Setting up a house can often be laborious, if not tedious, but there are some hidden joys.
Such as unpacking all the motorcycle stuff that’s been stored in various locations around the U.S.A. for the last few years.
While there were plenty of Christmas morning moments for me, one of my favorites was this container:
This container held tank bags used in a variety of trips earlier this decade.
Some trips were local, such as this one, a wonderful day ride around SoCal following a hand drawn map. As any rider will tell you, any trip that uses a hand drawn map is almost always a good one.
The next tank bag map pouch also brought back a lot of great memories. It contained coins from Japan and a Nazar (nazar boncu?u) from Turkey, which is an amulet used to ward off the “evil eye.” We’ve found them to be very effective in our travels. We’ve gone through quite a few, and they always seem to break or disappear when we run up against bad situations. Coincidence? You can be the judge. We consider them ablative materials in the traveler’s battle with bad juju.
The last one held a map and a dried flower from China. I thought I’d forgotten most of that China trip, but the sight of the flower triggered memories of Steph picking that flower, along with many more great experiences on that trip.
It was wonderful to spend a few minutes reliving those trips, and thinking about the food, places and people we discovered along the way.
Those memories kept me going as I finished that little organization project.
The end result was the first time most of our riding gear has been in one place in over four years.
But even though it is nice to get all of our stuff organized in one place, I’m already thinking about pulling one of those containers down and putting it to use:
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