Al Kitchel and his road brother Joz had one plan: ditch the crowds, skip the freeways, and ride the forgotten backroads of the American West until something worth remembering happened. No itinerary. No destination. Just two Harleys, open skies, and the kind of freedom only found between the rumble strip and the horizon.
Shirley Pourbaba is an accomplished and self-taught poet, artist, painter, pianist, composer, and visionary whose deep love for language and culture was sparked at a young age. Born in Iran, she left for New York during the 1979 revolution, where her father’s work immersed her in the rich world of Persian art and antiquities while her mother constantly reminded her to look into nature with awe and seek meaning hidden in the poetic Symphony composed by nature. She would often say, “One who is absent to nature is deprived of nurture.”
Al Kitchel was born in Oakland, California, and raised in nearby Pleasant Hill. He built his first motorbike at thirteen, a project that sparked a lifelong love of riding. After years of chasing music gigs and odd jobs, he moved his young family to the backwoods of North Idaho, where he built, by hand and without formal training, the log house he still calls home.
A class IV whitewater rafter, occasional backpacker, professional musician, and steward of a hundred-year-old Douglas fir forest, Al spent eighteen years in the financial markets before retiring and writing his first book. He and his wife have logged more than 85,000 miles together on his Harley-Davidson across the Northwest, and it is one of those trips, a journey he shared with his lifelong friend Joz, that became the heart of The Other White Line.
This collection was born from a lifetime of observation, emotion, and reflection. Rooted in the poet’s Iranian heritage, it carries the echoes of ancient poets, the rhythm of her culture, and the timeless beauty of climactic human emotion. It is shaped by the stories of nature the rivers, the sun, the whispering trees and by the stories of humanity love, oneness, longing, sorrow, joy, and enlightenment. These poems are the language of her soul, every verse gushing with intense feelings, transcending ego, and surrendering into love.
Each poem is a sip of boundless yearning and devotion, connecting the aching soul of the poet to her eternal beloved or to the Divine. The words move with a magnificent humility, intertwining mythology, archetypes, and the symbolic entanglement of culture, religion, and psychology. The verses draw readers into a dance between self-awareness and self-acceptance, seeking the Divine at each bend, in the forgotten alleys of time and space a bridge to the here and after. With the brushstrokes of a painter and the depth of philosophy, the poet’s metaphorical lyricism breathes life into the universal law that governs all: love.
A late season ride south through Eastern Washington opens the story, introducing the bike, the brotherhood of the road, and the easy camaraderie shared between riders and long haul truckers alike.
Last minute bike trouble, a stressed out phone call from Joz, and the chaos of getting two Harleys road ready set the comic tone for the adventure to come.
The ride south through the Tri Cities and into the high desert of Oregon reveals a landscape of hidden beauty, dust devils, and the wide brown sweep of the Columbia River at Umatilla.
While the rest of the working faithful were dragging themselves out of bed, Double Trouble, in Sisters, Oregon, were debating and recalling the idealistic 60’s. After a brief recall of lost brain cells and the mayhem of the sixties, they spread out their crumpled maps, and as if two generals planning a pending raid, they then strategized their first day ride to what would become an alarming day’s end.
A foggy roadside motel, a throbbing head, and an unsettling presence in the dark turn this chapter into the book's most unexpected detour into the eerie and unexplained.
Leaving behind the strange memories of Death Alley and an old Yurok burial ground, the riders push south on Highway 101 through towering redwoods and a changing landscape.
Mount Shasta looms overhead as the pair ride into the high chaparral of Highway 89, camp near Hat Creek, and trade fish stories with the legend of the one that always gets away.
In the afterglow of the ride, Al surged north without his road amigo, Joz. What awaits him, when in the darkness of midnight, he finds himself suddenly lured by the bottomless depths of Nevada's Pyramid Lake?
Al Kitchel and his road brother Joz had one plan: ditch the crowds, skip the freeways, and ride a few of the forgotten back roads of the American West until something worth remembering happened. No itinerary. No destination. Just two Harleys, open skies, and the kind of freedom only found between the rumble strip and the horizon.
What started as a half-baked idea on a freezing Oregon riverboat, between a fishing guide’s cursing and a wad of flying chew, became a journey through raw country, canyon roads, and the unshakable bond of two men who chose adventure over comfort.
Part road memoir, part backwoods philosophy, The Other White Line is for anyone who has ever felt the pull of the open road and had the guts to follow it.
There is a kind of beauty that only shows itself when you slow down and stop expecting it. On the ride south through Eastern Washington, the grass on a hillside bends one way, then whips another in the gully beside it, like a flag caught in two different winds at once. You will not see that from an interstate. You will not see much of anything from an interstate, which is exactly the point…
If a rider breaks down out in the hinterlands, far from anybody who would care, chances are it is a trucker, not some weekend poser on a borrowed Harley, who stops to lend a hand. That trucker might have tools, a bit of know how, and the strength to get a downed bike rolling again…
There were no moon or stars to brighten that foggy sky. The only light came from a neon sign at the highway’s edge, buzzing and flashing like a candle in a breeze. VACANCY, it read. I should have kept riding…
The wind snapped at us like an angry god with a bad attitude. Then came the smoke. A wildfire was tearing through the western slopes of the Sierra and the ancient giants of Sequoia National Forest. We were not turning around…
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