Cold on Cold on Cold

There are times when I’m out riding and I get caught unprepared. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s brutal. Those are the days when the sun’s beating down as I leave, so I skip the jacket and cold-weather gear. Hours later, the sky shifts, rain-heavy clouds creep in, slow and deliberate, and then bam! A drop hits my face. At first I think it’s a bug. But then another hits. And another. By the fourth or fifth, I know: it’s rain. And I’m fucked.

The chills set in fast because that throttle’s only got two positions, and stopping is never the answer. I’m riding, and that’s all that matters. But as the air cools and the rain thickens, the cold starts carving its way in. Fifty-five degrees doesn’t sound cold to someone behind a windshield. But at seventy-five miles per hour? That’ll gut you. That’s the kind of cold that crawls inside your bones and sets up camp.

The summer of 2024 was when I bought Rhea, a small, fast, mean little Indian Scout. Gorgeous, but uncomfortable as hell. She wasn’t built for long trips, and I knew I’d eventually want a bigger bike. But I wanted to understand what mattered most to me on the road, and that meant pushing Rhea — and myself — to the edge.

Truth is, I was still reeling from death. Two years out from flatlining three times, and I was still a little fucked up in the head. The bike helped. It gave me space to process, to chase meaning, to search for purpose in the silence between miles. So I rode. Everywhere. Destination didn’t matter. It never does. The ride is the destination. The experience is the goal.

One weekend, on a whim, I decided to head to El Paso. I’d never been, I live alone, I make decent money. And, after dying three times, my decision-making process had sped the hell up. Inception to execution: about five seconds.

Rhea had no storage. That was part of her sex appeal: stripped-down and bare. Impractical as fuck, but absolutely gorgeous. Saddlebags would’ve ruined her look, so I wore a backpack everywhere. For this trip, I packed light, threw on a long-sleeve shirt to fend off sunburn, denim vest over the top, and hit the road.

The ride south was what you’d expect — hot and flat. If you’ve ever been south of Albuquerque, you know the landscape turns dull: dry, brown, and endless. I pinned the throttle just to break the monotony, and somewhere in that desolation I found Rhea’s top end: 124 mph.

I rolled into El Paso cooked by the sun, sore from the tiny bike and five hours with a pack digging into my shoulders, but grinning. Because misery on two wheels is still two wheels. I can’t fully explain what riding does to me. It touches something deep and primal in my soul, so even the worst rides are still joy.

I checked into the hotel, cleaned up, and went exploring. Photographs. Dinner. Winding roads climbing into the nicer neighborhoods. After the day’s furnace heat, the cool evening air felt like a gift. Saturday was a blur. Breakfast, a morning ride to the state park, old churches in the afternoon, another local diner that night. El Paso: checked off the list.

I woke up early Sunday — early was my new normal after death. Sleep and I weren’t on speaking terms anymore. Even exhausted, I was lucky to get three hours before I’d be staring at the ceiling, waiting for the world to wake up. That morning was no different. Around 6:00 a.m., I decided to quit waiting and hit the road north, maybe grab breakfast in Alamogordo.

It was a gorgeous seventy-degree morning when I rolled out of El Paso. I had no idea what was coming.

I’d checked the weather before I left — but only for the ride down. I wanted to know if it would rain on Saturday and what the temps would be on arrival. I either didn’t look ahead to Sunday, or the forecast was dead wrong. Either way, it didn’t matter. Because not long after I left, I felt it: the slow, creeping drop.

Rhea had an external temp gauge. It confirmed what my body was already screaming. Goosebumps. Shivers. Sixty degrees isn’t cold — unless you’re blasting through it with a self-induced 100 mph wind chill. Sustained over time, it’s madness. Your body tries to fight back, cranking out heat to protect your core, but the wind is relentless. And my body was losing.

59.

58.

The skin on my thighs started to feel like it was cracking, spiderwebs of pain spreading across my legs. Maybe it was my body cutting blood flow to my extremities to protect the core. I don’t know, I’m not a fucking doctor. All I know is it felt like watching a windshield shatter in slow motion from one side to the other. It wasn’t exactly pain, but it wasn’t far from it either.

I kept the throttle pinned and pondered the absurdity of that feeling.

By the time I rolled into Alamogordo, those spiderwebs were crawling into my hands and forearms too. I pulled into a parking lot and practically fell off the bike. My body wouldn’t move the way I wanted it to. Inside the restaurant, I could barely breathe the word “coffee” to the waitress. She must’ve ridden before, she was too empathetic not to have. She brought me cup after cup while I thawed. It took 20 or 30 minutes before the shivering started again, which, if you’ve ever been that cold, you know is a good sign. Only then could I eat.

She told me stories about riding with a biker crew in another life. Said they once got caught in weather like this, but they had trash bags in their saddlebags. They pulled them over their bodies, jackets over the top — crude windbreakers. She swore it worked. Then she brought me a trash bag for the ride home.

After breakfast, I rode to Walmart hoping for a jacket. Nope. Sweatshirts everywhere, but no jackets. Fuck it. Better than nothing. I bought a hoodie and pulled it on over the trash bag. It was useless. The wind sliced right through both. And as I pushed north toward Santa Fe, it just kept getting colder. A light drizzle joined the party at some point, because fucking New Mexico.

I started pulling over every thirty minutes to warm up. I didn’t need gear to warm up, I just needed the fucking wind to stop. To give my body time to catch up. So that was the pattern: Ride thirty, stop ten. Rinse, repeat. It took all fucking day to get home.

I grew up in Minnesota. I’ve seen fifty-five below. I’ve spent winters where twenty or thirty below was just Tuesday. And still, I’ve never been as cold as I was that day riding back from El Paso. Most of that ride hovered in the low forties. Freezing. Slow, sustained agony. Cold on cold on cold. Shivering. Cracking skin. Soaked head to toe. And yet, in the middle of that misery, there were these fleeting moments where the pain lessened. Where forty-four degrees became forty-eight. It still hurt like hell, but it hurt less, and that was enough to make me smile. Perspective is a funny thing when you’re desperate. Even a scrap of relief feels like salvation.

I made it home eventually. Stripped off the heavy pack, took a hot shower, pulled on warm clothes. And then, because I’m me, I got back on the bike that night for an evening ride around Santa Fe. Because the cold, the pain, the absurdity of that day… none of it changed the truth.

I ride. That’s who I am. That’s what I do.