My dear Dad rides with me

The Grand Teton Mountains, in all their jagged splendor, are more impressive than I expected after years of seeing them in photographs. They signal the end of Day 9 on the road just outside of Jackson, Wyoming. Photo by Craig Chester. Click image for a larger view.

I rode in sadness for a while today. It would have been my dear father’s 97th birthday. He died last year at age 95, very much alive until the moment his heart stopped.

In the last year of his life, he learned to operate a computer, and had he lived, he would have been the most frequent visitor to this blog, reading every word, looking closely at each photograph, studying the maps.

I got my first ride on a motorcycle because of my father--when my mother was seven months pregnant with me. That was back in Latvia, our native land, where my father was a national champion road racer. In those days, you rode during the week what you raced on the weekend. Thus, my first ride was on his 350-cc racing machine, an AJS.


I have with me on this ride the medallion he was awarded as the 350-cc class national champion of Latvia in 1939. It’s a trophy the size of a postage stamp, all that was affordable in the days before the Second World War. It was his favorite victory, he used to tell me. In his last year with us, he kept it on his desk above his computer. Tonight, it sits by my computer in a hotel room in Wyoming, where I can touch the raised image of a motorcycle racer and shed a loving tear in his memory.