Granny's "Bucket List" Modification

As soon as we purchased the Goldwing in March 2002, we immediately began putting the miles on with longer trips around the Olympic Penninsula and down the coast to Newport, Oregon and to other Northwest locations. During the riding season (when I have the option, I'm definitely a fair weather rider!) that year, we put plenty of miles on the new Goldwing. Little did we know that the "motorcycle across the USA" plan would drastically change that winter.

I don't remember the precise date, but I still remember Debi and Ben calling us that winter (probably in December 2002) to announce the anticipated arrival of our first grand child in June 2003. Immediately upon hanging up the phone from this conversation, Deb said "Noel, I hope you won't mind if I don't ride the motorcycle anymore." Her comment was somewhat unexpected because she had never complained about motorcycling. She had been completely supportive of getting back into motorcycling and moving up to the Goldwing. However, her changed attitude was also completely understandable because I knew of her powerful passion for being a mom -- which would naturally flow to being a "Grand" mom. She was clear in her thoughts and expressions -- she was not expecting me to give up motorcycling. She just didn't want to take the risks anymore now that she knew that she would soon be a "Granny" (the name she called her grandmothers -- and which would become her name when Amelia arrived in June 2003).

To be sure, the "across the USA" trip after retirement had already been moved off the expectations for the summer of 2003 even before this announcement as I picked my anticipated retirement at the end July, followed by Neal and Anna's wedding just a few days later. Instead, I began planning for a 3 week - 4400 mile solo trip to California as my "retirement gift to myself." That was accomplished and some of the original web/blog site about that trip is still available at:http://ntog.weebly.com/mototrip-2003.html

And, as you can guess from the fact that I am now writing this in 2009, this "across the USA" trip just kept getting pushed further down the "bucket list." I still rode the Goldwing plenty and took several trips including long ones (3 more to California and to Idaho and Montana). A couple of the blogs for those motorcycle trips are here:
http://backroadrider.blogspot.com/
http://ntog.weebly.com/mototrip-2005.html

As I write this, the Goldwing sits with some 44,000 miles -- except for just a few put on by my son, Neal -- the rest I've put on in the 7 years we've had it.

The intervening years have been filled with plenty of other travel including a 10,000 mile rail trip Deb and I did in October 2008 around the USA (blog: http://traintripping.blogspot.com/), and trips to Europe in 2005 and 2006 (Deb and I together) and to Switzerland in 2007 (I made with my dad - blog: http://someo.blogspot.com/).

However, finally this year, events and opportunities have aligned in a way that it appears (so far) that the "across the USA motorcycle trip" may finally get moved into the "completed" category on my ever changing, sometimes modified -- bucket list.