Dark highly defined clouds descend from above as I work my way towards a disassociation from the everyday. The curves come and go, one by one, as I find myself feeling fairly certain that every so often it’s a good idea to grab the handlebars, twist the throttle, and whip around a few majestic landscapes in the hope of escaping the regularity of the work week. Oddly there’s something completely reassuring and yet still intrinsically wonderfully about leaving LA in order to capture and conquer the unfamiliar bends in the road while you let the day-to-day fade away and watch the tripmeter continue to roll.

Three weeks ago I mindlessly found myself checking the calendar and realized that the coming weekend was the big event – the social gathering of the year as it might be - and as is the nature of those of us who ride, my first inclination wasn’t, “gee I need to book a flight” or “wow, I need to make sure my hotel reservation is correct”, but rather did I have the time? The time to escape…

Could I pack the saddlebags once more and hit the road, free and clear?

Of course, as motorcyclists tend to do, even though I didn’t really have the time, I found the time. Reconfigured the days and nights leading up to the event and the clock on the other end solely for the purpose of giving myself four days of pristine early winter riding on the California Coastline.

Perhaps it wasn’t the most professional thing to do, or the even most grown up – though I’m not quite sure what ‘grown up’ even means these days - but somehow it seemed the most prudent. At least to me. Because days tend to come and go, but few offer the chance to capture magic along the way…

To be fair, this all started with a mere phone call.

I was a quarter of the way through a wonderfully self-indulgent single malt when the cell rang and the gal on the other end began to chatter. Beat after beat she beamed with pride over her coming wedding. What had been just a mere date on the calendar suddenly seemed like quite a bit more. Then she rather innocently asked whether or not I was planning on riding up to her wedding.

My response was fairly atypical for me, I hadn’t really given it much thought.

When it comes to planning adventures, get-aways, or simply days to ride, it seems I tend to be rather last minute about it all. It’s not that I don’t spend the time to ponder these sort of things ahead of time, but rather that I often find myself waging an internal battle between what I would like to do and what I think I should do. Perhaps that’s just the phase of life I find myself in right now, who knows…

In this particular case the concept of what I wished to have happen won out, no doubt heavily influenced by the gal on the other end of the phone.

As fate would have it, the past couple of years have been a whirlwind of weddings. One affair after another it seems. Years ago a kindred spirit who’s many moons older, once remarked to me that one day I would realize that weddings come in ‘waves’. Until now I never really understood the sentiment. Now of course I most certainly do.

Repeatedly these events have come and gone, each one leaving me feeling as if I’m watching the last vestiges of youth walk out the door. Perhaps I’m a tad bit jaded at this point, or since I’m nowhere close enough with a gal pal of my own to take part in a similar ritual, the omnipotent pageantry seems entirely lost on me. Sometimes it feels as if there’s a parade based on youth that continues marching on, only now I find both my friends and myself are no longer active participants but rather spectators standing in the first rows of the grandstand. What once felt innocent and blissful now seems to have aged and somewhere along the line the people I looked at as children seemingly have grown up overnight. Frankly I’m not quite sure how that happened so fast or fluidly…

As the gal pal smiles through the phone as the excitement grows, I can’t help but find my mind wandering. Slowly find the meaty base of the glass rocking back and forth in my hand before I take another sip. Single malts it seems are one of the few parts of life which champion their individual independence as if it’s a good thing.

Eventually the conversation moves towards heavier material once the primary factual information has been conveyed. ‘This is just another chapter in our lives,’ she says as my mind begins hula-hooping. Few phrases toss me for loops, but when did ‘her’ life become ‘our’ life? And if life really is a book filled with chapters, it certainly would have been nice to have received an advanced copy.

Mindlessly I continue to try and pay attention, but truth be told while I’m happy for her, I still can’t help but feel like I just don’t get these things. At this point they all seem roughly the same. Perhaps that’s wrong of me to say – Perhaps I simply don’t understand them. People show up, the wedding couple says ‘I do’, and an hour later everybody madly gyrates to time-tested tunes while sipping hastily poured drinks. No matter how fancy the window dressing is, the eventual results all seem fairly predictable.

That’s not to say that I’m completely down on weddings - they seem like fine events all in all and I was certainly honored to be asked to attend this one as the gal pal is a very, very close friend – it’s just that the more of these kind of events that I attend, the more I find myself objecting to some of the basic core tenets involved. For starters, who are these things for? It certainly doesn’t seem to be the bride and the groom, who spend the evening working the room like it’s a political convention. Where exactly is the celebration in spending a night shaking hands? Then there’s the inherent competitive nature that exists between events which draw on common components (or shall we say people). Theoretically one would think these sorts of events ought to be purely about fun and optimism – yet I can’t shake the sense that on some level they seem to be used as engine oil windows for life.

Wedding lore – real or imagined – would seem to suggest that eons ago these events were about more then just a fantastical party. Yet today couples live together and sleep together well in advance (something that I’m all for as I would never buy a bike without a test drive…) and in most cases already walk an outwardly appearing path of matrimony well before they take their actual vows. Then there’s the black sheep topic that hangs in the back of the room in weddings across the country - the ever-increasing divorce rate, which at this point seems like a rather reliable and proven growth stock. Ultimately all of these thoughts leave me wondering, is it completely inconceivable that the actual institution of marriage might simply be a holdover from an era gone by? Clearly both the concept and the characteristics of ‘love’ don’t need public vows or a physical ring, so what exactly is the reason we do this?

Four days later I’m on my way to the gal pal’s wedding, charging up a wickedly behaving CA Route-33 on the ST3 in an attempt to both make my way up North yet also break free. Normally 33 is as good it gets, but not on this day. Not today. Not when the road is flush with dirt, debris, and construction – all of which seem to bring more annoyance then relief. The act of riding feels rather awkward at best. Corners that typically contain an enchanting form of magic suddenly seemed depleted and vaguely uncomfortable. And the whole time the bike and I are at odds.

Everything seemed amiss and yet for the life of me I still don’t know why – the weather was great, the bike seemed decent enough, I had the time to ride and the opportunity to compartmentalize the day-to-day. Yet even though all the ingredients seemed to exist for a perfect ride somehow I just couldn’t escape the here or the now or even the next.

Pulling off just past the summit, I look out over the western edge of the Central Valley as the turbulence under the helmet continued to swirl. What is it about weddings that cause me to internalize where I’m at in life? You’d think after so many of these things, I’d stop using them as temp gauges for my life, yet somehow it seems I can’t.

Each of these events seems to pull me out of the parts of life I truly enjoy the most and instead impose a rather different kind of life path. It’s as if all these weddings have made my life a translucent fairing through which I can see cracks and scratches in my own personal trellis frame.

Getting back on the bike, it occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve decided to ‘ride’ to a large-scale event. Usually I back out of this kind of ride and instead cage it because of the vast quantities of alcohol that tend to be involved. Yet this time around, for some reason it seemed like a better idea to try and combine passion with pleasure and hold off on the excessive drinking. Yet for all the grand intentions, the pinball machine sitting in every corner acts like it’s already been tilted. Moments of concern occur with regular frequency - the backend of the ST3 acting out like a problem child, feeling like it’s about to break loose at any moment.

Eventually I made my way to Route 166. Subsequently headed East, before picking up the remainder of Route-33 heading North. This pushes me past the oil fields that lie just outside of Taft before dropping me on the doorstep of grandeur. CA Route-58. A road that I’ve mentioned before but that is truly one of the great – and somewhat hidden - roads of California.

If CA-33 is a race track, CA-58 is a test track. Without a doubt the 33 to 166 to 33 to 58 trek to the Central Coast is quickly becoming my favorite way to start a trip up North, even if it paradoxically starts the journey in exactly the wrong direction. The lack of traffic, the open asphalt and the serpentine roadway simply make it a fantastic route to take –Even on a day when no matter what you do it feels as if you skipped the rails.

Halfway across the CA-58 horizon line, I pull off once again and light a smoke. While standing on the edge of the earth’s curvature, I take a long, deep, slow drag and admire the view. It’s in this standing moment when it dawns on me that there’s something else at play here – something different, something not easily defined at first. And then it hits me – while standing on the vapid periphery of civilization, I can’t hear a thing. The quietness is both memorizing and yet chilling, which creates a strange kind of glory all by itself. There’s literally nothing going on – no motion, no animals, no bugs, no wind, nothing but a vacuum of silence. It’s bleak and plain and empty and somehow completely appropriate for the mental moment.

Several hours later, after wrapping up a day’s worth of riding, I find myself sitting on the last stool at the end of a bar in Morro Bay. Outside the window the orange sun has started to melt into a reddish abyss. The cautious water glimmers with relief as the bartender slides a short dram my way. The deep peaty smoke quickly surrounds my mouth as I stand back and admire the fringes of the California Coastline aesthetic. Thus far it’s been a long, rather complex day filled with far too much commotion inside the helmet and yet at this very moment it seems surprisingly worthwhile – even though it’s been anything but easy.

As sailboats rock back and forth in the harbor and the last hints of daylight escape, I find myself keenly aware that there’s something special about visiting this part of the world. A certain calmness that brings reinvigoration to the spirit and seems capable of calming the nerves. Oddly while I don’t know how to surf or sail and don’t really even like swimming, there’s something awfully comforting about watching the water as it slows down.

To my surprise I wake up the next morning to a bright sunny coastline – usually Morro Bay is about foggy mornings and steaming cups of coffee, but thankfully not today. Quickly pack up and check out. Close another chapter in life I suppose, or at least turn another page.

It doesn’t take long for the tires to get grippy or for the engine to rev just a little bit louder. Soon I find myself charging hard past the seal-covered beaches, the motels, and even Hearst Castle. Quickly come to realize that yesterday’s nomadic and introspective voyage will not repeat itself again today. Cars and campers pack the road in numbers I’ve never seen and for some reason the deck feels stacked. Taking a long look into the distance, a deep damn near foreboding collection of black clouds hovers just between the coast and the mountains. It doesn’t look pretty or pristine or even remotely enjoyable. Such is life I suppose.

Yet even as the clouds get closer, I can’t help but feel like this is cherished territory. This is a land that time has somehow forgotten– and even though today isn’t as perfect as I would have hoped, there’s something that lives and breaths here that needs to be both savored and remembered. A kind or type of life – or perhaps lifestyle – that seems so utterly remote and yet it too still marches on.

Sixty miles into the hundred and twenty mile trek from Morro Bay to Carmel, the traffic piles up as the road gets tighter and tighter. The turns bending over in level four yoga positions before I eventually find myself stranded behind three gargantuan RVs as they double-down and shift their way towards a snails pace. Who on earth buys a Tony Soprano sized RV and then looks at the most squiggly line on a map of the State of California and thinks driving it in a rolling castle is a good idea baffles me. Nor am I quite sure why cars on Highway 1 try their damndest to keep pole position on the straights yet pull over in blind corners and wave you on to pass them where no one can see you.

However the upshot of this dramatic slow down is a whiplash sense of sea salt. Suddenly riding along the coast in fact smells like the coast. Which is a far more salty form of sport-touring then one would think. While the pace of the day seems redundantly mindless, the residual taste of magic that’s hovering on my lips seems to forecast something bigger, something better, something more remarkable and perhaps more outstanding.

Several corners later the sentiment comes to fruition as the road opens up and the bike leans out into the oncoming lane. Whirls up with excitement and flare. The ride finding another level of the sport-touring experience – a secularly speedy kind of momentum that lies between third and forth gear. Suddenly the ST3 becomes less a mode of transportation but rather a sophisticated collaborator whose only intention is to break the bonds of the mundane. It’s quick and light-hearted and yet completely fluid. One movement becomes two, which begets three and so on. Until a moment and many bends later I’m tightly hugging the line after swinging past the human cattle haulers and thanks in large part to their super-sized slow down, the road is now wide open. Finally free of the confines the sightseeing stops and the sport-riding begins.

Instantly corners come roaring back to life. The bike barks. The tires bite. The landscape shutters and hides. A desmodromic engine hurls itself forward with a ferocious tenacity that bends the chassis towards the edge of reason. The yellow lines which normally corral the spirit suddenly don’t seem to apply anymore. Curve after curve, the bike dominates, digests and spits out what’s left. The ST3 no longer is taking orders from the asphalt but rather creating them. It’s a rolling, moving, motion-filled adventure making machine that holds the power to bring the simmering magic of the moment to a rushing boil. Almost instantly it feels original all over again. The act and the art of riding becoming paramount obsessions.

Suddenly thoughts of where I’m headed become superseded by the very asphalt that lies just millimeters ahead. For the first time on this particular journey things make sense again. The macro becomes the micro and it’s no longer about just getting there but rather living on the way.

Whip out of the next corner, I bring the throttle back just a little harder, with a heightened level of concentration and a touch more passion, and an overarching sense that defeating days weighted with indifference seems possible once more. When the engine howls with approval, I know I’m on to something. Corner after corner what felt elusive seems surprisingly tangible. Quickly the entrances and exits that mark the beginning and end of each twist in the road evaporate as the act of riding transcends both the moment and the ever-coming future while the darkness finally begins to lighten up. Soon the road parts and the journey becomes the sole focus of the day, Reminding me that even in low opacity moments obscured with a helmet full of divergent thoughts, life is not nearly as predetermined as it often times appears. After all, there’s a wide-open road that’s begging to be hit hard and fast – sometimes it’s just hard to get in front of the traffic.