Gifts from a Good Samaratin

Working on my next motorcycle travel story for RoadRUNNER Magazine. I’ve got my GPS tracks and my copious notes, but very often it’s the photographs that trigger memories and ideas.

Via Flickr:
“There was a gusting and a lashing and a generally perturbed wind last night, flapping the crinkly nylon rainfly like a demented windsock and threatening to lift the entire tent off of its fancy ultra-light tent stakes and blow the whole shivering mess – yours truly included – to somewhere over the rainbow. The howling and terrifying and “are-these-tent-poles-going-to-snap-like-young-saplings?”-ness of the evening was accompanied by a glowing light casting ghostly shadows upon the thin tent walls. To be honest, I feared that the Grim Reaper was outside, dark robes flowing in the wind like he was in a music video. Instead, it was Connell, a guy working on the pipeline and living in a trailer down the way. He saw my forlorn tent – the only one in the campground this late in the season – and my hapless attempts to start a fire before the sun went down. He asked if I was ok and handed me a plastic bag with a warm container of chicken soup, crackers, and Hostess cupcake. After this random act of kindness the wind didn’t seem so foreboding after all. I ate, put the earplugs in, and slept like a baby.”