 911 record to make sure I really made it and how many minutes ago and if somebody is really coming. I see the call lasted two minutes. This gives me pause. What happens when you dial 911 from a cell phone? The cell call hits the nearest tower and the call is routed to the Highway Patrol dispatcher who hears “Morgan Hill” and “fire” and transfers the call from the 415 area code emergency department to the 408 area code emergency department and routes it to the fire department and hopefully stays on the line but I don't know. I relive the experience, now knowing that the call was being rerouted as I yelled for mom and attempted to unlock the kitchen security door and gave up to crawl across the floor and down the hall past mom’s room and the office and the guest room to dad’s room where I heard the woman who appeared in my phone demand my location.

I now know that it took only two minutes for the fire to dance its fancy little dance and transform into a raging smoking killing monster. I look at the house, the flames and smoke and I look at my mom shaking with cold in her thin robe in the passenger seat and the what ifs start rolling again.

Such as, what if I had heard the alarm only 30 seconds later we may not have gotten out.

Such as, what if I hadn’t gotten sick after the conference and instead headed north for my meeting and to visit my friend in Sonoma leaving mom and the dog alone in the house.

My mom is wearing her thin robe and slippers and I am wearing my dad’s soft gray cotton sweatpants which have been turned inside out to be used as a respirator and then right side out again and my feet are bare. There are two thick moving blankets in the car, the kind with quilting and some sort of rough silver-gray coating. We bundle up in them still shivering because it never occurred to either of us to turn on the engine and run the heater but we would probably still be shivering even if we were warm.

Just as I think about walking to a neighbor’s to wake them up in case I didn’t say the address right after all a man strides by, his hair disheveled, intent on getting to the house. He stops when he sees how big the fire is with flames shooting up into the sky and I roll down the window and he turns, surprised because I don’t think he saw us in the parked van and his eyes are wild when he asks, Is it your house? I say yes, my mom’s house and he says Are you all right? and we say Yes we got out and he asks if everybody is out, and we say Yes and he asks again and we say Yes it was just us, my dad is in Dallas and the dog is here, too.

His name is Mike and he knows my parents and his dogs knows their dog as he lives just one house down. My mom says he is a hazmat guy, the kind of firefighter who deals with toxic fires, and he says he has his radio on all the time and when he heard the name of his street, our street, he woke up fast and ran outside down his driveway. I imagine him bursting out of his house running turning right toward the dead end and my parents’ house. Was he thinking two people in their eighties are in there and how would they get out? Of course he was. He knows about dad’s stroke and mom’s bad ankle and so he is so very relieved to see us and confirms that the fire trucks are coming and stays with us talking as his head swivels between the house and us and back at the street and up to the house next door where 90-year old Phil lives wondering if he should go wake him up. I feel like we are on the same adrenaline bandwidth knowing he is thinking about the fire jumping roofs and getting his wife and kids up and out and also Phil next door in his walker or his wheelchair, maybe he should be doing that right now, but I trust his assessment that the trucks are seconds away and anyway the fire is devouring the house in a direction away from Phil and the houses downhill and along the block and so we talk, or I talk to him to tell him about where it started and how fast it spread and we watch sparks from the living room side of the house and the smoke rising and the three big fir trees we always worry about and think oh shit those are for sure going up.

Fire truck lights and Mike is heading out to meet them. Mom looks at me like she's trying to remember something and says How did you know? How did you know? and I say How did I know what? and she says How did you know there was a fire and I say I heard the smoke alarm didn’t you hear the smoke alarm? and she says Ohmygod no I didn’t hear it I slept right through it and I squeeze her hand. She might have been there alone and I think of the lunch meeting I missed in Redwood City because of my cold, which was probably the Coronavirus we figure out later, and my cancelled visit with my friend in Sonoma.

Mom takes her phone back and calls her sister in Virginia who hesitates a second before responding in exaggerated articulation, “This is in no way a very bad joke you are telling me Cynthie, right?” and mom says No Ginny no this is in no way a joke, I am actually now sitting in the minivan in my bathrobe with Carla and Tucker watching the house burn and Carlyle is in Dallas.

Mike walks back to us from the first truck that arrives with a firefighter who asks me and I am saying it again and mom is saying it again that Nobody’s in the house. It's surreal staring at this real live firefighter doing his real live scary job in a real live fire in his big black coat with the yellow strips of reflective tape and the big red helmet hat with its visor and his number and his square-jawed firefighter face with his big eyes looking into mine and asking again and I realize I don't sound definitive enough so I say in the most definite tone I can It is just me and mom and the dog and my dad’s in Dallas and there are no other people in that house but it’s nice that you are checking so many times and he looks relieved.

More trucks come and more firefighters in big black coats with yellow reflective tape and red hats wrestling hoses and the ambulance is here and they tell me to get in and mom will go in the second ambulance. That doesn’t seem right and I keep thinking they can take both of us, isn’t there enough room for both of us? they should take mom first? and they say No it’s you who has to go first.

It’s bright in the ambulance and quiet and amazingly, stunningly clean and white and quiet so quiet and calm and the paramedic is chill which reassures me and when he looks down I keep staring at his safety glasses, or maybe because I'm staring at him so intently he looks down. They are very hip glasses with frames in neon yellow along the top ridge that glows in the light. He’s quiet thankfully not filling up all the space with meaningless chatter which means I can think about the sequence of events and after he puts me on oxygen he busies himself further making notes on a pad. The bright lights going by on the street hurt my eyes. Where are we? It seems like it’s taking a long time. I must have asked out loud because he tells me back roads because the fire trucks and the other ambulance are stopping traffic on the main road which makes sense and then I notice there's no siren on the ambulance so I must be okay.

Jeff tells me later that he arrived with clothes and food as per my request, though I have no memory of asking now. He and his wife Kathy and their teenage daughters Maddie and Jackie wiped out the pantry and Jackie’s closet and threw everything in the car. He passed my ambulance on the way in and spent time with mom until her ambulance came and then stayed to watch as more and more fire trucks arrived because Jeremy was headed to the hospital to meet us once mom was loaded up. There were ten trucks in total, he said, some from Morgan Hill, others from San Jose and Gilroy because everybody knows that if the trees and the grass catches these dry hills will go up they can swallow whole neighborhoods and the orchards and vineyards and maybe even all the way to town. He said that at sunrise a volunteer crew of people arrived with coffee and juice and pastries and everybody was saying thank God it’s February and not the end of summer when this fire would have burned down all of Morgan Hill.

The ambulance ride takes too long and parts of my body start to tell me about their troubles. Besides my lungs already stressed from my cold the bottom of my feet hurt and I wonder why then remember sprinting back and forth on the gravel driveway barefoot. My face and shoulder and hip hurt on the right side and I wonder why and will have no memory of hitting the side of the kitchen island and my bumps by the staircase and the hallway for over 24 hours. My right pinky toe is black and swollen and very sore and I still have no idea what happened to it. I am coughing from deep in my lungs not only because I caught a cold not the Coronavirus from one of the hundreds of people at the writers conference in San Francisco but also the smoke has seared my throat and coated my lungs so that when I cough and blow my nose I leave black marks on the tissues.

My sister texts and I want to reply with a status selfie in the ambulance. When I turn the phone to selfie mode I jump. My face is smeared with soot and my hair is not blonde any more and my eyes are so weird that I barely recognize myself. I am clearly on drugs and they are called adrenaline and shock, no wonder I was first in the ambulance and now I know why the firefighter was staring at me so intently.

Somebody counts one two three and I’m heaved onto a bed in a white room where they give me more oxygen and take a vial of my blood to separate it centrifugally to look for cyanide and other poisons which are in furniture and other synthetics they say when I ask. I think of the old carpet that caught so fast and then I think maybe they’re also testing for the Coronavirus because of November when I was in Thailand which is okay despite being more than 30 days, because I am where I need to be if I have it and there are cases cropping up here and there

I can see all the way down to the emergency room doors and sometimes people look in my room and then look away very quickly but finally I can see mom arrive in the gurney and she is talking and joking and then Jeremy comes in behind her.

Jeremy sped in his Tesla all the way from San Francisco and says Jeff is still at the house. A nurse comes in and calls me Missus King which makes me groan and say I’m not a missus and he says oh I’m sorry and he gives me a container of warm water and a bunch of towels in case I feel like washing up. It seems important to him for me to wash up but to me it seems like too much trouble but I would like to pee so somebody walks me to the bathroom and I look in the mirror at my black face and hair, green eyes and dilated pupils in the bright white light. Someone knocks on the door and I open it and then say I forgot to pee yet and close it again and wash my hands. I towel my face but the soot is sticky and I just end up having to rub pieces of sooty sticky shreds of towel off my skin and they walk me back to my bed.

Then I am in my room alone and coming down from the adrenaline high. My head hurts and I want to talk to somebody and I call my sister. It is exactly 6:00 am but it is two hours later in Dallas where she and dad are visiting her son Andrew who just moved there to work at the zoo. And after that I lie there listening to the sound of Jeremy and mom talking. I can’t hear their words but they sound perky.

I have much too much time to think, to relive the nightmare of the bright dancing flames, the sudden smoke, and the metal door and the locks that turn but don't release and the view to safety but no way to get out. Every night now for three nights I wake shaking from nightmares about the fire pressing me against that door as I twist the locks that make their friendly clicks to assure me that they’re working but they really don't and it is so hot and I wake up before I start burning.

Here in the room alone there is too much time to think about all the causes and effects. The cause of the fire itself, maybe an electrical fire? Was it already raging under the living room floor before it sneaked up through a crack? Was that the whoosh or was it when mom opened the door to the porch that made the house fill the house up with smoke.

And there are all the what ifs, would haves and should haves.

Such as, it was a good thing my dad installed redundant smoke alarms in the living room and hall, because it might have been too late for us by the time the smoke reached the dining room alarm.

Such as, if that damn metal door only had one lock instead of two.

Such as, if there was linoleum flooring or tile and not carpet in the living room.

Such as, if I had taken the alarm seriously instead of thinking it was a malfunction I would have run not walked.

Such as, if I hadn’t spent some of the months or years of my life in an unhappy job or relationship or location because life is precious and should be lived every single second as if it is your last.

I know I will cataloguing the such as'es for some time to come.

My blood has no cyanide in it so I am discharged and there is a shift change and mom is stuck in the hospital staff shift change but Jeremy and I sneak her out anyway walking her to the car and head to his house where his kids are both off to college and there is a guest room and Mason’s room and Zoe’s room and two bathrooms which we immediately occupy and my sister-in-law Lisa is making breakfast and coffee.

Such as, what an incredibly fabulously lucky thing that I was born into this family.

The hospital calls mom to belatedly discharge her and I take a long shower with lots of soap and look in the mirror. There is still soot on my neck and on my back. Jeremy rubs it with a soapy washcloth but it’s not working so we fill a bath and he brings me salt scrubs and bubble bath from Lisa’s closet. I soak until I see a black ring around the tub and run the shower again while it drains, using my yoga practice to reach every inch of my back.

“Oh my god I thought you had dyed your hair black” Jeremy says when I finally emerge from the bathroom.

Dad arrives in early afternoon from Dallas and now Mom and Dad and I are occupying Jeremy’s and Lisa’s and Mason’s and Zoe’s house entirely. Their old dog Vegas and my parents’ old dog Tucker wander aimlessly in the chaos, their nails clickety clacking across the wooden floors and their chins heavy on our knees when they want reassurance.

We have visited this house a lot and I have spent the night and weekends but not all of us at once and with celebrations and not trauma. Lisa is patient and shows us where the coffee is and how the dishwasher works and asks us to keep the dogs out of the kitchen and finds Acetaminophen for my mom and helps look for rental houses that the insurance company will pay for and so much more.

Such as, who your siblings marry is really important.

Such as, spending money on really good insurance is important.

We returned to the rubble to stare at the bricks and ashes, at the fallen metal support beam that dad added to straighten and stabilize the roof, at the three scorched fir trees the firefighters sprayed first so the hill wouldn’t catch fire, at the gaping black maw of the basement, at the heavy wood-burning stove tipped over and pushed by high-pressure fire-hoses to the far side of the living room, at the SUV with its hood and left-front corner panel melted like ice cream. At the garden which flourishes and the side yard with the squirrels and birds gorging themselves on the bushels of scorched corn and sunflower seeds spilled from the screened-in porch, and at the fish in the ponds still eagerly nipping at bugs on the surface.

We wonder what caused it. There is no wall plug and there are no extension cords on the side of dad's chair where I first saw the fire dancing so it may have started under the house. It may remain a mystery or an investigation may solve it.

This house which to my parents was their only home. This house which to my brothers was their childhood home. This house which to me was a place I felt at home.

My dad and I planted California poppies on the hill only a week ago. He ordered a gallon of seeds from a catalog and I walked the steep grassy hillside tucking them into crevices next to rotting oak branches and clumps of grass and roots hoping they’d germinate and turn the hill orange come summer. We watered copiously and now we wonder if watering the poppies helped prevent a spark from catching and spreading to the next hill and the next all the way down to the next street with only two houses just one hill away and then the meadow and vineyards and a goat ranch across the pasture and orchard and then not much until the main road and the dense housing development across it.

And we wonder, come summer, will the poppies bloom bright yellow and orange, the color of fire? From now to forever poppies will remind me of fire, this fire, and the resilience of nature and the fragility of the human abode.

My dad and my brothers return after a trip to the hardware store and Best Buy to lock up the garage and secure the property with deadbolts and motion-detection cameras and alarms that notify you on your smartphone. The technology is easy now but the neighbors on this private road are just as good a deterrent as everybody knows each other and the names of the UPS and FedEx and Amazon Prime drivers and especially now everyone will be on the alert for strangers. The ambulance-chaser construction companies and lawyers have strolled up the drive and been accosted by one neighbor in particular who hates traffic on the lane and we've said just please go away because... well, just because... ambulance chasers.

One of my brothers sources industrial masks from a friend with a house-painting company and they and my dad don heavy boots and disposable work clothes to pick through the toxic rubble. They don’t find my mom’s rings, her purse, or her wallet because that side of the house burned completely and poof, there goes the money and plastic and anything paper or cloth. All of its walls and floors and furniture is now just ashes and whatever had been there was scattered by high-pressure fire hoses. The other side of the house with the guest room and dad’s room didn’t burn but the damage from a caved-in roof and smoke and water from the fire hoses created their own havoc.

They spend half a day shoveling ash and picking through the rubble and find my purse which had melted around the interior where my wallet is intact though with a wet and smokey passport and bank cards and a few hundred dollars in American cash and Mexican pesos. And they find my laptop with a piece of broken glass melted to the cover. The hard drive powers up, but the screen doesn’t. It doesn’t matter, because all my files are in the cloud. It wouldn’t matter, anyway.

They even rescue my journal and for a moment I experience great joy thinking all my entries from my November trip to Thailand through to the writers conference last weekend are intact but the water damage to the ink has made my writing nearly indecipherable.

It doesn’t matter. None of these things matter. The rings and the wallets, the clothes and the furniture, the antiques and the heirlooms, sentimental as they are, mean nothing to the dead. And we are not that.

Thank you for reading. Now please go replace the batteries in your smoke alarms and I’ll follow up with parts 2 and 3 of this story later.

Let me know your thoughts about this story, or about fire preparation or recovery. I’d love it if you hit the LIKE button below and comment.

I sighed, leaning farther back against the bench to shade my face as the sun dropped lower in the sky. Its warm light shone golden on my bare legs on this sunny Valentine’s Day weekend in Calistoga, the quaint Northern California hot springs town—one of our favorite places for a short getaway.

Our room wouldn’t be ready for a little while, but it was nice to relax and people-watch, decompressing from the two-hour drive up from San Francisco.

A couple on a bicycle built for two rolled past, the woman in the back pointing at something down the street. I caught a snippet of their conversation—something about where to have dinner, oysters maybe, or barbecue.

My stomach rumbled.

“That sounds good,” I said. “With a crisp white from Napa.”

He laughed and agreed. We almost always agreed. We had such a good time together, and it was going to be another good weekend.

I snuggled closer to him, but he took a sharp breath in and tensed slightly, as if I’d pinched him. So I shifted away. But it wasn’t that. He was fumbling for something in his inside jacket pocket.

A pulse of unease moved through me, quick and sharp, my breath hitching before I even knew why.

“I love you,” he said. “We have such a good time together, don’t we?”

I wanted to say I was just thinking that, but a sense of dread crept over me, and I couldn’t speak.

In his hand was a small velvet box.

“I think it’s time,” he said, flipping it open.

The diamond caught the light and the entire world around me blurred, narrowing to a pinpoint on that cold, sparkling stone.

The air thickened, the sounds around me dulling as my mind reeled. The soft laughter of tourists, the faint hum of bicycle tires against pavement, the rumble of a muscle car trailing its scent of oil and gas. All of it faded under the weight of the moment pressing down on me.

I took a deep breath, still staring at the diamond.

It’s time? I thought. Why now? Why here on this bench, on the sidewalk, in the middle of town?

And then I thought, again, Why? Why at all?

I’d never really wanted a diamond ring, despite everyone else apparently wanting one, but this one was beautiful—catching the light and emanating it at the same time. Absorbing and reflecting, tempting, twinkling, winking.

“Oh.”

Not Yes. Not No. Just… Oh.

His smile faltered, his hands tightening slightly around the box. I had to say something else, but it wouldn’t come.

“Oh?” he repeated.

My heart pounded against my ribs, frantic, disorganized.

“I love you,” I said, tearing my soul away from the sparkle and looking into his eyes—blue, hopeful, doubtful, and then, as if he knew what I was going to say, sad, just before he looked down.

“But I don’t think I can say yes.” Then desperately, I wondered, why couldn’t I say yes?

A muscle in his jaw twitched. The box snapped shut. And a silence opened between us, gaping and bottomless.

Then, without a word, he stood.

I could feel it happening—the slow-motion unraveling of something we had built over the years, the years leading up to this day, this moment.

Our love was easy. Our friendship was easy. Smooth, full of laughter, anticipation, fun. And I thought we also had understanding between us. I hadn’t had a clue. Couldn’t things just go on as they were? Days spent hiking in Marin, enjoying jazz in Oakland, the roadtrip to Tomales Bay in the driving rain just crawling along, laughing as the windshield wipers slapped discordantly against the beat of the music.

I wanted to say something else, to explain, but my throat was thick, my mind full of cotton wool—sticky, clogged, unable to form words.

And then he walked away.

The white Lincoln was parked in the first spot next to the B&B. It hung out of the space a little, too long, too impractical.

But it was also roomy, quiet, with plush upholstery and a great sound system.

It was like him, an extension of him, just like the way he carried himself—with an old-school sort of confidence. I loved the way he moved, and the way he dressed, with a careless but classic elegance, fashionable but immune to fashion.

I rose, watching him go, my stomach twisting, my breath shallow.

“No…” I almost cried out. “Wait.” But I didn’t.

What was I thinking? That he was going to grab our suitcases, roll them back over here, and continue our weekend plans?

He didn’t look at me as he yanked open the driver’s side door and got in. The engine roared to life, and the tires screeched as he threw the car into drive—then reverse.

A couple on the sidewalk jumped back, startled, their hands flying up in reflex.

They stood there. I stood there.

The rear suspension scraped as he backed over the curb.

Luckily, there were no bicyclists, no cars. But I don’t think he would have noticed if there were.

Then he floored it.

He’s not like this, I thought. My God. He’s going to kill somebody, I thought, as I watched him go.

And then, just as suddenly as he had peeled out, he braked. My heart leapt with hope.

He’s changed his mind, I thought.

Relief rushed through me so fast it made me dizzy.

We can talk, and we can go on as we were.

The Lincoln sat idling, the rumble of its engine filling the silence.

Then it reversed.

I took a step forward to meet him, but he braked again, just short of where I stood on the sidewalk.

The rear window slid down.

I held my breath, trying to think of what to say.

I’m sorry? I love you? It doesn’t have to change. Maybe even… yes? What would “yes” feel like?

But then my suitcase came flying out of the window.

It hit the pavement hard, bounced twice, then tumbled backward, landing on its side in the center of the street.

I flinched.

A slow wave of silence rippled through the town.

Then the engine revved.

The tires screeched again.

And the Lincoln was gone.

Incredibly, there had been a break in traffic during this whole ordeal.

The cyclists, the couples strolling hand in hand, the families, the friends sipping wine on the patio across the street—everyone was watching now, a collective pause hanging thick in the air.

It took a beat, but what was I going to do? Run around in circles and cry?

I heaved a deep breath in and stood up straight, shoulders back, and walked to the middle of the street to collect my suitcase.

Without looking around, I released the pull handle, stretched it out, and turned.

Rolling the suitcase back to the sidewalk, bumping it over the curb, and dragging it into the B&B felt like an eternity.

Inside, the air was cool, scented with eucalyptus oil and freshly brewed coffee. The lobby was all rough wood paneling, dim lighting, and the kind of muffled quiet that only came with a place that cost hundreds of dollars a night.

The woman at the front desk—a silver-haired pro with a no-nonsense bob and the energy of someone who had seen it all—watched me approach, dragging my suitcase behind me.

“Checking in?” she asked.

I nodded, feeling the weight of everything pressing into my bones.

And now, I’d have to figure out how to get home tomorrow.

“Just me.”

She clicked a few keys on her keyboard, then glanced up, studying me for a long moment.

“I’ll put you in a different cottage,” she said. “He requested number three, but we’ll put you in six. Because…” She hesitated, then shrugged. “There’s always somebody here, twenty-four seven. So you can just dial the front desk… whenever.”

Something in my chest loosened. “Thank you.”

I felt tears burning in my eyes.

“Safety first,” she said. “He might be a nice guy, but you never know what people are gonna do when their heart gets broken.”

I let out a short laugh, despite myself. “Oh, I think I might have some idea.”

The cottage was beautiful. Too beautiful. A four-poster bed with gauzy white drapes. A bottle of Veuve Clicquot chilling in a silver bucket. A platter of antipasti—marinated olives, ribbons of prosciutto, dark chocolate squares arranged just so.

I pulled down the duvet, nestled into the white sheets, and sighed.

What the hell had just happened?

Why couldn’t I just say yes?

We were happy. I did love him.

But there is something about marriage that changes a woman in a way it does not change a man.

Once married, a woman is claimed. Owned. Controlled.

And being married changes friendships in the same way that being divorced changes friendships.

Suddenly, you’re single, and your coupled friends find it awkward. Suddenly, you’re married, and your single friends find it awkward.

You haven’t changed, but the world changes how it sees you.

It changes how much time you spend—must spend—on the relationship.

Now, if you travel: Why isn’t your husband going with you? What does your husband think of that? I can’t believe your husband would let you do that.

I’d had quite enough of that in my life already.

But could it be different now? Now that I’m older?

Does he really see me?

Or would it all backslide—into expectations, into limitations, into something I could never quite name but always felt closing in?

Incredibly, I went to sleep.

When I woke from my nap, the hot tub outside was steaming, mist rising into the night air. Beyond the deck, the silhouettes of oak trees swayed gently, backlit by the moon.

Somewhere in the distance, someone was playing acoustic guitar, the soft melody weaving through the crickets’ song.

I uncorked the champagne and slowly filled a glass, watching the bubbles rise from its hollow stem.

Stepping into the warm water, I took a sip, then let my head fall back and the silence settle in.

I wanted him to be here.

I loved him.

But I never wanted him to be mine.

And I didn’t want to be his.

Can you be in love and still want to be free?

Thanks for reading. I hope this story is thought provoking. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

And in the meantime, here’s the perfect anthem for the occasion: Leslie Gore's "You Don't Own Me"

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You may know me as the woman on a motorcycle, writing about the road. But there’s more—so much more. Stories, ideas, and experiments that never found a home. This is where they finally land.

Motorcycle Misadventures is where I publish narrative work rooted in movement and attention: long journeys and small moments, border crossings and backroads, present-tense observations and stories remembered years later. Motorcycles figure prominently, but they’re not the point. The point is what happens—to the body, the mind, and the story—when you move through the world alone and awake.

For years, my published work focused on travel and long-distance journeys. Along the way, I also wrote pieces that didn’t quite fit anywhere else: interludes written in real time, fragments that carried their own weight, reflections that belonged between chapters rather than inside them. This publication brings those strands together into one place.

Think of this as a literary journal in motion—part memoir, part archive, part experiment. Some pieces are fully shaped; others are written close to the moment they occurred. All of them are grounded in lived experience and curiosity about how place, power, history, and movement shape a life.

Sections You’ll Find Here

China Road Motorcycle Diaries
Chapters from my book in progress about riding an antique Chinese sidecar motorcycle solo through northern China in 1998, at a moment just before the country changed irrevocably.

Motorcycle Misadventures
Narrative essays and stories drawn from years of travel by motorcycle, bicycle, and otherwise—misadventures in the original sense of the word: encounters shaped by chance, risk, and curiosity.

Present Tense
Interludes written from the now—short pieces rooted in immediate observation, reflection, and attention. These posts aren’t about journeys completed, but about being here.

From time to time, I’ll also share stories from my family archive, including writing by my grandparents, who crossed America by Model T in 1927 and were among the first passengers on early transatlantic commercial flights.

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Founding members receive all paid benefits, plus my enduring gratitude—and, when inspiration strikes, something personal and unexpected.

Subscribe to follow along, wherever the road leads next.

I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s begin this journey together.

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Adventure motorcycling has always been my passion. The hum of the engine beneath me, the open road stretching endlessly ahead, the smell of dust and freedom—this isn’t just something I do; it’s who I am. But lately, the road has begun to feel different. Each journey is a story, and each story is proof of resilience, curiosity, and strength. Now, though, I feel that identity slipping through my fingers like sand.

This month-long trip to Baja, Mexico, was supposed to be like all the others—thrilling, rejuvenating, transformative. Instead, it became a reckoning.

From the border crossing at Tecate, the ride to Baja Rancho la Bellota was everything I expected: remote, rugged, and beautiful. The dirt road leading to the ranch demanded skill and focus, the kind that once felt like second nature. I was thrilled when my navigation app led me to a lonely dirt road winding into the mountains. For miles, I seemed to be the only one on it.

But then the road narrowed sharply and curved hard to the right before climbing steeply uphill. Anticipating loose dirt and gravel at the curve’s center, I shifted into low gear, slowing and committing to keeping my tires on the left outer edge. All good so far. But when I accelerated uphill, the back tire caught the edge of the washout, spinning and jerking me dangerously to the right. Instincts took over. I overcorrected, leaning sharply left, and gave it more throttle. The bike straightened out, and I made it to the top. From here, I could see nothing but nature rolling out in every direction.

I cut the engine, letting the silence settle in, and stepped off to recover. My hands burned, my wrists ached, and my thumbs felt bruised from gripping the bars and working the brake and throttle. Setting the bike on its kickstand, I walked a few steps to clear my head and glanced at the navigation app. For the first time, I felt trepidation where I normally would have felt exhilaration.

Had four years between trips like this really made such a difference? We like to joke that 60 is the new 40, but here I was, asking myself: Am I too old for this? Despite workouts, hiking, biking, yoga, and a healthy diet, I just don’t feel as strong as I had just a few years ago.

At 5’8” with a 32-inch inseam, my feet touch the ground on most bikes, which has given me a lot of confidence. But it was the weight that challenged me. The KLR weighs 400 pounds, and I’d added 100 pounds of gear: clothing, camping supplies, electronics, and food. Lately, I’d noticed that it was harder to heave it upright, especially if it leaned too far over on the kickstand. When did this happen?

I checked my navigation again and realized I had no cell service. The stakes were higher now. If I fell, I’d be walking miles to get help. For a moment, I considered turning back, but it didn’t feel right. After all, I’d just navigated a very tricky, rutted curve on my loaded adventure motorcycle. How much worse could it get?

By the time I reached my destination, I’d fishtailed through several gullies, veered off the road into a field, and nearly dropped the bike once, planting my leg firmly to keep it upright. Exhausted, I rolled into the ranch, a beautiful valley scattered with oak trees. I parked by a hitching post, shook out my tingling hands, and walked to the main building.

I found Rosa, the ranch cook, who showed me where to set up my tent. I unloaded the bike, inflated my mattress, topped it with my sleeping bag, and went for a short hike on the trail by the arroyo into a canyon. Rocky hillsides were bearded with early-November scrub brush, and clumps of wildflowers were going to seed. One of the ranch dogs accompanied me, trotting just ahead, and sat patiently waiting for me to catch up when she lost sight of me. There was no road noise, no generator noise, not even a jet flying overhead. Birds flitted to and fro, tittering and scattering in the dry leaves, bugs buzzed. There was a tinkle of rockfall and a breeze rattling the dry leaves on the oaks and sycamores. Mostly, there was the sound of my own breathing and footfall.

Reckoning With Identity

For years, adventure motorcycling has been my refuge. It’s how I escape, how I prove I’m strong. It’s how I think. Helmet time is sacred—a space where I’m unplugged, away from the noise of life. No podcasts, no calls, no music. Just me, the road, and the rhythm of the engine.

Back at camp, I cooked some noodles, and popped a Corona. Even the small effort of tearing a packet, pressing the ignition button on my JetBoil, pulling a beer tab— sent shooting pains up my fingers to my wrists. I couldn’t imagine riding on or even riding back. I tried to convince myself that in two days I’d be fine, ready to ride again. But as the moon rose over Baja’s wide-open sky, a question pressed harder: Is there bravery in letting go, too?

The next day, I met Raul and Caroline, the ranch owners. Raul shared stories of Baja’s misunderstood beauty, its resilience, and its culture. Caroline, his partner in life and work, spoke of her own adventures and the power of embracing change.

Sitting by the lodge’s wood stove, Caroline coaxed me to speak my fears out loud. I spoke of the difficulty of getting here and my fear about the changes in my body, my abilities, and riding back. I was surprised and a little ashamed to feel my eyes filling with tears. After I’d gotten control of my emotions, we sat in silence for a moment, listening to the pops and whooshes of the fire. The smell of woodsmoke mingled with Rosa’s cooking in the next room. The big moon poured white light into the room through the windows.

“Sometimes,” said Caroline, “change opens a door to something wonderful you didn’t expect.”

Facing What Comes Next

I couldn’t ignore what my body was telling me, so the next day, I turned toward home. I rode through the Valle de Guadalupe, passing vineyards, restaurants, hotels, and pottery shops, thinking about alternatives. A smaller bike. A vehicle that could carry a bike. Short fly-and-ride motorcycling destinations.

Letting go of long motorcycle journeys doesn’t erase the miles I’ve ridden or the places I’ve seen. It doesn’t undo the strength or joy those journeys have given me. I told myself that this change simply means I’m being called to redefine what adventure means for me now.

A New Journey

The US border guard at Tecate smiled as she scanned my passport. “I’d love to learn to ride a motorcycle, but I’m too short,” she said.

I laughed. “No, you’re not! Start with a Motorcycle Safety Foundation class—they use small bikes—and maybe try a Honda Rebel.” She smiled and wrote it down.

I continued into the US, following smooth highways that didn’t require much shifting or braking. Despite the discomfort in my hands, or perhaps because of it, I felt a bittersweet clarity.

This trip might have been my last big adventure on two wheels, but it also feels like the beginning of something new. Trading my motorcycle for an overland vehicle might let me carry a paddleboard or bike for other adventures. The new year invites reimagining. I don’t know exactly what’s next, but I know the road still calls—it just might look different now.

For Those Facing Their Own Shift

I never thought I’d face this crossroads, but here I am. If you’re feeling the same, know this: You’re not alone. Whether it’s age, injury, or life’s demands, the loss is real, and the grief is valid. But so is the opportunity to evolve.

My tears fogged my helmet visor as I considered this change. I felt betrayed by my body, resentful, and silly because I hadn’t planned for this. But we don’t stop being who we are because we can’t do what we once loved. The courage it takes to get out there and push your limits—it’s still yours. That courage will help you navigate this transition, too.

Oh boy. I headed out 10 days late and so tomorrow I’ll cross the border during Baja 1000 race week. The excitement is building, people are flocking to Ensenada, and the races start on Friday. But I’ll be at a ranch 60 miles south of Tecate, hiking, riding horses, and tasting tequila, not necessarily in that order. Then in the Valle de Guadalupe for food, wine, art, and architecture. I look forward to hanging out in the quiet spot between the 840 and 800 marker in the race map, below.

As for the motorcycle, this morning I checked it with Jamie, the owner of Clairemont Cycle Supply and the oldest independent motorcycle shop in San Diego.

I’ve got a pesky fuel problem. Why the shop in Santa Cruz, who I specifically asked to go over the bike with a fine tooth comb, didn’t catch this, is a mystery. Just goes to show, self-maintenance is the way to go. I shouldn’t have depended on a shop.

The carb isn’t leaking (but it is corroded, like a “normal” old KLR). There’s probably a little leak in the petcock seal so gas is getting into the oil reservoir and creating some exhaust smoke. Not terribly serious, and probably I could go all the way to Cabo like that. But I don’t relish the possibility of needing to stop halfway through my Baja trip to find a mechanic. I’m carrying a carb rebuild kit and the petcock replacement parts, and there are plenty of great mechanics in Baja, but still.

So I’m thinking and rethinking, and will let you know how it goes and how far I get into Baja. Already, I’m 10 days behind schedule and my 30-day trip has now shrunk to 20. I’m looking forward to my time at the ranch to relax, hike, ride horses, and taste tequila.

Yesterday...

I moto’d the 25 minutes north from Mission Bay to Leucadia (a beachside northern suburb of San Diego) to visit with my friend Allan Karl, who is just back from a ride in Portugal and Spain. Allan shipped his BMW 650 to Europe some years ago and finds places to store it between rides. He found a such a place in Madrid this time, and looks forward to returning to continue his explorations. A lot of committed travelers do this kind of thing. Sometimes they purchase a bike in the continent and leave it there.

I know a couple who has a motorcycle in the US, Bulgaria, and Australia. It beats the cost (and wait times and risk of damage or delay) of shipping, especially when you have friends around the world where you can store it. Yay for the internet to connect us! The adventure motorcycling world is full of generous souls who store bikes for each other or loan out extra bikes, too, which is half the reason I have two bikes. Though I use the KLR for travel, at home I consider the KLR a “friend bike.” It’s got scrapes and dents and zip ties holding some of the plastic parts together, and its replacement value is only about $2500 so it’s not like anybody would fear dropping it, which mostly happens at low speed in sand or water crossings or in parking lots when you don’t put kickstand all the way down anyway. I’ve loaned it to several girlfriends from across the country and Canada for whom Death Valley and Baja and the Sierra Nevada—backyard destinations for me—are mind-blowingly exotic.

Allan and I forgot to take a selfie together, go figure. But we did take photos of Dar, his beautiful Bengal cat with the big green eyes and quite the snuggle bunny. Ever curious, she liked my Giant Loop bag and tried to snuggle inside it.

It’s also helpful to talk out what to take and what to leave behind. I overloaded my toolset, and we walked through it and rejected some items, which I’ll leave here in San Diego.

Yeah, the hammer is a reject and also various pliers with wire cutters, because I surely won’t need all of them. The rejects are on the right. This lightens my load by about 10 pounds.

We also talked apps. A few weeks ago I discovered iOverlander, which not only provides a road map with options (twisties, avoids tolls, highways, etc.), but crowdsourced places to stay, including campgrounds. I love that mechanics and gas stations are also marked. Users can add new places, leave reviews, save favorites, and share places with other travelers, a la Yelp and Google Reviews. The paid version ($59/yr) allows you to download maps for offline use, which will be critical during my trip.

Allan showed me Detecht, an app that’s popular with motorcyclists in Europe, that helps you plan your routes, avoid freeways and toll roads, and choose the curviest roads. It lets you save and share routes, too. I’ve been looking for an app that tracks my riding days for a while, and haven’t found one, so this is awesome!

What are your thoughts about the Baja 1000, about motorcycle fuel systems, travel apps, horseback riding, hiking, tequila tasting, and food and wine? Whatever your interest or area of expertise, I look forward to hearing from you!