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.
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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.....