The Whispered Addiction.....

It's impossible to motorcycle seriously and for very long without becoming more spiritual.....   Every aspect of the earth is presented to you on a private tableau of sight, sound, and sensation --  a blue mountain horizon drawing inexorably closer, the darting and soaring of birds, the changing of light in trees and upon water, the sensation of wind moving upon you like a woman's hand.....  the earth in all it's glory ever presents itself like a wanton dancer to you, and everywhere in the rushing of the wind is the whispered promise, "yes, you are of me, you are me......feast, and rejoice!"  Once you are addicted to this promise, you can no more refuse to ride than you can refuse to breathe...  And the speed acts upon your soul like a rich sauce: knowing that you are at all times in mortal danger, that you could lose everything in less than a heartbeat, makes you an extremely grateful, extremely thankful, extremely religious, yes, religious....rider.    I'm so glad I ride.....

Tuscan Potato

Red and I worked pretty hard today, me on a ski patrol class I'm to teach and she in the yard, so afterwards we booted up and rode "Great White"up to Roslyn, Wa for dinner...but everything was closed. I guess they do that on Tuesdays up there. So we turned around and stopped at the iconic, traditional, Sunset Cafe in Cle Elum, Wa. Not exactly overcome with excitement, I ordered the "Endless Soup and Salad." "What soup," asked the friendly waitress. I almost ordered my regular Minestrone, but, on an impulse, I asked what other kind she had. "Tuscan Potato," she replied. I smirked and said, "I guess I'll have any soup with the gall to call itself 'Tuscan Potato!'" She grinned and moved off...but then she brought it, and then I tasted it, and then I gasped...... huge chunks of potato and Italian Sausage in a rich, thick, creamy soup that was absolutely, incredibly, unbelievably even...delicious. Best soup I've ever tasted.  I couldn't get enough. Ate two whole bowls with Italian bread.....considered a third bowl, but my wife's eyebrows were already disappearing with alarm up into her eyebrows, so...... blimpo.....

 Now, trust me.... if someone in the Sunset Cafe in Cle Elum, Wa., USA,  offers you a bowl of "Tuscan Potato" soup....take it! Another good thing.... looking out the window, barely able to breathe, I saw a massive, very old man with a stability cane stop and stare at our Goldwing.... he walked very laboriously and deliberately completely around it staring at the seat, the dash, the fenders, the tires, the brakes....all the while talking loudly and gesturing to his tiny old wife, who stood there patiently waiting, motionless..... after awhile they finally entered the restaurant. We had our helmets on our table, and when he saw them, he made a steady but laborious beeline directly toward me. When he arrived, finally, with his eyes barely able to peer out of his beetling brows, his good will shining from every wrinkle, he put two huge brown spotted hands down on our table, and said, "I am .....enthralled....absolutely enthralled...with your Goldwing! What year is it?" I grinned at him, couldn't help it. "It's a 2005, sir, Silver Anniversary Model......" "Well," he thundered. "It looks brand new!" I kept grinning at him, couldn't help it. "Yeah, it was pretty much a garage ornament.....want a ride?" "No," he thundered again. "If I did that, I'd try 'n buy it!" I laughed. "Yup, I'm the same way, can't keep off the thing!" He turned to me, and the unmistakable yearning and hurt was there, deep, deep down in his ancient eyes.... "Well, do it while you can, son, do it while you can....." And he moved off, painfully, a huge, good man, I think, shuffling like some old and huge bison bull toward his table... and his oblivion, very soon, I fear.   "Yes, sir," I whispered. "I shall."

A favorite ride....

My wife, Red, and I ripped off one of our favorite white liners in the Pacific Northwest

today: Ellensburg through the Yakima River canyon to the the Old Naches Highway to White Pass to Cayuse Pass to Chinook Pass, and back down to the Old Naches Highway to the Canyon...and home..... first time for both of us together on the bike this season.....   Lovely ride, and talk about bikes? Thicker than male Democrats at a porn convention! There was a time, believe me....when Red and I seemed to be the only two motorcyclists out there!  Now they're chock-a-block.....

 Two of my favorite passions, motorcycling and skiing, are very, very closely related in many ways.....both are verbs! Motorcycling and skiing are something you do... motorcycling and skiing are actions, and require volitional effort -- hence, they are not things that happen to you. They are things you do. Motorcycling and skiing are not situations, they are activities freely chosen, and they require decision after decision after decision from you, sometimes dozens of decisions within a half a minute! You are the actor, not the acted upon.... not unless you refuse to act, and then things do happen to you, and quickly!

 Motorcycling and skiing have another commonality: both are performances, dances if you will, incredibly precise and beautiful dances between the realms of earth and sky. When you ski or ride, you seem to slip from the earth, although not really; you feel almost like you're flying and the sky seems to open up to you, although it doesn't, really....... but there you are, suspended between earth and sky, totally dependent upon your own decisions or actions to determine whether you will prevail, or suffer total disaster... In other words, in that dance -- either on skis or a bike -- you're about as free as a mortal man can be, at least for awhile!

 I don't think any true happiness ever comes to you, without it being the result of something you do..... something you have an effect on.... For instance, put me in the back of an acrobatic airplane, with someone else at the controls, and give me a wild, one-of-a-kind, all over the sky ride.......and I wouldn't be as happy as if I had the knowledge and skill to handle the controls myself, even in a flat line, boring, beginner's flight.... Other than physiological or organic issues, most human unhappiness is caused by the true or the perceived lack of personal control..... give me the slightest chance to have an effect on my world, and I can go on living......happily. Take away all chances, all ability, to do that, and I shall die, and soon.

People who don't ride or ski.....how do they live, and why?

(South Tyrol, Italy, 2012)

Houston, I have a problem!

Ever have a motorcycle shut down on you, in midflight, at 70 mph? All systems just kaput, instantly and all at once! I just did, on a mental health run to Cle Elum, Washington,  and back on my clattertrap KLR 650.....

 As I coasted to a stop on Washington State's Hwy 97, my biker's mind was already grappling with explanations and solutions... No explosion, din or clatter -- so probably not a grenaded engine; no sputter, cough, or wheeze -- so unlikely to be fuel-related; so, the only alternative, something electrical....

 But what electrical? What could collapse a sweet-running KLR all at once and without warning? Spark plug lead, of course, but it's buried under the fuel tank, and if it somehow got vibrated off, I wasn't going to be able to fix the thing alongside the road anyways, and I had disabled the sidestand safety switch and the clutch override safety switch, which, if I still had them, would cause such an instant shutdown if they malfunctioned...... Hey.... Wait a minute!

I then remembered that the internet article I read years ago showing how to cut the wires to those two switches, and then solder them together bypassing the stupid things.... and how the author strongly suggested soldering rather than the much easier twist and tape method..... I have to admit I don't know how to solder, but I do know how to twist and tape, and so I did..... do you suppose?

 Yup, within seconds, I had found that one of my old school redneck twists and tapes had untwisted and almost untaped..... I pulled the remains of the rotten old tape off and re-

twisted the bare wires, and the bloody good bike fired up again most satisfactorily! On the road again......

I love solving mechanical mysteries, especially those of my own making....

My drug of choice....

Good motorcycles are powerfully addictive...and I think the reason is because, like drugs, they seem to make you more than you are. Faster, more powerful, "able to leap buildings in a single bound!" Good motorcycles provide the illusion, at least, of total freedom and power... You can change horizons as fast as you can twist the throttle; you can cross continents, rolling across borders like an unstoppable storm; you can literally extend "yourself" for hundreds and hundreds of miles.... Thousands, really, to be honest.... Those of us born to the wheel know how addictive they are, and we are good with it.

The photo below, taken on the Seward Highway in Alaska, 2005, our second trip up, is kinda how I feel about all motorcycles on nearly all days! I love the damn things; I will ride them until I die, or until I can no longer hold one up....and then I'll bolt on a sidecar and ride until I die! If Heaven hasn't got good motorcycles, than why is it called Heaven? I pity people who don't ride...how do they live, and why?  Rubber down, my Buckoes!  And keep that white line running!

Becoming a motorcyclist...

Becoming a motorcyclist

was the best decision of my life, and I was fortunate enough to make it early.  Notice I said "motorcyclist," and not "biker."  I don't collect, build, sit on, trailer or show "bikes."   I ride motorcycles... long and hard and often.

 A modern motorcycle, ridden correctly, is one of the most freedom enhancing machines ever devised by human beings.... continents, mountain ranges, deserts and plains.... they all go  much better with a motorcycle! I am so thankful that I was given the freedom and opportunity to spend much of my life on a series of powerful and affordable bikes....

I was born free, lived free, and -- God willing -- I shall die free, and no one could ask more from life.  Freedom is my most important, over-riding value, and nothing lends itself to freedom as much as a  motorcycle.

The greatest impediments to human freedom? At least in this society? Are the restrictions and fears generated in your own mind.... Don't let your dying words be, "I wish I would have....."  Regrets on the deathbed are to be avoided at all costs.
\

I'd rather......

...live my life in the wide open, crossing at my will the high, cloud-draped mountains and the long deserts that fade off into blue, than to live forever in a palace of granite and gold strewn with pearls....

I'd rather live with my wife, she with her eyes and cheeks bursting with health and laughter, than with any slender, high fashion model with nothing but a deadness behind her eyes....

I'd rather be a "patch of sunshine fading on the grass," and disappear forever, with my ashes dancing away in the wind, than a centuries old, tight-wrapped mummy hidden deep in dark vaults of limestone.... with only the silence of cold stones above my dead bones.....

A quality motorcycle, an uncrowded road, and the freedom to ride it... and my gentle, brave and always smiling partner on the back.... a quiet place to pitch our tent at night.... That's all I need; and that's all I want.

And I have it in abundance....

We go fast and free and far.....

saying words to each other through our headsets that only we, and God, can hear.....

I grew up pretty much alone....not much adult supervision. It's because of that, I believe, that I can only endure many people around me for only so long... then I must be alone for while, or only with my beloved wife, to recharge my "social" batteries. Motorcycles are good for this...... a bike allows you to flow through the world without much impediment .... or so at least it seems. Probably why so many loners are bikers.....

Anybody can ski downhill.....

Here's old CJ "skinning up to the Bump Shack at Summit at Snoqualmie ski area, Washington State, with his cherished one and only close behind snapping her pictures..... Great three shift weekend wearing the red jacket... at two different ski areas...did two backboards, two knees, and taught some rescue tobogganing skills to some eager-eyed young recruits.... I have a full life. With something important to do, the winter flies by, and I'm as happy in my life as I have ever been, even at seventy long years. I believe more than ever that we must find something important to do, something that is seen by others to be important, to maximize both the length and quality of our lives. For you flatlanders ............... (A bump shack at a ski area is at the top of the hill, where the toboggans, trauma packs, traction splints, and spine boards are kept, along with a patroller ready to be dispatched to any area of injury.....the term evolved from the time when the ski patroller simply stood at the top, and would be "bumped" off by another patroller coming up the lift. After about a half century, somebody got the bright idea that a shack in which to keep out of the weather might be nice! "Skins" are long pieces of nylon with a one-way nap that are applied to the bottom of the skis in order to allow climbing up rather than sliding down. Red and I try to climb up the hill at least once during my shifts, to give the heart and lungs a therapeutic workout.... Thus ends my mini-ski patrol lesson........! ) I love skiing and I love ski patrolling, but Friday I spent some time with my motorcycles, both of them silent, still, hooked up to their battery monitor IVs, and the Great Plains of America are beginning to call me again..... "Come! Come, my child-man! My flowers will soon be blooming, my grasses swaying... Come! Come and let us once again visit the prayer wheels of the Northern Cheyenne!" Soon I will be longing for summer, and for the plains of North America, plains once crossed over in covered wagons by my ancestors... I believe

I can do one more crossing! At least one!