The last couple of weeks have been tough. You’ve heard of writer’s block: a creative drought brought on by any number of factors, but inevitably leading to long hours staring at a blank page and willing something, anything to appear there.

Well, I’ve been suffering from quite the opposite: a deluge of inspiration restrained by a variety of factors that have combined to squelch my writing for a couple of weeks. I’ve got a hearty ideas list sitting right here next to my keyboard, and it continued to grow throughout the duration of my writer’s obstruction, but whenever I thought I was nearing the point where I would be able to overcome one distraction and scratch an idea off the list, another half dozen problems would crop up.

But I’m off the zombie shift at work, I have a new (functioning) modem, my landlord’s allowed me to set my computer back up in my office, I’ve returned from vacation and hacked my way through to a reasonable stopping point on a handful of other intimidating troubles. It’s time to write.

I’ve alluded a couple times recently to a vacation I planned to take with my buddy Cam, which we embarked on a little more than a week ago today. Ever since I bought my first motorcycle following college graduation, I’ve yearned to take a road trip on two wheels. It’s tough to explain that desire. I suspect it was fueled partly by stereotype and partly by a suspicion that it would yield some sort of deep, spiritual gratification.

Turns out, I wasn’t disappointed on either front.

So I talked Cam, a long term bro-mantic partner of more than a decade, into riding out with me. One of the trip’s conditions, in keeping with stereotype, was that we really wouldn’t have any clue where we were going until we got there. When we left Friday morning, it was with a hastily-researched, loosely-defined set of objectives and ideas, but we really ended up making it up as we went along.

So westbound it was. And no interstates allowed.

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As you can see from the map, westbound it did not remain. While we gave brief consideration to shooting for the Badlands in South Dakota, a couple factors made us abandon the idea after the first day. For starters, riding naked-frame bikes cross-country is just plum exhausting. While a rider can easily let half a continent roll past under his pipes on a touring (old man) bike, our cruisers offer none of the windshields, the fairings, the floorboards or the cupholders that protect motorcyclists who choose them from the wind, the road grit and the riding fatigue.

The machines Cam and I ride aren’t the massive two-wheeled, open-air cars you see rolling down the interstate with antenna towers sticking up on back and chrome testicles hanging off a trailer hitch. Nor are they the plastic-encased speed machines that force you to ride in an awkward, hunched-over position that’s not sustainable for more than a couple hours. We ride cruisers: engines, wheels, handlebars and a little bit of chrome, with nothing wasted on luxury and just enough comfort to allow us to cover more than a thousand miles in four days.

It’s that simplicity I first found attractive about owning a bike. But without the full set of riding accoutrements, we figured it would be best to stay within a day’s ride of home at all times during our inaugural motorcycle road trip.

Also, the weekend of our trip coincided with THE rally in Sturgis. I was fairly gung-ho about taking part in this time-honored motorcycling tradition, but Cam was fairly convinced if we showed up at the infamous Harley festival, a couple “college boys” on Suzukis, we’d end up face-down in a gutter somewhere. I’ve since been told this likely would not have been the case, and there’s always next year.

So we left Madison on Friday, southwest-bound on 151, then veered off the main road at Platteville, weaving our way through the bluffs to Potosi. We stopped off at the Potosi Brewery (as far as I can tell, the village’s only attraction on its only main road) for some eats and a pint served to us by none other than Cam’s little brother. Through the course of the meal, we made two decisions — it would be hilarious for us to travel to Waterloo, Iowa and be the only Madisonians watching the Mallards play an away game, but first, we had to go to the dog track in Dubuque and bet on some races.

I’m not sure what the allure of watching the “little ponies” run is, but something about being 24, out on an open road with nowhere in particular to go made it seem like a natural step. Alas, it was not to be. When we arrived at what used to be known as the Dubuque Greyhound Park and Casino, we were told the races didn’t start until 7:00 — the same time we hoped to be 90 miles away watching the first pitch of the baseball game.

Not to be deterred, we made the only natural move for a couple of guys clad in road armor in a casino full of senior citizens on a Friday afternoon — we had a seat at the blackjack table.

I don’t consider myself a “gambler” per say. When my old man taught me to play blackjack, the first rule I learned was that you don’t gamble with money you can’t afford to lose completely. When I change out money at the table, I do so with the mindset that my money is being spent on a very expensive, enjoyable form of recreation. Anything I walk away from the table with is just an added bonus, though I try not to play like a fool.

The beauty of blackjack is that it can be as simple or as complex as you make it. Cam had never played the game before, but with a little help, he picked up on the core rules after five minutes of watching me. His next task was to get a feel for how to operate as a player within that framework — when to hit, when to stand, when to split and when to double — so as to maximize the number of hands he wins against the dealer, which he did well enough to break even on the day.

But the game is much more complex still, because on a hand-to-hand basis, the dealer is going to beat you more often than you beat him. There wouldn’t be much profit in running a game if this weren’t the case. So in order to walk away with more money than you started with, you need to try and arrange it so you’ve got the minimum bet on the table when the dealer beats you, but you bet big when the dealer ends up paying out.

That’s where the real fun of blackjack starts, for me anyway. Some people try to count cards as a means of sensing when a deck is “hot,” which is a good way to go if you’re in it for the long haul, you’ve got a large starting stake and you want to concentrate so hard on the game that you don’t have any fun at all.

My style of play is a little more free-wheeling than that. While the odds certainly play into it, you can still get burned playing them, because in the end it’s a game of chance. Luck is a streaky thing. It can evade you for hours, which is how my afternoon at the table started out. It can come evenly distributed across a stretch of hands, which is perhaps the most frustrating and most common situation of all as you try to pick the winners to bet big on and the losers to steer clear of. Or, luck can happen all at once, and my key to playing blackjack is recognizing these instances early, getting my money on the table and watching it grow.

The whole process reminds me of surfing, which I’ve only tried once and am not any good at. I paddle out into the water and lie there, getting a feel for the environment and placing just enough minimum bets to stay afloat. Occasionally, when the situation feels right, I’ll try to catch a wave of luck by floating a bigger bet on the table. Sometimes I’ll stay up for a while, and sometimes I’ll fall off hard.

Friday, I spent more time falling off than I did surfing. While Cam walked away relatively unscathed placing minimum bets, every time I tried to ride a wave, the dealer would catch 21 or some other ridiculous stroke of bad luck would crop up, and down I would go. I struggled along, catching no breaks and hemorrhaging chips until I was down to a quarter of my starting stake. I caught what I thought was a streak and rode it back to 50 percent of my stake before the bottom dropped out of my luck and I fell to 15 percent.

I piddled around with minimum bets for a while as Cam went to cash out. He returned just as I felt what I hoped was a big wave of luck swelling up behind me. Do or die. I threw the rest of my stake out and hit up to an ugly 17. The dealer busted, I held my breath and let my stake ride.

It was the kind of streak blackjack players have on their minds every time they sit down at a table. I wasn’t bulletproof, but I was close. I bet aggressively, but just tentatively enough to keep from self-destructing. In the span of five minutes, I rode my wave from 15 percent of my stake to 140. I probably could have ridden it a little further, but I didn’t want to get greedy and I could tell I was getting cocky. Sweating, pulse pounding, I tipped the dealer, thanked him and stood up to cash out. Dad also taught me to know when to quit. Even an afternoon of crappy luck at the table is bound to contain one good streak. I was lucky to have been able to end with it, and play it right.

We left Dubuque on what was hands-down the most boring leg of the entire trip, made interesting only by the fact that Cameron, riding point, missed the turnoff for Highway 20 westbound and we had to navigate our way back to it. 20 itself was monotonously flat and straight, and we opened the throttles up and tried to make the godforsaken state of Iowa roll under our bikes as quickly as possible.

Turns out, our expectations that we would be the only Sconnies at the baseball game were very misplaced. The first person we met in the beer line was a young woman from Madison, in Waterloo for the express purpose of seeing the Mallards play away. That didn’t stop us from being the loudest fans in our section, even though the Mallards never really had a chance after the third inning in the 6-3 trouncing we witnessed. The Iowans, for their part, were friendly enough folks. They razzed us a little, and then tolerantly pointed us in the direction of a downtown Waterloo hotel. We barhopped a little before calling it a night, and surprised ourselves by finding what I’m convinced is the only hockey bar in the entire state.

We set out on Saturday with the idea being that we’d end up somewhere in the vicinity of of the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewery in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, but the main objective was to get to some scenic riding. THAT meant getting the hell out of Iowa as quickly as possible, so we set out northeast-bound for Prairie du Chien and the legendary Great River Road, Highway 35, that runs along the Mississippi. The first hundred miles of the day were tedious and boring, but as we neared the northeast corner of Iowa, we got back into the rolling bluffs that make southwest Wisconsin such a destination for motorcycle enthusiasts. I’ll be speaking with my elected representative about annexing that part of Iowa (including Clermont, Postville, McGregor and Marquette) into Wisconsin, which I think is only right.

Coming next: the Zen of Motorcycling, where I’ll explain the appeal of sitting in a perpetual gale, clinging for dear life to a 600-pound machine balanced on two wheels and being pelted with bugs and debris while the pavement whizzes underneath you like a massive belt sander, inches from your extremities. Stay tuned.