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In the summer of 1967, I was on my way to Canada, due to a disagreement with the gummint regarding foreign policy. After a few days in the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco, we (my then-wife and I) were headed north on Highway 101 in our VW bus.
Driving up that long grade in Marin County north of the Golden Gate Bridge, something caught my eye: On the other side of the highway, headed south, a fellow all in black, a leather flight cap with flapping straps on his head, on a classic three-wheeled motorcycle all painted black. Keen. As he went by I glanced in my mirror, and saw painted in white letters on the back of his trike's cargo box, the famous Tibetan Buddhist mantra Om Maṇi Padme Hūṁ:
WOW! No way to learn who he was, but I've remembered the scene ever since.
Of course I met Dan at ZC some five years later in 1972, but didn't know it was he on the motorcycle until about 1979, when fellow named Sanje Elliott showed up at ZC. He was an American artist who'd become a Tibetan Buddhist and a master of the art of thangka painting – and also apparently spent some time with Suzuki Roshi at Sokoji during the 1960s. He gave me a little photo of the XVI Karmapa's "rainbow body":
And he also showed me a photo of Sokoji – with the very same three-wheel motorcycle parked at the curb in front, showing the mantra above in white on its rear end. "I saw that motorcycle!" I exclaimed, and recounted the story above. He told me it belonged to Dan Welch.
I saw Sanje again in Santa Fe, ca. 1986, when he was working on the beautiful Kagyu Shenpen Kunchab Bodhi Stupa. It's still there on Airport Road, as the city has expanded around it; it's apparently still thriving as a practice center, and has been a resource also for the Santa Fe Tibetan community.
In 2011 I found Sanje on the Internet (nice profile at YouTube), and asked him if he still had that photo of Dan's ride, and could I get a copy? Unfortunately, he didn't. - Andrew Main
