09/04/2026
If This Is True
Diary notes from 2nd week, 19 May 2015 📖
The past week has felt like a year. So much happened every day that it was hard to keep track of where I was going and who I was meeting. With the map on my lap I’m retracing the route I rode.
My first week ended with my arrival in Paonia, Colorado. By that time the director and the cameraman had just arrived back in the Netherlands, and I was really left to my own devices.
In Paonia I met Melvin E. Miller – what an amazing name – and photographed him. A man with a face as distinct as his stories. He ended with ‘… and all you need to know is truth and beauty’, taken from the poem ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ by John Keats.
From Paonia I rode southward and ended up in La Junta. While I had initially been riding through a very cold mountain pass covered with snow, now I was on a flat road where I occasionally met up with a cow. The sun was shining and it seemed like nothing much was happening. But this quickly changed when another storm came out of nowhere. I decided to stay a day longer in La Junta. Here I wheeled around and had soup at a bar called the Railyard. When the owner found out that a Dutch photographer was in his bar, he took it upon himself to keep me occupied. To this end he invited practically all of La Junta over for a photo moment. Lots of people showed up to meet me and to photograph me. I had become a kind of tourist attraction. For a while I was fascinated with the new situation, but after a few hours it was time to hit the road again. I wanted to ride eastward first, but at the advice of La Junta’s inhabitants I headed south, toward the Mexican border.
On the road it became (painfully) clear to me what ‘gusty winds’ are. Gusty winds basically aren’t all that bad. It feels a bit like somebody is grabbing you and shaking you really hard. But gusty winds combined with falling rocks and rain is a recipe for disaster. My dad says I’m like one of those tilting dolls on my Harley. That thought gave me comfort.
