Once again it's November and the cold (it's currently 35 degrees F outside, 19 F with the very strong wind chill blasting around the eastern border of Minnesota and Wisconsin as I write this. But it's about 2:30pm in the afternoon, and the coffee shop is warm and inviting, the paper coffee cup in my hand is warming up my frozen bones, and I'm riding in November, so zero complaints.
I'm sitting in Dunn Brothers in the river valley on the Wisconsin side, with Sunshine, my 2008 Suzuki Bandit 1250s, my trusted ride, sitting quietly out front.
The ride here was extremely cold, even with seven layers on. I still don't have heated gloves, gear, or grips, any or all of which would have made the ride a bit less bone chilling, but the way I figure it, if it's that cold that I need that kind of gear to just stay warm enough to ride, it's probably below my "safety temp" of 34 degrees F anyway, a point at which the tires on my bike simply won't stay warm enough to allow me very much twisty fun. My rule of thumb since a cold-temperature lowside my first year of riding remains simply: cold street rubber = plastic tires = no sticky sticky = bad outcomes.
But even with adherence to that safety temperature, I still felt Sunshine's back wheel slide and start coming around as we hit a big stray patch of ice left in the middle of a rural Wisconsin roundabout on the way down here. No doubt a leftover from the half foot of snow that blanketed Minnesota and Wisconsin about 12 days ago. A bummer, but not nearly as scary as it used to be for me.
I'm a moderately confident rider now, having put on nearly 10,000 miles since March 4 and about 25,000 since I started riding 3 years ago. These days, whenever she slides in a turn like that because of surface or traction issues, I'm well practiced. I just clutched in immediately and gently eased the bike up from the angle I had her set. Even if she doesn't stand up because the physics won't allow it, at least by rearranging my center of gravity and releasing any pressure on the back wheel, she'll maintain her (sometimes severe) angle without flattening out any more. Then it's just a matter of waiting for the back wheel to catch solid ground again, which hopefully happens (i.e. has thus far happened :-) before we slide out of the other side of the corner.
So it's been an entire year of riding, including several thousand miles with a new motorcycle club that I joined in March, but this is my first and likely only blog entry of 2020. So yeah...
I've honestly had a lot to say about a lot of things happening this year, but because I have maintained (and continue to maintain) a very unpopular line among the fearful heard around me, I have held my thoughts back from this forum.
I intended this blog to be a place where I write about my love of travel by motorcycle and the personal and transforming effects of movement in unique ways. I did not want it to be about politics or hidden agendas or any of that bullshit. But as it goes, this worldwide epidemic of fear and lies that has taken over is as much or moreso about a failure of human beings on an individual and personal level than it is a about bullshit polities or billionaire agendas.
And so here goes ...
To begin with, I guess I just assumed everybody understood that all politicians LIE. That mainstream media LIES. That every one of the international industrial complexes, whether industrial, military, pharmaceutical, food, or petroleum, LIES. I just assumed that everybody who walks the planet takes these facts for granted and would never allow their freedom and sanity and rationality to be compromised in any major way by any of these external entity-promoted lies.
I was wrong.
Let's get this clear. I absolutely love America and what it represents and the freedoms it affords us as Americans, but this has been a challenging time for Americans who want to see America great again. Instead, it seems like my beloved free America (along with most of the 'free' world) has turned into a Nazi-like interment camp, using state-sponsored media and political and billionaire agendas to turn neighbor against neighbor, cultivating suspicion and fear at absolutely every level.
Basically, it's divide and conquer. This is not the America I love.
I mean, it still is America, but I am so very disappointed by the behavior of most of my fellow Americans.
I understand if citizens of other less-free countries capitulate to state pressures, however irrational. They don't cultivate courage like we do. They don't cultivate free thinking like we do. I understand if those citizens cower from their tyrannical ruling monarchies when given "marching orders", Given abject capitulation versus the risk of certain torture, death or imprisonment, what choice do they have?
But this is America!
What happened to American free thinking? To American courage? To American rationality when facing outside pressure, real or imagined? Where did personal accountability go? Accountability for one's own physical body and health and wellbeing? And what happened to American curiosity? Our desire to get to the bottom of any riddle and solve it. More importantly, what happened our American will to uncover and champion the truth at any expense, especially over any purveyors of questionable information, be they foreign or domestic..?
I found myself asking these questions from the back of my motorcycle as I rode through abandoned roads filled with putrid clouds of human insanity and fear over the past year. And I still have all these same questions as the year 2020 now comes to a close, and precious few answers.
The coffee shop that Sunshine was parked in front of in my previous post from last November was burned to the ground during the riots. I have ridden all the way into neighboring Wisconsin on almost every ride this year, a minimum of an hour long ride one way. Why? Simply because the supreme court in Wisconsin was one of the only state courts brave enough to shutdown the abuse of emergency powers by its own governor. Accordingly, I can walk into nearly any shop here without worrying about donning a stupid and pointless face mask. Wisconsin, at least the areas of Wisconsin that I now frequent, is still "free America". There are precious few areas of the country left that can make that claim.
If you read this, and you are American, I implore you to take time to consider what that really means.
Consider the sacrifices and hurdles that were overcome in order for the constitution of this great country to have been inked by great thinkers, men with great hearts and even greater minds, who really crafted an inspired document describing what a country of free citizens could actually be like.
Now consider how much animosity and division you have allowed into your heart and mind, to be cultivated like a fast-growing cancer by manipulative sources you consider to be "true". Is it really truth you're hearing and believing?
America was founded upon some very basic human values, principally Truth (i.e. real truth), alongside integrity, equality, decency, accountability, compassion, tolerance. None of these values seek to divide.
If the truth that you are dialed into, religious, political, medical, personal, spiritual, or otherwise, whether as a result of believing in this current worldwide stream of bullshit or from any other religious, media, parental, peer, or personal source in your life, past or present, ... if any truth you believe in results in you having to maintain an "us versus them" attitude, IT IS NOT TRUE.
Consider that for a while, and then decide what kind of America you want to live in in the many years to come.
I wish you a wonderful holiday season and happy new year.
No comments:
Post a Comment