Riders and Passengers

I've covered a lot of ground riding early mornings and evenings and lunch hours, and I've taken a lot of new roads to a lot of different venues in which to do my very cerebral day job. And yet, even with all those roads and all those miles, there is still something about the 'unexplored rest' that keeps me wanting to ride. Ride. Ride.

Every mile in the saddle, even if I've traveled that same mile dozens of times before, seems somehow new - reborn to me. Maybe it's not about the destination, it's about the present moment - about the ride itself as it unfolds and, with it, my experience and my own 'present moment' gets unfolded along with the ride.

Somehow riding parallels life, and with every ride I get to see that more and more. It's starting to make sense to me.

You can choose never to go anywhere. You can be a passenger or a driver. You can be a driver or a rider. At each level, life takes on an intensity and the penalty for deciding poorly becomes all too clear. But so do the rewards.

Some folks accept going nowhere, being stuck or anchored down by the prison of their own mind. Some crave adventure but prefer to be passengers, living life in the back seat. Now both driver and passenger can be on the same open road. But really, the passenger is still only a passenger, being driven forward by the whims of others, unable to contribute meaningfully to either the process or the outcome.

What about the driver behind the wheel? Sure, the driver gets to decide a direction, but stays entirely removed from the experience. Now I'm not talking about the elite race car driver or track racer. I'm talking about the other 99.9% of humanity, motoring along in glass and steel cages. Like all the overpaid corporate middlemen of today or trust funders living matchbox lives on mountain tops, most stay stuck in their head, stuck experiencing life while fully removed from (and often afraid of) the realness of it all. They look in rear view mirrors to see who's behind them, in side view mirrors to determine the competition, and through a windshield wondering when it'll rain.

Only the rider has both a say in where the open road takes them *and* is fully alive along the way, saturated by the experience in all its richness. Riding is independence and freedom embodied by an activity that empowers the will and liberates the mind.

Riding is not about the pursuit of happiness - it *is* happiness.

That's the difference. That's living. And that's also a lesson on how to live, regardless if you own a bike or not.

Even With ALL The Bad Drivers Out There...

... I'd still rather be riding than not riding. :-)

Blind to Motorcycles

I am learning a LOT about riding safely these days. Thankfully, the lessons haven't cost me anything but a little squirt of adrenaline. I hope they never will.

As I was taking a roundabout, a red 1990's minivan approached from the righthand side, just as I was midway through.

I made (or so I thought) eye contact with the driver and turned my head back towards my line of travel and started to straighten out when, quite to my amazement, I saw a flash of red paint and the hood of the minivan (a Dodge Caravan) out of my peripheral vision moving up on my right side about a foot behind the seat of my bike.

Instinctively, and purely out of self-preservation not conscious thought, I threw my right leg out of the way as its front driver's side quarter "rolled into" the soft saddlebag on my right. The minivan pressed the Bandit's saddlebag hard enough that I felt my rear tire "hop" a couple inches to the left, but I was otherwise balanced and managed to keep moving forward. The minivan screeched to a halt midway through the roundabout, I'm sure just as surprised as I was.

Now for the irony - I am waring my brand new Scorpion Exo-R710 florescent high-viz helmet with a florescent yellow high-viz Triumph jacket as well. How that driver didn't see me after looking right at me is completely beyond me. The whole incident left a bad taste in my mouth.

But honestly, before I could say "what the f**k?!", I was shoved and then rode out of the roundabout and continued along. The minivan and its driver didn't follow, don't know what happened to her.

Lesson learned: even though they are looking right at you, who knows whether a driver ACTUALLY see you or not. I was taught about "inattentive blindness" by Jason in class - now I've experienced it firsthand.

Not fun.

The Used-To-Be-A-Deer

Wanted coffee with a view this morning to take in the sunrise. Bandit and I picked our way through heavier-than-normal (for this time, anyway) traffic until we found a long empty stretch of highway and then followed that all the way to the river valley, watching the sky lighten and brighten and take on different hues as the sun crested the scene ahead of us.

Filled my thermos with coffee from a riverside cafe that I like a lot, then rode to a marina just north of town. The view was great and I let the rest of the sunrise unfold while sipping the warm excellent brew.

I sat for a long while, sun warming the morning chill away, legs dangling over the quiet river. I finish two slow cups before continuing the ride northward through about 25 miles of tree-lined two-lane to an area we've been considering moving to. A perfect morning by the river.

The ride to the north after that was mostly uneventful ... mostly.

I was riding third behind a large dump truck that had everybody blocked. The show was cruising along fine and I was patiently waiting my opportunity and turn to pass the truck. Without warning, the small Toyota hatchback behind the dump truck suddenly swerved directly into oncoming traffic, and sent the three oncoming cars reaching for the gutters and grass. Idiot. Behind him, the large F-350 pickup slammed on his brakes and I did the same, convinced that there was about to be a head-on collision. The dump truck never flinched.

Amazingly, nobody hit anything, but I was only about 50 feet from the F-350 at this point and still doing about 55 MPH. Then I saw why the hatchback swerved like a maniac.

Out from underneath the pickup came a huge pile of used-to-be-a-deer spread entirely across my path of travel. Guts and skin and bones and blood covered the road and a large section of the deer was directly ahead of my front tire.

With only a couple seconds to react, I grabbed a handful of brake and picked a line of travel between a femur bone sticking out to the right and the head of the unfortunate creature now in the gutter and rode the bloody painted line between the two. No problem, I rode through without incident.

But it did act as a reminder to live every day to the fullest.

That used-to-be-a-deer, obviously only a few minutes from having once been a living breathing deer, probably had no idea that today was the day it would no longer joyfully roam the trees and fields, smelling and chewing tasty leaves and grazing on the greenest grasses.

None of us ever really knows when that time will come, or how numbered our days may be.

When I was a firefighter and paramedic, that truth was in my face on a constant basis. Without that kind of daily work, the lesson grays a bit in my life but is still just as true.

Anyway, as my (very wise :) mom told me many times...

"Live today as though you're going to die tomorrow, but plan for tomorrow as though you're going to live a thousand years!"

True. Very true. Thanks Mom.

Instinct

Another rainy morning.

The Bandit and I left early with the sky still misting but after the bulk of the lightening show had spent itself and moved on. The roads were slick and puddle-ridden for most of our morning ride out towards the river valley. We stay on the side roads and parkways as much as possible, and take the major eastbound highway only in the final stretch, since the Dunn Bros I am looking for hangs off it.

The road is slick and I skid around a bit and bounce off a few puddle-covered road defects. Only so much you can handle at speed, though. There is a LOT of information to take in when riding in weather, from cars to intersections to road conditions and other potential hazards, all while looking through a rain-speckled visor that doesn't clean itself. So I quiet my noisy mind and let my intuition tell me what to watch out for and the ride smoothes out.

I did notice, as soon as I let my gut guide me, that my riding location changed a bit. Instinct took me towards the lane center and kept me maximally inside on speedy wet curves. I was hugging the inside of turns without really knowing why other than it felt better to be there than anywhere else.

Then my mind starting making noise again (well really, it never stopped :), and I connected the dots...

We nearly lost it on a slick oiled-and-pebbled road the other day. The road is slick everywhere now between the water and floating oil spots and rain-hidden surprises, but it's especially slick at the painted line edging the roadway. Keeping the Bandit to the inside of the turns for as long as possible is giving me the most asphalt to deal with traction issues before inertia and I run out of room. Staying mid-lane does the same on the straightaways.

The lesson? Trust your gut, quiet your mind, and you'd be surprised what comes of it.

Tucking In (The Non-Riding Kind)

Big storm clouds above, sky going green. I'm in my full kit, Triumph jacket and riding pants, boots, and gloves, so the storm itself doesn't bother me. On any other stormy day, I'd just keep riding... But today, I'm just not feeling it. Instead, I'm sitting in a local chain coffee shop on a big leather chair with a hot cup of medium roast just watching the storm crackle and roll in my direction.

Some days, it feels great to just tuck in. No, not the sport-riding-knees-in kind of "tuck in". I mean a comfortable chair, a warm cup of something, etc.. Those kinds of inside-looking-out days lend perspective to the times when we're in the thick of it, fighting the elements and the world to keep moving forward.

If all we know is battling the elements, the battle becomes all we know. If all we know is a life without adventure, then our life is missing something important.

It's good to appreciate the calm as well as the storm.

City Twisties

Even in the most surprising places, you can find nice little twisties in the city landscape. Found a few this morning.

Leaning over the bike and turning in on a nice tree-lined bit of asphalt on the way to start my work day always makes me smile.

Colder out. It feels like winter is here in mid-July today.

Perfect

One of those mornings that makes it worthwhile just being where I am, doing what I'm doing... No words needed.

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Night Moves

Friday night at 10pm and I'm wide awake again. My mind won't let me sleep. What to do?

Ride, of course. :-)

The night air rams into my side as a high pressure system blows in to clear out the mucky weather of the day before, pushing against me as I accelerate down the darkened 2-lanes headed nowhere in particular. I glide up onto the highway towards the river valley for a bit but the wind-blast is pretty ferocious now and I drop off again about ten miles down the road, pondering the events of the day and big decisions ahead.

Aside from the occasional bars sporting Harleys and choppers and a couple cafe racers parked here and there, nothing on the city streets really catches my eye. The bike and I cruise through several small communities and outlying suburb scenes. Eventually, I've sorted through the thoughts in my head and I turn us back towards home.

It occurs to me that this ride is kind of like a perfect mirror of itself, both in purpose and form.

I'm riding in the dark with an incomplete view of the world, and heading "out there" knowing that I'm leaving the comfort of bed and home for a while. Both intuition and curiosity guide my way, and my performance on the bike and streets keeps me safe.

At the same time, I'm trying to decide big life things with incomplete information and a limited view while still moving forward. It's also uncomfortable, and my intuition and interests are still trying to guide my way. My knowledge and skills and hard-earned wisdom, I hope, will serve me the same way.

Moving. Work. Family. The midnight ride helps sort out a couple of these, at least...

Power

Carving through traffic this morning at speed, I wondered at the amazing design of this bike. Agile, nimble, and very, very powerful, and it's all right there, just waiting for me to flick the throttle open and pick a direction.

Without the bike, and I am good for (at best) a fast sprint for a mile or two before my resources are exhausted. But with the bike, being on the bike, its power transforms me... With the Bandit, I can fly and dip and turn and take myself almost anywhere I want. Its powerful design supports my journey - enables it.

Alone, I am a sole traveler slowly working my way across the landscape around me. But together with my bike, I am something else entirely, empowered and free to roam and ready for adventure.

Something about this rings true about my relationships with others these days.

I (personally) feel strong and capable these days, ready to take on the world and any challenge in it. And yet the more powerful and centered and capable I become, the more I seem to be given the challenge of helping others who are not where I am, or are not yet capable of what I am capable of.

I'd like to think this is just how life should be - the strong helping the less-strong through periods and in ways they cannot help themselves. The powerful helping the less powerful.

But looking around, life is actually quite brutal and unfair. The strong take and pillage and leverage from those less fortunate. The deceitful prey upon the trusting, and the wicked prey upon the weak. In my opinion, it's an epidemic failure of humanity to use power appropriately.

In stark contrast, my bike is also powerful. Very powerful. And although the Bandit sits quiet and still when it doesn't need to be anything else, she readily lends me her power anytime I need it.

In that same way, I try to lend strength to my friends and family to help them move through life's difficult periods. I care about people. My wife is an amazing woman, a reservoir of quiet strength and beauty, and I watch her do the same for her friends and family. And actually, as a former firefighter, I've been privileged to know a lot of people who use their strength to help others like that.

To me, at least, this feels like the 'right' use of power - and all of us moving through life, at one time or another, needs that kind of borrowed strength.

Mission-oriented

Well, I was having such a great riding day yesterday, right until I wasn't.

Rode early morning, worked my work day, then took off late evening on a mission to find a nice spot for us to have dinner out. I ended up cruising past several options, but the city's rush hour was in full swing and all the highways I would normally cruise up and down on without concern were then stop-and-go. And every route I tried, and tried, and tried - I kept hitting thick stop-and-go traffic.

But I was on a mission. So I rode onto and right back off the interstate as soon as I got to the next exit and ended up in downtown, and the traffic was still jam packed, with lane closures and traffic stops keeping everything crawling.

So now I'm distracted and very mission-focused, and I motored on until I could get a little breathing room between me and the line-ups of cars behind me and on either side and then turned down a cross-street that leads to a local wood-fired pizza place we like.

I never saw the oiled pebbles, freshly dropped and a couple inches thick in spots.

There were no "Loose Gravel" signs, no "Fresh Oil" signs, in fact no construction signs at all. Nothing warning me that the street I was turning onto wasn't just like the downtown street I was already riding on... I leaned in and started to turn the bike onto the connecting street at speed and within a half-second the Bandit started sliding sideways and tipping to the left.

As much instinct as desperation, I throttled back and started to bounce the clutch (I was in second gear) trying to regain some traction on the back tire to keep the bike upright while the Bandit sunk left onto my increasingly strained knee, my left boot dragging through the gravel and spraying me and the left side of my bike with pebbles. After a few tense seconds and a lot of left-leg pressure to keep the bike upright, I managed to regain control enough to fish-tail my way through the rest of the gravel and turn into the parking lot for the pizza place ahead of me. Thankfully, the car behind me slid to a stop as soon as they saw I lost traction. Only a few seconds after that, the Bandit was safely in the parking lot and I was filling my fountain drink with a shaky hand.

So life is like that - get too focused on the mission, you risk losing perspective on the big picture as well as other important details.

Sure, a street sign may have helped me but it's not the city's fault or anybody's fault but my own. I know full-well the risks I take when I try to navigate public roads on two wheels, and frankly I wasn't paying enough attention to the details to notice the change in street color/texture. My fault entirely, and I'm just glad I didn't have to set the bike down or pick oiled gravel out of my skin that evening.

I take it as a reminder to always keep the big picture in mind, even when I'm headed towards a goal. Pay full attention to everything and (like Jason Curdy at Full Throttle Academy taught our MSF class): "NEVER stop trying to make a bad situation better!"

Good advice in general, thank you Jason.

Beautiful Places

The rain broke late yesterday, leaving the roads mostly dry this morning save the occasional puddle. I topped off oil and sprayed a little chain lube and was out the door with the sun hanging low in the sky. No place to go, no destination, just exploring the world today hoping to run into experiences along the way.

As I moved through my ride east, then south, then east again, zig-zagging across patches of big-city metropolis interspersed with the occasional park or other green space, I started to notice the raw beauty of the 'tucked away' places. A large oak tree tucked under a bridge that has somehow survived the merciless tree trimming of city officials. A quiet meadow beneath the growing growls of traffic on the six-lane slab above. A still pond teaming with life jammed between two city lots. On and on, examples of life squeezed into the mayhem of what everybody actually calls 'life'.

Beauty is a funny thing. 

Raw beauty, a sweeping mountainscape with snow-capped peaks running off into the distance, is easy for anybody to appreciate. It's there. It's huge. It is what it is. But "subtle beauty"... you know - the soft kind that comes to you as much as a feeling as it does a place or person or thing in your view ... that almost seems worth something more.

Rain

I rode the Bandit morning, noon and evening yesterday in the sweltering heat. The burning sky never let up, it was in the 90's all day, morning through evening. I rode to my favorite coffee shop in the morning, finished my work day, and rode back in the evening to listen to a local Minneapolis band (The Nighthowlers - rockin' awesome). The heat made my sticky sport tires even more sticky. I was tilting her over to the pegs at every opportunity (just because I could :-) and never once felt the slightest "give" underneath me.

But today it's raining, and the morning ride out to a country coffeeshop was wet, wet, and more wet. My jacket and pants are soaked, my bike got a good rainwash, but I'm otherwise dry underneath. Made it to my next stop and will be continuing my work day here until the continuous soak slows down a bit...

Riding in the rain makes everything harder, and "sharpens" the ride. What yesterday was sticky as hell I can no longer take for granted. Wet tar snakes all over the road and the wet painted lines and crosswalks all refuse to let my tires stick to them. The constant rain on my visor dims my crisp view of potential deer crossings and road hazards, and in general, the whole ride becomes an exercise in focussed hazard avoidance.

Only after I loosened up the reigns and relaxed near my next stop, knowing I had made it through slick roads and a whole lot of wet and windy blind curves, did I realize that I was challenged by what I just road through. I felt that telltale tension/ache in my hands from holding onto the bike too tight and not riding in relaxed form.

What's more, I realized that a lot of my life is just like that ride - full of challenging periods that I only see after making it through. Sometimes, you can see them coming. I could have stayed home or turned around when I saw the dark clouds looming above, but I choose to take on whatever comes. Life gives us the same choice - sit and do nothing or take action and move on through. It does that with everything.

If (when) we make it through, the rewards really are instant. Relief. Perspective. Joy. Wisdom. Experience. Confidence. Being better prepared for future storms. But we only get those things if we take ourselves into uncomfortable situations and trust in ourselves enough to make it through.

Sometimes (but rarely) we have no choice at all. But honestly most of the time, we have to choose to ride in the rain. And most of the time, it's well worth the risk.

Partnership

Wet morning, roads a bit slick and a rainy start to the day. By the time I finished my long ride out to a new coffee shop I've been wanting to try, the morning sun was burning through the last of the rain clouds and pushing its way through, filling the whole east-facing shop (which is all windows with yellow and orange and white furniture) with this kind of over-enthusiastic-sun-shiny start to the day. But the coffee I'm sipping as I write this is great, with good background tunes and nice folks.

I spent my ride wondering about partnership. Life is about partnering with things, like this bike humming beneath me. Sunshine (my Bandit 1250S) fits me pretty well, but she's a spitfire for sure and still a lot of bike for me to handle. Factor in the EFI-overrides she came with from her previous owner and she's like an angry redhead, still surprising me a lot. I'm not sure we'll ever be completely compatible, but we're getting to know each other enough to make the partnership work for now. Familiarity and shared experience is bonding us together even if she's not the 'perfect' bike for me.

I've got two other bikes (yes, I know I've only been riding for a few months, but hey, they were inexpensive and I got them used), Burt (a 2003 Honda Shadow 750DC) and Lucy (a 1982 Honda Nighthawk cb650sc) and I like riding both of them, too. One is comfortable, the other a classic, but neither are the Bandit.

It seems we spend time, however long or brief, with all kinds of things just like we do with all kinds of people. And just like our people-partnerships, some things fit better into our life than others and some require a change in attitude in order to work right or get along with. And sometimes it's worth it, and other times it's not. Comfort and familiarity and acceptance are concepts that squirt grease onto our relationships with both things and people, but it doesn't really mean they were meant to last forever in our lives.

I know Sunshine and I are going to put a lot of miles on together (hell, we already have the past couple months). We will see a lot of pretty sunsets and sunrises and also face a lot of exciting mountain passes and bad weather and bad roads and getting lost and getting found, ... But is she 'the one' for me? Do all our miles together make that true, somehow, or are they just a bunch of shared experiences..?

Is there that bike out there that I'm just going to get on and ride and say 'wow, this bike totally gets me - this is the bike I've been waiting for!'..? Or am I just kidding myself?

Zen?

Early rides are the best.

Before traffic wakes up. Before people start to fight with each other for turning lanes and passing lanes and rights-of-way. Before life really starts. As a rider, you get the best of it all then - the gloaming sky, cracked open just enough to see well without cooking in your gear or being blinded out, the benefit of a big empty road, and the freedom to explore in any direction while the world still sleeps.

I like the sky this morning, still and overcast and brooding. The road's mostly dry, the bike feels rock solid and sounds great, and the new way I am trying out is sufficiently twisty enough to bring an instant smile to my face as the bike and I slip through the trees.

I remembered this line as I'm riding this morning from "Point Break" (the original) - '... it's that place where you lose yourself and you find yourself ...'. Sometimes, not always, riding brings you to that place for a few seconds. It never lasts, but when you're feeling that 'connected and present and lost' feeling all at once, it's unmistakable.

Is that Zen..?

That Riding "Thing"

OK, so it's been about 4 months and I've ridden one of my three bikes nearly every day possible since late February, logging nearly 3000 miles since then. It's been a whole lot of city riding but also some longer trips into the countryside and up north and lots of rides along river-tracking twisties near the St. Croix river valley in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

I didn't grow up on a bike - hell, it's always been "out there for me to try someday...", and someday turned out to be age 47. That said, I love it. Love everything about it. For road travel, it really is the only way I ever want to get myself from point A to point B again. And again. Again and again... :-)

Riding a motorcycle has a 'thing' that you can only get once you get competent enough not to worry about managing the motorcycle under you or dealing with the texting teenager driving 90 mph just inches away. You really have to get comfortable knowing that you can handle the bike and the traffic and road hazard thing, and when that finally starts to happen, riding seems to transform from 'a process' to 'an immersive experience'. I'm still getting there, but it's definitely feeling a whole lot less like work and more like... well... flying. Maybe that's the riding 'thing' I'm trying to get at. 

It really feels like the bike somehow straps invisible wings on your body and immerses you fully in the environment around you. The bike kind of disappears, the road and landscape and wind and rain and smells of trees and mud - everything - EVERYTHING becomes part of how you are moving yourself through life for a little while. Other cars begin feeling like stones in a stream, slowly tumbling along while you swim and dart whichever direction you want. Their form of travel feels heavy and labored. My travel feels light and like an expression of free will. Somehow as a rider, you start to become acutely aware of gravity, inertia, tilt angle, and it all just feels both natural and supernatural at the same time. I think this must be something like how a bird feels, able to launch itself into space at will and just go wherever it wants to go while taking whatever line it wants to.

By comparison, I have jumped (a lot) from airplanes and I fly them too, and yet, carving a powerful motorcycle through a curvy road at sunrise across a scenic landscape while the world sleeps exceeds all of that in so many ways. 

Not to take away from skydiving or flying, those are awesome experiences in themselves, and I love doing them, but riding is a whole different thing.

A riding thing...