West Hollywood – Sitting in a West Hollywood Starbucks the answer appears to be, “Fate”. Fate is what’s in a name. Shakespeare may have written, “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet”, but do you think that’s really case? Red stink-poesy, that wouldn’t cut it. So I should have thought things through, before naming our next series “Road to Ruins”, because it’s become a rolling disaster of organization.

The day has been an organizational scramble, the delayed shipment of bike has pushed out the shooting schedule and suddenly I’m faced with the daunting task of filling two extra weeks in California with little to no budget to support it. Cue the flurry of emails to destination marketing organizations and Convention and Visitors Bureaus (CVBs).

These are brilliant and helpful people, but if the “organizations” and “bureaus” part of that sentence didn’t make it clear they are members of agencies based on planned and predictable schedules. That runs counter the nature of motorcycle travel, and the industry around it, where itineraries go to die a grisly convoluted death of a 1000 last minute changes.

So here I am in LA, concocting a desperate backup plan of buying a thirty dollar K-Mart tent, strapping it to the back of the ever fabulous R1200GS Adventure and roughing it.

Not that I’m opposed to camping, it has the hallmarks of practicality and romance, but of my camping gear I’ve only brought a -7C sleeping bag and a freeze your from bellow summer-weight air mattress. So now I’m scrambling to build plans D through F, with zero lead time for anyone involved.

Adversity makes for a good story, but that’s largely in retrospect, and this is the behind the scenes groundwork that never makes it into a series. Anyone know of a yard I can camp on in Palm Springs? I figure the weather will be warm enough there.