The occasion of the Lentil Festival in Pullman, Washington, a brilliant weather forecast, and the opportunity to take a long weekend away from work combined to form just the incentive needed to get me to map a ride on the Yamaha through the Palouse grasslands.

Members of the American Motorcyclist Association have identified the road between Enterprise, Oregon, and Clarkston, Washington, as one of the best 15 motorcycle roads in the United States, and although I have ridden Highway 95 along the nearby Salmon River in Idaho — itself a beautiful trip — I had not ever encountered the Rattlesnake Grade on the border between Washington and Oregon. Any trip into that part of the country would have to include that stretch of road.

The outbound trip necessarily found me in the boring parts to Walla Walla; time did not permit a more scenic route, and it was just as hot, congested, brown, and, well, uninspiring as I expected it would be.

I had packed a lunch for the first day, and when it was time to eat (past Yakima), I started looking for a shady spot. It was then I discovered that virtually all of the trees in Yakima County exist somewhere other than near the road. No flippin’ shady spots. I finally came across a small stand of trees adjacent to the exit into Granger, and as I rolled off the highway saw that some civic‐minded organization had installed a bench under the trees. Perfect! It was as I pulled up that I realized the bench was not in the shade; it was sitting out in the 80° midday sun, and it was metal. So I stood under the trees and ate my sandwich.

Once I cleared the Oregon border and turned east, the real journey began. Dave Karlotski wrote in his essay Season of the Bike, A motorcycle is a joy machine. It’s a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It’s light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it’s a conduit of grace, it’s a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.¹ I found that joy and grace on the Hells Canyon Scenic Byway, a perfect road on a perfect day traversing stunning countryside that had seemingly been abandoned by all humanity save me and my bike.

The far point on my route was Joseph, Oregon, which is where I found all of humanity that had been missing from the highway. Goodness. It turns out that I had ridden into the middle of the Bronze Bike Rally, which seemed to have attracted every Harley owner in the state. There were local cops everywhere, including one with the back end of his car halfway blocking the street as he wrote a ticket — clearly in a big hurry to write one in order to go get another and not so much to do an adequate job getting parked. I chuckled at the sign posted on the main street that read, This little town is heaven to us, please don’t drive like hell through it. I turned around and started north.

The trip between Enterprise and Clarkston the next day was at least as fantastic as I had imagined it was likely to be, and I have a pretty vivid imagination. I try to be mindful of the need to be grateful for each day and think I do a good job of pausing at least once each day to appreciate that I was breathing when I woke up — and then there are stretches lasting hours that are filled with utter clarity on the question of whether it is great to be alive. This was one of those times. A bird flying over the road in front of me clutching a fish in its talons; the shadows on the undulating land emphasizing its form; the physics of managing the bike — knowing I was balanced just so as I skidded on baking hot tar snakes when deep into turns, where each vector of force communicated itself precisely into my gut; the air rushing over me — it was impossible not to grin at the realization of how much fun I was having.

Continuing north from Clarkston, I hugged Lower Granite Lake until I could fly up out of the canyon to Pullman. I love the landscape in this part of the state and the colors imparted to it by the farming that envelopes the ground from horizon to horizon. The fact that the horizon itself changes more rapidly than the mileposts rush by is oddly disorienting and altogether interesting.

I made it to Kamiak Butte in time for lunch with the family. The Lentil Festival wrapped up that afternoon, and we spent the evening shooting the breeze and eating pizza. After the traditional Day After Lentil Festival breakfast at Denny’s the following morning, it was time to say farewell and twist the throttle.

The ride back west across Washington on Highway 12 returned to the hot, flat, level, congested highway kind of travel that bores the shite out of a guy on a motorcycle. I was running low on drinking water and was once again reminded that there must be a shortage of funds in the WSDOT budget to build shady spots along the highways of southeastern Washington. Even the series of small towns that are bisected by the highway and post 35 MPH speed limits, hoping the storefronts will catch the eye of the unwary, are devoid of parks or signs pointing to parks where one might otherwise pause in the shade and admire lovingly maintained landmark courthouses and city halls and appreciate the kind of people who would care enough to have treated them so well. Nope. Not a park anywhere.

For miles I swiveled my head hoping to find a welcoming place to put down the kickstand for a few minutes. It was near 90°, I had been stung twice by bees that got caught in the neck of my jacket, I had been cooking my nuts on the vinyl seat for hours, and my ass was screaming for respite from its ten inch patch of unyielding motorcycle.

Finally outside Pasco I came across Madame Dorian Memorial Park, which sits adjacent to the Walla Walla River, and features Actual Trees. (Note that the presence of trees does not disprove my theory about WSDOT’s budget; the park is maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, not Washington State.) Hooray, I thought, I can stretch my legs and fill up my water bottle. As I pulled up, there in the middle of the sidewalk bordering the parking area was a beautifully crafted, stone‐encrusted drinking fountain. It was one of those that appear to have been hewn from a design perfected in the heyday of the WPA, with modern fixtures, able to withstand bazooka fire, and built by the goddamn United States Army. Jimi Hendrix was playing the Star Spangled Banner as I strolled up to it to take my fill of water piped right out of the river that was 50 feet away. America, fuck yeah!

Ask me if it worked. Go ahead. Ask. Jesus Tapdancing Christ.

The copyright for the music bed I chose for the video is owned by EMI, and its use here is blocked in the United States. The video is nowhere near as interesting without the music; you will have to get invited to a party at my place if you want to hear it, or else figure out how to synchronize The Smashing Pumpkins’ Cherub Rock in your music library with the video embedded here.

Late in the afternoon, I came to an abrupt halt behind traffic at a dead standstill west of Cle Elem. Typical summer Sunday rush to get back to the Puget Sound basin, and probably a three‐hour slog to climb the 35 miles to the summit of Snoqualmie Pass. I was contemplating my next move when I looked down and saw coolant spewing out of the overflow hose. Great. A roadside inspection of the radiator suggested I had caught the problem just as the overflow tank had finished draining its small volume of coolant, so (the traffic having not moved an inch in the time I had been worrying over the radiator) I swung around and ran north through Blewett Pass and west across Stevens Pass.²

A forest fire the previous week had kept Highway 2 in Tumwater Canyon closed, but I knew it had reopened after I left home; nevertheless, the air west of Leavenworth was still laden with smoke, and there were crews dealing with flare ups that came right down to the shoulder of the highway. It was surreal to ride through it — very dystopian atmospherics, and a fitting punctuation to my afternoon in Purgatory.

Most of the twilight had drained from the sky as I was closing in on Gold Bar, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but another bumper‐to‐bumper trail of cars at a dead stop on the highway. Idling in the traffic made it simple to watch as coolant began boiling out of the overflow again, and so over to the shoulder I went. It took me another two hours of stopping, waiting, riding up to find the back end of the traffic jam, lather, rinse, repeat, until I reached Ben Howard Road and bypassed the remaining nonsense. Late in the night, 1,132 miles after I had left home, I switched off the engine in the garage and headed upstairs for a good night’s sleep, where visions of the rolling hills of the Palouse would dance through my head.