talerider I’m no Odysseus. Nor am I Homer.
My 2023 Softail Nostos voyage is not upon an open sea that is calm one minute and a hellish let’s-drown-the-bastard perfect storm the next minute.
My voyage will be upon black ribbons that are sometimes two lanes, sometimes four lanes, and sometimes narrow two-way country roads that semis thrash through but are barely wide enough for a Mini Cooper, and which haven’t been repaved or repaired in decades.
The black ribbons I motor upon will be straight, curvy, twisted, hilly, steep–level one minute and the roller coaster ride from Hell the next–bingo balls in a tumbler have a calmer ride.
I’m not journeying in a pentekontor with 50 oars nor a skiff built on the goddess Calypso’s island, skimming through the blue-green water-roads of the sea for 650 lost miles.
I’m journeying on an HD Heritage Softail Classic built in Milwaukee, WI, in 2008, its 1584cc engine gripping the black ribbons with its 130/90-16 tires, motoring on well-mapped 2,600 miles that will guide us from Lawton to Belleville, IL, to Lousiville to Colorado Springs, to Dodge City, and to Home, spending the night in a dozen cities at inexpensive motels (my frugal Scots metaphor for “cheap”).
Odysseus’s journey in 1080 took him ten years.
My 2023 journey will last but 21 days.
I’m no Odysseus. I’m no hero who set off to fight a war not of my making, pissed off one of the gods, and, as punishment, was sent on a ten-year journey before returning home.
No Polyphemus, no Sirens, no Circe, no Calypso, no returning to my country to find suitors have squatted in my home, abused my son, disrespected visitors (even a blind old man–me in disguise, BTW), ate my food, tried to bed my wife–and then I kill them all!
My journey, however, will be adventuresome. Maybe not Ancient Classical Homeric adventuresome, but adventuresome nonetheless.
Since I don’t have Homer to record my adventures, I’ll scribe my journey this summer either at the end of the day’s traveled miles or at least every other day.
I had intended to record 2022’s journeys every day or at least every other day, but I did not. I suffered from WIWLPS–Writer’s I’ll-Write-Later Procrastination Syndrome.
During 2022’s journey to Lousiville and Imaginarium and then back Home, I took some memorial pics and did a bit of journaling but didn’t do the trip justice.
I met some fantastic folks on my 2022 journey–many curious as to what I was up to and where I was going–and each one was every bit as interesting, fascinating, and cool as Odysseus, Polyphemus, Circe, Tiresias Peisinoe, Aglaope, and Thelxiepeia, Calypso et al.
The 2022 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Retreat in Colorado Springs was in May and the 2022 Imaginarium meet-up was in July. The 2023 Retreat was changed to July–one week after the 2023 July Imaginarium Convention.
Each has become special to me: I’m attending both, back-to-back, blasting out of Louisville on Monday morning, jetting through four states, and arriving in Colorado Springs by noon that Thursday.
Thus the 2600-mile black ribbon Nostos Softail voyage.
I declaratively state categorically that the places at which Baby Blue and I stop, the people I encounter and with whom I trade stories, the fantastical folks I meet at Imaginarium and RMFW Retreat, and the roads less traveled which I journey upon during Softail Nostos 2023 will all be worthy of Homeric-style epic story-telling or a least a Samuel Pepys detailed daily diary entry.
After all, my kutte patch reads TaleRider.
Be well and at Peace. Safe journeys.
TaleRider
