Flaming Gorge With A Hot Date

I have really great friends. They give me stuff—boots, jackets, motorcycles… You know, the usual.

A few years ago, two of them invited me on a group motorcycle trip to Europe. It was to be an extreme Alps ride, as in Stelvio Pass and about a dozen others. Then, for good measure, they pitched in and subsidized it. The trip was amazing. I have a lifetime of memories from it. One of them is a single photo I took from the bathroom window of a little hotel in Austria.

After looking at the picture and realizing it wasn’t fake, my wife said, “I want to do that.”

There’s one thing I love more than planning a trip with my riding group over six months and then actually making it happen. That thing is doing all of that with my wife.

A Transformation into a Roadrunner

A year and a half later, the same group pitched the Canary Islands to me as a destination and again they offered to help defer the cost. This time, I suggested we bring our wives. They all agreed. I searched every map I could find of the Caribbean but still, I couldn’t locate the Canaries. Reluctantly, I turned to Google Maps and “remembered” that the islands were much closer to Portugal and Morocco than Turks and Caicos. Oof.

After landing in Lisbon and exploring the fabulous city, we took a short hop over to Tenerife. For six glorious days, we ferry-hopped and rode our way around three beautiful islands. Lesa and I were two-up on an overloaded BMW F 800 GS, throwing sparks on perfect roads and eating perfect food. Despite some torrential rain and a little mudslide that took down our guide, she was hooked. She had just graduated from her day tripper status and was now officially a Roadrunner. One picture did that.