By Joanna Duda

“Let’s do the Canadian Rockies next.”

That’s what I told my husband, Mike, after we put the kickstand down in Portland, Ore.

We live on the East Coast, but we had been keeping a bike on the West Coast for a few years. In 2016, Mike shipped his 1986 Kawasaki Concours out to Phoenix. We were doing some work on the Kayenta Reservation with our Navajo friends and decided to ride through Joshua Tree National Park and the San Bernardino Mountains.

When we reached Los Angeles, I watched as Mike poured in fuel stabilizer and disconnected the battery. We flew off leaving “Connie” with friends. Two years later we flew back, connected the battery, and Connie started right up!

The ride from L.A. to Portland was a fun project of connecting the dots from one vineyard to another and then, once again, we parked Connie, this time only for a year. In the summer of 2019, we returned, reconnected the battery and once again, trusty old Connie fired right up.

Mike’s motorcycle buddies thought he was crazy to take a 33-year-old bike with more than 75,000 miles on the clock through the Rocky Mountains, where cell phone reception is spotty and grizzlies are more common than a motorcycle repair shop, with me on the pillion to boot.

This was actually our second Connie, and we’d had her since 2002. We carried some spare parts, along with the usual assortment of tools, but we never needed any of them.

After a stop at the LeMay Museum in Tacoma to view Brown Maloney’s Honda Collection (see the story in the July 2019 issue of American Motorcyclist), we visited Vancouver Island, B.C., to indulge my gardening passion at Butchart Gardens. Then we rode north.

The view on Route 99 from Horseshoe Bay to Squamish was spectacular. I shot some video, while Mike took care of the twisties. Then on to Whistler, along flowing rivers and crystal clear lakes with the backdrop of snow-topped mountains, all the way to Banff.

We were welcomed in little towns like Savona and Revelstoke with outdoor markets and nightly festivals. The Canadian summer may be short, but the people know how to enjoy it. They were warm and welcoming.

We rode the last leg of the trip from the Canadian border to Whitefish, Mont., and took the Going to the Sun Road through Glacier National Park. Mike had decided to sell Connie in Missoula and booked a hotel at the Missoula Airport.

Sadly, with nearly 80,000 miles, Connie was showing her age. She was in need of new tires and brakes and was now worth less than the cost of shipping her home. After a few bites on Craigslist, we found an auction house that would sell her to a new rider. Connie had served us well.

As I watched the transaction, my attachment was palpable. Yes, she was a machine coming to life with the turn of a key and the quick press of the thumb. Logically, I knew she had no heart or soul. But, I do confess, I felt deep loss in my heart knowing we wouldn’t be riding her again.

We have other bikes and more places to ride, but as I saw Connie standing alone in the lot at the auction house, I grieved the impermanence of life’s changes, of letting go and loss. May her next owner appreciate her steady power and rock-solid reliability.

Meanwhile, we’re planning our next trip.

Joanna Duda is an AMA member from Rockport, Mass. She and Mike have been together since a ride on Mike’s Honda CB160 48 years ago.

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