black chevrolet

Masses of cumulus clouds pad the horizon and a gentle late-summer breeze dusts through the alfalfa fields as I pedal toward the empty intersection. I could smell freshly mown hay and alfalfa and listened to the rustle in the popple trees. A car or two swished by and left dents in the breeze. I sniffed the air and turned my head to let the airstream wash over the side of my helmet.

"I'm really going to miss this. I don't think they have sunsets this nice out in California. At any rate I'll be far too busy to enjoy them."

I couldn't breathe enough of the clean country air that had been shoved over thousands of miles of flat nothingness. I figured I'd miss it.

Fast forward four years...(heh. four years)...and I'm sitting on the crest of a ridge seperating the peaceful Upper Ojai Valley in the north from the populated bustle to the south. Faraway bustle, way-down-there in a shimmering carpet of streetlights. Up here, on this little mesa of weeds and sage, it is absolutely, frozenly, frighteningly still. I listen hard and the silence is deafening. The air smells of dust and citrus and vegetables and sage. The flat tinsel quilt that is Oxnard scintillates in waves. The sun has sunk behind the mountains on the western coast and left them fingers of rough lava thrust into a rim of fire. The lava rears out of the ocean in a couple humpbacked forms - the Channel Islands.

I had never seen such colors in the sky. I guess I had forgotten to look, or was paying too much attention to the nondescript smell of the breeze. My eye traveled from the place where the sun used to be, all the way up and over and across the hemisphere. Burnt-red orange yellow pink purple deep lavender to blue and all the way back to reddish blue again and then chalk-blue on the eastern horizon. The eastern mountains stood out chalk on chalk, beige against the blue. The moon hadn't risen yet, but I knew that when it did it would be a massive orange ball. SoCal moonrises are one of a kind.

Half an hour later I was striding down the gravel road in the dark. It took me twenty minutes to hike back to where I'd parked the bike, collapsible-chair and backpack a not-yet-uncomfortable weight against my back. I found all as I had left it- helmet clipped to the side lock, saddlebags untouched, bike still upright in the gravel patch. I slipped the helmet on, swung a leg over and thumbed the starter. The motorcycle growled quietly to itself and we glided away onto the twisting saddled ribbon otherwise known as Sulphur Mountain Road. It's a road that goes on and on, twists and turns and ducks and dives like a roller-coaster and you never know what the next turn is going to look like. Suzi handles a like a bike 2/3 her weight even at 20 mph.

I caught glimpses of Ojai through the trees as we slithered in second gear through twist after twist. The road warped right and left in the yellowed bar of the headlight beam. The tach and speedo glowed warm orange, both needles down and out of my peripheral vision. It was okay, I didn't need to know. I was going too slowly. A quick check showed 2000 at 25 mph. I quickly got a feel for how loud 30 mph exhaust note sounded, and went by that.

Something bounded away into the trees ahead. Maybe that doe I saw earlier, on my way up. Where there's one there's two. I passed the spot and glanced around, no animal life in sight.

It seemed like fifty twists later before we finally plunged into the cold lake of air at the bottom of the valley. Business as usual now. The road shook itself straight, we coasted up to the stopsign behind the dumpsters, and carefully nosed out into the two-lane, headed home. I'd make it back for supper after all.