The quilted polyester was stifling in the unseasonably warm September sun.  The road was radiating black tar smell and flies hovered in the tree shadows.  I've been getting a bit "over" motorcycling lately; I've been doing it too much.  WAY, way too much hollow-eyed, jaw-rattling freeway, too much stoplight clutch-hand cramping, there is a rattle noise from the engine I've been told not to worry about that's become REALLY irritating, and, well, just all the damn running around for practical purposes is getting old.  Even my geeky old refuge of playing space invaders with holes in traffic and squeezing 3 more mpg by short shifting 500 rpm, has gone.

In short, I really had to debate with myself whether to go for a fun ride on a clear-as-a-bell fall day.  Had to debate whether to nap, read or ride.  I napped while deciding.

Two hours later there I was, hell-bent sideways on a 65mph sweeper on my favorite backyard road: Hwy 33.  This is where I come to remind myself that the V-Strom is a sport-bike, too; that I needn't convince myself beyond hope of doubt that it's just a gas-saving econo-truck.

I set about reminding myself while not revving things through the roof of my mouth.  The scenery along this road is perfect, it really is, for doing speed and road-test stuff.  The picture changes from sage-brush covered cliffs and creekbed and tunnels at the bottom, to twisted, gaunt northern trees and naked rock at the top.  It begins to look like Iceland or something that ought to be driven by with Sigur Ros in the earbuds.  Great valley sweeps swing into view, mountain ranges on either hand trailing to infinity with a thin thread of asphalt snaking along between them, a tiny speck of motorcycle buzzing along that like an insignificant insect.

I practiced emergency braking in curves.  Funny how good brakes on motorcycles are.  A quick grasp of two fingers on my right hand promptly dislocates my eyeballs (no, I kid not: a front wheel on verge of lockup produces serious facial pain).  If there was a rabbit THERE snap squeeze owwwww bounce chirp HERE.  The rabbit is safe.

I was able to cure the unwanted neutral problem between first and second gear by readjusting the shift lever; but the false neutral between fifth and sixth gear is a mechanical problem that can't be cured by an adjustment.  It only happens occasionally, and less than it used to; and it's more an embarassment than a problem; one is occasionally suprised by a zing to 8000 rpm when it should have been 6th gear, and reacts by re-slamming the lever which bangs everything back into place.

Curve after curve, swing after swing, picking out the perfect line like a searchlight in fog.  This thing truly is balanced nicely, all I have to do is get a new front tire.  Got some headshake.  The handlebars oscillate when I let off the throttle and that's because the front tire is worn out.  I grind lower and lower to the ground, feeling the sides of my boots scrape along the flying asphalt.  I really miss sledding as a kid, having the ice and snow skitter past my chin four inches away.  I don't miss getting road-rash on my face from the snow, though, the times when it went wrong. Nor do I fancy getting road-rash on my face from actual road.  One must never ride as fast as one can, on public roads.  There are too many hazards; gravel, birds, pedestrians, gravel, oncoming traffic, gravel, fallen rock, gravel, sand....I wonder if that fork-brace will really improve the handling noticeably? I can't say as that I notice a lot of float and the shaking bars aren't helping, nor is the numb front tire.  I suppose I'd have to go with new springs and heaver fork oil to really make a phenomenal, outlook-changing experience.  But if I redo the suspension then it would be a street-bike, not a go-anywhere anypurpose thing anymore. Not that I really go anywhere except street.  There isn't anything public BUT street around here.

On the way back, at the top of the Grade, I pull over to check my cell-phone messages and noticed that I'd ground some more rubber off the sides of the tires.  Now I'm down to 1/8 inch from the edge of the sidewall.  Maybe I WAS pushing things a bit.

"And who is my neighbor?"

Someone once warned me that if I became mired in the science of religion I would defeat its purpose. It's very frustrating. Whether one lives with respect to the whole or with respect to the parts...it's a no-win scenario, for the whole lives in the parts without giving up its fundamental unity. This is an impossible task for deduction, analysis, the picking apart of a thing into its component parts.

The Church has no component parts. It has "members". An analogy cannot even be made to the body and its limbs because those may be broken apart and identified without destroying the whole. The Church may not be named without naming the whole, nor may the whole be named without naming the part for it is One and without division or separation.

The abstract consideration of, and action toward, the whole as such seems to undermine its life force. Consideration of the whole-without-part leads to a mindless slavery to Law at the expense of the Spirit.

The concrete consideration of the part, of the "neighbor" and daily duty would seem to contribute to the life of the whole, and a contribution to life is certainly commanded by Christ. Consideration of the part without whole, however, leads to a spirit of obedience such that results in misplaced trust and consequent blindness to the good of the whole. What man, focusing on his corner of the universe, his circle of needy, can possibly look beyond it? What responsibility does he bear to the rest of the Church? In short, what is his place among his neighbors?

What then is the meaning of duty for the Member? How must he live his life that he excludes blindness yet does not overstep obedience; that he lives by Spirit yet remains loyal to Law?

Loyalty and obedience; turned from virtue to scourge by modernism, which wields them with vast casualty against an unwitting Church to this day. There is an intense atmosphere of loyalty that I've struggled through for years that runs deeper than any other collective virtue I've known (if one may speak of collective virtue); yet I do not know whether to call it virtue or foolishness. All I know is that I cringe whenever I hear mention of loyalty in newsletter or speech. I cringe because I know what it means and where it leads and I begin to understand the weeping of Christ over Jerusalem....

"Shepherd once tol' me, if you can't do somethin' smart, do somethin' right."

 - Jayne, Serenity

In an age where there are no right answers, the questions take a back seat to action.  Seventy-five miles of bumpy freeway couldn''t jiggle the bubbles in any other way.  I have to return to where I started, throw the knife into the ground, and realign the crosshairs.  Training talks, you see. Aristotle was right. A man is what he was made to be.  We do not choose the age we live in.  Nor do we choose the character we play.  We stand there in costume with stage weapons and....then....the lights go purple and no one knows what happens after that until someone comes along with a pen and paper and a title for a history book.

I wonder whether doing the motorcycling club-style is really the thing.  It's a social undertaking in which one must worry about the one in front of you and the one behind you and bisecting the distance so one looks Respectable and Professional in the eyes of the unseeing world; but it really is so much better when the wheels stop turning, the bike is motionless, and one does not have to gulp apple juice amidst a roaring silence.  One has someone to talk to, perhaps share an experience with, and that's pretty fun.

And lunches are so much better with other motorcyclists than they are by oneself.  One is not off at the corner table under the palm tree with one's cigarette and coffee cup with a 10' radius carefully kept by all passersby lest they be knifed in the back.  One is not looked at askance by normal people as a freebooter from the outer planets and a threat to society.  One is simply having fun with one's friends.  Of course, the 10' radius is still kept by strangers, but it's less....embarrassing....somehow.....

And that is nice.

I am single and free.  Yet how often do I take advantage of this fact to blow off the world for a couple of days and Do What I Want?

Noli recently alluded to a recurring necessity I seem to have, to "go find a big sky and find myself under it" and while big skies do not exist in California (too many mountains), perhaps a long road will do, similarly.

And I am so sick of work and my neighborhood.  Why don't I just go away?

Why not indeed.  In about three seconds I had it all mapped out: get on the bike and ride.  Don't care where, don't care how, don't care what it costs.  Just haul ass till ass hauls me.

I have only one style of cross-country travel: decide whether or not I need to get somewhere today; if in the affirmative, find a freeway and pin it, if in the negative, find a deserted, twisty country road where there are speed limits, and creatively pin it.  I stop to take pictures when I see pictures.  And for gas.  And maybe for lunch.  But for the most part I don't take a lot of joy in contemplating local treasures, since I am alone and it would seem strange for a helmeted alien to be standing in front of an antique shop talking to himself.  I don't take pictures of people, they might get offended and their faces are none of my business anyway.  I take pictures of things.

It isn't about the places, after all - it's about passing through the places, feeling their feel and smelling their airs and seeing their church steeples and moving on, always moving on to the next place. It's about experiencing nature's own special effects studio.  But mostly it's about moving. Places move, they move past me, because motion is relative and MY place happens to be moving. And a happy place it is indeed.  The uttermost limit of what is contained is a now-broken-in-finally piece of foam, a windshield and too-wide handlebars with too-narrow grips.  Could be better, in other words, but hey I'm not complaining.  Except when I knocked in that lady's mirror, lanesplitting in San Francisco; but that was just a reminder that I shouldn't lanesplit with such a pig of a motorcycle. ("pig" being a technical not derogatory term applied to dual-sports that are too heavy to be really maneuverable)  Anyway, not to ramble.

Any travel story is useless without pics, so here we go.

Weekend stats:

Approx 1200 miles

20 hours, of which 17 were spent in one riding day

40 mpg average on the freeway (doh!)

New speed record set from Livermore to Santa Paula: 6.5 hours

2 Monsters

1 cigarette

5 Advil