I kill things with my face.

It's true. Every day, I kill things with my face. And when I say kill, I mean massacre. (My brothers* would here insert a cheap quip about this having gone on for years. Grow up you two). It’s not just a friendly shot in the foot that results in a random, tragic death from loss of blood or a shock-induced heart attack. No, these bodies, once I’m done with them, are mutilated beyond any scope of recognition. It’s gruesome. It’s gory. It happens by the dozens, sometimes the hundreds. But it’s my reality.

I kill bugs. With my face.

If you’ve ever driven or ridden on a motorcycle, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, you cannot possibly imagine. Just as we humans take for granted our existence as the only life-force in the universe, so do we take for granted our existence as the only life-force on the open road. I’m here to proclaim, We are not alone. Bugs are everywhere. (Except where I’ve been. There they’re all dead because I kill them with my face).

These bugs… You can’t avoid them. Can’t swerve out of their way. Can’t negotiate with them. There are days when I can actually see them coming at me, and I’m certain that they’re some sort of arthropod freedom fighters who aren’t just randomly colliding with a high-speed vehicle but are putting themselves in the line of fire for the sake of martyrdom. Stop it bugs! You’ll never win. And you’re interfering with my driving.

First, there’s the pain factor. If the killing is of anything over the size of a common housefly and it takes place on the surface of your skin and not your helmet**, it is PAINful. You’d be surprised. It’s like someone’s hurling tiny stones at you at 60+ mph. Most of the time I scream on impact because, well, a) it hurts and b) I can. (No one is going to tell me to be quiet. Other times I just scream without having killed anything. See b.)

If there isn’t a pain indicator, it’s usually worse. Several different times I’ve pulled up to a small-town gas station, peeled off my helmet and strode inside, only to find that no one will make direct eye contact with me except the bewildered child who strains his neck in amazing ways to holds his stare on me regardless of where in the store his mother drags him. This is when I know two things have happened: 1) I have tiny gnats stuck all around my mouth and lips, and occasionally plastered in between my teeth. (They don’t stick to my cheeks or forehead – only my mouth which makes it look like I’ve just been mowing -- pronounced maow-ing, as in “to mow”, to chow down – on a colony of dead bugs). And 2) My helmet has deposited a line of dirt between my eyebrows, which perfectly imitates a uni-brow. By this point, it’s no use trying to wipe any of it off – the dirt on my hands will be just as bad all over my face as the bugs. So, much of my time is spent in costume as some sort of demented, bug-eating Frida Kahlo. (It’s glamorous, the biking life).

If they’re not collecting on your face, they’re collecting on your helmet, which is bad news just the same. Drive along the St. Lawrence Seaway mid-summer and you’ve got yourself a date with about 300 billion sand flies (not fleas, flies). I made this very trek at night, which is like their Mardi Gras, and was wiping them off of my faceshield every other minute. Except I couldn’t wipe them off, they just smeared, and then the lights from oncoming cars would smear over the smear, and I was blinded from the dead bug remains all over my helmet. When, by some act of god I made it to Montreal, I threw my helmet in the shower like a dirty prisoner and watched enough sand flies swirl down the drain to cause concern about a clog in the pipes. Even my jacket had to be scraped of its mashed carcasses.

(The Lanark County Genealogical Society writes on their website, “Where houses are near swamps or rivers, [sand flies] enter by thousands and attack the inmates, driving away sleep, and producing the most uneasy sensations.” “Uneasy sensation” perhaps being… that you’re covered with thousands of flies? Gross).

Sometimes I’ll attempt an autopsy to try and link the remains on my lethal face to the original species. But it’s usually impossible. The most I can ever decipher is that something very green or neon yellow was taken as a last meal. Only if they’re really big can you tell what they might have been, like when I got my first Dragonfly. Happened in the White Mountains and he was fat, the size of a walnut. (Maybe even a kiwi. Probably even a whole grapefruit). He hit me with an audible Smack! (Scream!) and a very unfortunate positioning – he tangled himself in my chin strap. I could feel his wings flitting and flapping against my neck, fighting a champ’s fight to break free as I grit my teeth and downshifted to 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st like the fires of hell were burning underneath me (you have to use both hands when shifting – no limbs available for freeing bugs) … Once I reached my sanctuary on the side of the road, I tore the helmet off , flung it into the weeds, then jumped off my bike and started pawing at my neck and doing the dance of a madwoman. Alas, we were by then separated, but his death lingered on my skin for days.

(One time in California I hit something that was definitely not a bug. I think it was a bat. It was big enough to knock my head back. People have told me I’m out of my mind, that you can’t hit bats because of their faultless sonar. But then how do people catch bats? If their sonar is that good, wouldn’t they always avoid capture? I'm sticking to my story. It was a bat. Unless you're from PETA, in which case it was probably a coconut).

I can say I’d like to do something about this face killing business. But I know there’s nothing to be done. Someone more heroic might turn this into a good cause, like “Killing things with my face to fight XXX rare disease”. But I’m no hero, so I’ll just go back out and continue with my causeless killings. Because that’s what I do, and I like what I do.

*Danny Motz: Age 21, a member the U.S. Air Force in Anchorage, Alaska where he snarks free continental breakfast off hotels after having passed out in their lobbies. Served in Kuwait in 2005/early 2006 (Iraq = War; Kuwait = Peace) and when recently questioned as to why he unfairly received a laptop from traditionally non-laptop-giving parents, he credited it to his being a “war hero” and all.

Andy Motz: Age 19, a member of the Albion College football team in Albion, MI. Spends his time carving fraternal logos into chest hair and strategizing how he can abandon his career at a college, where he has to “pretend to be sympathetic to the liberals”, for a life of professional poker playing. To date, Andy has earned an aggregate Absolutely Nothing on the poker tables.

**My helmet is a Nolan flip helmet (probably called something more professional than this, but work with me). The front can be worn either up or down -- i.e. with the face totally exposed or totally covered.

The beginning... in the middle. (A helpful Q&A to get you started)

This is it. My blog. After all these months, I've only just begun...

This is the story of how in July of 2005 I left New York City and a real life for a ride across the Americas on a motorcycle. How a call to chaos quickly transformed into a story of grease and leather and the smell of gasoline. This is my adventure. Enjoy.


(photo by D.Y. Bechard)


FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

Q. What kind of bike do you drive?
A. I drive a Honda Shadow ACE 750. It's a cruiser, all black and chromey and when not caked in mud is a mechanical Playmate of the Month. I adore it. It weights 505 pounds (same as a 12-foot bull shark) without gas or luggage, has a 3.7 gallon fuel tank and chugs out a pretty consistent 55 miles to the gallon.

The "750" refers to the engine size -- or if you're a glutton for technical details, to the capacity of the combustion chamber in the engine cylinder, measured in cubic centimeters (CCs). The larger the chamber, the more fuel and air it will hold, thus the stronger the "combustion" it produces and the more power the bike has. (I know I'm screwing this all up for the sake of simplification and that the actual explanation involves bores and strokes and displacement, but let's just be clear right now that I am not a mechanic... and I've gotten along just fine). There are bikes as small as 50 CCs (not highway-legal) and as large as 2,000 CCs (probably even beyond). Mine is perfectly suited for my purposes (though I do sometimes hear a whisper of "I think I can" when we accelerate or charge up large hills). So far this bike and I have covered almost 20,000 miles in the US, Canada and Mexico.

**Not long after posting, I was informed by a kind expert on the Motorcycle USA boards that my information is far from accurate. He writes: "50cc means that the pistons displace 750cc as the crank rotates one time... The displacement is the radius of the cylinder squared times Pi times the distance the piston moves (the "stroke") times the number of cylinders. I'd imagine your bike has a compression ratio of about 10 to 1, so that means your combustion chambers are only around 43cc each, as 750+43+43 = 836 and 836/86 = 9.72. This is not exact, (because I guessed at the compression ratio, and) as no 750cc motorcycle is exactly 750cc." Ok, I kind of get it. Kind of.**

The "ACE" stands for American Classic Edition; it's a Honda bike but was produced at a plant smack dab in the middle of the American heartland -- Marysville, Ohio. Coincidentally, I bought it in the same state a few hundred miles to the north from a man I found on Ebay whose four kids welcomed me at the airport with a crayon-made sign of my name and a can of 7UP.

Q. Why don't you drive a dual sport BMW with all the convenient metal storage cases and off-road capabilities?
A. Oh, wouldn't that have been tremendously easy. And practical. Certainly I'd never afford myself either of these luxuries.

I did, actually, look into getting the dual-sport BMW F650. But, as indicated by the term "dual-sport", this bike will hop off road just as easily as it will hop onto the freeway... Since this is a solo expedition and I generally tend to test my boundaries with things, I decided that with a bike that goes off road I would no doubt end up off-road. And probably, at some point or another, off road, wrecked, hanging over the edge of a canyon. I know far too little about motorcycles, dirt and the world in general to toy with freedoms of such massive proportions. My reasoning:

If... BMW F650 = Freedom from pavement = Increased opportunity for off-road expedition (IOORE)

And... IOORE + general feeling of invincibility + total disregard for mother's cautions = Perilous off-road situation far from reach of human contact (PORSFFROHC)

And... PORSFFROHC = Possible to near certain death and resulting multiple-day search party at enormous cost to local police force, also disrupting the nearby small-town whose inhabitants close shop to volunteer with search

Then... BMW F650 = Bad for the economy. And my life.

Q. How did you decide to do this? When?
A. There was certainly a lifetime of build-up, but the actual decision? It kind of seems like I just woke up one morning and thought to myself, “Next year I will learn how to ride a motorcycle, buy one and ride it across the continent.” Then I got dressed and left for work. It was really that arbitrary. I hadn’t heard of Ewan McGregor, hadn’t seen Motorcycle Diaries, and hadn’t been dating a Hell’s Angel. It just seemed like fun -- an adventure. I do love adventures.

(Of course, if you examine at the daily routine into which this decision was embedded and the mental constrictions imposed by the physical New York City landscape over an extended period of time, combined with a career field burning with all the excitement of a pre-arranged marriage, there’s a philosophical case to be made that a trip with no schedule and a machine without doors was a choice born of deeper roots… but that’s not fit for the FAQ)

Q. Where do you sleep?
A. Now that I'm in Mexico, I jump around between hostels and budget hotels (which can be had for $10 a night and under and host a surprising number of travelers over 25). I do carry a tent and sleeping bag bungeed to the back of the bike and while I was in the US I did a lot of camping in national parks or on BLM land (because it's free! All 261 million acres).

However... there are times when night jumps up on you like a bum on a freight train and so you knock around in the dark until you find a place to fall. I have slept in an abandoned RV, on deserted beaches, on a bunk in a VW Vanagon, in the Temple of the Red Velvet Jesus, tucked into a canyon with grazing cattle, in the guest house of a local judge, on numerous strangers’ couches, in trucker motels coast to coast, etc. etc. One time I was invited to stay at a firehouse but had to decline, with regret. I am most appreciative to all those who have taken me in for the night and equally appreciative to those who would like to do so in the future.

Q. Aren't you scared/afraid?
A. This is an incomplete question. The correct question is "Aren't you scared/afraid of...?" If you're asking whether I'm scared of being a woman alone on a motorcycle (in Mexico), the answer is no. It's nowhere near as dangerous as your mother or the State Department would have you believe, and clearly, I'm doing it, aren't I? I don't know too many people with a fear of the dark who lock themselves blindfolded into a closet at night.

If, however, you're asking whether I'm scared when there is a wild, frothing boar ripping through my tent or if I'm scared when I wake up in a bloody bathtub full of ice with a suspicious-looking incision across my kidney area (scenarios not based on actual incidents), then the answer is yes, certainly. Do I worry about the possibility of such things happening? Well, luckily, there are plenty of other people who do all that work for me.

Q. Are you taking pictures? Where can we see them?
A. Only a fool wouldn’t eat and sleep with a finger on the shutter on a trip like this. And only a fool wouldn’t back-up 5,000 digital pictures with the singular dedication of a Jamaican bobsledder while traveling through places where an American accent translates into “Steal from Me” in perfect Spanish. (Would take an even bigger ninny to be pursuing professional photographic opportunities and not back-up).

What a fool I am. My computer was stolen, my pictures were not backed up. So find my laptop and you can see ALL my pictures. Otherwise, there is a mutt selection on Flickr that I’ll begin (someday) to add to on a more consistent basis. There’ll be pictures on the blog too.

Q. Do you carry a phone?
A. I had a phone until February 18, 2006. Then there was the incident involving a yacht, a stolen... er, borrowed... kayak, and a certain quantity of whisky. The phone is no longer with me. (I hesitate to use the word lost; I like to think of it as more of a sacrifice to the gods ascertaining my death will never arrive from the sea). As I've continued to live and breathe without Cingular-branded chimes resonating from my back pocket, there are no current plans for a replacement.

Q. How long do you plan to travel?
A. Until my bank account runs dry and I can’t find any more bottles to return for a deposit.