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…

As is apt to happen from time to time, my latest adventure in wrenching started for a rather simple reason — I needed to replace shit…

A few rides ago, I was hitting the next great corner that lies ahead, with a perfectly reasonable amount passion, when I happened to look down — and low and behold, to my surprise realize that one of the bar end mirrors was absolutely missing…

As in Adiòs Amigo…I am not here…

Suddenly my heart is skipping a beat as I’m rolling down the road and I’m wondering what the hell is going on… Have I just had my first Harley moment on the Monster?

Under the helmet, I tell myself, ‘just fly the plane’…

When, where, how the mirror went missing?

Who the hell knows…

Maybe they’ll end up on a wanted ad on the back of a moto-mag…

Standing in the ‘ol garage twenty minutes later, I peer around the bike — it all seems rather normal and unaffected — Except of course for the raw, bare bar-end, which looks somewhere between unfinished and romantically grungy…

And I’m left to ponder what to do…

So a little while later, after scouring the web for solutions and possible improvements, I find myself on the phone with one my favorite parts suppliers - Anthony Creek from Desmoworks, placing an order for a new set of Rizoma Sport Reverse Retro Bar End Mirrors & some Handlebar End Weights… (As some of you might recall Desmoworks is where I picked up the Bitubo Steering Dampner for the Monster awhile back).

Of course simply replacing the bit that went missing wasn’t enough, because while I’m on the phone with Anthony for some reason I’m overcome with the ‘down to the full-frame resto mentality’… And needless to say, if I’m going to wrench a little, why not a lot?

So with logic that perhaps only an mc addict can understand, I ask him to toss in a set of Rizoma Sport Turn Indicators as well…

If anything lately has been sticking out on ‘il mostro’, it’s the fugly turn signals… I love how an Italian brand such as Ducati can wax on poetically about style and art and culture and all that jazz, then come up against homologation requirements and simple stop caring…

Did the original OEM turn signals have to be nasty looking? Not at all — Somebody, somewhere made a choice that these were the best combination of performance, style & cost…

In typical Desmoworks style, Anthony tells me I’ll have the parts in a few days… So simple and easy…

Of course an hour later, I’m back in the garage looking at the bike and thinking, ‘well if there are new turn signals up front then I’ve got to clean up this mess in the back’… (And I truly, truly love these sort of justifications — the back was never an issue, until now and messing with the front, well that simply necessitates screwing around on the back of the bike… Brilliant)…

That night I go back to the ‘ol cpu and start diving into possible tail-light solutions — And somehow instinctively head over to yet another one of my favorite part suppliers, Monster Parts, and after just a touch of research (you really gotta love the DMF list), I decide to pick up a Light Werkes LED integrated tail-light/turn-signal LED combination. Jeff, the proprietor for Monster Parts, is awesomely on his game, and a few days later not only does a new integrated tail light arrive, but it also comes with all the connectors I’ll need and a personally written set of instructions that are so clear it makes the packaged set of Light Werkes notes seem silly.

My first order of business is installing the Rizoma Bar Ends since the mirrors use them as their base… This should have been a relatively easy task, or one would think, but not so shocking it isn’t!

(Why is that the easy tasks are always the ones fraught with wrenching danger?).

Taking one look at the supplied Rizoma instructions leaves just a bit to desired…

As a non-brand specific kit, between the bar-end mirror kit and the bar-end weight kit there are dozens of washers and bolts and bits… The possible fractal combination here are high enough to make my high school math teacher pass out… And I feel fairly certainly one could hot-wire a Russian missile silo with greater ease than reading how the Rizoma boys want you to do it….

Once again thankfully the DMF list exists! After a little bit of reading I got the basic gist down and go to work…

The end result has a nice modern retro feel…

The new front turn lights went next — they were super simple and even though they came packaged with the additional resistors, bizarrely it turned out that I didn’t need them… I loosely wired the signals into the bike’s electrical system and low and behold everything worked! (Always nice when simple jobs are simple!)

Here’s a pict of the cleaned up front end…

With the front now successfully modified, it was time to turn my attention to the rear of the machine…

This is the way the rear looked when I started…

And this is the new cleaned up rear of the machine…

The unit itself is almost identical looking to the original OEM tail-light, however the difference is that its an LED unit that combines both the brake lights and the turn signals… And it’s surprisingly bright!

Installation was unbelievably quick thanks to the super easy to follow instructions supplied by Jeff from Monster Parts. A few crimps on a few wires later and I was in business… It’s was truly a plug’n play installation…

The final result is a newly cleaned up machine!

In the end there’s a surprising amount of solitude in wrenching on your own machine. Working with one’s hands offers such a wonderfully different part of the motorcycle experience and when you have the time to successfully make a change, big or small, there’s such a beautiful sense of being in touch with your machine. Not as a rider but as almost a ‘parent’… I feel so much more connected to the machine and by extension it feels like it is part of me too.

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?

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…

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…

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…

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…

Pro Italia's Cafe Desmo Event Flyer

I’m a bit bummed I’m going to miss this, but Pro Italia, one of my favorite dealerships, is throwing their annual Cafe Desmo Event next weekend. Over the years its turned into quite the scene; with a concert, a bike show, celebrity judges, all kinds of chaos… As always I’d expect it’ll be a rocking event this year…

Here are some picts from last year…

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.

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…

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.

It’s been awhile since I last wrote up a post here on the ‘ol blog and as usual it’s not for a lack of desire but rather a lack of time and energy…

Sometimes otherwise known as having no good neuron firing solution upstairs…

But the synapses are funny things and as crazy as life has been over the last two or three years, somehow it’s become even nuttier in the interim… (more on that later)… And I find it truly amazing that no matter how fast you think you’re capable of running, you always can seem to run faster and yet still faster…

To what end I am not sure, though I suspect at some point soon I shall find out…

Speed however is an even funnier thing — There’s fast… And then there’s fast…

For the past 18 years the Dodge Viper has been one of the fast, fast cars…

A couple of weeks ago I had the distinct privilege of watching, and filming, one of the last great American Muscle cars roll off the line for the final time…

I’m sure some will quibble with the assertion that the Viper is the last great American Muscle Car — and that’s ok, everyone has the right to their own opinion — but in my mind all the other classic muscle car badges have somehow evolved into something else these days… The Viper has and always will be very different…

As they say, ‘it is what it is’… A raw, unadulterated, 600+ horsepower beast of a Supercar… And it never wavered from that from day until now… There’s no Traction Control, no computerized noth’in… Just full power all the time… The Viper was neither a production car in the truest sense nor was it quite a hand-built ride exotic either, yet somehow it existed in-between those two realms for a very long time. Admittedly that’s a very hard place for a car to stand and it’s not the most friendly business model, however somehow Dodge made it work and I think you have give them incredible props for that…

One of the things that I find most fascinating about the Viper is that it takes just one look at it to know it is a special ride. Somehow that doesn’t happen exactly the same way with Vettes or Mustangs or Camaros… They’re cool but they blend in… They’ve become part of our daily automotive lexicon… The Viper never was — it was rare from day one and stayed that way…

At this point I’ve now had the good fortune of shooting in a hell of a lot of car and motorcycle factories — well over thirty at this point — and I’ve got to say that the folks who build the Viper are unlike any I’ve ever come across. There was a palpable sense of passion in the Viper factory the likes of which I’ve never quite witnessed before in person. A lot of factories say that they have that kind of passion, or more accurately the ’suits’ who sit upstairs say they do, but a lot of times the folks on the actual line are just doing their job and it wouldn’t really matter whether it was building that particular machine or a coffee grinder. That was not the case at the Viper Factory. It instantly felt different. The people there were some of the most caring, artisan, passion-filled wrenchers I’ve ever had the pleasure to get to know and frankly it showed — all day long.

The Viper is not only a hell of a supercar and beauty to look at but it’s crafted by a select group of individuals in a way that somehow articulates not only the incredible engineering that went into making the machine work superbly at speed but also echos each individual mechanics’ personal pride in what they do.

If I had the money, I’d buy a Viper tomorrow, hands down… And there’s a whole host of supercars that show up in the auto mags every month that I’d by-pass in a heartbeat and without even thinking about it… I don’t know that there’s a stronger statement about how moto-romantic I found the Viper factory…

More picts after the jump…

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 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…

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…