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?
The Puzzle Comes Together
The bike is running at a wicked pace through a pristine slice of California Wine Country, which sits on the edge of a desert that’s exploding with change, when all the pieces start to finally connect again. Suddenly. Effortlessly. Easily. It all makes sense, as if that much desired and somewhat foreign ‘see no evil, do no evil’ reality has once again been reborn.
What an incredible difference just a few days can make…
Gunning the engine, there’s a wail of interaction, an everlasting echo running through the canyon walls, and a touch of excitement as the bike downshifts and I begin a symbiotic dance through the turns. Bits of breaking meet a touch of front-end dive and a long, low, lasting tilt. It’s a much-needed change, especially after a few rides that bordered on the dysfunctional, or at least the emotionally downtrodden.
By the time the road begins to truly tighten and constrict the very civilization I’m escaping, everything feels ideal – and nothing it seems is going to be able to upset either the bike or myself today. Absolutely nothing… What a wondrous feeling… (more…)
