Albert Camus once observed: “All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.”  So, on November 3, 2002 I was riding a rented motorcycle on the wrong side of the highway in South Africa when I had this thought.  How come I’ve never seen a woman making a solo cross-country motorcycle ride?

Don’t misunderstand, I wouldn’t have been on the wrong side in the USA.  It wouldn’t have been spring either.  In Oklahoma you drive on the right-hand side of the road and November is fall time.

But there I was riding south from Cape Town en route to the tip of Africa on a beautiful spring morning in November.  There were no lady riders on the road.  In fact, there were no other riders out there period.  I guess that’s what started me thinking.  See, on a morning like that in America, you wouldn’t be on the highway twenty minutes before you’d see riders.

Now typically, his is what you’ll see; group of two or more guys.  Maybe there will be lady passengers.  There may even be a lady in the group ridding her own machine.

Less often--but still not uncommon--you’ll see a single male rider whose bike is fitted out for long distance travel.

What I’ve never seen is a lady with a guy on the back.  And I’ve never seen a lobo lady going cross-country alone.

Now, I’m not saying women don’t do it.  I’m just saying I’ve never seen one do it.  I’ve never talked to one whose done it.  And I’ve never even heard of a woman doing it.  No doubt there’s a renegade lady rider out there somewhere--and I’ll doubtless hear about her.  I’m looking forward to it.  But, for now, I think I’m safe from contradiction when I say the overwhelming majority of lonesome highway riders out there are guys.  At this point in history, it is, unquestionably, a manly pleasure.

The question is--why?

There must bee a recessive nomad gene expressed in a small number of males that causes an irresistible craving to leave everything and everybody behind and hit the road.

After over forty years of aimless unscheduled meandering, I’ve come to believe this is a seductive call that can’t be explained, acquired--or even shared.  With apologies to John Keats, this, like poetry, must come naturally to a man as leaves to a tree; or it won’t come at all.  With apologies to no one, every pilgrim’s romance with this mystery is different from every other pilgrim’s.

So I managed to re-rout my neural pathways and keep the cycle left of center all the way to Cape Point.  There you can stand in one spot and see the convergence of tow mighty oceans--the Atlantic and the India.  If you can forget about the signs warning about deadly cobras and dangerous baboons, you can allow your mind to drift.

Could be the day will come when a flaw will develop in the feminine immune system and some women will develop the fever and find themselves riding solo lover completely unanticipated highways.  Then again, maybe not.

On the ride back to Cape Town, it dawned on me that November 7 was just a few days off.  That’s the anniversary of McQueen’s death in 1980.  He never got an academy award.  Too bad. He probably deserved one.  But he was posthumously inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame.  If there are long stretches of scenic highway in heaven, Steve’s probably expl0oring them now.  And you never know who might be riding along with him.  Rest in peace Steve.

Oh and by the way, if Albert Camus was still alive, he’d be 95 on November 7. 

I’m Hink, and I’ll see ya.

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