Bike had become motorbike, one had become two and "seeking travel companion" had become "for sale" in the lightning-fast grapevine of the travel community. I set him straight. And, what the Hell, invited him along.

There was clearly something about bicycles that repulsed these Indiana Jones-type travelers more than a goiter or a dose of gonorrhea. He helped himself to recover by tapping a cigarette out of a crumpled pack of Marlboros.

"I've got my eye on a big Honda. 450cc. Classic bike, old enough to've been around during the war. Real pretty." He paused and surveyed me through a swirl of cigarette smoke. "It could take two."

He planned to buy the bike in Saigon, spend a couple of months riding it to Hanoi, then sell it at a profit and fly to Laos. He was an Alaskan who had been coming to Asia every winter for eight years to escape the Arctic cold. During the summers he worked as a carpenter, a builder, an expediter during the Valdez spill and a general handyman. Mostly, he liked to fish - especially those king salmon that evidently grew larger than his arms were wide. "My friends always check the tide tables before bothering to call me," he said with pride.

He was forty-one, with a boyish smile that spread the hairs on his mustache and leathery skin that was gradually submitting to the relentless tropical sun and endless, gritty cigarettes. He wanted me to split the price of the pretty motorbike. I wanted him to buy a bicycle and quit smoking. He lit another cigarette.

I thought about his offer. It wouldn't hurt to scout the Highlands before committing to them heart and soul for the next six months. In truth I knew very little about the Trail beyond a few second-hand tales of humorless police and impassable roads. I could spend a few weeks on the motorbike, then hop a local bus back to Saigon and do it for real.

We agreed to share the cost of fuel and repairs as far as the now-defunct Demilitarized Zone. I offered five dollars a day rental towards the bike and pulled out a topographical map to show him Highway 14, a thin line that snaked through the forbidding central mountains instead of following the more hospitable coast. Less than a year ago it had been off limits to Americans. The infrequent travelers' tales were not encouraging. He agreed to try it.

After he left, I realized I didn't know his name.