Fogged

I had to be in Seattle -- 115 miles away by four-lane and over a high mountain pass -- to teach a Red Cross CPR/AED class at 8:00am in the morning. At 5:45 sharp, I kissed my wife, Red, backpedalled the Wing off the patio, and rode off into the dark. The weather report said clear and sunny with unseasonably high temperatures, but it failed to mention the thick, cloying morning fog and vapor.

The Goldwing has good lights, even better than most cars I've owned, but, as fog riders will attest, good lights in fog often don't mean spit. The traffic thinned as I began the climb to the summit, and one by one, the red tail lights with dewy red rings and the white head lights with dewy white rings pulled off and disappeared, leaving me with nothing but the fuzzy grey tunnel offered up by my own lights. Bad news......

After awhile, it was like boring through cotton. I became disoriented and began to suffer vertigo. It was very similar to entering a tunnel from bright sunlight. I had the vague sensation that I was continuously leaning to the left, and that sooner or later, I would lay the big bike down on its left side. I suddenly became convinced that I couldn't do this, that I couldn't continue, that I had to park the bike on the paved shoulder and wait for better conditions. My speed slowed from 70 to 60 to 45 and then to 25. I found the white line and pulled the bike to a stop. I switched it off.

Around me the fog twisted like something alive in the sudden silence. Evergreen trees, spectral in the non-light, appeared, disappeared, changed and evolved. It was hard for me to accept that they were real, that they actually existed. I dug for my cell phone, but it offered no service, just a faintly glowing faceplate. And then something, something alive and real, crossed the road in front of me. I couldn't see it, but I knew that it had been there. My breath fogged my faceplate and chills marched up and down my spine. "Damn," I muttered into my chinbar.

I had just begun to experience the onset of real fear, when, suddenly -- salvation. Deep in the valley behind me I heard the heavy pounding of a powerful diesel engine, a truck, an eighteen wheeler...... I often curse the big commercial tractor-trailers, but I now felt blessed. I fired up the bike and waited. Soon, a fearsome glow appeared in my mirrors, yellow, white, and red, the truck -- lit up like a carnival on all its hard edges -- came plowing through the fog like the Second Coming.

The driver slowed passing me, but then got hard on his throttle again, the sweet sound of the huge engine throbbing in the night. I waited a few moments and then pulled out into his wake. His huge, lighted presence brought the road back to me. I could see now the lanes and the markers and the pavement -- and all things made sense again. I tucked behind my snug fairing and grinned. He took me clear to the summit of the pass, slowly but steadily; where the fog ended and we crashed through it like a line of fence.

The world reappeared. It was nothing more than a cold morning west of the summit, skies as clear as a bell. I got the Wing up to speed and passed the truck, waving to the driver. The world was right again.