The Down Side of Being Out There

© Gary France / GarysUSAtour.blogspot.com

One of the sweetest joys of riding a motorcycle is being out there in the world you’re passing through. That’s as opposed to being enclosed in a steel cage, peering out through a windshield that limits your view, shut off from the smells and other sensory inputs of the world around you.

And then you throw buffalo into the mix.

I was in Yellowstone National Park just two weeks ago, and if there is one thing you can count on for sure in Yellowstone it is getting held up along the road by people stopping to photograph wildlife. Some pull over, while others stop in the middle of the road. Sometimes the animals themselves stop the traffic because they are roaming free and have decided to roam right there on the road.

So why does a buffalo cross the road? To get to the other side? Perhaps. And if you’re in a car and they’re crossing right in front of you, you’ve got some separation from that 1,500-pound critter with those pointy horns. It’s a little dicier when you’re on a bike.

© Ken Bingenheimer / RumBum.comThere I was, in a mass of traffic intermingled with numerous “Bison bison” (the official Latin name for the beast). It wasn’t a threatening situation but I would have had to have been asleep not to be conscious of my vulnerability. Suppose one of those bulls suddenly feels threatened, or a protective cow gets worried about her young’un. Let’s just say I was very alert. And I made sure not to make direct eye contact with any of the big ones because I’ve heard that they consider that a challenge.

That may not have been the case with another motorcycle tourer I’m familiar with. Gary France is a Brit who is currently on an American odyssey on a rented Harley-Davidson. Gary, who had been in Sturgis at the same time I was, also headed on to Yellowstone about the same time I did. He also found himself stopped on the road by buffalo, and he describes what happened next:

“The big bull gets most of the way across the road . . . and then turns back right in front of us! He seemed a bit upset and was snorting . . . he was about 10 feet away from me, when I looked sideways and saw the other two bikers getting off their bikes preparing to retreat . . . I kept taking pictures as I wondered what to do . . . I too then retreated. A park ranger in a car came driving up and put his car between the bull and us. He with the aid of his megaphone (told) the three of us to move even further back and get into a car. Any car.”

It all ended well, but you get the picture. I can’t help but wonder what it must have been like to visit Yellowstone on a motorcycle years ago, back in the days when bears used to hang out along the roads hoping that tourists would feed them. You almost never see bears in Yellowstone now, because management policies have been changed to discourage them from coming around, but I’d feel a lot more insecure meeting a bear on the road than a buffalo.

It kind of puts a different spin on the term, “a walk in the park,” doesn’t it?