SE7EN DAYS TO CALI | Cross-Country Motorcycle Memoir
Road hums, wheels ignite
Cali calls through desert dust
Seven days take flight.
BMW R1100GS Urban Portrait
PART ONE, ACT ONE: THE CALL
It wasn’t raining the day she called, but it felt like I was standing in the wake of a typhoon by the time I hung up the phone.
I was knee-deep in a production job that had long since stopped being glamorous- long days, longer nights, and a catering budget so low it was turning a devoted crew into a band of mutinous rebels. The shoot wasn’t set to wrap for another week and a half. I’d been running on electrolytes, protein bars and vitriol, making it harder and harder to get up the next day and show up without a permanent scowl.
Then came one of “those” phone calls- out of the blue, and enough bad tidings to remind me that I should stop taking things for granted.
I recognized the voice from a woman who first spoke to me when she was in her twenties and I was nine; Lilian is a good friend of my father- the kind of woman you remember from your childhood, long hair, deeper eyes, and a way of looking at you that made me wish I was capable of smarter conversation.
She used to watch me when I was a kid. Made me birthday cakes that probably rewired my brain chemistry. And though life had marched on in opposite directions, her voice still had a place in me that didn’t age.
“Uncle Bobby stopped chemo,” she said. She always referred to her husband as “uncle”- a habit she must have fell into in order to avoid confusing the many nieces and nephews in his extended family.
“The pain of the treatment was simply too much”.
There was a pause- those heavy, quiet seconds that carried more truth, more weight in its meaning than any other sentence I had heard until this moment.
“If you want to see him… you know, I think it should be now.” She said. No drama. No persuasion, but with the precision of a protective matriarch.
Reading between the lines, I figured I had three weeks at the most to have one final face to face conversation with a man I loved and respected as much as anyone might feel for a blood relative.
I didn’t need to think it through. I’d already missed enough. Enough weddings, birthdays, July 4th barbecues with legendary comfort food served against a backdrop of great fun and unresolved family tension. Whatever- that’s all gonna get resolved someday.
Except, there was no room for a “someday.” Before now, death-bed requests were only in the books that I read, the shows that I watched and the stories told by other people. To receive one now, to hear the request from the voice of a woman who is certain of a grim outcome, struck the kind of chord that sang out at a volume that kids who grew up angry need to hear:
Don’t fuck this up. Drop everything and show up, just like they do in the movies.
Except- in real life, people have to buy a plane ticket first- and the cost of air travel within a two-week window was higher than I or anyone else had seen it, not to mention the other real-life expenses associated with traveling to a major city known for being unbearable without a car.
My intention was to arrive and stay by my uncle’s side for however long he needed- and when I realized that days could turn into weeks could turn into months, I had to plan this out a bit differently than any other trip I was used to taking, especially since leaning on relatives that I had not seen in over 17 years, seemed like extremely bad form…
-Because I’m the black sheep of my family.
After a couple of sleepless nights weighing in all of my options, the simplest and most practical solution was to travel from Brooklyn, NY to Sacramento, CA…
-by motorcycle.
End Act One.
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