Some days I'd like to take a very light motorcycle, perhaps even a scooter or a motor bike, tie on a very light sleeping bag and climber's tent.....and then just go out and see how far around the world I could get! But then... then.... I take another look at my lovely wife, and say to myself: "What's the matter, fool? Are you nuts? Already you are more fortunate than 99% of the world's population! Just lay back chilly and enjoy, you old fool, ....lay back and enjoy!"

In the western world, boredom is the greatest threat to an old man's happiness, and usually it's self-inflicted.....

But not always, sometimes it's spawned by advancing age. At seventy years plus and still suffering from the non-healed wounds he received during the Civil War, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the Hero of Little Roundtop, tried to get back into the Army for the Spanish American War, and was heartily pissed off when refused.... Why? Maybe bored, or maybe haunted by the approach of his mortality.... The more intense your life, the harder it is to see it ebbing away....

Most men can live in one place, but some cannot..... I'm one who cannot, but I do..... because I love one who can. But she loves to fly away with me, over the nap of the earth, on our Great White Wing. We go out for me, and we come back for her. It's called compromise; it' called a true Glasserian Conflict (see below); it's called love.

Speed is my narcotic, my balm, my warm scented oil...... with the throttle pegged, and the front wheel spinning, flying, carrying me faster and further than I am designed to go, I escape, for a moment, the consciousness of my weakness and fragility, my vulnerability, my temporariness...... For a shining, speeding moment, I forget my death. I forget my mortality. I forget my insignificance. By confronting death with my absurd helmet, my gloves, my throttle -- I vanquish it. But only for a shining, speeding moment.... Only for a shining, speeding moment.... And that's what our lives amount to, really, in the Grand Scheme...... a shining, speeding moment.


(Glasserian True Conflict: loving, valuing, wanting two things at once that conflict, in this case.... freedom and Red)