A Motorcycle Road Trip Rendezvous With The Great American Eclipse
Photography and words by Sam Bendall
Published for Petrolicious
“Space. The final frontier, these are the voyages…” We all know this monologue at
least tangentially, and for me and many others, these words were a profound part
of childhood. Star Trek made me look up in awe at the heavens. Perhaps one day, I
thought, I would travel among the stars as an astronaut aboard the Space Shuttle
for NASA. Today I pilot a different kind of machine, a motorcycle, and it too is a
vehicle made for exploration and boundless adventure. Loaded with full safety
gear, one cannot help to feel somewhat similar to an astronaut too, protected and
insulated from the vast elements of nature.
A decade ago, I made a pact with myself to rendezvous with the Great American
Eclipse to come in 2017. I did not know how this story would play out, nor did I
have any idea how I would get there. But I had been planning this one for a while in
one form or another, with little notes around my life and dates set in my phone
serving as a constant reminder. Before all the hype of the eclipse hit the news cycle
and the population was going crazy about seeing this once-in-a-lifetime event, I
started sketching a rough timeline of how my trip might go. At the time it was
simple: drive as fast as possible, sleep in my car, watch the eclipse, and drive home
so I could inevitably work the next day. As for the location of all this driving and
sleeping in the car, I would make my way north from my home in Los Angeles to
Oregon, which was the most ideal location for my compressed schedule.
It just so happens that by the time the calendar showed 2017, I had the great
fortune and privilege of being a motorcycle journalist and motorcycle safety
instructor. Straying from the original plan, it only seemed appropriate to make the
trip on two wheels. Though I was entirely prepared to do the ride alone, my good
friend Bobby joined me on his Triumph Bonneville T120—solo adventures are
awesome, but those with friends are always more memorable. With one long day
spent traveling from San Jose, CA to Bend, OR, we placed ourselves in a position
close to the town of Madras. It would be one of the many towns along the North
American continent where 100% totality of the eclipse could be experienced.
Our first night in Oregon was a great primer to the show in the sky, and we arrived
at a great cafe called Spoken Moto after our long ride up the coast. After a handful
of beers and some delicious sandwiches and ice cream to cap a day well spent, we
opted to pitch camp outside on the lawn instead of behind the shop as originally
planned. This proved to be a stupid decision, which we learned under the spray of
the timed sprinklers that woke us up at midnight. Thankfully Brian’s (a co-owner of
the shop) son Chris was working on his car in the garage nearby and heard us
dragging our stuff off the lawn, half asleep and soaking wet. He graciously let us
spend the night inside the cafe, which was much warmer and drier than our first
choice for sleeping quarters.
We awoke early in the morning as you tend to when sleeping in new places, and
though still tired from the trip and the midnight surprise, we got right on with the
day to beat the traffic and get into a good position for viewing the event.
From the time we left California to the last person we told our story to, everyone
stoked the fires of fear: it was a mass migration of humans to specific locations
along a line, the traffic was going to be more than a bit noticeable. And if you were
in a car, you probably experienced some such misery if you were in the eclipse’s
path. On our exploratory cruisers we took advantage of lane sharing and didn’t
have to suffer like our four-wheeled friends.
After poring over a number of maps and overlaying the path of the eclipse, I had a
rough idea as to where we should set up and await the convergence of the celestial
bodies. This involved venturing off the paved path and making our way along a few
fire roads before reaching a remote location in the Oregon high desert. Then we waited.
You don’t witness a total eclipse, you experience it. It truly is a magical event and
its finiteness only lends it more meaning. It is remarkable in its full effect; the
majority of Americans witnessed a partial eclipse through glasses with solar filters
or cut-out cereal boxes, but those in the path of the moon’s umbra were treated to
a scene nothing short of spectacular. Unlike an Annular Eclipse, a Total Eclipse is
when the moon is close enough to the Earth and therefore large enough to cover
the entire sun, allowing the solar corona to be visible to the naked eye. Our
location allowed us to view the total eclipse for just over two minutes.
At 9:06AM the moon began its eclipse of the sun. To view the partial portion at this
point with the naked eye would be madness and likely a form of blindness. The sun
is too mighty, and solar glasses are needed to watch the moon slowly bite away at
our star. By 9:40AM, the moon had eclipsed about half of the sun. Around this time
is also when strange things began to occur. The landscape dims as less light reaches
the surface, yet everything retains a natural vibrancy unique from night or dawn,
because the angle of the light is different. The temperature is also dropping
steadily as the light’s leaving, and just before totality occurs, the air feels almost 20
degrees cooler.
At 10:18AM we are a single minute from totality. All of a sudden, in the distance, a
shadow sweeps across the mountains and across the valley from the west. The
light from the sun vanishes and above us is the vision of a black hole enveloped by
the spectral light of the sun’s corona. The world goes silent. Every animal in the
vicinity is probably wondering what the hell is going on. I look up and am
completely blown away. A total eclipse is something that defies belief and no photo
could really ever do it justice. The sky retains a beautiful deep shade of blue
around the sun, and as you gaze down toward the horizon the color lightens in a
smooth gradient. In every direction along the horizon, there appears to be a
perpetual sunset with explosions of red, yellow, purple, and pink, while we remain
enveloped in the moon’s shadow.
Two minutes and four seconds later, the sun explodes out from behind the moon
and the dimmer switch of darkness abates. Daylight returns to the landscape.
Bobby and I look at each other and marvel at what we just witnessed. We spent
533 miles and 11.5 hours in the saddle to come up to Oregon to watch a two-minute
show. It was more than worth it.
We stopped off at Spoken Moto again for a final coffee and to talk with the Steve
and Brian, the owners, who were enjoying the cafe’s second year of success. I also
shared a recipe for a sparkling espresso and rocket fuel with the baristas, hoping
that when I return it might be on the menu. The eclipse had me in a cosmic mood,
and the next three days would be spent heading west toward the Oregon coast and
then back down to California. We enjoyed sweeping forest roads through the lush
Willamette National Forest, chased the Umpqua River along Highway 38, rode the
coast back into California, and stared in wonder at the redwoods along Highways 1
and 128 as we rode back to the Bay.
Over four days we’d experienced: 1,500 miles of riding, 1 small child infatuated
with our bikes, 2 complex fires, countless bugs hitting our visors, 12 beers, 10 cups
of coffee, 7 bottles of Soylent, 11 protein bars, 3 real meals, 1 suspicious hotel, the
courtesy and pleasure of company of kind people along the way, and most
importantly, 1 mind-blowing, once-in-a-lifetime Total Eclipse.
The next eclipse that will pass through the United States will be on October 14th,
2023—my birthday in fact— but unlike the Great American Eclipse, this one will be
an annular eclipse but the next great American Eclipse occurs on April 8th 2024. Maybe it too will call for another wild ride to rendezvous with
the cosmos all the same.
