Around mile 2280, on the way to Sedona.
On naming bikes: My first bike, a Honda NC700X, was named Hoss from the start. I’d been looking for a name for the Scout as soon as I got him, but nothing fit. Riding through Arizona, Cat Power’s cover of Silver Stallion came on.
You have to understand how absolutely, beautifully gut-wrenching the song is. Her voice is smoky and rough and the instrumentation is only punctuation. The slide guitar slips you in and out of choruses.
In the song, she’s gonna steal a silver stallion, teach him how to trust her like a sister. Well, there’s no way the Scout was going to be a stallion, silver or otherwise. Too on the nose. But the song was definitely his, as soon as it played. So what was his name?
The song keeps circling the word “gonna” (“we gonna ride, we gonna ride. Riding like the one eyed jack of diamonds with the devil close behind”). It seemed impossible as a name, Gonna, but it wouldn’t leave my mind. We gonna ride.
Thousands more miles and it is the only name he could have.
“I’m gonna chase the sky forever
“With the man, the stallion and the wind
“The sun is gonna burn into a cinder
“Before we ever pass this way again
“And we’re gonna ride
“We’re gonna ride…”
Go, Haley, Go! 