Today is a quiet day. We use it to rest, catch up on emails and the blog, and to give thought to our friend John. Back home they are having a memorial for him and our daughter Tara offered to read some words on our behalf. Following is what she read, and we hear there wasn’t a dry eye in the place:“Buenos Dias Amigos, from Duane and Corinne somewhere in Peru. To John’s family and all his friends, we are so sorry for “our” loss. John was a very special friend. We met John about 20 years ago in an unusual way. We were on our way to our first Wing Ding in Albuquerque New Mexico and one of our nights was at the Super 8 Motel in Thermopolis Wyoming. In the morning we were packing up the bikes when we heard a “You hoo” from a nearby window. After sharing a few pleasantries with the friendly lady we discovered that she was Wendy, John’s girlfriend of the day; that they were from Calgary and were also headed to Wing Ding. So the sociable thing to do was to ride together at least part way.
Well, “part way” turned out to be the beginning of a long friendship. In addition to having motorcycling in common, John and Duane also had K-Mart in common. Duane spent several months designing K-Mart stores and John’s company did the janitorial work for them. Besides those shared interests, John’s warm friendly smile, his positive approach to life, his colorful past, and his willingness to share his opinion on just about any subject, always made chatting with him so easy. We rode thousands of miles with John over the years, and shared many great weekend trips with him. So when we got the bug to do some world motorcycle touring, just one word to John about our South America idea was all it took. Before we could even ask him to join us, he was already planning our trip.
Our original plan was to do a guided tour with Ayres Adventures, but John insisted we could get “more bang for the buck” doing it ourselves. After all, John spoke reasonably good Spanish, he had experience dealing with border crossings and other such challenges, plus being on our own would give us the flexibility to do what we want when we want and change routes on a whim. As many of you are aware, John rode his Gold Wing to the Arctic Circle, so the thought of spending his 70th Christmas in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, the most southerly city in the world, feeding penguins, was an opportunity John could not pass up. And for us it would be perfect. John’s cheerful, easy-going manner coupled with his worldly experience would add so much to our enjoyment of the trip. The three of us spent several months readying the bikes, refining the plans and taking various back road trips to practice riding the “pocket bikes”. John kept insisting that he was not a 650cc kind of guy, but every time he climbed on his little bike we could tell from his ear to ear grin that he loved it.
The bikes were air-freighted to Lima Peru where we were to meet up with John on November 13th. The last thing Corinne said to John when he called Thursday before he left Mazatlan was “I want to see your smiling face when we get off the plane in Lima”. He assured us he’d be wearing his smile. What none of us knew then was that the Good Lord had his own plans for John that did not include a trip through South America. And so we must go on without our dear friend.
We are continuing the South American adventure without John in person, but he is with us in spirit. We can hear him chuckle when we take a wrong turn and have to do a gilly-galoo, and we are trying to keep his positive spirit in our minds. John we really miss you. We will light a candle for you on Christmas Day in Ushuaia. God speed amigo, God speed.
In the back country on one of our off-road "practice runs"
John shows his enthusiasm for riding his "pocket bike" on back roads. We had just climbed a forestry road that was gravel and was 18% grade! Almost seems to be straight up. Now we have to do the hard part... go down!
