The Vivid Vista
There’s a shake… And a shutter… And the slightest side to side maneuver… The engine hums, its bangs, it butts its head up against the limit… A sense of excitement and purpose and pure joy flows… The kind of overt outpouring that makes one take notice of the date and time… Catalog it… Put it away… Try their damnedest to remember it. Because it’s special..
With the slightest bit of back pressure, the clutch lever comes back… A quick bang and a torquey grunt later and the bike fires once more… Goes up a gear and dances down the tarmac… And again… And again… And just like that I’m in fourth… Maybe fifth…
Banging down the avenue well above the speed limit and trying my damnedest to visually record the moment — because today is so f’n brilliant… It’s perfect… It’s astounding… It is why we ride… Why we escape… Why we live…
How we wish for moments like these. How we dream of them. How I wondered whether I’d be ‘here’ again…
Months ago, I took a sip of the single malt sitting in front of me and remarked to the ‘old man, ‘Have I lost the love for the machine?’
He said and says, ‘no’…
I wondered… Even feared… That he was wrong…
But he wasn’t… And he isn’t…
I suppose some part of me always looked at riding a motorcycle as a linear passion — In my mind it could only grow greater. Grow stronger. Become more profound. Mean more to me than it already did…
But then I hit this patch where it didn’t…
Maybe, dare I say it, perhaps it even declined…
So many other things came to the forefront, so many other daydream vehicles took control, and at some point I sat back and thought, ‘why have I let this happen?’…
Why do we let some of our greatest passions slip away?
Why do we subscribe to paths of rationalizations??? … ‘X’ is ok because ‘Y’ happened and for some reason that’s more important than my need to ride… My need to be me… My need to do my own thing…
Why?
A couple of months ago a wife of a friend says to me, ‘you’ll stop riding once you have kids’… Impulsively I agree…
But why?
That’s not how I feel — That’s not what I believe — Any of us could get hit by a bus tomorrow, do we run around passing judgment on that? Do we fear the risk management in crossing the street? No…Not at all…
So why is my vehicle of choice condemned? Why is a motorcycle still considered evil or deadly or dangerous?
What isn’t in today’s world?
Do we subscribe to live in a bubble? To become indentured servants to what’s ’safe’? Do we cease daydreaming because it’s deadly?
No…
I’d like to think that humanity is based on living, on breathing, on pushing our boundaries and become more than what we are… And I never, ever, ever want to wake up and think ‘I’ve let myself slip away’…
Cresting the next great canyon road and seeing the ocean reveal itself from atop of a bike is far to brilliant of a vantage point to miss ever again… Because I never want to miss this vivid of a vista again…
When Fantasy becomes Reality
Chimney Rock Road & the 1098S
The bike is roaring. The engine whirling. The tach rising. The fuel tank lowering. The moment at hand…
I see it…
I feel it..
I am here… I am alive… once again I believe…
So many big ‘thoughts’ and so few ‘little’ ones…
I am one with the machine, and in a way that hasn’t been true in eons… Isn’t that what we all want? Is that’s what we all wish for? I feel the brake, I see the corner, I wonder what the next straight away is going to be like and yet I know I’ll wick it up again… Speed seems so commonplace here… I feel compelled to find out what happens next..
Leaving the parking lot post-breakfast, I ask myself, ‘where am I headed today?’…
And I don’t know…
There’s no pre-planned map… No known journey… No well worn-repeated loops… It’s all fresh and new and wondrous… Gød I hope I can hold on to this idea, to this feeling, to this belief…
It’s as if the unknown is the unsacred…
Twenty minutes later, I come into a collection of back and forth corners… Whiplash for the mindset but wonderful asphalt for the tires… And I whip it… And yet it’s funny how the unknown can be a blast — There’s no knowledge of dirt in this corner or that one, or farm tractors always pull out here, or bad traffic comes after 4 pm… No thought I laid it down right here… Nothing… It’s a blank canvas… And somehow that feel like a release of it’s own…
Right now it’s all fresh and new and wondrous and alive… And I fear none of it.. And yet the catalog of corners in my mind makes me take a breath… Pause… Bite my tongue…
Because new doesn’t equal safe… It’s all a gamble… It’s all risk management…
And yet it’s also so alive…
As if it’s never been here before….
I come through corner and gasp — do vistas like this truly exist? Am I really here? Is this really home? Am I honesty that fortunate?
Gød I hope so…
Because riding around here is beyond awesome and unusual and unique… it’s the beer you taste at the end of the day and go ‘whow’, it’s the bike you get on and think ‘wow’, it’s the life you think only exists in moto-mags and yet is there… It’s here… It exists….
What the fuck took me so long to realize that?
It’s been a little over five weeks since I permanently side-stepped to the California Central Coast — Five weeks of chaos, and madness, and… well, absolute beauty… Total unadulterated awesomeness… There is a breath and bite to the surroundings here, and touch of insanity that I can’t quite grasp and yet a wonderful ability to just ride… So unfettered… So available… So there.. for the taking…
Who are we not to indulge?
Boxes We Build
Ducati 1098S on Creston Road
There’s a beat… A second that goes by… A moment where what lies forward enters the ‘here & the now’… A smirk, A smile, A sense of life…
But then it’s gone…
A flash. A bulb going off.. A brilliant beat that’s continuing to move past…
That’s behind…
The strip of paint on the tarmac that you see coming and then see going…
Twisting the throttle back makes the bike jump.
It’s hurries itself up. Faster and faster… More compact, more alert, more alive. I hear it. I feel it. I am it. And I want more of it… Much more… So much more… Ah… this is what I love… This is what I am… This is more me than I’ve known…
Somehow what’s good gets better and what’s best becomes more… I don’t know how, I don’t know why, I don’t know what is happening… But I like it…
All day the never-ending serpentine asphalt has been bending and brushing its way around the land but not any more…
Now it’s living in a sequence of continuity, where the long winding path has rolled itself out, unfurled its wares and become one, long, nasty and beautiful — and lengthy — bit of straightness.
So straight. So strong. So much grip… And I feel myself slide back in the saddle.
Get as low as I can. Under the windscreen. Beneath the air. Below the bike.
And then the ‘10 rips… The engine forcefully pushing… Pulling… Biting… Hitting the limit and then with one click, starting all over once more time… And again… And again… And again…
When the corner finally approaches, I let the throttle down, softly increase the pressure on the brake lever and sit up like a sail… And as the wind blasts away and I mentally prep for the corner ahead, I find myself thinking, we all live in some kind of box, something that surrounds our lives and gives it definition — Perhaps for too long I’ve spent too much time searching for bigger and better boxes when instead perhaps the goal should have been pushing the life inside the box to the edge… Or as far as the tach will go…
83 Mile Tacos
The Monster on the PCH
Shards of golden red light are spreading across the sky as a perfectly turquoise edge of an ocean barks with life. The waves crashing with such force it almost feels like there’s an earthquake looping on the house audio system.
But there isn’t.
Looking around, oddly I’m the only person who seems even remotely disturbed by this phenomenon… The others - the locals - they just go about their business… As if it’s all naturally normal (which it is) and should they miss it today, they nonchalantly seem to intuitively know they can just catch it tomorrow (which of course they can)…
Ahhh beach culture…
A slow, slow evolving style of life if ever there was one…
The view and the thought are interrupted when the waiter swings a steaming hot plate of spicy tacos down in front of me, fresh off a grill in a taco joint that’s just six blocks away — and yet it took me 83 miles to find.
Looking at the map spread across the empty edge of the table, I shake my head.
Funny how sometimes the long way turns out to be the best way to go a short distance.
Honestly, I don’t know that I’ve ever gone as far as I did today to end up so close by…
I thank the man and start to dig in. But he cocks his head, looks at the helmet and jacket and asks, “where you from?”
“Just moved here actually,” I tell him.
His lips rise as he smiles and reveals a missing tooth, “This is special place… Where’d you come from?”
I say LA.
His smile shrinks, “To much anger there, people happy here… N’joy!”
And with that he’s gone…
And all that reminds is the view…
Whether that’s true or not, I do not know… What I do know however is that an 83 mile six-block ride never seemed so strange or so beautiful…
2 Tanks of Fuel Fantasy
You know you’re having a kick ass sportbike ride when you find yourself filling up the tank for the second time before noon…
And today was that kind of day…
I suppose it shouldn’t be all that shocking really, like many things in life, the more repetitions you get at something or with something the more comfortable you being to feel doing it — Today was the most confident I have felt on the 1098S in eons.
Every corner felt so spectacularly solid, so firm and planted, and so secure that nothing felt remotely risky. Nothing felt hard. Nothing felt even slightly out of control.
Instead everything just happened. Like magic…
It is a feeling that I have so sorely missed and yet suddenly, without warning, here it was again…
The belief that I could do anything on a sportbike — and while I know that’s logically not true, as I am not Mat Mladin or Troy Bayliss or anything remotely resembling a professional roadracer, it sure felt that way… And that’s just an awesome feeling to behold (even if it is not 100% logically correct)… That sense of total immersion and connection with the machine. Where it almost seems like you can feel the pulse of the motor. It’s excitement. It’s anger. It’s vivid vitality and sense of purpose and dedication to the task at hand.
Just as I’ve been working my way back to confident riding, so too with writing about it… This is one of those blog posts that I fear doesn’t do justice to the experience of wicking the throttle back on a central coast canyon straight-away and feeling that rush that comes when the bike launches from 40 to 100 in a fraction of a split second whirlwind… And as you hang on you think this is bloody fast… And then you’re getting on the brakes, a finger at a time, scuffing off speed before the next kink in the roadway, and you feel that sense of moto-isolation, where it’s just you, the bike and the road surrounded by an empty cali-canyon…
For awhile now I’ve wondered if I’d ever get back to this spot — Back to that mental paradise where riding wasn’t a series of commands but a reactive, free-flowing, existence and the wonder wasn’t in being able to manipulate the machine proficiently with thoughts but rather the ability to find that nearly mystical place where it all just happened by itself. When and where you were free to not think about how to do it. Where thought became thoughtless… And amazingly it is… How awesome…
Mental Drifting
Pozo Road
I’m coming through yet another corner — the latest in a series of endless turns and bends — and I find myself wondering when am I going to wake up?
When will this dream cease and reality set in?
Hopefully never…
It’s been less than a month since the relocation and yet I find myself wondering what took so long?
Why do we wait to get to the good parts of life? How is it that you can intrinsically know in your soul that something absolutely correct for you and yet still say to yourself, ‘ah I’ll get to that later’…or, ‘I’ll move there one-day’… or, ‘I’ve got plenty of time to enjoy that’…
Why do we find reasons not to jump?
There are simply more corners around here than I think I will ever know what to do with… Every road seems to be radically tweaked… And it’s awesome… Absolutely awesome…
And then there is today…
I don’t know that I’ve felt this comfortable on a bike since I laid the 999 down… Between the howling engine and the sense of grip — even in adverse pavement conditions — nothing seemed impossible today. So confident. So in control. So in touch with the machine. And the 1098S did everything I wanted it to as I thought of it… And that is just fantastic… I wish it was always this good…
I remember when we were shooting Twist The Throttle, the great Massimo Tamburini said, ‘when a bike can do what you want when you think of it, that’s a special machine’ and that thought has never left me, and yet until right now it also never seemed possible…
And yet it is…
So much is…
Life has never felt this good…
76 Miles and Noth’n but Curves
I’m absolutely aching for the long slow drag I know I shouldn’t have when a single hand reaches out of the driver-side window from the car directly in front and waves me on.
It’s not the sexiest way to pass someone or something but then again this isn’t a sexy passing kind of day.
Rather as the road begins to bend and I pass a sign proclaiming the next seventy-six miles to be curvy, I find myself thanking my lucky stars that to be here and coming to realization that right now the absolute worst thing one could do is rush.
I spend too much time rushing anyway…
This however isn’t a day to ‘just get there’ or a route to easily forget, rather this is the last best spot I’ve ever been and a day to begs to be savored.
A day I want to last as long as I can make it last.
Back home there’s a lot of ‘real’ from the ‘real world’ waiting – all the usual culprits; bills, work, big thoughts about growing older, stuff that requires heavy emotional lifting.
But right now and right here, leading this pack of traffic on this particular day, it’s feels as it’s just me and the road and roar of the pacific.
And as the asphalt breaks left and right and then back again, and again, and again…
So do I…
It’s been too long since I last visited this stretch of Highway-1 and today for the first time in what feels like forever, I can hear its call. I feel its longing. I miss this place and I miss this ride.
For all my travels, this is one of the great, great routes and rides…
One of those fantasies on earth – to be had and held and worshiped and run again and again…
Yet what once was an adventure away is now such a short track lap from home that I can’ t quite wrap my head around it.
As the ST-3 rushes down the hillside, I twist the throttle back further, smell the bite of the cold ocean air and realize that while there’s a plethora of wonderfully, curvy asphalt between Monterey, California and home, less then 2 miles of it requires a freeway.
Never in my life have I been this close to asphalt perfection. Now if only I could learn to let things go and enjoy it more.
Rehab for the Soul
I ask where I am and the man says, “the last, best spot in California”…
Quick smile to myself and I think you’re more right than you know…
Am I really here? Is this real? Am I alive? Is this a dream?
I do not know… but please do not wake me up…
So many thoughts keep running through my head — by far the biggest and most preposterous is whether or not this is real… I feel somehow stuck in the whirlwind of a daydream… I suppose that’s only reasonable when you permanently escape to the place that you always used to ‘escape’ to…
Event thought moments seem entirely fleeting these days, I keep thinking about today and smirking… It lasted a long time and even though I wish it had lasted longer I am quite content with what it was… Roads around here are quite curvy…
While I am not an expert in knowing how to ‘hold on to the moment’, I fully understand that change is just another awesome vehicle in which to arrive in…
This is undoubtedly the best thing I’ve ever done… I wish I had done it sooner…
Reboot, Reload, Restart
I woke up awhile back…
And I stared myself down in the mirror…
It was the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to do…
Because what I saw reflecting back at me wasn’t an image of today or tomorrow, but rather an unfolding series of event leading me straight into the future.
It was a story about the evolution of my life…
But it wasn’t my future… And it wasn’t for me…
That morning I realized that I was watching was another person’s personal narrative unfold.
Someone I didn’t want to become and someone I didn’t recognize as me.
On each successive day since no matter how much I might try to rationalize what I saw that morning, I keep finding it absolutely impossible to shake the feeling that this was not the odyssey or adventure I was destined for…
What is it that we ask of ourselves in the future?
Who is it that we want to become?
Where do we want our paths to lead?
And when you look in the mirror and see two divergent paths standing before you how do you choose which one to take?
These are questions to which I do not have any answers at all. Only the vaguest hints of thoughts… But none of them even remotely begin to result in a solution to the puzzle of my life.
And yet!
And yet! I feel the clock ticking in a way that I have never felt it move before.
Because as of today a third of my practical life is now over.
And it feels like it has rushed passed me as if I were standing on the edge of the track and watching bikes roar right past me at two-hundred miles plus. I see the blur of motion, I hear the whine of the engine, I feel the rumble beneath my feet… But I don’t feel in control. I don’t feel like I am the rider.
And to be honest, I’m having a very, very hard time with that.
I find little comfort in science, less in organized religion, and absolute none coming from the people whose council I’ve depended on for decades.
Everywhere I turn lately it feels very, very lonely.
And not in that glorious break-of-the-dawn twilight emptiness… Rather it feel black. Very, very black. As if there’s heavy contrast everywhere I look and someone intentionally crushed all the blacks to nothingness…
Everywhere I look, I see the walls surrounding life and they’re bearing down.
The hands of time have flown by with a speed and a vitality that completely freaks me out… In those deep, dark places we don’t want to go at night I find myself doing the math and I can see how things are headed and it seems pretty clear to me that a number of term limits are about to expire in the near future.
Life it seems is capable of moving surprisingly fast and without you even realizing that it has gone anywhere at all. And now where I used to see an abundance of limitless possibility, well, now I find myself resigned to the fact that there are no exit strategies that tie up all the loose ends, just doors that lead right back to newer, bigger, brighter, boxes of the same choices..
And I find myself wondering what the struggle is worth… There’s so much turmoil - all the time - whether it be the job, the deadlines, the economy, the various parts of living, the various parts of loving, the endless parade of bills & deals & facts & figures & people you only vaguely know… Are we a species that simply feels compelled to jump from fire to fire? Does this thing called life ever actually slow down? Do we ever get time to take in the vista and deeply exhale? Or does this circus just keep moving faster and faster?
I’m now old enough to realize that there are some practical definitions and limitations to our lives that we cannot change. They are the guardrails that surround our route and define the corridor of how our lives turn. The idealistic nature of my youth has fallen away as the maturity of the mid-live rises and that saddens me. I liked it better when it bright-eyed and shiny…
Life as it turns out is much harder than it used to be and I don’t know why that is or how it changed so radically… But everything these days seems ‘heavy’ — Everything seems like it requires instant analysis and definition. What happened to just having ‘fun’?
And all of this makes me feel rather jaded when I don’t think that’s a feeling I ought to honestly have yet.
The oddity is that on a professional level, it’s never been better. I have never felt prouder or more satisfied with the work. The shows, the films, the stories, the crews, the utter lack of bs in the field. It’s all come together in a beautiful, beautiful way.
And I have never felt so destined to do this particularly task at other point in my life.
It’s all happening… In a good, good way…
Yet for some, work can be everything - and also the only thing – but after much deliberation, I’ve come to the conclusion that’s not at all what I want out of life…
The brighter the worklights have become the more obvious it has seemed to me that I needed to make a change for my soul. Because while I don’t mind working nights & weekends, or long hours, I do mind feeling like the walls are deathstar-han solo-squeezing me to pieces on a nightly basis.
Yet whatever today is, I know it is fleeting…
Whatever this is, is going away…
I can see the expiration date that lies ahead. The great get-off for both myself, and the ones I care about, may not be tomorrow or the next day or the one after that, but it is most certainly coming this way. Amidst the change another era looms on the horizon, just over that ridge, and while I can’t see it just yet, I can certainly sense its approach… I can feel it in a way that I have never felt it before.
The only real question now is how long it’s going to take between the ‘here’ and the ‘there’.
The more I’ve processed this sensation, the more acutely aware I’ve become that life feels like it is desperately slipping through my fingers and above all the other fears that I have in my life, my greatest fear is quite simple…
I am deathly afraid that one day I will wake up and find myself wishing I’d done it all differently.
It is a feeling I cannot stand.
Nor one I want to be a witness to.
There’s no longer a reason to wait and there’s no reason to wonder.
Life is just to short.
So tomorrow I’ve decided to hit re-boot in big, big way.
And to restart my life in a whole new direction.
Tomorrow I move the bikes, the dog, and the business to California’s Central Coast.
Change of course is never easy – it’s a concept that we as humans seem to inherently fight. The status quo often seems like the best course of action because it’s the easiest course of action and as a species we seem to intrinsically desire the path of least resistance.
But if the last few months have taught me anything of value, it is that the easy choice is rarely the right choice. Or the best choice.
And blowing it all up and starting over wasn’t an easy choice by any stretch. Quite the contrary, as there were a multitude of variables that I’ve been sorting through for a long time now. It’s only after months of pondering and introspection and deliberation, that I’ve come to the conclusion that this is something that I had to do for me.
At its most simplistic core, I suppose the most basic truth is that I never quite jived with California’s Inland Empire. Certainly it was worth the attempt and the trial. I’m glad I gave it a shot. As an area the IE has a lot going for it, but want it never quite captured was my soul.
So now I’m ready to reload and restart the machine once again.
To try and enjoy this thing called life.
Because there’s an adrenaline kick that’s been missing in my life. A buzz and a beauty that I ache to feel again in the worst of ways. A nostalgia for the days when my only concern was where I was going riding this upcoming weekend. Back then there were no worries or agitations over being a grown up. In Greek the word nostalgia comes from the phrase nostos, which literally means to ‘go home’ and while I am not going ‘home’ figuratively, I certainly feel like I am emotionally.
Among all my travels if there is one spot on this wondrous planet that has always captured my soul, it is the middle part of the California expanse. No part of the world has ever encapsulated so much of what I believe defines me quite like the Central Coast. I’ve written about it extensively here on the blog and I think what comes through in that writing is that I believe that this area is simply Gød’s country. For years I’ve used the Central Coast as a place to escape to, a place to find myself and my thoughts… Now I’m just escaping here permanently.
It’s not a choice about money or friendships or a judgment call on people or places – rather this is a choice by me and for me because I’m tired of doing the LA hustle. Beverly Hills, The Sunset Strip, The Westside, Malibu, the endless sea of traffic and congestion — these things just don’t interest me any more.
And the Central Coast is a place that I always thought I’d eventually call home – So why not now? Why not today? Why not do it while the clock still is ticking?
There is a personal narrative that I have yet to write. A story of soul and searching and seeing and doing that I haven’t put down on paper. One that I’m gonna alter and edit and revise, and go over and over and over again until I get it right.
Because life is just to damn short.
So starting Tomorrow the ride begins at the end of the driveway with the beginning of the best part of the Pacific Coast Highway. Head inland and you’ve got countless avenues of adventure sprawled across gorgeous mountains. Go even further east and you’ll cross into rural and undeveloped classic California at its finest. The kind of vistas that made John Wayne famous. It is a location-based panacea for riding.
And as of tomorrow it’s home.
Process
The cloud cover moves fast. Its sense of purpose surprising. Its speed shocking. The wind that moves it less than exciting. And in its wake it leaves great big shadows – over dozens of housing developments and landlocked avenues and bits and pieces of society.
Yet I find myself riding squarely in the sunshine.
But I’m not.
And I don’t know how that happens.
In the distance stands the next great vista and beyond that hopes and dreams.
Maybe even mine.
Rolling through the next mountain pass, I swear I can hear the sirens call.
I can feel the urge, the great need to explore, the great desire to be from ‘here’ and to go to ‘there’…
California is calling me.
Calling me once again.
Cresting the ridge, I’m struck by how the beauty of this state never fails to amaze.
No matter how out sorts I might be – and let’s face it, I am — there’s always something that draws me back. Something that draws me here. Something that makes me think this land is more special than any other.
No matter how much I travel or where I go in this world, it’s this land that speaks to me – This swatch of life that echoes the sentiment in my soul.
A blip of the throttle, a drop of the gears and one hell of an engine howl later, I find myself squeezing into the Duc’s tank and hustling the Monster up the next incline.
Then I hit the next corner and the bike dives.
For all the ups and downs in life, nothing reboots the system like an L-Twin.
In the back of my mind I crave that long lost smoke, I thirst for the booze I shouldn’t have, and I can’t help but think about where the road I’m on is headed.
But they don’t make maps for where I’m at… Nor where I’m heading…
After all, personal discovery isn’t communal… Its personal…
Right now I’m not quite sure how to process where I’m going – it’s both new and old and exciting and difficult and quantifiably confusing all at the same time.
But at least I’ll always have California.
A Wicked Ortega Wind
A Cloudy Ortega Highway
Dark, deceitful clouds were hanging still. The kinds of clouds that chew up a word like ‘foreboding’ and spit it out. Because it’s not mean enough. Not ominous enough. Because it’s not nasty enough to convey the dread that lies ahead…
Hesitantly, I twist the throttle back and the bike bites down.
For now there is no other option but what lies ahead…
Hours ago, I picked this path and choose to ride 18 miles out of the way, just to catch a couple of killer corners on the ‘long way home’. It was a classic moto-madness decision — The sort of choice that non-riders or drivers probably never understand, when the quality of the route supersedes the rush to get home. Efficient? Not at all. Fun? Absolutely.
At least on most days…
But today was not most days — Instead as I started climbing the canyon wall, the air-temp dropped, the background scenery dissolved into the mist, and what little ambient light was left seemed to crawl away. To vanish into the greenery and the low level clouds and anywhere it could find refuge.
But the asphalt gripped.
And the ST3 clawed away.
Suddenly the corners come - fast, fluid, fun kinks in the roadway, the kinds of bends and bits that make you hum and smirk inside. And for the briefest of moments my worries about the weather dissipate. It’s just about the ride. The moment. The contact between the rubber and the asphalt. Bends cease being individual breaks and start becoming fluid, singular lines. A left, followed by a right, then a left. A back-and-forth ballet of body steering and acceleration…
Bliss…
And then I hit the top of the mountain…
Suddenly the wind is whipping. Back and forth. Recklessly. Trees creak. Sand scurries across the road. The bushes blow over… And the bike involuntarily moves. Changing lanes with no warning. First to the left, then back to the right. Suddenly the sense of bliss and relaxation is gone — Replaced with instantly fear. Because this isn’t fun anymore. This isn’t exciting. This is just downright crazy. The full-fairing acting like sail, scooping up the wickedness in the wind and pushing against it to no avail.
And I think to myself, ‘it’s been a long time since I last rode in this kind of wind’…
A half-hour later I come to a stop at the base of the mountain and thank my lucky stars — because today I got away with one — today I survived the elements…
Air
It was short and sweet and to the point — The business email of rides — All bullet points, no flowery language, just the road, the bike and and an oh-so-brief chance to let go. To breath. To touch what you can not see…
One minute I was attacking what’s left of the work week and the next, I was feeding this frenzied sense to hang my knee out just a little bit further. To find that long, lost sense of exposure. To the air. To the ground. To the asphalt. To life.
It has been too long since I last felt the wind whistle past… Far to long… And I can’t even articulate how badly I want to feel it go by… To taste it. To see it. To believe it. To become one with the machine again…
Montezuma Magic
Anza Borrego at the end of Montezuma Valley Road
The asphalt is rushing underneath. A big crestless wave of concrete. Moving with a shocking sense of speed and vitality. It seems elaborate and alive and fresh with that early morning dew-on-the-grass kind of confidence.
Yet the route is so inherently dull. Laid out so straight-as-an-arrow that I find myself wondering where the pavement thinks it might actually be going?
For all the movement around me, all the cars and the trucks and the traffic, I don’t actually feel like I’m going anywhere at the moment…
At it’s core, I have to believe that the road knows it has better places to be than this treadmill of traffic… This stillborn conduit of everyday life…
But freeways are freeways…
They move people from Point A to Point B. They’re routes of progression. Routes of advancement. They go forward. Day in and day out… Yet in some ways they never really seem to advance…
Much like my life at the moment…
Tugging in the clutch lever ever so slightly, I knock the bike down the gear and the engine revs its awesomely torquey head off — The turn signals click, the traffic dives towards the right lane, the route of regularity exits… The road begins to get fun…
It’s 1 pm and there’s a loud, vibrant, noisy commotion whirling around me.
Ahhhhh, this feels good…
Days of work have lead me to this… To this singular movement and moment and belief…
And just a few miles later I’m filling up the gas tank, perusing a map, and wondering where in the hell I’m headed…
Just thirty minutes ago, I hit the garage door clicker and asked myself if I even felt like I riding — But today is too perfect, to beautiful, to crystal-clear to let go of…
Moments of potential magic only come around so often in this life….For last year I’m not really sure if I’ve really taken advantage of them… These days I find myself wondering how many days we get in this life and how many we actually embrace?
And then there’s a boom… A boom-shack-a-lacka… The engine wailing…
The uncluttered mass of an engine’s explosion shuttering its excess waste out the block and down through the exhaust, until there’s this unburned shuttered pulse riveting up my spine. A slight kickback. The bike wiggles… And then it’s ready to thrust again…
Like it never happened…
And it feels so damn good… And so damn strange… All of which is so out of character for what it seems my character has been as of late…
Over the past chunk of time, I find myself feeling this odd sense of excitement about the future — Because things have never seemed this good or looked this positive… On all fronts… I have so much to be thankful for and even though I’m not the most religious of folks, so much seems downright blessed right now…
Yet I can’t help finding fault in the greatness — The world is bouncing back from the edge of a near global abyss and in my darkest moments I find myself wondering just how ‘real’ that bounce might be… And what that means for me?
And then I’m also bouncing off the walls…
I feel like a fucking hamster…
Amazingly it was just six days ago when the latest show that I’ve worked on, ‘Man Made: Bugatti Super Car‘, premiered on the National Geographic Channel — And yet if I’m really, really honest with myself (and that means you too dear blog reader) that feels like a thousand miles ago on the journey of life…
As if it never computed. As if it never mattered. As if it never happened…
And I find myself wondering, how is it possible that the thing that kept you awake all those many nights in damn-near daydream stupor suddenly seems, well, darn I say meaningless? How did I move on so quickly?
Have I lost the ability to appreciate the moment?
Have I become too jaded?
Does anything matter anymore?
For all the excitement, for the all success, for the very culmination in the idea that the dream is actually alive and kicking — perhaps more so than ever before — It oddly feels as if it never even happened…
Is all of this an illusion? Is life?
At the moment, I’m left wondering when did it all begin to accelerate this quickly? When did I loose the ability to cherish the very moment I’ve worked so hard for?
I just don’t know…
That’s a different way of saying that I used to bemoan the fact that I didn’t know who I was — But then at some point I found myself — And it felt ‘right’, it felt ‘real’, I was who I wanted to be and it was all moving forward with a certain purpose and drive and vision — And yet now I’ve done, gone, and lost whatever magic that was…
I feel driven and split and confused and conflicted and so out of sorts that I think I need my own engine ‘tuned’…
Every day there are moments which feel familiar, moments which seem real and intrinsic to who I am, moments which give me joy… And yet there are also moments which feel so strange, so different, so out of place, so against the texture of me, that I’m left emotionally bouncing back and forth between who I think I am, who I want to be, who I think I have the ability to become…
What dreams are real and justified and which are jaded illusions, and which are so far-off in never-neverland that they’re just pipedreams…
And maybe most importantly, when did dreams become qualified?
What happened to excess belief and that gnawing, deep-down self-confidence where you know — just know in your gut — that while you don’t exactly know where you are headed, you know where you’ll end up?
Tonight, I’m left wondering if that’s a real attribute or just merely a product of age? Can you only experience that in your teens and twenties? Does the real-world always eventually catch up with you? Do credit cards and car payments start you down a path of no return?
Ultimately does the money matter more than the humanity or the product?
In today’s post-economic-apocalyptic world, how do we measure success?
These days are we all supposed to be Huxtables, and Keatons, and Tanners?
Is the drive the family? The ego? The business of business? The product?… Or is it still the dream?
Ten or twenty minutes later — Maybe an hour, maybe two — I’m flying through Ranchita, California… A speck of a town that’s a dot on a map in a guidebook that nobody buys…
And it is so fucking fantastic…
The road is open, to say the traffic is light is foolish — There isn’t any — And a heartbeat later I have the opportunity to grind one of the great roads in California…
CA S-22… Better know as Montezuma Valley Road…
If there is motorcycle-magic in this world, this is ground-zero…
A flick of the wrist, the pull of a clutch lever, going gear-up, then a gear-down, and more twisting of the wrist… And I’m there… I’m alive.. I’m in fantasyland… This doesn’t feel real and yet I know it is…
Perfect pavement bends in beautiful corners designed to accentuate the majesty of the dessert’s mountainous cliffs… And the road just twists… Back and forth and back and forth… It’s seasickness for asphalt… And the views… The Salton Sea never looked this good (ok, I’m not exactly sure it ever looked good, but maybe that’s a generational thing)… If you’re a gearhead this is paradise… There’s no two-ways about it… The snakey-snarky road surface flicks around with such relentless abandon that it’s hard to believe that there’s something better in this world… Most roads have one 180º corner, this road has dozens… And that’s if you just count the ‘big ones’…
As the heat of the engine builds and the outside temperature conversely drops, I pilot the bike into a succession of endless corners and smirk…
It’s the perfect golf-shot moment… The reason we come back ride after ride… Because every now and then, it can really be this good…
Ortega Release
The Monster on CA-74
Clouds are forming in the distance and my bones are aching for a smoke as I pull off the road. Twisting the key, the bike ceases to breath and for the first time all day I can hear the silence. Because as amazing as it sounds, I’m actually alone — Even though I’m standing on one of the busiest canyon roads in California.
As it turns out it’s been months since I last road the Ortega Highway. The combination of work and life and well, a sever desire to stay away from this particular stretch of asphalt has kept me away. That might sound harsh, but over the past two or three years each and every time I’ve ridden the Ortega I’ve managed to witness such a constant level of moto-chaos that it almost defeated the purpose of riding. It’s hard to relax and get away from it all when you’re constantly fighting it all and wondering when the next bit of crazy is about to enter your life.
Yet today it feels so damn different and I don’t know why.
The road is smooth, and slick, and fast and fluid. The canyon walls seem eager to open up and I’ve spent the last forty minutes smirking to myself. Because this is fun. This is why we ride. And the traffic is perfectly behaved. There’s excess speed in appropriate places but nobody is running three wide in a blind corner. Nobody is making me feel like death is a downshift away.
Looking out at the water, I scan the thousands of suburban homes and I find myself wondering why it is that roads continue to ebb and flow in our psyche? How is that they change and why do they?
Or is it me? Am I the one who’s changed?
I wonder… I truly wonder…
Canyon Cometh
Engines wail. Roads bend. Seasons change. But the dirt, the dirt in the middle of the asphalt, that never seems to go anywhere…
Extending the kickstand, I kill the engine and slide off the saddle. Peer out over the reasonably clear San Fernando Valley. And it slowly crosses my mind that this isn’t just a ride — It’s an anniversary.
Of my very first motorcycle accident.
And I chuckle to myself.
Not because I’m fearless. I’m not. Because I can’t believe its been only a year. And yet I can.
Amazing how fast time flies… And amazing how conflicted one can feel at the same time.
On one hand the low-side that happened that day remains remarkably vivid in my mind. I can see it. I can feel it. I remember the sensations, the dread that crossed me while standing above a downed bike. The sense of mourning when the tow-truck arrived. The relief when the adrenaline subsided and I felt alright.
But I was lucky and I know it.
Without a doubt both how I ride and why I ride changed that day. A touch of gravel redefined my life. As much as I might try to hide it, that collection of small pebbles altered the paradigm through with I view riding on the street. What didn’t seem like it could happen to me, suddenly did. And I think that was a good thing in the end.
Yet on the other hand, today I felt so totally in control of the bike, so able to do what I wished, that the thought of crashing seemed nebulous at best. Matter of fact I don’t even know if it crossed my mind while I was actually riding. I roared through the canyons with pep and perk and zippiness that felt fantastic and probably was illegal. There were no dark clouds hanging here, just bright skies and open roads ahead. The image of disaster was elusive and ineffectual and almost meaningless.
Until I stopped that is… What an odd round trip of a year…
Flashing back a couple of months, I remember perusing some leather jackets in a local cycle shop, when a sales gal popped in out of nowhere, saw my scuffed up jacket, and rather matter of factly said, “Looks like you were due”.
And maybe I was… Maybe that’s just the cost of doing business when you ride. I don’t know.
Canyon Love
Canyon Love: The Top of Saddlepeak
The light is hard and damn near horizontal when the bike crests the canyon. What had been going up suddenly dives down. The machine whirls forward – oblivious to the change in pitch — with such momentum that there’s little time to breath.
Let alone sightsee.
In a fraction of a revolution, the bike leans forward. The suspension pushes rider and chassis on to the front wheel with such force that the handlebars instantaneously feel six inches closer to the ground. And with it my courage. But the engine booms away. Screaming nastily at the low-lying canyon walls. And just like that my wrists feel the effects of their terror.
Yet the canyon cries out.
It wants to be heard and it wants to be seen.
Because it’s empty and awesome and just so blatantly beautiful that it’s hard not to take in its grandeur — Even if it’s only momentary… Because moments like this go by way to fast, even when you’re going slowly.
But that’s life and all you can do is take it in as quickly as you can, process it the best you can, and hope to hold on to it…
Eyes dart from scene to scene as my mental shutter clicks shut. But almost before the images can be processed and saved, the road surface begins to glide its way sideways. Swooping to its right as it descends towards the masses. A return to the real world encased in one all mighty awe-inspiring vista… That goes on forever and ever and ever…
Quickly a lever comes in and the engine flips out.
Gears change. The engine howls. But the clutch plates press on. And the motor gets back at it… Thousands of revolutions at a time… Add a touch of counter-steering and it’s a remarkable recipe for emotional exuberance.
The bike planted so firmly in its line that it feels flawless. The tires gripping the asphalt with such conviction that it seems as if I can do no harm.
The result is a spirited sprint around one hundred and eighty degree of whiplashing greatness… A corner of corners… And a testament to civil engineering.
How and why roads like this exist has always fascinated me, but today it’s even more profound. Because on the other side of this marvelous adventure isn’t a ditch, but a NASA descent. This isn’t bin it and bust, it’s bin it and bungee. Only without the cord.
Hitting the apex, I whip back the throttle and the bike bursts as the harsh sunlight returns. Yet even though it’s hard to see, the engine roars as the combustion transforms into sheer, heart thumping excess and the exhaust notes endlessly echo on and on and on.
Catching the gears, the bike feels so very alive as it flashes down the asphalt. It feels so good. So powerful… The acceleration hitting, in big, gulping mouthfuls of muscle that act as if they’re tearing the road surface apart bit by bit. It hits so damn hard and yet its so damn easy to make happen. And so unlike the 4-valve Ducati engines. Nothing about this machine feels fluid; This is all ugly, nasty, mean torque-tweaked anger coming out to play. Yet the bike feeling so light and nimble, that it’s just inspiring…
This is one of those perfect days… Because the Monster is just a marvelous machine… And because suddenly I have total confidence in it… In a way that I’ve never had before…
Isn’t it amazing what a set of new brakes can do for you?
4 Valve Victory in the Canyons
I see the corner coming — the deep bend, the strange camber, the way the road rolls against itself as it tilts right and climbs north. Part of me cringes. Feels out of sorts, as if today isn’t really my day. But the bike doesn’t flinch. It never backs down. It never echos my personal conundrum.
Instead it just settles down.
Then the tires grip. And the chain spins. And before I know it the little bit of lean angle that remains disappears as the throttle rips backwards with vengeance…
Instantly valves open, the heart flutters, and the engine revs… Wildly revs…
And for all the worry in the world, now there is nothing to do but hang on…
Effortlessly, the bike fires — forward — Imposes its own will on the asphalt. Claws its ways up the hill as it rips big, heady chunks of asphalt out of its way. The road surface has no choice but to let go. To surrender. To give in.
The push is incredible. The drive out of the turns sublime. The self-created forward momentum astounding.
Beneath me a battalion of horsepower is on the attack and I can feel its every move. The bike hunkering down, the revs increasing, the exhaust bellowing and by the time I reach the top of the lonely canyon wall, it’s clear that the roadway has been forced into a unique form of submission.
It hasn’t just been defeated, it’s been conquered.
In world where nothing seems secure, and so much suddenly seems fluid, I find myself smirking at the thought that for this one moment in time, on this one particular day, a 4-Valve L-Twin engine seems to have the power to defeat anything and everything in its path. Forward momentum never felt this good.
A Clearing in The Mist
Misty Morning on the Ortega Highway
Just a quick snap from a quick ride up and down the Ortega in the rain… Not my favorite ride of the year, but better to be out on the bike than not…
Curving Flashbacks
In the Canyons with Trevor
Top of Stunt during Fire Season
Few quick picts from a sweet ride through the canyons with Trevor Navarra, a rather accomplished still photographer…
Smokeless Duc
The S2R Outside of Lake Skinner
The sky is bleeding clouds on a dark, dank day as the engine disengages. One quick kick of the kickstand — and it dies completely.
Then all that’s left is the silence. And the ritual.
Letting the clutch out, I lean the bike over, twist the key and slide off and out of the saddle. Seconds later, I’m un-velcroing the gloves, loosening the helmet and unzipping my jacket.
It’s a combination of connected movements that I’ve now done thousands of times, on a whole mess of different machinery, all over the country and the world, without thinking about and yet today, I’m conscious of each and every step.
The order and the process. The A that gets to the B that takes you to C. And so on.
It’s a well-worn practice – a part of the riding experience that happens each and every ride, even on trackdays, and in a strange way there’s almost a comfort to the rhythm. To the execution.
And yet today there is something missing.
Mentally, I start checking and re-checking that internal to-do list that every rider has when they climb off of their bike during a ride.
Taking a breath, I stare out to the East; through the weeds in the fields, above the rolling hills that almost shimmer in the light breeze, and up and over the not-so-distant mountains, which look decidedly muted under such a dark, black, virtueless sky.
The menacing color palette feels haunting. It looks evil and nasty and so damn turbulent.
Yet the shitty weather on the horizon that’s quickly approaching doesn’t even faze me… Instead, my mind seems stuck on what’s been forgotten.
Swinging my head around, I glance westward, expecting to see something brighter, but it’s just a lighter shade of gloomy.
Looking back at the bike, my hands start to fidget just a bit as a thought crosses my mind and I shutter.
This coming Monday will start my 11th week without a smoke.
Unlike previous attempts to quit, this time around has been surprisingly easy with the exception of a few crazed days.
Expect for right now.
In my book, few things in life pair as well as smokes and sportbikes. They are remarkably complimentary if not opposed activities — The long, slow introspective drag of a smoke perfectly counter-balancing the heart-pounding core-human enthusiasm you feel after a jaunt down a decidedly curvy road that you just conquered. For practically the last decade, the combination of these two elements has been the means by which I’ve experienced life.
But not anymore.
Now, I find myself standing next to the bike, looking out at the foul weather that’s coming my way and thinking, it’s time to get back on the road.
Introspection will have to wait. It’s time to ride.
Rumbles on Rails
Ducati Monster S2R 1000 in Temecula Valley Wine Country
The air is vivid and the clarity stark as I gaze out at a classic reproduction of the quintessential California expanse. Wilted brown hillsides that amble up and down in a series of earthquake-riddled waves that feel like they’ll go on forever. There are no homes. Few roads. And not a single Mini-Mart in sight.
Of course, I’ve ridden enough miles in my life to know that at some point this rollercoaster of a journey will come to its inevitable conclusion and fade away. Die a slow death that hardly anyone but a true rider or driver will notice.
The road surface will once again straight-out and be consumed by track homes and manicured lawns and big, airy shopping centers with plenty of parking. Shopping Centers, which oddly enough seem replicate from one corner to the next in an eerie form of reproduction, where only the names on the outside of the buildings seem to change.
For a second I find myself detesting that magnificent sensibility we call urban sprawl – But then it occurs to me that I use it everyday. I exist in it. I pay for it. I live in it. And I use it far more than I’ve gotten out to ride — So who am I to put it down?
The reality is that the roads that make riding fun are not practical anymore. They’re not the heavy-lifting, heavy-duty infrastructure backbone that helps society advance.
Rather curvy roads are post-modern asphalt artifacts left over from a time when life was simple and secluded.
Today it is not.
Today Small Town America is a stone throw away from the big city thanks to a plethora of communication. We talk more. We email more. We surf the ‘net more. We connect more.
Information is our new currency and like the good ‘ol dollar bill, it binds us in a continual vortex of the ‘now’ and the ‘current’.
But right now, none of that really matters.
As the asphalt undulates, a wildly rumbling Ducati L-Twin time-machine is hustling me up and over yet another crest in the journey of life.
And it’s fracking awesome.
I feel so outside of myself and my life, that I find myself quickly wondering why I don’t do this more?
Why don’t I take that thirty or forty minute ride over lunch? Why don’t I escape for an hour or two, here or there? Why mentally do I always fall on the safety sword and tell myself I’m either to tired, or to unfocused, or to busy to get a quick ride in?
Why do I force myself to live a life of riding that’s blocked out on the mental calendar in permanent marker in dedicated riding chunks and not simple, short adventures, even if they’re just for a coffee or two?
Of course, if I did toss the gear on and take shorter, more frequently escapes, would I respect them as much? Would I get the same release? Would I feel as relaxed afterwards?
I don’t know… But I wonder…
Can riding be both less dedicated and as fulfilling?
Pendulum of Confusion
F4 at the Rockstore
The engine is howling with anger as it sucks down air and explodes. Blows Up and instills its will. Rev by Rev, the road surface bears the brunt of this rage. For an instant it’s easy to imagine bits of tarmac being ripped right out of their cohesive molecular bonds and spit backwards, towards the remnants of the traffic behind me.
Asphalt Hell it seems is alive and well…
At five-grand I’m already doing seventy-five or more on the freeway and that’s not even a quarter of the way up the tach – I shutter to think what would happen if I really lit it up… Though the phrase ‘prison bitch’ comes to mind…
Slowly, or at least I think slowly, my hand instinctively rolls back the throttle anyway. Soaring speed like this is too much fun to ignore – to cathartic to miss – regardless of the consequences.
The sound of the engine goes up a notch. Becomes more intense. More sinful. More vicious. More maddening. Even with ear-plugs.
Quickly, I short-shift into the next gear in a sub-consciously ridiculous attempt to at least keep the speed limit in sight and the next thing I know, not only is the rest of the everyday world far, far behind me, but so too is the freeway itself.
It’s gone.
Vanished.
Behind four legendary MV Agusta exhaust pipes, which right now are bellowing out a purely wicked tune.
A moment later I come up to the first traffic light on the Pacific Coast Highway and am forced to stop. Cease dreaming and start seeing. Reality is back, in a big, big way.
It sucks.
More cars, more people, more dreams, more of the real-world once again. Lots of people on Bluetooth headsets chit-chatting away. I feel bored. My eyes search. Seek out something to focus on. Then they arrive at the clock in the dash.
It’s now an hour ahead.
Think to myself, ‘I ought to change that’, before stumbling through a series of vague Italian electronic solutions that make programming an ordinary VCR seem simple.
Its moments like this that make me question Italian Traction Control.
Seconds later the clock rolls back as the traffic rolls forward — It’s time to go again.
Finally.
Looking down the road, the light is harsh. The shadows starker and living more horizontal than I remember them before…
But then it’s been quite awhile since I was regularly riding.
Quite awhile indeed.
Can’t tell if I’m guilty about that or just plain angry with myself for letting it happen.
To many days have come and gone this riding season without a ride taking place. I’d say it wasn’t intentional, that it was a series of coincidences that in the end added up to form one horrific non-riding riding season, but then I’m not exactly sure that’s true either. I’m not really sure what is true right now. At least when it comes to riding and, well, more importantly work.
It seems once again, I’m living on the extreme edges, and perhaps for the first time in my life I find myself wondering if that’s a good thing or not anymore.
Somehow the journey seems harder right now than I think it should be. Harder to live with. Harder to justify. Harder to believe in. Harder to verbalize in a blog.
And yet it’s amazingly good right now too – On a personal front, it’s good in ways that it has never been before – Very, very good… The kind of goodness that makes you think you might actually be lucky enough to have finally found that missing piece to your life.
It is as if the pendulum of confusion has swung one-hundred and eighty degrees to the other side; Where there was once comfort from the profession and yet personal-side confusion, now there’s security in the joy the other parts of life and perplexity in the my working-world dream.
Why does that happen? How does that happen? What the hell is going on here? Is it impossible for life to be 100% good – does the journey we take always need some amount of uncertainty? Some amount of confusion?
I don’t know, but I’m starting to think so…
A beat later, the F4 roars back to life as the road opens up and I smirk with a diluted sort of self-confidence. The kind of confidence that I fear has been missing 9 to 5. There are lots of rocketships on the market right now and many I quite admire, but few that elicit this sort of emotional response. Something about the MV F4 is more evocative, more alive, and more vivid than any other machine I’ve ever known. Even when life seems to begin and end on the edges.
With a nearly full tank, a sunny, mellow temp’ed day and an open road, all that’s left is to decide where I want to go…
Private Canyon
Sweat is beading up. Bits of perspiration grow unchecked. First there’s one. Then two. Now, three. Until the moment comes when the collection of water hits its critical mass and the weight exceeds the liquid’s suction power.
A second later, I feel the momentum of the bead as it rolls down my back and the cool-yet-warm-yet-idyllically perfect SoCal wind buffets the side of my helmet and exposed parts of my neck and I have to smile.
It’s November and at last I’m riding again.
How perfect.
Cresting the canyon, I wring back the throttle as the bike launches forward. The gauges go up, the gears spin faster, the exhaust audibly rises and the road bends – oh, boy, does it bend…
Going back and forth left and right and up and down, in equal measure and in all directions, before it suddenly shouts out straight ahead. Slowing rising, as if the road is just biding its time… Just sneaking a peek at what comes next. Just letting you catch your breath. Never fully giving itself away, never quite letting you know its intentions. And then there’s a kink.
A little jut that shoots you straight out under the trees. The shadows overwhelming your senses… It’s just darkness and a prayer.
You gulp for air and wonder what might lie on the road surface – but just then the sunlight comes back. Casting its watchful eye on your adventure once again… Right before the road rolls over itself, and you gasp… The jarring 180º up-hill assault brings the tarmac back on to itself and as you gaze at it, you too return to earth.
A second later, the bike dives-in. Leans left. In your mind, you think about traction and forces, and science and force, and all kinds of madness… And in a heartbeat it’s over…. Before I know it I’m hanging above the coast and the canyon, peering out at an endless expanse of nothingness. Clouds that cover all and yet offer no definition between sky or ground or even horizon. It’s just one big bland colored canvas that’s wrapped around everything that I can see.
Yet even though it seems colorless there’s vibrancy.
And lots of it.
Hitting the stop sign, I pause for a second and tell myself — no, remind myself — I should breath.
My head feels like its spinning so fast, I’m shocked… Can’t remember the last time I felt this way…
My heart races… And I smile…
I’m alone – completely alone – And in my very own private canyon.
*****
Minutes later, the road barks. The 1098S vibrates with an urgency I haven’t felt in quite awhile – the windscreen shakes wildly, the seat wiggles up and down, there’s a beat to the moment. A sense of booming and bamming…
The engine hurls itself forward with such vigor that I almost feel powerless to stop it by myself. There’s a third-person video-game quality to it all. The ride surrounding my outlook on life so fully and in such a dedicated manor that there’s seemingly little left to do. I feel lost. Out of control. Out of touch.
However I’m there… I’m in the moment…
With each new kink in the asphalt, the road openly communicates. The handlebars scream instructions as the Tires dip and dive and avoid conflict-riddled patches. I feel engaged. I feel in touch. I feel in control.
The engine rumbles and howls and screams… Rapidly increasing and decreasing the bellowing exhaust notes, each flick of the wrist echoing through-out the canyons and right off of the rocky walls.
Coming up to the top of Saddlepeak Road, I my eyes fixate on the width and breath of the San Fernando Valley. It’s clearer than the Coastline, but not by much. I can see birds fluttering, other traffic, hikers, bicyclists… Yet all I can hear is the soundtrack of my own private canyon. The Rattle and Hum of the Individual Experience as it was meant to be had… Solitude in Speed… Gød how I have missed this…
Organic Comfort
The road is rising. Lifting up. And reaching out.
Searching perhaps.
For where to go next.
As am I…
I think…
Hugging the side of the mountain, the road anxiously bounces, frenetically jumping left and then right and then back left again. Over and over and over again. Each kink flowing into the next, with such little regard for the rules of reality that at times it seems almost overwhelming.
Yet it never quite gets away.
Never makes that full and final break that ends today and starts tomorrow…
Instead coming out of each successive corner, the road surface jumps ahead just enough to show you how little control you have over it before it slows back down and nimbly allows you to find your groove once again.
That addictive groove. The one that all riders crave.
When you can see no evil nor hear no evil. When you and the bike symbiotically connect with such frightening ease that what seemed fast yesterday is now downright mellow in comparison.
A slow mellow.
As the road snaps right, I catch my first peak at the ocean ahead and smile. The rush of the ride is coming to an end. I can see it beneath the faint haze that’s hanging over the crystal blue water. Half of me thinks that this is a good thing. That there’s no way I can sustain this pace safely. That I’ve ridden today to far out of my comfort zone.
Yet the other side of my head just defiantly smirks. Because like everything else comfort zones are organic. They live, they breathe, they grow. Expanding with confidence or contracting with fear.
And today it’s wider and deeper than its been in ages.
