“I don’t know if the blog is turning out the way I want. It’s missing something.”
“You sound like my hubs. What it must be like to be an artist. You all are so hard on yourselves. Well, I like it.”
Sometimes it just gets so chilly only Perry the Platypus will do. I love this gal.
In fairness, I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what wasn’t going according to vision, as though anything ever perfectly does. Perhaps starting this blog mid-move and having little time on my hands for it wasn’t the ideal. Maybe it is because I am accustomed to very rigidly planned projects, not a loosely bound together collection of photo journaling.
My primary goals seemed simple: accountability with regard to writing and photographing. I’m not sure I understand how that could be off kilter. I’m not sure why every little thing seems not quite right in a time of turbulence beyond the fracturing of a mind pulled too many directions at once.
But Saturday all turbulence drifted away into the melodic hum of engines guided by experienced riders in a pack, unwinding the ribbon of quiet dark state highways under our collective tires.
Riding motorcycles in a group, a deep meditative trance state takes over especially in the dark cool night as all the engines reach the same crescendo and break into a triplet set to the rhythm of the asphalt. The cool of perfect incoming fall rests your bones and you drift into blessed emptiness. You realize your smallness and infiniteness, you feel the forces you learned about in physics twenty years ago that hold you to the earth and slowly let go as your speed increases, you see those forces laid out blue print style before you and really understand them. Then you hear a clack clack, clack clack clack, and you remember there’s a shovelhead in the pack.
In fairness, it wasn’t the shovelhead’s fault; miles back a cave disguised as a pothole had damn near cracked its frame and the clacking was the pull over right now warning. Unfortunately, after a roadside examination in the cold night air, the consensus was that even another mile was a serious risk and a hotel would be necessary until morning light. One in the a.m. is not the time for roadside repairs if there is a hotel within sight.
And as a quick aside: if your friend’s bike has just been nearly snapped apart by vicious roads and they plan to just grab a hotel room, don’t be the guy that jokes about why they need to call one of the two fine hotels in podunk to check for available rooms just in case a hick convention is in town. There will inevitably be a hick convention in town and you’ll feel a bit sheepish. Also, a huge thanks to the sweet hotel clerk who understood the bike couldn’t safely continue and gave our friends a cot for the night in the banquet room so they could rest and wait for dawn to do repairs.
Dharma Anchor 