The coastal fog is just starting to burn off when the bike begins another deep self cleaning cycle for its inner soul. Opening up the throttle, excess heat pours out and the bike fires forward. Out of a sweeping turn and right down a short straight away that connects one series of back and forth snaking corners to another. The asphalt version of connect the dots. It’s an intermediate blip of straight-edge normalcy which offers fractions of seconds to rest. And a moment when your mind can wander, even if it’s just a little bit.

And it’s in that heartbeat of time when visions of life flash by — my first bike, my first canyon roads, putting pucks to asphalt, scrapping through corners, my life up until this point — and then the next turn comes charging. The bike has no choice but to commence a dive bomb assault. Feverish side to side head swinging starts. Now there’s no more time to think. To ponder. To drift away. From this point forward it’s all about the here and the now. It’s all about the road.

Getting on the brakes, I feel the bike dive. Plant itself on the concrete. Heat continues to pour out. Then the weight shifts. I slide to the inside. Twist the bike into the corner and watch. Realities slanted view becomes horizontal and in that brief bit of motion it’s easy to see that there’s greatness lying out among the brush today. The kind of budding exuberance that stimulates a one-of-a-kind ‘wow factor’ which can only come from riding a fire-breathing monster of a sportbike exactly the way you want on exactly the roads you wish. It’s a moment within the moment kind of experience. A point when what was good becomes great and what was great becomes glorious.

And yet as fast as the thought comes flying by, it’s got even less time to get going. The first corner quickly gives birth to a second, which snakes the other way. My head swings back. The bike tilts into chaos before it finds the security of its own personal line. A groove that once found never fails. Then a beat later the road halts and swings just as hard back the other way and with it any remaining sense of dissatisfaction. For life, from life, doesn’t even matter? Hanging on to the bike, hitting the downshift, getting back on the brakes, and then twisting my wrist, it’s clear that there are to many continuous corners that lie ahead to allow myself to be beholden to anything but the sense of enthrallment that comes from carving this kind of asphalt. Especially on a day when all seems right with the world. When all seems right with me.

It’s a strange bit of writing I’m sure, but one that I’ve come to realize must just be the way my mind was wired back at the factory. It’s clear to me that I’m absolutely happiest when I’m riding regularly — and riding maniacal twisting roads at a hyper pace. When the aches and moans from my body aren’t due to aging, but rather from hunching over a full tilt sportbike over miles and miles of asphalt madness. When the thoughts that run through my head aren’t based in work or life but rather living and breathing. Being ‘in the moment’ and yet ‘from the moment’. It is the fractions of seconds of speed which flourish in lightly to nearly non-inhabited corners of the planet which offer the kinds of constant corners, brilliant vistas and sense of escape that I truly crave. They are the bits of time that allow me to personally connect the dots.

More picts after the jump…