Not a week ago the blue V-Strom turned over 54,000 miles. Every time another ten-thousand goes by, which seems to happen with great rapidity, I have a chuckle reminding myself that some people own bikes for years and never put so much as five digits on the odometer. But then I stop chuckling because I know that piling that kind of mileage means sole-transpo, or at least commuting, use and I will never blame anyone for not using a motorcycle to substitute for a car. Piloting the Civic down the 101 freeway in torrential blinding rain last night, heater filling the glass bubble with peace and warmth, I thanked my lucky stars that I wouldn't have to thaw a shivering wet body under a hot shower for 20 minutes when I got home. On the other hand, I had to slightly crack open the driver side window so I could get at least SOME of the rain-smell into my nostrils. These are the things you lose with bodily comforts.

But yeah. 54k. And it's getting to be that time of year again. June. Road trip time. The V-Strom wasn't born to sit at home and chug back and forth every day to work and back. The very first time it came into my life, the very first three days I owned it from mile zero (or mile 2, since you can't register a new vehicle with no mileage) it carried me more than two thousand miles east for a wedding and then home. It wasn't a week old and it had more than two thousand miles on it. It was born for this very thing, to eat continents for lunch. And it's been moping about Ventura County for a whole year since last time I crossed the east California border, moping about, waiting for me to accrue enough vacation time to let it out again to play.

It'll be tough this year. My vacation time is going to be all used up honeymooning on Catalina Island in August. And that's okay. I'm looking forward to that, a different sort of adventure, of course. But it won't fix the wanderfoot, so I'll have to be creative. Another big thing is that the wifey-to-be has to be wandering with me or I'll feel selfish and unfulfilled. The V-Strom and I have a whole big world to show her, but we have to be careful not to overload her with too much adventure at the outset or she'll get sick and not want to do it ever again. She'll have to be eased into it somehow, the timing will have to be right, she'll have to have the right protective gear....it might not happen this year. But it sort of has to. A window in our lives is closing, and she absolutely HAS TO do a long, cold, hot, dry, starving, agonizing, gorgeous Purple Mountain Majesties and Fields of Waving Grain road trip before we can't anymore. She has to have that experience in common with me otherwise she'll never understand America properly. I wish I'd been able to do this earlier, but for health reasons it wasn't possible at all before this year and it may not be possible this year.

We'll see.

In the meantime, I watch episodes of the Long Way Round, I shake out my summer gear and polish the smoked visors for my helmets, I pinch my pennies for a full set of Givi side panniers, and I wait for my chance.