July 17 1980 I was coming off of a 2 year drunken period of self discovery. I was sort of working out a time of getting used to be single again. Two weeks before I’d met a woman at a company picnic/camp out. I called her up and asked if she’d like to go for a ride. I lashed two bags onto the bike and off we went for a few days. She’d never been on a bike ride. We twisted up and down the Sierra and the adjacent White mountains. One evening we were really beat and just pulled off the road and flopped the bags and zonked immediately. When the sun came up we found ourselves looking off of an especially advantageous promontory, with a view of a valley that dropped 4-5000’ and spread till the detail of the land failed our eyes.

As a motorcycle racer living on peanut butter and cold 19 cent hamburgers I’d spent a lot of time on the road. As a contract programmer I spent more time on the road in $29-$300 a night rooms. That dawn on the cliff is on my list of top ten wake up calls.