Unguarded motorcycle

I’m just as quick as anyone else to whine “why me?” when something goes wrong through no fault of my own, and I can be just as slow as anyone else to realize when I just plain luck out in spite of myself. Today I’m remembering one of those latter times:

Lucking out

I was on my first solo cross-country motorcycle trip, summer, 1986 — San Francisco to Denver and back again — and I was having the time of my life. My schedule allowed me to take my time and see the sights, and one of the sights I wanted to see was Lehman Caves, a few miles south of US Highway 50 near the Nevada-Utah border.

I got there late in the day but in time to take the last tour. The dilemma was, as usual, how vulnerable my bike and my stuff would be while I was out of sight.

I was packed pretty heavy since I was on a long trip. I was riding my Kawasaki 550 LTD, which is a cruiser, which means no hard, lockable luggage. I had two soft saddlebags, a tank bag, a duffel bag on the back seat, and a cooler and ground cloth on the luggage rack. Leaving all that on my bike in the open parking lot in the middle of nowhere felt like a risk, but I had no choice if I wanted to see the caves.

I had little padlocks on the saddlebag zippers, although I knew a serious thief would simply cut the bags and get out whatever they wanted. I decided I could lose the cooler if someone wanted it and not feel too bad about it. The duffel bag was strapped on and covered with the ground cloth in case it rained (which it had been threatening to do), and that was as good as that was going to get. I would just have to hope no one wanted to go to the trouble of undoing everything to take the stuff off the bike.

That left the tank bag, which converts into a backpack. I made sure my camera and other “valuables” were in the backpack, and I would just take that with me and wear it. If my bike got stripped, I would still have some of my stuff.

At the front desk to get my tour ticket, however, the first sign I saw was one that said “no backpacks allowed in the caves.” Bummer. I asked the ranger why and she said it was because they didn’t want to risk anyone’s pack inadvertently knocking off some of the delicate stalactites or stalagmites.

That seemed reasonable but it left me with a problem. I didn’t want to leave my valuables on the bike, and the tank bag was the easiest bag to remove. The ranger commiserated with me, but she couldn’t bend the rules for me, rightly so. I was ready to just go back to my bike and ride on when another ranger came up and said he would put my tank bag in his office and he would stay until the tour was done. He would be off duty but he was willing to wait so I could tour the caves and know my things were safe.

I was very grateful and stowed my backpack with him. The tour was about an hour and a half long, mostly underground, and it was a good one. I could stand up all the time, but some of the passageways were very narrow and I was glad I wasn’t wearing my backpack.

After the tour, I found the nice ranger and retrieved my pack and headed back to my bike, which was at the far end of the parking lot. It was when I was reattaching my tank bag that I saw I had left the key in the ignition! I’d been so worried about my pack, and the extra effort of strangers had helped me keep it safe, and there I’d left my bike, loaded with the bulk of my things, keyed and ready for anyone who knew how to simply ride it away!

I lucked out that day, I know, and the experience served as kind of a double lesson for me. One was that no matter what you decide to worry about, you hardly ever worry about the right thing…so why bother to worry at all? The other was, of course, that sometimes we simply luck out whether we deserve to or not.

© Copyright 2017. Mel White, a local writer/photographer, has been writing “On the Bright Side” columns for various newspapers since 1996. She is also co-owner/founder of the unusual and eclectic Treasure Trove in downtown Tehachapi; she can be reached at [email protected]