Every once in a while pandora will find something worth listening to.  Through the weltered new-age mush that composes much of my Loreena McKennitt radio station (I haven't bothered to weed it out) one number shines like a piece of ice.  They're called Blackmore's Night.  It's good stuff.  I kinda like it.

What a weird night.  I suppose most normal people don't spend their Friday evenings reading Anna Karenina.  I knocked off a few tens of pages like a few shots of vodka, but without the vodka.  It was easy to do because one of the main characters rediscovered an old love and another one began to go mad; this provoked a deal of drama within the story and made it go quicker.  

So like a pilgrim on a dusty road, the drink of water and nap under the tree has improved life for the next few miles.  I fully expect things to slow back down and go back to slogging by tomorrow.  I mean, I'm sorry Tolstoy, but I'm a 21st century American and I don't have the attention span for this.  At least in War and Peace you had some social conflict going on; this introverted high-society bullshit is really getting on my nerves.  Although the account of Vronsky trying to commit suicide and failing miserably was kind of entertaining.  (I mean, how do you stuff a revolver into your left side and pull the trigger and miss?! I mean, what a loser. Not only was he a bad lover, a bad horseback rider and a bad money manager, he couldn't even commit suicide if he tried.  At least he ought to have punctured a lung or damaged the spinal cord or something. And to just lie there bleeding everywhere without doing anything proactive to finish the job? Till the servant comes in to clean up the mess!  The man deserved to live.  Or maybe the Russian army issue sidearms of the period really sucked.  I don't know)

The freight train headlight suddenly swung around a corner, probing its beam into the salt fog.  It was followed by a deep flash from dual chrome pipes and a rumbling growl of exhaust.  As it disappeared down the boulevard I thought to myself, some things will never go out of style...

White paint on offramps can be deadly slippery with condensation in the fog and thus is to be avoided at all costs.  With knackered rear shocks and a recently rebuilt fork complete with Progressive springs, the chassis is all off kilter, stiff in the front end and squashy in the rear.  So that when I nudge it up to 2nd gear I have to be damn careful not to drop the clutch or the whole thing goes like a bouncy horse.  Doesn't help that one has to love that throttle to make things move smooth.  It takes less than 1/8 of a turn into that liter motor to get you up to speed, maybe 1/3 on acceleration to freeway speed.  Just a nudge.  And if you go past that bitty nudge there better not be anybody or anything in the way. 

Another thing will never go out of style and that is clinging in the dark, reaching far out over the tank to the handle bars, the wind controlled by the right hand. A 70 mph wind hitting me in the stomach.  Directly in the stomach.  No fairing, no nothing to deflect the wind, gravel, sticks, leaves, cigarette butts, birds, bird poop and whatever else the freeway has to dish up.  The classy dual-pod speedo/tacho nacelle frames the headlight beam stretching far ahead of me, lighting down the divergent raingrooves.  There ought to be a silk scarf flapping about my neck and the static from a navigation radio echoing in my headset and sparkles from antiaircraft units glaring in the distance.  The square mirrors slash upwards like antennae on the right and on the left, showing headlights rapidly disappearing on my six.  Turbulence shudders through the frame as I bank left into a cloud of fog...

(I'm trying to run the fuel out of the tank in preparation for Suzi's surgery starting this week-end, and I forget how much class this machine exudes)

There was only one way to solve my question. It was to humble my pride, be very direct and very quick and ask this old man smoking a cigarette and wearing an ancient baseball cap whether or not thunderstorms tend to hang over the 15 or not.

"So that storm up there, that's where I'm headed. Hey do you have any idea what the weather's like up at the junction of 70 and 15? I know it's not a town or anything, but that's where I'm going."

"Well son, the only thing I can say is that they move fast. Build up quick in the afternoon, don't usually stay in one place. And it's late a'ready, they should be settling down. See if the weather's on and what they're sayin'. Should tell you somethin'.

The TV was showing some reality show through the graffiti scratched windows of the truck stop. I went inside and asked the cashier for his opinion. "The weather program should be on in a couple minutes now."

"You got a restroom?"

Five minutes later the "weather" was still not on. Some blond was swaying over a microphone in the noisy TV broadcast. This is useless. I'm wasting time. I should get out of here.

But I was sore and tired. I was strongly tempted, though I don't smoke, to buy a pack of cigarettes and join the laconic local in the baseball cap and bring up the price of milk and corn and forget about being on the road for a while.

Instead I unraveled my rain pants from my gigantic pack and began to struggle them on. The local eyed my preparations. "Watch out for them highway patrol, they hide on those overpasses. Was ridin' a Harley down through here back in the day, got nailed pretty quick right out here. Keep an eye out."

I really could care less about the Utah highway patrol. I wanted to know something about those lightning flashes arcing across the sky, far to the north. The darkness was warm and oppressive, a feeling I knew well and dreaded. I looked around. The TV was still blaring some music show. The truck stop was dead. The old timer puffed on his cigarette. There was nothing to do but leave and face the imminent unknown of what it was like to be on interstate 15 in the middle of the night in the middle of a thunderstorm...

I yawned as I stumbled, half-awake, out of the Days Inn into the morning sunshine.  Not a cloud in the sky.  Not one. The rain last night had washed the mountain air to a painful polish.  I could see for miles, or at least felt I'd be able to once I woke up.

I dumped my bags next to the bike and worked the cords and straps mechanically, slowly reassembling the gigantic mule pack I'd torn apart in haste and impatience in the dark and wet last night.  I dropped a cord and stooped to pick it up.  

My watch said 10:30 am. It was going to be a long day, and I was getting started late.  I hate getting started late.  But I need the sleep.   Not taking breaks on a long trip piles up on you till your body commits mutiny.  I needed that extra two hours, didn't want it but took it.

I walked through the double door into the lobby.  The receptionist took my key card and asked how was my night.  Good, I said.  My nights in motels are always good.  By the time 2 am rolls around and I face the fact that if I don't pull over and go to sleep I will crash, I am far too gone to notice whether the bathroom is clean, or rather too far gone to make a fuss about it.  Yeah, my night was good.

I stride back through God's morning sunshine to the bike, plug in the key and swing a leg over.  The ignition sequence rolls through the panel like a speed racer initializing.  The speedometer and tachometer needles wave good morning and the fuel and temperature gauges come up in their central-command LCD.  Well, sort of come up.  Two bars on the fuel gauge.  Two bars out of five, standing against 180 miles.  I always get bad mileage on the freeway.  Wringing out the little half-liter engine loaded down with 220 pounds takes its toll.

I should get gas.  Should.  But I have two bars left and that ought to be more than ample to get me to the next major city.  The fuel gauge is inaccurate.  I know this.  But two big fat bars and I'm not awake yet so it's more than enough.

Pack stowed, last minute mental checks complete. I blearily trundle out of the shiny black parking lot toward the onramp.  Rain has left the pavement slick and wet and I am easy with the throttle as I approach the onramp back onto Interstate 70.  Aah, it's bright up here.

I accelerate to Highway Mode and settle into watching Colorado fly along beneath my feet.   begin to look lazily for a gas station.  I had flipped my map around last night but I was already off the chart to the east.  

An AmocoBP slips by, glistening in its rainwashed green and yellow glory.  A gas station.  I should get gas, but  I don't feel like stopping.

Minutes became miles and miles became  nearly an hour.  The sun was now past the zenith and I-70 had become a vast sweeping river of asphalt careering around rockface after rockface.  My throttle hand had sunk deeply into the power and I was flying fast, now, entranced by the beauty of it all, unable to think or move.  Big fish fell away on either hand, Cadillacs and Ford duallies and Tauruses pulling trailers, swimming lazily in the sunshine, content with their sublegal speeds.

What was that on the LCD?  SOMETHING'S MISSING. Oh yes.  I guess the the gas gauge just dropped by a bar.  One left.  Uh, that was fast.  That was only 30 miles.

I tore on through the early afternoon.  Clouds began again to dapple the sky and the asphalt river became mottled with shadow.  I had left civilization for sure, but gas stations are everywhere along an Interstate.

Only minutes later the last bar began to blink.  Ok, this is not funny.  My minds eye recalled the green and yellow sign soaring above the trees, mocking my arrogance. Oh god please don't let me run out of gas in this waterless place.  Time to get tucked and get serious.  The little gas-pump icon began to flash.  I sped up to 80, took the motorcycle out of gear, and turned off the key.  The motor fell quiescent.  I shuddered.  This is what it will be like if I don't find a gas station pretty damn quick.  "When the fuel-injected 650 runs out of gas, boom, it's done, that's it.  Your pushing."  The words from Motorcycle Daily News writeup on my motorcycle flashed briefly through my head.

The buzzing gone, I fell like a glider on a descent through thermals.  A rather rapid and decelerating descent.  I crouched behind the windshield to eke any last bit of aerodynamics from my manifestly un-aerodynamic profile.  And the big fish began to pass me.  Cadillacs and Ford duallies and a Taurus pulling a trailer, happily cruising at a warm and fuel-rich 55 mph.  Little kids pointed out the window at the strange visored alien crouched over the wedge-shaped motorcycle in a comical contortion.

I started the motor again just as I dipped below the minimum speed limit.  Sweat began to start under the helmet.  I have no idea how much fuel is left in my tank.  No idea whatsoever. Could be a gallon, could be next to fumes.  The first two bars invariably mark about 4 gallons out of my 5.8 gallon tank, the last three bars are far more vague in signification.  

Don't die don't die dont die....please.

I crested a ridge, puttering along at minimum rpm, and shut down again for another glide into a valley.  It's really a great thing for negligent motorcyclists that West Colorado is higher than Central Colorado.

The blinking became more insistent.  Gas station, where's a freaking gas station! (Realistically: let's be realistic: how far could I push before I'd have to stop and rest?  A mile?  A mile and a half?  Half a mile uphill?  More like quarter of a mile I'd think.  And I have no water, just energy drink.  I'd be screwed.  So we are not thinking about pushing.  We are thinking about motion, about moving forward and cresting the next hill so I can shut it off again.  Yes, the next hill.  I twisted the throttle with trepidation expecting sputters.  The 650 chugged bravely on.

Well, we crested that hill, glided, thought about eternity, crested another, glided again and one more hill revealed salvation in the shape of a yellow and red shell poked up above some rocks.  Far off still, but I could see it approach.  I would make it.  I would make it just fine.  I will live, I will not have to push my motorcycle fully loaded on the freeway for miles, I will not die of dehydration or be run over by dozing driver in a semi-truck.

And I did make it. Parked, then in the cool shade of the roof over the pumps,  I sat and meditated upon my foolishness as the tank hungrily sucked at the pump.  The meter read only 5.3 gallons when it shut off.  I had a half gallon, a whole 25 miles, left in that tank.  I could have driven on normally and still would have made it quite handily without making a complete fool of myself in front of numerous five-year-olds....

Tomato soup.

It is wonderful.

The extent to which a fever and a headache can curdle one's brain is quite interesting.  I successfully restrained myself up until now from running to my computer and tapping out a blog post about some disconnected imagination I'd have been sure to forget halfway through imagining it; but here I am blogging about disconnectedness anyway.

*Here's to filler posts* (clink) - that was the empty teacup falling off the desk.  Thank goodness it was empty.  I'm not in the mood to clean up spilled tea.

I think people, especially Californians, should get sick more often. (Young people who have full powers of recovery of course) as it is a potent reminder of one's own mortality and one's helplessness in the face of an angry God.  Not to mention a desperately needed opportunity to sit and think.  Who is gonna sit and think for a day and a half unless one is (a) taped to a chair or (b) sick with fever?  I mean, seriously.  Spiritual reflection, willed or otherwise, is only truly possible in quiet, and if one has a pounding headache, the room better be quiet.

There isn't much else to do.

Much else including for me Tolstoy's epic work "Anna Karenina".  It's not as good as Brothers K.  Tolstoy shouldv'e stuck to war stories.

Kakashi has left for his home valley, to await the coming of summer and the next phase of life.

Will miss the ol' roomie, though he'll be down for a drink and a talk frequently enough.  This place is going to be boring as hell.  I don't know what I'm gonna do with all the empty space.  Clean it, I suppose.

New favorite phrase: "yucca garden".

Nothing evokes California to me like that phrase.

I didn't mention that on that journey through candyland I did find the neatest ol' road I ever did see.  This road kicks Mulholland's ass up and down the street.  It's called, uh, what was it called?  Anyway it goes up the mountains that castle Santa Barbara.  It has twists and turns that defy gravity, as the old Hot Wheels advertisements used to say.  It also has one or two overlooks, littered with enough broken CD's, Tecate cans, stuffed animals and ragged lingerie to indicate that this was somebody's juvenile fun place.  Averting one's eyes from the ground, however, one is treated to one of the best views of Santa Barbara there is.  A sweeping panorama takes in the entire pocket of coastline, tens of miles in either direction.

The onset of springtime and summer makes me antsy. I'm coming out of the hibernation mentality that descends on me around November, the air begins to warm up and smell like wildflowers and dust, and the sun is clearly climbing the ecliptic to its intense spotlight position for the summer.

I went for a ride on Sunday. I laughed inside to think I was going nowhere for fun, doing what people normally do with motorcycles. A strange and unusual concept indeed, after the gray wintry grind of nine-miles-one-way-nine-miles-back, dirty water splashed across the blue bodywork and scuffed windshield. Now the mud has dried to dust, and the same blue tank and same scuffed plastic windshield are out there pointed into a dappled-shadow fairyland straight from a Honda TV commercial. Highway 192 winds and stops and turns and winds again through some of the ritziest country residentia in the nation. Palm trees, boxwood hedges, yucca gardens line the highway. Low brickwork walls with ornate wrought iron gates shield great majestic hacienda dwellings from public eye. Mostly.

So this is where all the high powered film directors and movie actors and lawyers and computer programmers and retired Caltrans superintendents live. Who needs Beverly Hills, seriously. In fact, I've DRIVEN Rodeo Drive and they've got NOTHIN' on these folks. Nothing.

So the sunshine and shadow flits along, the motorcycle patters and putters along and I ask myself, as I always do, why I don't do this more often on weekends. People come from far and wide, go on vacation, spend lots of money just to be here, to do what I'm doing on a whim on a random weekend. As far as I'm concerned, it's free and a common fact of existence. I can come up to Montecito whenever I want and all it is going to cost me is ten dollars in gas. (Not even that.)

So in a way I'm not in the best position to appreciate the legend. But I don't really care about the legend as much as the sunshine and curves.....

The Fieldsheer pants arrived last night.  They are longer than my regular jeans, and provide as much coverage as I can reasonably ask of non-tailored pants.  Very, very sturdy nylon construction.  I feel like I got my $189 worth.

Speaking of cash outlay for gear, it is said that one spends $2000 on one's first motorcycle and at LEAST $1000 on gear.

So far:

$99 jacket (cheap due to polyester construction; I love it, but now that I've wised up to this polyester/nylon thing replacement is imminent.  When I have the money.)

$160 helmet.

$29.99 gloves.

$79.99 gloves.

$49.99 gloves.

$160 boots.

$100 torso armor

$50 elbow armor

$50 knee armor

$90 riding jeans with kevlar knees

$90 .....

Aforementioned Fieldsheers.

Another helmet for passenger doesn't count cause I don't wear it.

Grand total: $1,147.97

And I just bought another pair of riding jeans because I'm unhappy with one of the two I have. Both pairs are slightly short in the inseam, but one of them has this odd anomaly I only noticed today.  One leg is shorter than the other. I mean, how do you make pants with one leg shorter than the other??  It's like half an inch short on the left leg!  I also had to have them modified beyond belief since they only came in Long in some gigantic waist size.  So I can't return them. Not a happy investment overall.  (But they're better than Levis)

So that's gonna add 90 bucks.

I have to buy a mesh jacket for the summer.  $150-200.  Suffering through last year incased in a waterproof suit of plastic that is my current cheapo jacket was not pleasant.

Then eventually a leather jacket, the ultimate status symbol of motorcycling.  The final initiation into serious ridership.  That's gonna set me back 500 green ones.

So yeah.  Two thousand bucks.

But how much does human skin, blood and artificial titanium bones cost, at the hospital, eh?

(Answer: about $100,000.00 by some reports, with associated complications)

When we left each other the first time it was like the world was coming to an end.  Now we're all grown up, full of our own goals and our own worries, and the departure is met with just a half smile and words about the next destination in life.  I tell myself it doesn't hurt nearly as bad because I'm old enough not to care.  But its a lie.  One is never old enough not to care, never stoic enough not to cry inside as the little car rolls off forever with those familiar faces 

now you dream only in peaceful blue /

the morning doesn't even scare you /

anymore /

you are phoenix with your feathers just a little wet /

baby the ashes just look pretty on your eyes /

dry your wings in the sun /

you've only begun to understand /

when its time to move on /

there is no one to hold your hand /

so let go /

let go /

let go /

Deb Talan, Ashes on Your Eyes

The first thought and question every morning in February is answered by a quick glance out the window above my head. Is it raining or not?

This question will become irrelevant in a month. I slide out of bed and dress deliberately, mentally picking through 6:30 am pre-caffeine wool to determine whether there is Anything I Am Forgetting.

What am I forgetting?

Keys. Have keys. Have phone. Have wallet. Have helmet. Have gloves. Computer is off. I unlock the door and step outside into a cloud of my own breath. I exhale again, testing the air temperature. Cold. Probably 40 degrees. The weather is severe-clear, the neighbors' dogs are barking tinnily in the cold.

The carport is dark and even colder. I swing a leg over and push the motorcycle outside, fumbling in thick ski gloves. The fuel-injected motor doesn't care what temperature it is. I touch the starter, and with its usual quiet composure the v-twin shakes itself awake. The pattering lope echoes from the adjacent apartment walls. Now three dogs are barking across the canal.

I drop it into gear and ease off into the back alley. Round the corner, round the street. Bleary faces wrapped in scarves peer around opened car doors. The headlights of Dial-A-Ride fill the opposing lane and old ladies with canes, mummified in shawls, stump deliberately down the sidewalk. The neighborhood is still really asleep at 7:00 in the morning.

At the corner stopsign, I balance the motorcycle without moving my foot off the peg. I have to keep rolling; haven't acquired the skill to do this while motionless. Children bundled with pink backpacks and earmuffs, swinging water bottles, huddle around the steel lamppost.

Green, swing out into the far lane, clicking up at each 4500 rpm. Frosted, sleepy cars roll out into the broad, crumbled frosty street, white clouds of vapor obscuring the left taillight on each. The suicide lane is filled with left-blinking SUV's and donut trucks. I wing quickly by, unseen, poised to swerve.

The cold breeze accelerates to a wind as I reach a clear stretch of the Boulevard. The steam is blown from the inside of my helmet and the sun flashes blindingly above the neighboring overpass, bathing brick in the intense industrial orange of early morning. The wool is beginning to clear somewhat, but I'm still bleary and in need of coffee and breakfast.

Watch traffic, watch the soccer moms, watch the delivery trucks out of the corner of my eye. A beautiful day, just another beautiful cold freezing day on a cold freezing seat in a cold freezing town in February.

(and the bank thermometer says 41 degrees)

"Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup."

- forum poster on Pashnit.com

Real problem, cheaper solution

Well, I lost patience over the last rainy weekend having to change pants twice a day. When the sky broke open one saturday I skipped down to Cycle Gear in Oxnard and ordered up some FG Air overpants. They were too short, and I discovered a company called Fieldsheer that actually makes a tall size with a claimed inseam of 37" !!!!!

I'm a fan. Forward thinking, these people. I ordered a pair and am waiting on the call to pick them up.

Yeah yeah, they're $80 cheaper than the custom Cycleport ones I was going to have tailored to me, and they won't fit as well, but ... I'm not ordering them online either, so I can work with the dealer if they don't fit or I don't like them.

Oh yea, and apparently not all 600 denier fabrics are created equal. It is bruited about that polyester weave has little tensile strength compared to nylon, which worries me riding around in my 99 dollar Carbolex jacket (100% poly says the tag). It looks like Suzi is gonna have to sit in the garage a few months longer till I get my gear issues sorted.

$300 for a jacket vs. $10,000 for skin grafts: that's what we're looking at here. Problem is, I'm reluctant to admit I made a bad investment in cheap gear in the beginning (ignorance is bliss, truly) and don't want to have it laying 'round unused taking up space...

At least the pants have a 1000 denier (thicker) nylon shell, it ought to hold up. What I need to do is find a mesh jacket with leather panels on the back and shoulder for this summer (Cortech GX Air? 200 bucks) and then next fall I'll just have to buy another better jacket to replace my beloved Tourmaster Jett. Or maybe someone will further inform me about exactly what the hell Carbolex fabric IS, and it will be fine, and I won't have to worry.....

Anybody know anything about plastic fabric? I purposely avoid leather because it's hot, heavy, not waterproof, can't be thrown in the wash machine and is hella expensive (although not nearly as much as aforementioned skin grafting)