black chevrolet

2011-05-06T21:49:00.001-07:00

So I am an idealist who hates idealism; a practical man who hates the blindness of pragmatism, a poor hungry confused child who holds the stone in both hands while before him stands the cold reality that he is on his own if he wants to eat.

2011-04-15T23:48:00.000-07:00

It has been a while, and now in the thick of things I stumble across my old creativity and wonder where the voices got buried.

Oh, I know where they got buried, and how; I buried them. For a good reason. I'm not an angsty teenager anymore, I tell myself; blogging is something that people did before twitter was invented and I'm really much too busy for this nonsense.

But I was busy even then, and the voices existed for a reason and that reason was to remind me that maybe my busy life is nonsense. Maybe the tight eyeballs, small meals, and lack of sleep is nonsense. Why do we do it? More importantly, why do we persist and bring that nonsense to the level we do?

Maybe it's time to thaw the zombie, folks.

2011-01-12T10:22:00.001-08:00

Paper clip hearts in a chain to the moon

Paper clip hugs sweep me round the room

Paper clip love whispers a tune

With paper clip kisses under stars in bloom

Paper clip hearts in my pocket at night

Paper clip hugs round my waist hold me tight

Paper clip love round my heart glows bright

With paper clip kisses in the morning light

CLOSED until further notice

2010-01-19T13:23:00.000-08:00

"I don't want this blog to become one of those zombie blogs that leave off at a post about an anticipated journey" a rough paraphrase of some wise words by Doug Klassen, whose blog just entered the Death Scroll which has become my collection of links to other people's blogs.

Nobody's really writing any more. Not even Toque, who, poet that he is, could be depended upon to contribute something at least every other month.

The Little Lost Soldier Girl marches on with a post now and then, and I advise all of you to go read and comment.

Jaina is still posting fitness test results on her other blog.

But nobody else is showing any signs of movement. I guess blogs have gone out of fashion or my contemporaries have simply moved on fitter, happier and more productive lives.

Anyway, this is an awkward prelude to the main announcement: I'm going bye-bye for a while. I'm joining the Scroll of the Dead. I'm going to leave this blog up, at least for now; but my writing is done. My life is an unbloggable blur of color, motion and flying objects. I simply have far too much on my plate to reflect on, and to turn this blog into a play-by-play account of my daily activities would be to destroy the reflective nature of my writing.

So, until later, let this zombie be put into deep freeze.

2009-10-01T11:44:00.001-07:00

Is there any such thing as complaining that isn't whiny? Isn't there some objective, completely justified way to say Why Me God? It would seem not, for we are all servants and the servant may not expect to be treated better than the Master. And the Master suffered it all. Heartbreak, betrayal, lies, rejection, weakness, confusion, pain, abandonment - by His own Father, no less.

"...this is the world, this is the world, we live in /"

"it's not the one we choose, but its the one we're given / "

- Sea Wolf

What am I missing? What drove the Master through his dark night of despair up there on that rocky hill? Where can I get a piece of that? (Are pieces of that even available to be had, ha) I can't find a piece of that because I'm only a little one I can't see the whole picture, and the picture will never make sense to me.

I live in this world that my grandparents made a mess of, and now I have to clean up that mess without making it even more of a mess for my own grandchildren. The flood of humanism that engulfed my country after the Second World War has inundated all social structure and mores; destroyed all religions; overturned all barriers, given birth to monsters from the deeps. The building of houses of cards on credit, animal sex, the burial of the tablets of natural law under liberty, goddamn liberty.

My world must be rebuilt a stone upon a stone. And I must rebuild it, for my betters and superiors will not. Perhaps they cannot. Perhaps they are too poisoned by the flood. I must take these stones from the stiffening hands of my parents, whose sole calling it was to merely HOLD them for me, and begin a task that I will never see the fruits of...

2009-09-03T14:42:00.000-07:00

i am not worthy
to hear you breathe
to feel your trust
to touch your feet

i am not worthy
to see the smile
your devotion brings
to thorny trial

i am not worthy
to be loved by you
of the word and service
of your heart so true

i am not worthy
to plumb the deep
your endless ocean
washes me clean

For Ariel

2009-08-19T12:51:00.000-07:00

the traffic is stuck
the headlights glare
red curls in the window
a patient green stare

we live on the freeways
in the salt of the sea
daisies and bicycles
eucalyptus trees

She stands in the sand
wind tumbling her hair
a rose in one hand
casting petals to the air

There is no end
to the ocean's flow
nothing but the bend
of the beach house row

2009-07-08T16:06:00.000-07:00

Six of us clustered around the oily rag spread on the pavement; Toque, James, and the kid. Dusk had fallen deeply and Toque had his car pulled up to the corner, the headlights illuminating the bank of four motorcycle carburetors lying on the rag. James fiddled with the mixture screws, mumbling through his cigarette. "you're bike is gonna run so much better man, so much better when we get this cleaned up. It'll be like night and f---ing day." The conversation drifted to off-roading, and then eventually tapered off to silence.

"I love motorcycles man, I love 'em." James spoke what we were all thinking. Simplicity, purity, camaraderie in the challenge of keeping them running. It doesn't take much. Here we are tuning up the carburetors on the kid's GS750 in a church parking lot with two flathead screwdrivers, some slivers of coathanger wire, and an evening breeze filtering through the eucalyptus trees. And enough beer to float a boat. No, it's more about the enthusiasm, with one experienced bicycle mechanic chewing on a cigarette and Toque digging through his toolbag. Here's that pair of pliers. We're all here sitting around here like cowboys around a fire, cleaning their tack, in the middle of the desert. We're all sitting around this oily rag staring into the dying glow of the headlight beams while James performs his voodoo magic on this mistuned bank of carbs.

I'm gonna miss this kinda thing. The beer, the pliers, the cigarettes, the jumbled tool bag, the furrowed foreheads in the headlight beams. I'm gonna miss it...

2009-06-30T13:19:00.001-07:00

why can't I write about her? Is there too much to say? All the poetry in the world won't suffice. I've lost the wolf, the orange eyes are now a page in my past, a dusty jpg on a rewritable CD.

No words seem to be necessary. This is too real, too scary, too sacred and too confusing...I'm so awed and so challenged...

2009-06-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

"Call it."

- Chigurh, No Country for Old Men

2009-06-11T14:06:00.000-07:00

Oh, no. Noooooo.....

it's funny how life moves on, taking you with it.

I'm a reluctant prophet, but the future holds four wheels. The future IS four wheels. And a trunk. And maybe, probably, a roof.

But there will always be room in the carport for the old way of life. There will always be a need to save gasoline on the daily commute to work. And the blue V-Strom is paid for, fits me like a new leather glove and is the only thing in my life that doesn't give me problems...

2009-05-27T00:50:00.000-07:00

stop! stop it! crack, damn you! crack a damn smile!

the traffic is stuck

an your not movin anywhere

ya thought you found a friend

to take you outta this place

....

it's a beautiful day

....

don't let it get away

on the road

but you got no destination

....

you've been all over

it's been all over you

it's a beautiful day....

- U2

2009-04-15T20:26:00.000-07:00

Dr. Thomas Dillon, President of Thomas Aquinas College.

RIP, April 15th 2009

A hero of mine.

2009-04-15T11:57:00.000-07:00

Between the hours of nine a.m. and twelve p.m. today I feel as if my universe has shifted, that there are a few new colors in the spectrum, and that my life is about to change forever.

We'll see if this pans out, but the storm of intuition is overwhelming. And this storm is coming from the outside, I am convinced.

Quote from the Rule of St Benedict for April 15th: "To fly from vainglory".

I give God thanks for all the beautiful gifts He has given me. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.

2009-03-25T22:44:00.000-07:00

I'd forgotten something, which I didn't remember until I pulled off the road on the way back from Pine Mountain. The overrun extended a bit out into midair, a corner cliff projected into space. I could see the whole valley from there, the deserted ribbon of pavement winding itself down, down and around into the canyons of the Sespe Wilderness. The sun was setting and the valley bathed in yellow haze. I had to smile. My mind was clear of all the detritus that city-bound life had filled it with; my reflexes fresh and sharp from fifteen miles of gravel-and-sand strewn pavement and cold gusty winds. I couldn't remember what led me out here, but now that I was out here, it sure felt good. It felt good to wrap the v-twin out to something north of 7,000 rpm. It felt good to grind off another layer of rubber from the toes of my boots. (The Pirelli Scorpion is definitely the tire to get next time, by the way. I think I have a winner. Proper tip-in, proper progressive stick). It felt good to play sportbike for a while and remind myself that some day I will upgrade the suspension.

Reflexes are strange things. You train yourself to react to the corner, to the rocks and branches and tumbleweed and whatever appears round the bend. But you sit above your reflexes, supervising them, guiding them, seeking to construct a flow from *brake*, *downshift* *roll on*, *roll off again* There is a definite flow, but like life it is always changing shape. The perfect riding line is a myth, a spectre, always changing always leading you on. In your pursuit you lose everything else in the rearview mirror and if you're lucky you'll remember only what was important...

2009-02-23T00:54:00.000-08:00

I ought to update this thing every once in a while.

But like an old car wrapped in plastic and left in the backyard, I expect to forget about my blog except on those rare occasions I feel impelled to say something. And those occasions have become pretty rare. I guess that means that I am doing rather than saying; and doing is good.

I called darii on Saturday; we talked movies for a while and at the end of the talk I said something to the effect of "screw it, I'm coming up there and we're going to go watch Coraline". And I did.

I threw a few things into a backpack, swung it into the tailcase, spent a minute or two fiddling with my rain pants, and took off into the gray evening (it's gonna rain) without a second thought. I kinda miss just taking off halfway across the state just at random; I have too many rationalizations these days to justify such harebrained action.

Three hours later I was up at the house, and we were laughing and drinking and messing about just like old times. It was good. We hit up a 10 pm showing of the movie and it was the first time I'd ever been in an empty theater with one friend. We took full advantage of the opportunity to talk, loudly and irreverently, throughout the whole weird movie.

Yeah, I miss doing stuff of this ilk. You get old, you get sane, and life just isn't fun anymore...

2009-02-11T22:34:00.000-08:00

Large fusion reaction in western sky blotting out all visible objects with its overpowering radiance. Heavy traffic emerging from the center of the inferno, whipping by on either side. Squinting doesn't help see stuff. Curses, curses on picking this time of day, or night. There is supposed to be an intersection coming up here somewhere but be damned if I can see it. Oh. There's the barber shop off to the right. Intersection should be right here. Should...be....

Red light = 1.

Motorcyclist = 0.

Red light = 1. A long honk lashes the air.

Motorcyclist = WTF. Glances at the mirrors. Burnt retinas make out the receding glow of a red traffic signal. Not cool. People die doing stuff like that. Death by inattention, it's called. So ladies and gents, wake up if you want to live, yeah?

(and sunglasses can help with that sometimes too)

2009-02-07T22:28:00.000-08:00

Ventura is so beautiful at night from that little turnoff of Foothill where I didn't dare stay more than five minutes with my lights shut down and visor open. Too much traffic. Some passing meddler would call me in..."I'm seeing some suspicious activity by the avocado orchard, yeah it's a biker just sittin' there, lights are all off, must be waitin' to meet somebody"

I'm in no mood to deal with inquisitive cops right now....no mood at all...

beautiful and the stars are out and it's ice cold, the aloe are coated with frost...

2009-02-07T21:32:00.001-08:00

It is late at night, and the world is a horrible place full of panic. I should go for a motorcycle ride to nowhere. They can't follow me or find me there, as long as I keep moving, as long as I keep the brights on....Where? Which nowhere?

*grasps helmet*

2009-01-22T10:41:00.000-08:00

Streams of water dribble from the crack in the roof edge; the silent patter of rain trickles into the gutter and washes out of sight. (Dammit for not waking up at exactly the right time! Why did she have to leave early today?!) I work the cover off the bike, one corner at a time, helmet and sticky gloves in the other hand. (Should have wiped all that excess mink oil off these). The helmet goes on the seat, and I squeakily bend down to unlatch the padlock from the rear wheel and straighten up, vinyl stretching and squeaking everywhere. Cold air washes through the carport, cold air smelling of damp citrus leaves. (I hate wearing all this vinyl. hate it. but it keeps me dry, so I shant' complain). I pick up the helmet and shove it down over my face *flthlppp* snapping the visor closed like an astronaut about to perform a spacewalk. Which, in some removed sense, I am. The wet atmosphere is hostile to core temperature and early morning consciousness.

I glance briefly at the clean motorcycle, soon to become muddy and dirty, and then slide over the seat, squeaking. We'll see how good the new Scorpion S/T is in the wet and nasty. I back over the gutter and the little waterfall hits me in the back of the neck, inducing shivers. Have I never mentioned that I am NOT a fan of riding in the rain. If I were in Oregon I would hate my life, for sure....

2009-01-20T18:24:00.001-08:00

The chain of stoplights along Harvard Boulevard slowly blink red, beginning far, far away and sequencing backward. Something about the dusk haze of 3 hours of running around tending to all the little scattered chicks makes me want to twist the throttle and leave things behind for a few hours. That and remembering past lives and not being able to sleep. I'm not awake enough now; the afternoon was long and I am drowsy. And here I am at the carport already, good grief. The motorcycle ticks over quietly to itself. I cut the ignition. Do I really not want to go anywhere? Should I lock it...I lock it. Cover it. Start walking, gloves in hand. Tonight, not the night for aimless and desperate wandering.

2009-01-08T14:39:00.001-08:00

It's Thursday and I'm not looking forward to Monday, sort of like one doesn't look forward to the last curve at the end of the road because one is so exhausted from negotiating all the previous ones...

...my motorcycle is in the garage, without a rear wheel, waiting for a final-drive chain, so I am in a very, very foul mood. This is why I need to own more than one vehicle, so that my abilities to get about continue uninterrupted. Life cannot be lived, staying in one place.

I dread getting old.

2008-12-28T00:40:00.000-08:00

SO I'm a Californian now.

I went home for Christmas and it wasn't home anymore. That's how I know.

(Oh well, we all have to grow up someday.)

It sure was nice to have some peace and quiet for two days straight, though. To be able to walk outside and hear nothing but silence, DEAFENING SILENCE, and the distant gobble of wild turkeys.

2008-12-15T20:43:00.000-08:00

"ya didn't get to heaven but you made it close, you made it close"

-Coldplay

2008-12-13T01:50:00.000-08:00

31,000 miles.

Nein problems. (well, ok rattly cam chains, but that doesn't count)

Suzukis rule.

2008-12-03T22:37:00.000-08:00

Annoying fact about sequential gearboxes: you can't downshift from 6th into 1st.

This is annoying chiefly when traffic comes to a smoking halt on the uphill freeway, and all one's attention is focused on stopping at the expense of shifting. And then one is left, stock-still, while everyone begins to move off on their merry way. And one ignominiously struggles off to the left side of the road and works the throttle and shifter until such gear is reached that one may actually move. By this time traffic is moving at a goodly clip next to one's right shoulder and one hopes and prays everything clogs to a stop again, so that one may rejoin the stampede. And then (a gap!!) one loses patience and performs a spectacular redline merge, bits of retread and litter flying in all directions.

2008-12-02T19:33:00.000-08:00

bleach.

yeah, the solvent kind.

My hands smell like bleach. (Had to scrub a sidewalk) And that smell is penetrating...

2008-12-01T21:54:00.000-08:00

I finally got around to ordering and installing the Suzuki gel seat for the DL. Long, long overdue. It feels like a different bike now, really, now that I don't feel like I'm sitting in a tree crotch. Distances are now tolerable without ibuprofen. And damn, the new seat just looks classy. Slick, stylish fabric on the drivers half with elegant stitching all round the passenger accomodations. It looks almost handmade. Almost.

Yeah, yeah it's getting there. What amazes me about this motorcycle is that is has been perfectly acceptable bone stock for over a year and a half, and 30,000 miles. The slightest addon's and modifications are necessary, and when made, seem to make a vast difference in the quality of living. The electrical headlight switch relay boosted the headlight output by a good 40%; the Givi top box added all the practicality I need; the crash bars saved the radiator recently; the centerstand needs no explanation and now the seat makes it seem like I got cranky and fed up with the stock seat and replaced it, like any loving owner would.

Now all I need is handguards and to spend 3 minutes with a screwdriver and raise the windscreen...

oh yes, and I need to wash the damn thing.

2008-11-23T21:55:00.000-08:00

I grasp the white tightrope with groping fingers, feeling my way across the face of the cliff. The glistening city shows, in a sideways glance at the triangle of mirror, and is gone. Ice smears the asphalt, the wipers chudder across the pelted windshield, and the blindfolded glimpse of road ahead wavers, pulls inward and fades to bright white

The glaring eyes of a descending monster peer at me, headlong through the fog. Their rainbow coronas grow in size until the beams whip by, trailing long green scars in the dark. That was close.

Steady on, roll it slow, feel your way, feel the headlights along that bright white fogline, the fogline that is your salvation. Tiptoes now, icy icy, don't stray an inch because the edge is there, the cliff is there and you will die.

Another monster shows between the wagging wipers, another pair of intolerable eyes tear the darkness into green swipes and are gone. Feel it, feel the road now...

2008-11-12T19:51:00.001-08:00

It is not a question of which viewpoints are positive and which are negative; merely that of the positive some have a higher priority than others, which mean that some have a lesser positive value.

Unity over progress, except that progress that transcends unity; morality over unity and the good of the whole subservient to the good of the part. Whether the subjective has more value than the objective is a silly, silly question, for of things differing in kind no relative comparison may be made. Yet between things differing in kind, differing as the image differs from its principle, a relation exists. Whether the subjective has more value than the objective becomes, then, the only question, for if the creature is to have any value toward the creator, he must know himself as much as he must know his creator.

I think people would be grateful if I stuck to tire reviews. Sorry.

2008-11-11T15:32:00.000-08:00

So, and now of motorcycle tires.

Dunlop D607 Trailmax tires are not very good. They are cheap, but they are not good. They slip and slide about in the wet, feel squirrelly in the dry, are completely worthless on dirt, wear out quickly, and generally blow chunks. They skate across tar strips, and two fingers on the front brake easily lock up the front wheel on wet intersections.

Not cool. Matter of fact, they're WORSE in the rain than the Bridgestone Trailwings that came on the thing, and I didn't think that was possible. Nothing has yet measured up to the expensive Metzeler Tourances that lasted forever, or until I put 3 nails through them; stuck like glue; but were expensive and made the bike feel like it wearing snow-gloves on its wheels. And I hate that. The Strom doesn't exactly have laser-precision steering in the first place, not being a sportbike; so I am very particular about getting a good tire for that.

So far then, we have:

Steering Accuracy: Bridgestones
Dry Stick: Metzies
Wet Stick: Metzies
Dirt Stick: Metzies
Corner Confidence: Metzies
Longevity: Metzies
Price: Bridgestones

Dunlop didn't even score one, so they get scratched off. *scratched*

The search continues...

2008-10-30T11:11:00.000-07:00

It looks light gray and rainy and I smell rain in the air, but I know better.

It was not so long ago when I was learning about not skidding a 550-lb, 108-horsepower gorilla of a motorcycle. Blown dust and leaves and faded red 1982 paint, the smell of gasoline in the morning, filling up at the pump for less than ten dollars. The harsh shout of a 4-2 exhaust. Old suspension springs bottoming out over railroad tracks. A chest full of 70 mph air, and research online to see what windshields were about. Agonizing whether I had enough money to afford a proper full coverage shield. Evil, frosty bleary mornings shivering under my jacket, mind over matter and destination over journey spurring me on. All that stuff. It was a long time ago, and the crisp edges of the new experience and New Way to See the World have worn down to smooth blue grooves of daily routine. It gets so nowadays that I can't remember the last time I was thinking about the line I took through the last curve, or what gear I was in, or what intersection was the most dangerous, I just sort of ride and think to myself about whatever problems I think about and before I know it I am home, or somewhere else, and that is that.

It's fall. I should go ride somewhere just to breathe in fall-ness.

2008-10-26T19:30:00.000-07:00

"Not by bread alone is man saved but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God."

Belief: the sure knowledge that something is true; be it by proof or by trusted testimony. Belief may not be caused by sensible things alone, nor may it be caused by an abstract idea alone. Both must be involved for the soul and the body believe, for knowledge to be had. And of these, of the soul and body, the soul has primacy for its motion is closest to God. Hence the primacy of the Word in the causation of belief. Yet this is not to discount the necessity of the sensible, hence the necessity of signs, in the history of God's people; sacrifice, sacraments, without which signs belief may not be had.

2008-10-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

Good morning America, it's another beautiful day in California, and as long as there is the potential for rain, there is hope....

2008-10-23T21:55:00.001-07:00

"Hey. You know you should never post when under the influence, tired, and bitter. But you ignore me every time I talk to you so go ahead, knock yourself out. The day you learn to restrain yourself will be the day you begin to evolve, and that day I await with great anticipation."

"Oh, bitter, are we? Oh, tired are we? You're damn funny."

"Stop talking to yourself."

"I'm not talking to myself, I'm talking to you."

"Stop talking to yourself."

"You're evolved."

"You're #@*#$."

(Evolution is the new existentialism, in case anyone was wondering. Next it'll be socialism, and after that I'll make something up to use as a new swear word)

2008-10-23T11:38:00.000-07:00

"I don't think I understand what he's talking about. I see his mouth moving and all that's coming out is blah, blah blah blah."

2008-10-18T10:43:00.000-07:00

Faith is said to evolve

but evolution may be of two kinds for the motion of logic is either circular or linear

the first is an infinite progress which is a travel from lesser to greater along an infinite line, which is a reductio ad absurdum since the only infinite motion possible is on a circle, and motion on a circle may hardly be considered progress. Motion on a continuously created infinite line is also reductio ad absurdum, for it would be coincident with the progress of evolution, thus denying the existence of the line. This first sort does not resolve, then, to the principle of non-contradiction. (the principle of non-contradiction: that the same being may not both exist and not exist in the same manner, at the same time and in the same respect)

the second is a travel from lesser to greater along a line having an end, which progress presupposes an end which may be reached, thus culminating the evolution at its highest possible degree. Only this second sort resolves to the principle of non-contradiction and is that which in orthodox thought is called "expression" of faith rather than faith itself.

If faith is a simple being it may not evolve

If faith is a complex being or an attribute it may evolve

rejection of simple faith -> acceptance of evolution of faith -> acceptance of subjectivity of faith (for all evolution exists within the subject) -> crushing of individual subjective expression of faith and acceptance of consensus -> theological slavery to any blind fascist

all this, to escape the theological slavery of objective truth? And now, more miserable than we were before, we must tread the path of blood and tears, back the way we came, back to find faith where we left it two hundred years ago before Descartes....

2008-10-14T22:51:00.001-07:00

if I were the sort to develop crushes on movie stars I would have a crush on Summer Glau, mistress of the creepy poker-face and of the little girl inside just trying to figure out how the world works (while it goes up in flames in her wake). Go watch the Sarah Connor Chronicles and see why. Actually no, huge waste of time, watch Firefly instead. Far creepier in Firefly.

(Fortunately for all of you I'm not of the sort, otherwise this blog would be much more stupid than it already is.)

(NB: She was homeschooled from third grade through high school.)

2008-10-01T22:25:00.000-07:00

it is hot.

I can't sleep.

I ca-a-a-n't sle-e-e-p.

it is ten thirty at night. There is nothing more I need to do but go to bed (BUT I CAN'T SLEEP). My coffee-maker is all set up and programmed to start at 7:30 am so I don't have to fumble about in the freezer for coffee-grounds. The bowls and spoons for breakfast are washed.

The night noises filter in through the open door. A pickup truck revs its engine, stops and the noise of squealing rubber fills the silence as it takes off down the street. Some kid getting all excited. One can hear the occasional yelling from across the street, a child crying. Boys on skateboards rattling along the sidewalk in the dark, pushing and mocking each other.

Someone's timer goes off next door.

It is quiet. The screen glows peacefully to itself. So many things I didn't get done today and that I won't get done tomorrow unless this heat wave breaks and I feel capable of doing something other than sit collapsed in my desk chair all evening...If I was someplace humid I'd be positively dead right now...

2008-09-28T22:21:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-09-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

"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....

2008-09-14T22:43:00.000-07:00

"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.

2008-09-13T21:44:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-09-07T23:18:00.000-07:00

2008-09-07T11:08:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-26T20:05:00.000-07:00

I have no motorcycle. It is in the shop til Friday. (twas tipped in parking lot. again.)

I hate my life; it is not worth living.

2008-08-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

fresh young faces, invigorated conversation, and "where are the hedge shears"

sigh.

I hope they all work out, for my own sake. I don't want to go around breaking knees at the same rate I had to last year. And I hope they all work out for their own sake because no one ever realizes how much easier life is made by consistency and responsibility on the job...esp. when one does not have a lot of time to play with.

2008-08-18T21:04:00.000-07:00

Well I’ve drunk to drown, on every ocean I’ve been
Lake Tanganyika, where the crocodiles swim
Halifax, Nova Scotia to Van Diemen’s land
Well I drank with the Sultan, down the Suez Canal

Cause Every Dog Has Its Day
Like every woman, she gets her own way
And if there’s a ship that sails tonight
I’ll captain that too, just to be there with you

- Flogging Molly

The road is a deceptive beast, it is.

I thought of the imagination-trips I made when I was a little kid, riding my gray stallion through the hills of Apache country. I was heavily armed with a Winchester rifle and two Colt .45's, (appropriately shaped birch branches) herding cattle through the gullies to Yuma through the most dangerous country in the West. Now, packaged in a cheap Korean car listening to Latin trance to keep myself awake, I was on the blazing white rails of Highway 10, completely unarmed, just trying to get through without notice.

The slash canyons and tumbleweed rises of Geronimo's country unrolled itself to the foot of the mountains, dusky far from either side of the high freeway. The trailers and dusty cars of Geronimo's people lay scattered amongst the hills where once brush huts and twists of smoke used to arise. It was a sad sight, it was...the sagging Oldsmobile creeping along the road, loaded down with humanity and mattresses. The clotheslines run from the rotting trailer roof to the scrub oak, framing a huge graffiti tag on the wall of the decrepit dwelling. The stoic glare on the weatherbeaten face of the young man leaning against the streetsign, backpack in hand. They know what they had and what they lost and how it was taken from them, oh they remember. And I, the white man, leaned on the accelerator to escape the accusing stares of the broken storefronts and gaping windows. Sounds like a war zone, you say. Isn't it a war zone, I say. They will never forgive us, and we have forgotten them. We give them their casino permits and welfare, but they are irrelevant to us. We have their land; if they don't want to partake of our culture, well that's their own foolishness, eh?

2008-08-17T20:23:00.000-07:00

The Abbot's voice was low, but the stone of the abbey chapel resonated and trembled beneath its weight. The deep tones were taken up by rows of grey-clad monks, chanting, chanting in unison, the growl of a million spiritual horsepower sending a stream of prayer to heaven like a river, crumbling barriers impenetrable to ordinary folk. The sheer brute force of charity present in this prayer is tangible, you can practically smell it and taste it....A daily routine for them, yet never routine.

Say the rosary at home, that's one thing; listen to an old man who has spent his life in prayer say it, and it's another thing entirely.

2008-08-12T22:33:00.000-07:00

"You need to make it back safely, because we need you" the man in the wheelchair said. "God bless you, have a safe trip."

"God bless you." I hung up the phone. Perhaps it is good to be needed by a man in a wheelchair and a tall woman in a large straw hat. It is definitely painful to stand on the edge of their patio outside their mansion and contemplate the wispy, brown trees and scorched abtiniya, the dusty sand where lawn should be, the generally burnt patch of land with the very beautiful house in the middle of it. Sad, it is. So I have been successfully guilted into this, and it sort of happened without my knowledge, the hypodermic needle slipped into the clothing.

Dammit, I need a truck and a rake and a shovel and glue and PVC, and fittings. Especially a truck. With a truck, I can do things. Without a truck, I am useless. Worse than useless in fact since I am reliant then on the mobility of the client to do their job, which is wrong, just wrong.

But I don't have time to think about trucks and shovels and money because I'm going on vacation, I'm trying to finish 3, 4 or 5 tv shows and rebuild a motorcycle and do my job and my boss's job both at once so my dear landscaping does not wilt beyond repair. I am an insane man living an insane life, so I ought to be happy. I'm pretty sure that if I ever get randomly shot walking out of my apartment my last thought won't be about how I ended up here but about how I forgot to empty my digital camera yesterday again.

Also, on an unrelated note, I have to resign myself to the fact that I'm a racist. I do not, and never will, understand extroverted cultures, like the one I'm in the middle of. They irritate me. They have no abstract sense of responsibility or morality, substituting for this a sort of tribal familial code. I don't understand family. I don't understand a mentality based on the sufficiency of the family unit as opposed to the sufficiency of the individual. I was raised to kill my own snakes and take personal responsibility for the ones that got away. I was not raised to help kill our snake and then look about in vague confusion after it escapes our hands. If I don't have enough to eat, then that's a problem that I do something about, not a problem the government does something about.

I can deal with extroverted individuals, on a case by case basis. They're individuals. They're people. But I can't deal with extroversion in the abstract. Too friggin' much drama. I get angry just thinking about it.

So this place hates me, and I hate it. I guess that makes us about even.

Of course, I can't stand individualistic people either, but at least they leave me the hell alone.

2008-08-09T21:10:00.000-07:00

Don't look at me! It's your fault for being stupid enough not to plan your exits. Now you have to wait till this cavalcade passes, well sucks to be you. Take your rightful place at the back of the line, missy.

The BMW slices deftly between the fluttering California flags on the back of Bunny's burgundy Harley Road King and the glaring triangles of my headlights. Idiot. Asshole. Etc.

It's elementary. When you're dealing with a squadron of seventeen cruisers, it's common courtesy NOT to break up the group to make a stupid lane change. All right, so you really were blond and lost, eh? Make the next exit and go around the block!

Idiot.

2008-08-03T18:05:00.000-07:00

Dust rose from the trail. Five specks in a staggered formation crawled along the sinuous wash track along the foot of the mountain. The first speck was a white horse bearing a well dressed man, saddlebags and tack black and newly polished. The second horse, black and bearing a woman equally well dressed in new jeans and a white stetson. Third horse, whinnying and coughing in the dust, an older woman in well worn shirt, sleeves torn at the shoulders, leather chaps. The town of Fillmore lay ahead far ahead, a tiny cluster in the distance, a sawn-board cluster of storefronts. Steam rose from the cluster, billowing above the railroad tracks. The horses pranced from side to side in their walk, impatient to be home to their oats and silent stables. The sun beat down, dust coating the noses and throats of the riders. It was hot.

The foremost rider motioned high to the right, and a gigantic crane became visible behind a shoulder of mountain. It read Fillmore Pipeline. The man was the manager of this pipeline company, the horsewoman pulling up next to him was his daughter. The light turned green and the horses plodded on, one step after the next, their impatience subsided into lethargy. The lead horse whinnied, rattling the adjacent rock wall. The California Highway Patrol flew by, quietly, like a hawk on the pavement, a vigilant hawk checking speeds and tags and pickup loads I glanced back then ahead, the wisp of dust covering the riders had been swept into the patrol car's wake. Fringe rattled in the 55mph breeze alongside Daughter's white Dynaglide, pottering along its wheeltrack, her thin torso erect and proud as she grasped its handlebars. The lead horse had become a low swept assembly of black fleetside bags and glistening chrome, the rider clad in leather vest, half helmet and goggles; my own reins were a twist grip, my knees clamping some very shiny blue metal. We were a fleet rolling along the hot melted asphalt, headed toward a shimmering mirage. The cowboys. The last cowboys. They say there is gold up in these hills.... an eager young man looks about for a response from the weatherbeaten faces around him. They get a faraway glint in their eyes before breaking into conversation about veins found i the cuts made for the 5 freeway...about some ancient closed gold mines, still producing when their corporations and owners passed away....National Landmarks, fenced from the public with tommy guns and razor wire....

The last cowboys. Maybe not chasing bounties or herding cattle, but alone against the elements: hot dust and hot sun, dehydration and slippery pavement. Alone against the enemy, the hypnotic truck driver, the laser beams of the CHP. Alone against the world that cannot know their freedom, with only each other for recourse against mishap. Chrome glitters in the sun, open pipes rumble the ground, leather fringe flutters by. The weary riders shift in their seats and breathe the dust, peering ahead through the flow of traffic....

2008-07-26T22:16:00.000-07:00

All manner of humanity lies tucked and smothered into narrow valleys between five perfectly spaced ridges. Moms and tennis instructors and drug dealers and old men mowing their lawns and young men flipping their skateboards live and breathe and eat in the squalid air bottled down there. Glimmering lights begin to wink on, one after another. Streets begin to ignite slowly with headlamps, perfectly spaced thin grids of headlamps.

The five ridges stand ragged and stark against the soft blanket of incoming ocean fog. A low breeze rustles the plastic ribbon against the stake at my side. Click, click clic-k. Silence reigns.

The valley sweeps away below my feet, a valley of scrub oak and sage and wasteland. Here and there, if I peer carefully, I can make out a house. But it is all wild. Completely empty and wild all the way down the hill till the brown air of the valley begins. The fence in front of my chest has a yellow tag on it that says "ELECTRIC FENCE". I want to touch it with something metal and make it spark, but no, there is too much dry sagebrush about and last year the worst fires were all arson.

There is so much room in the world I am surprised that we insist on cramming ourselves into such narrow corners and then complaining that there is not enough room or food for everyone. I have seen open spaces that have nothing in them, and then tried to ride to the end of the spaces and there is no end, really. I eventually just find a road that takes me away in another direction and steers me back to another crowded corner of population.

Here there is a quiet crag on a silent mountaintop, an island of silence and sanity in an ocean of crawling, panting humans whoring after happiness according to the laws of technology, economy and sociology. Anyone who wants to take a minute from all that can come up here and park their car at the gate and walk out into the silence as far as they want. Answers are tied to noise and solutions and frustration; only in the quiet may one ask questions. Brown air can't reach up here, the smells of barbecue and cigarettes and the sound of hip-hop can't reach. One may be still and think whether the laws of technology, economy and sociology must rule life, and where those laws might come from. The quiet is friendly to inquiry within and the beauty keeps curiosity occupied in the meantime.

Beauty also reminds me, and I stuff my hands in my pockets and glare at the sun and wish she were here, and all reflection about sociology and economy becomes irrelevant. Gravel crunches under my feet as I drag along back toward where I came from. It is a gorgeous view, to be sure; all these multitude of mini-valleys but here I am all alone like a fool or a homeless person with my hands in my pockets crunching gravel and kicking stones along ahead.

2008-07-24T11:11:00.000-07:00

The chair is comfortable, the ceiling filled with demons, and the feeling of peace remains like a buffer between me and them, the peace that covers a multitude of sins. Peace, like a down blanket over the room, is receding slowly out the window. It's following her, I'm sure it's following her back home. I've been graced with this comfort for one day, unasked, uninvited, like a wraith. And now that comfort is gone again, as if it never existed - but it has left me settled, happy again and I smile at the demons. Kill me now, please, while I'm happy.

I could never figure this out: the times in my life when I have been really alone, but unwilling to recognize the fact, there is one person who shows up from nowhere to take the sting away like a healing salve. This is the second time this has happened. I've always been angry with this person. I don't want to be healed. Pain is weakness leaving the soul, so don't heal me. But she comes with sudden comfort and I become soft and pain is not useful anymore but something that is ugly and hurts. She can't make it go away, but she makes it not hurt.

And then I can't get away from her, everywhere I go I keep running into her, like a guardian angel. She lives in the hallways of my daily life. This is the really weird part. I never seek her out but I can't get away from her as long as she chooses to stay. Perhaps she IS my guardian angel. Poor guardian angel. I'm so sorry you have me for a job.

And this guardian angel is of such caliber that when she does leave, she leaves comfort behind for hours. And I am happy until enough time passes and things happen that I forget and assume again the accustomed cold burden and weakness and the demons come back to take up their posts and life is the same as always.

posting about posting

2008-07-21T19:41:00.000-07:00

My posts are too long. I can't seem to fix this. Whenever I try to recount a serial experience from beginning to end, well, I recount it serially; and motorcycling is of is nature such a firestorm of sense experience that every sensation is labeled clearly in my memory; everything from the nasty butterfly that decorates my windshield five minutes from home, to the Old Dominion freight truck with the words "flash me" scrawled in the diesel crud on the trailer doors. The slowly rotating boat propeller glistening ahead in the 2-second following distance; the young dentist hanging a pressed white broadcloth arm out the window of the nameless black SUV.

the world isn't big enough to hold it all....

Rim of the World

2008-07-16T19:29:00.000-07:00

2008-07-15T18:56:00.000-07:00

"Ok, for god's sake, youre going to get up at 5:45 AM in the morning and try to make early Mass in Pasadena so you can be that much further along on this gas-wasting, timewasting entirely unnecessary diversion of yours? It's just another twisty scenic road, ok, you know the type. Mountains. Rocks. Sagebrush. Trash, lots of trash. Graffiti. What exactly again are you looking for here? What's different about this one?"

Difference? What difference? There isn't any, if your asking me to quantify it in color or temperature or solitude or lack thereof. But it's a road I haven't seen yet. Okay I admit, those roads are getting further and further from my radius of operations. But California Highway 18 is another legend of motorbikers, tourists and (firemen) that I haven't seen yet.

So do I really need to think twice? It means I nix whatever I'd be doing to Suzi's guts over the weekend, but I've given up the idea of getting her back together by August. And I only live once and I only have gas money once, so is there really a contest here?

Not really. And I can get away with early Mass at TAC if I hurry afterwards.

The next morning was cool and foggy. A bit of surreality that always makes the (hurried) cruise down the 126 a trip through fantasyland. The breath of the leftover irrigation mists cloud the celery fields; mixing with the upper airs to cloak the mountain shoulders hither and yon. I glide on along the empty ribbon of asphalt, v-twin in its happy-zone, humming to itself in its peaceful refrigerator hmm. All manner of smells flow by along my face: the everpresent citrus, blended to the everpresent sage and tumbleweed (yes, tumbleweed smells) and the occasional whiff of plowed dust, ash and diesel smoke. Nutshells, onions and porta-potties, palm oil and lavender oil, adobe tile and citrus again, citrus and more citrus....

I swear half the scenery is smells. You, dear reader, unless you ride a motorcycle, have no frickin' clue what I'm talking about. But trust me, it's good. (Has a tendency to crowd out all those gremlins that find a clench-hold, you see, in the consciousness over a stressful week. They can't stand up to the deluge of sensations)

Uahum, freeway. Out of the zone. It was nice while it lasted but the onramp levers me gently into the teeth-rattling, turbulent reality of battling for my position in the left lane. People, people everywhere encased in steel and plastic boxes - Toyota Camrys, Ford F150's, Dodge Cummins Turbodiesels, BMW 750iLs.

Two hours ensue.

I almost miss the offramp. Then I do miss the offramp, chiding myself for falling asleep at the handlebars. But the mistake was easy to correct, and underpass and an invigorating merge later I am headed back in the right direction. The I-15 looms ahead and I arc off, northbound.

Wow. Boats. Boats everywhere. I feel like I'm on the river. Jeweled dashboards and salty hulls in every direction.....offramp, offramp to the 138, anyone? Could you move away so I can see the roadsigns?

2008-07-08T22:19:00.000-07:00

"It's been a long time."

"You're telling me." The vats of beer look shapely through the swirled bottom of the glass. Vats of beer. Vats.

Something settled on the surface of the bar that wasn't paper and wasn't glass. I tried to focus and missed the paper napkin.

"Well?"

"Hell, I'm not talking. I'm drinking." The foam along the sides of the glass shuddered as the bottom hit the wooden board, then slowly began to evaporate.

"Your glass is empty."

"Your hand is empty."

"And?"

"You've got eyes like..."

"Like what?"

"Like the Minnethota sunset."

"Thought you didn't like Minnesota."

"I didn't. Or I hadn't. Tho sinth when does it mather. But I do like sunthseth."

"Spare me the bullshit."

"I ain't teasin' ya, dammith!"

The glass slid almost of its own accord toward the bartender. I like beer, dark beer, light beer, and the wine that's saved for the last....

2008-07-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

The tobacco shop huddled darkly next to the glaring red stoplight set off the bright white t-shirt of the teenager pedaling a very familiar bicycle. It still has those $70 saddlebags I bought four years ago. With sudden recognition I averted my face as the light changed green and the whole intersection got an immediate earful of angry v-twin. It's been half a year and it still pisses me off. I don't have information to prove the machine is mine, so even if I WERE to go all ape and confrontational and shit there would be no way to follow through. I should have filed a police report. I should have cared. This is how I protect my stuff, this is how I defend myself....by convincing myself that at the time that it didn't matter, it's only a 400-dollar bicycle and I'm way to busy to worry about something I hardly ever used....

...only a 400-dollar bicycle....

....so what will it be next, coward? what will it be next? Your mailbox? Your wallet? Your motorcycle? Your girlfriend?

2008-06-29T21:57:00.000-07:00

LIST OF STUFF I need to get:

(I) Head

(a) cam chain

(b) cam chain tensioner

(d) cam end cap screws (originals chewed :))

(e) get messed bolt hole helicoiled

(II) Cylinders/Bottom End

(a) piston rings

(b) countershaft seal

(III) Body/Frame/Electrical

(a) regulator/rectifier

(b) new turn sigs.

....seems there might be something I'm missing....

2008-06-22T22:11:00.000-07:00

GOOD NIGHT!

THERE IS A F***ING BEE UNDER MY SHIRT!

hazards

pick a shoulder

THIS *******ING ******* ********* ************

******* ***** ******ING******

neutral kickstand switchoff biting tongue wait for oncoming traffic wait PULL SHIRT FLAPPING JACKET

little ******ER ***********

2008-06-15T14:45:00.001-07:00

I did my best to disconnect from my accustomed telemetry mode and look up from the tachometer and straighten up from the road every once in a while. In between turns I snatched glances into the yawning gulfs in the distance. I wished I was riding passenger and not having to drive; even smog ridden, the emptinesses framed by twisted granite castles were grand. Images flooded in, from a half forgotten anime movie...sunbursts of colored rock, towering pyramidal fastnesses. I arced round cliff after cliff, expecting at any turn to find a steam-powered blimp hanging in midair.

The road elevation signs kept reading higher and higher. 6000, then 7000 feet. The air was cold, the birds twittered in the silence, the asphalt hummed beneath the tires.

California 2, at least the western part, is basically 45 miles of linked sweepers along the crest of the Angeles Forest mountains above LA (Sierra Madres?) The pavement is smooth and of high quality, so that where there are no rocks on the road, an expert rider can hold sustained speeds of 75-80 mph. But there are usually rocks on the road, and few of us motorcyclists are truly expert at lines and brake points, myself included.

So I'm usually to be found puttering along somewhere in the vicinity of speed limit in the far right wheel-track, waving people by one group after the next. (When nobody is looking though I will find a nice low gear and dive into a curve, grinding a little bit more off my boot toe. Like that group of green fish I got stuck with in a long curve. I was uncomfortable letting them pass me in that curve, so applied the lash and dug in tight. I bet there's a visible bootmark all-ll the way through the apex. It's amazing how much grip a worn-out, leaking Tourance rear tire can muster)

Even cruising along, I'm struck by how different one's impression of the world is at succeeding 30 degree angles of bank. One may get a GREAT view of the bottom of the canyon because there one is, hanging over the edge of it. One becomes very intimate with all the little bits of debris along the side of the road and one wonders to oneself what their stories are - discarded camera batteries, childs' tennis shoes. Redwood trees smell much different from sagebrush and scrub at the lower altitudes; the air smells very different. And of course on the other side, the sky side, there is the coldly iridiscent mackerel sky, the Face of the Earth sculpted in granite glowering down upon one. (That's all the stuff one sees before one slows down some more and begins applying imagination and memories from the aforementioned anime-movies to the scenery....)

2008-06-14T19:44:00.000-07:00

I read stuff and find great quotes that I say to myself: "I have to post that on my blog sometime" and then I forget and don't.

Which is appropriate because no one reads this blog for quotations from books.

Although its content might be more substantial if quotations from books were its content, as opposed to filler posts like this one.

I'm still trying to figure out a good three-week adventure for a vacation this summer. It has to be road-trip-ish. It has to go to places far away. It has to be fun. It should make me a better human being and educate me on the great truths of the universe. And so forth.

2008-06-10T19:07:00.001-07:00

Only in California.....

....on Highway 126 may one be half asleep in the car, the pop station wailing in the background, when a good friend breaks the silence to announce that the singer is the goddaughter of his father and that this particular song held #1 on Itunes.com for six weeks straight.....

2008-06-09T23:08:00.000-07:00

"Heh. Hehehehehehehehehehhhhh."

"Heh."

"You've lost it."

(silence. I know.)

"hehh."

When will I realize that I'm really not that funny, and that people only smile and laugh because they care about my feelings and they don't want to see the expression on my face that would result from an honest expression of their feelings. Am I the only one out there who holds this opinion? If so, it doesn't matter. Why? In the end it's irrelevant. Experience tells me it's more relaxing to be unfunny and ignore the fact. Kind of like someone trying to imitate a retard, but with no malicious intent. But the attempt must remain just that, an attempt; for success would turn me into a comedic character (comedians imitate retards successfully).

Day 3

2008-06-01T17:44:00.000-07:00

Day 4

2008-05-27T21:47:00.000-07:00

Recovering from Day 3. Pics of Day 3 later when I have time.

Ironman The Movie is fricking cool. I have not had so much fun watching a movie in forever, (or since Batman Begins).

Day 2

2008-05-25T16:24:00.000-07:00

Sleep.

"You may think you're headed off on some great adventure. But I've got news for you."

More sleep.

Day 1

2008-05-24T21:02:00.000-07:00

Still without a plan, I pushed the "on" button on the coffeemaker and plopped blearily down in front of the laptop. Google Maps. Where haven't I been.

I've been along the coast; I've been up to 's Barbara, I've been down to Santa Monica, and everywhere in between.

There's some stuff by Santa Clarita I haven't seen though, so that's where to head. I downed my coffee, zipped into the textiles, and trotted off to the carport.

Mm, this feels good. The half helmet will be an experiment. I picked this thing up last week so I could put on and take off a helmet without removing glasses. It works for that purpose; but an unexpected side effect is that I feel I've taken the blindfold off. I can SEE everywhere, and the little retractable sunshield shades the upper half of my face protecting my eyes from bugs, if not my teeth.

I rolled out onto the freeway, headed east into the wrack of building gray clouds. I hope it doesn't rain. I'm NOT interested in experimenting with how heavy drops of water feel on my face at 60 mph. It's not supposed to rain. This is California, it won't, can't rain.

...won't rain...

...And it didn't. I was spat upon twice, but it never rained and I broke out into the sunshine at Castaic Lake with nary a welt on my chin. The chosen route was Lake Hughes Road, a curving highway slicing off into the Angeles Forest. It winds, winds, long 45 mph sweepers, hither and yon as the canyons deepen and the mountains begin to lose themselves in cloud. Before long I was slithering along sheer rock faces, striated in strange volcanic patterns broken by stark poles of charcoal where redwoods had once been. "Maintain Defensible Area" signs admonished homeowners to keep a firebreak around their property. The pavement was rough and shook the V-strom's suspension mercilessly; the road was evidently not well traveled and not a subject of taxpayers' money. I arrived at Lake Hughes, a small town with a big saloon around which the local Nissan 300ZX racing club had gathered, t-shirts, mohawks and all.

The subsequent three hours were spent exploring a road called Bouquet Canyon road. This road is a trickster. You begin at the beginning, become lost in its beauty and at the end it dumps you right out where you started, in my case Lake Elizabeth (yes, Elizabeth, there is a lake named after you. It's a resort, really, and a pretty posh one at that).

I returned via the way I came on Lake Hughes Road. Five hours is a bit much for one day's loop of pure riding with no real destination, eh?

2008-05-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day Weekend coming up. Where to go, where to go.

It is about going. The thought of staying at home is, of course, inadmissible. Heck even last year I found myself blearily fingering my keys between bites of late breakfast.

In fact, Memorial Day this year marks the first anniversary of First Long-Ass Ride. The epic crosscountry of a month later was only a gleam in my eye; I had to find out first if I could actually handle twelve hours in the saddle.

So the PCH was the logical proving ground. Had never been there, was long, and was convenient. I left at 9 am and flogged north to a little town called, oh what was it called. And then I turned around and came back and all I came out with was numb hands and a sore neck. The experiment was a success, and I decided that I could handle whatever I could be reasonably expected to throw at myself in the way of endurance attempts.

And Highway 1 is of course the most gorgeous highway in my little world and provided ample material for reflection upon the heroics of the veterans of the Second World War, particularly those assigned to the defense of the West Coast and more generally those in the Pacific Theater. One looks at the big rocks with velvety green grass, the nestled houses, and reflects upon the homes in a beautiful land which perhaps was the only thing keeping some boys marching....to protect this beauty from an evil foe.....

So, where to go, ...... hmm......

2008-05-19T00:05:00.001-07:00

Another long surreal stretch of freeway lies behind me, it is late at night, I am back in my hot dry apartment and it is time to sleep.

I wish the dude at the machine shop would call me back and tell me that he hates Japanese four-cylinder, 16-valve motors and that I should have known better than to bring him the piece of shit to fix. And tell me to take it somewhere else.

As it stands, I'm going to have to draw it out of him. I give him till Wednesday. If he does not call me back on Wednesday, I call him and ask if he can fix it or what, if he doesn't want to fix it, it's all cool JUST LET ME SODDING KNOW! I DON'T HAVE all summer. Well I do, but that's not something I should think about....

2008-05-15T22:03:00.000-07:00

"F--- it, Dude, let's go bowling."

- Walter, "The Big Lebowski"

2008-05-15T00:04:00.000-07:00

For sale; baby shoes, used once.

- Ernest Hemingway

Skid marks next to the heavy padlocked chain indicate the slipperiness of the carport floor. Spatters of wax are scattered along the floor, in a line with the rear wheel. I meditate upon the motorcycle-chain links running along as I spin the rear wheel around, spraying the chain with an aerosol can, adding to the layers of wax on the floor....Hemingway, Papa Hemingway, the master of the art of concise. What I wouldn't give to have a bit of directness in MY style...

2008-05-12T22:11:00.000-07:00

"Hence the simple assertion that Hegel denies the principle of non contradiction gives a quite inaccurate view of the situation. What Hegel does is give a dynamic interpretation of the principle in place of the static interpretation which is characteristic of the level of understanding.. This principle operates in dialectical thinking but it operates as a principle of movement." A History of Philosophy, Vol. 7 Frederick Copleston, S.J.

2008-04-28T22:13:00.001-07:00

why does life have to be so complicated? But it is said to be simple, it's just life and one lives it. Existentialists.

(existentialism = the new f-word...)

No more. I'm going to run away from complexity for about six hours until the sun wakes me up again and god forbid the heat in this stuffy apartment doesn't keep me awake all night thinking about living...

2008-04-27T13:51:00.000-07:00

Existentialism and by a more remote coin, phenomenology, end in despair. It is a sad picture to see, man gazing at himself, shielding himself from the reality that is a damaged and dysfunctional being, searching for hope through himself and finding none for there is none to be found. For man to seek himself as an object is to contradict the very philosophy he espouses, and for man to seek himself as a subject is nonsense. Hence existentialism as such can have no end, and without an end it remains an abortion of thought. The imitation of existentialist thought by artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Sam Francis and such expresses this visually.

For this reason the new springtime heralded by the new philosophy of The Person also must end in despair, shortly to be followed by the new theology of the Person. The roots of this new theology are to be found in phenomenology, whatever heritage the blossoms may claim.

....

it's coming, there's a couple of bits and pieces that fit together...

2008-04-26T20:47:00.001-07:00

time does not erode necessity

friendship exists for a purpose

unanswered questions draw answers more powerfully than any force on earth, even the fabled force of love is helpless against x + y = constant

words, containers, perception, mistaken human opinion

where does it all end? For if questions have answers, it really does all end, there is a real end, a real Thebes.

So, what good is history?

What good is ethics? What is the real value of these things? What is the worth of studying human behavior when the grace of God blocks any possible closure?

What is the worth of studying faith? Why does one fall prey to its mystery? Why can one not believe that faith may not BE understood?

WHERE do the ends meet, or rather where do the ends exist? So much fighting, so much war, and it's all about faith, all because of belief, all because of what we say we know when we really don't know it, we just believe it because someone told us we had to....

Unfortunately for my own sanity I believe in the principle of non contradiction. Contradictions between truths do not exist, for that defeats the very definition OF truth. Where contradictions exist, therefore they must only be apparent.

"What's all that about? Come on, what's it about?"

Never mind. Just never mind. I tried talking to you years ago and it didn't work, so it won't work now. Just...go away.

2008-04-22T16:45:00.001-07:00

What if everyone rode motorcycles?

The streets would be totally different. Narrower lanes, perhaps six lane roads that now exist as four. Retaining walls to block the wind and noise would be more numerous. Parking lots, vast acreage of asphalt, would fall into disuse and be reclaimed by nature. Instant Pennzoils would have chain-tighten services instead of automatic transmission services. Everyone would know how to drive stick shift. Everyone would pack light: small lawn chairs would sell like hotcakes. Small trailers would be popular for carrying groceries, and side cases would be child seats for the ones who couldn't pilot their own machines. Engine size would be limited to 250 cc for those under 18 and 90 cc for those under 14. Bubble fairings and lightweight roll cages would abound in the aftermarket. Driver training would be far more intensive and regulated. And transportation budgets in thousands of families would be cut by half.

Of course, no one would go anywhere when it rained, the phenomenon of living in cars would disappear, the accident rate would rise and accidents would be gorier and involve more children....

2008-04-17T09:49:00.000-07:00

This shopping center goes deserted at dusk, only one or two other customers were hastily finishing up their purchasing. I was alone with my handbasket and two or three items in the back of the store, headed toward the produce section. His face, looking out from the freezer amidst the cut green beans, caught my eye as I walked past. I looked again and recognized him and then recognized his sisters. I hadn't seen this family in years and they live nowhere near here. I greeted them silently and they waved back silently. Or perhaps my hearing was gone due to pressure changes. It was certainly good to see their faces again and to recall the memories of kindness in the brief times I shared with them.

Good to see their faces, yes...but where were the rest of them? I only saw some of them there. They must have split up. Like a small child playing peekaboo I kept my head down, my face averted, hoping to find them before they found me. The freezer ended at a plastic double door, and the next freezer section began beyond it. There a small body was hiding behind a cart, where I would have completely missed her if I hadn't been looking. She lifted her head briefly and I recognized her face. Overcome with joy and relief I ran across the aisle, knelt next to her and embraced her shoulders, whispering "I am so glad to see you, so glad...it's been forever..."

She wiped my hand off her shoulder and moved away, terrified. The black plastic flat she had been filling with carrots slid toward me and she dropped the vegetable she had in her hand. I slid myself back on my heels, frightened, wondering what I had done to scare her. The paper bag in her arm morphed into a woodcut puzzle with incredible detail, a farm scene with buildings and bony trees. The flat of carrots had also transformed into a wooden puzzle, a stained landscape burned onto its face.

I became aware of someone else standing over us. I looked up and her father was there, leaning against the shopping cart, smiling gently down at us.

She turned her face away, watching me intently from the corner of her eye. A drop of blood ran down the side of her face.

I stood up and turned around and walked away, all relief quenched by old familiar agony. Nothing would change, nothing can change...

fun and games day 3

2008-04-13T16:54:00.000-07:00

So there's this road I've talked about before. The Angeles Crest Highway.

It's one of those legends among sportbikers, you know, like Deals Gap in Virginia or the Ortega Highway in San Diego or the Mulholland Highway in Malibu. Gaggles of brightly colored sportbikes flow along its curves on nice weekends such as this, jinking and gunning and fighting for lines.

Anyway, today being a nice day, I took a detour on the way back from church and followed the signs to Highway 2, the Angeles Crest Highway. My original intention was to have myself a nice lazy scenic cruise for about 20-30 miles, find a good overlook and curl up with Hegel for an hour, turn around and come back. Sounds idyllic, right? Right.

The original intention was shot all to hell by a red Ducati 99something whose rider obviously was not intent on exploring the limits of his (her?) bike, nonetheless staying tantalizingly out of range of my increasing lean angles. After about five minutes of this unintentional hide and seek I gave up, found fourth gear, and began systematically scrubbing sidewalls. I was steadily catching up, and after a few miles found the pace Ducati was holding and we climbed together to 6000 feet.

Ducati turned around and went back down, but I wasn't quite to my 170-mile point of no return on the fuel gauge. So I went a few more miles and whallah, the most perfect overlook opened before my eyes. I had passed a couple of ski slopes and the conformation of the land here allowed for a few wide open views of L.A. I pulled over, found a fallen tree comfortably balanced on the 45-degree ski slope, sat on it and read for about 10 minutes, then turned myself sideways and fell asleep. (If it weren't for the fact that I was rather precariously lying on a cylindrical shape about 5' off the ground, in the open sunshine getting burned, and with a dinner appointment looming, I would quite happily have not woken up until sunset.)

I struggled myself awake to check my phone messages. I had a voicemail but service was so bad I couldn't connect. It was 2:30 anyway, time to go, time to get someplace where I'd have cell reception.

I held to my plan of lazy cruising till I passed the restaurant place. Wafting restlessly behind a green Ford Excursion, I noted a growing swarm of sportbikes building behind me. A yellow Ducati was in the lead followed by a black CBR and a blue SVS and numerous others.

The truck pulled over to let us pass, and like salmon from an open floodgate we rushed headlong through the open gap. Crap. Now I'm leading this whole pack of rice racers. I hate this. I'm not on a sportbike, so either I pull over or I stay in front. And I can't stay in front long if I choose that option because (1) I don't have big fat tires on a taut little chassis and (2) I don't have a lot of experience running twisties hard.

I resolved to go what was comfortable and if they just had to pass me, well they could go right ahead. I proceeded to go what was comfortable, slicing my lines as precisely as I could and keeping the v-twin spinning at 5000. To my surprise the yellow Duc stayed where it was. Okay, here's another dude not interested in wrapping it out. Obviously. Because there's no way a 417-pound, 62-horsepower 2-cylinder dual purpose commuter is going to smoke a Ducati.

And evidently no one behind him weren't interested in pushing the envelope either because no one passed anyone. I kept doing my thing, wondering if there were more SVS genes in the machine I was riding than I gave it credit for. The thing is, the V-Strom is so planted and predictable it really is very easy to toss around, notwithstanding its heft, lack of power and skinny tires. I ground deeper and deeper into each successive curve, watching the pack disappear behind me...slowed up in the straights and they caught up, took off into the curves again and they fell back. The yellow Duc stubbornly hung on, but he suddenly seemed to feel the need to hang a knee out on some of these curves. Had I really picked up the pace that much?

Apparently I had, because no one was very close behind him anymore. And it stayed that way till we arrived at the more civilized portion of the road, the one with prominently posted speed limits and more traffic, we all slowed to normal riding mode, said mental goodbyes and arced off to each of our individual destinations. I kept going straight hoping to find a convenient gas station before I headed home.

That felt good. Even if the competition wasn't trying, I had to feel a bit of pride in the ol' Strom showing its SV heritage through the daily denim exterior, and at least entertaining a Ducati-led wolfpack for a good half an hour or so. Eh, she can play hard when she feels like it.

(before anyone asks, Ducati is an Italian marque, v-twin with 1000cc displacement, noted for excellent handling and numerous Superbike championships)

2008-04-11T22:41:00.000-07:00

'Lost' is skipping and mistracking on me, and my computer's all dood, yo' only gots thirdy-fi' minutes lef' so give it up already.

Also I found out today that not only is machinery aware of my existence, but Highway 33 which I once took for a very dead, very inanimate strip of asphalt is also conscious of me. It likes to be ridden hard except where its icy and cooperates nicely as long as I am talking to it (via twistgrip). But the minute I stop paying attention it will throw me off it and look at me as if I betrayed it. However if I were to stop paying attention and get thrown off, I would be too dead to care. So it doesn't matter.

Had convergence today (an experience involved in riding 33 hard). It went like this:

Tanker truck crawls up hill at 25 mph.

Blue motorcycle buzzes back and forth in tanker truck mirror like an angry hornet.

Tanker truck pulls over half off the road into a turnout without stopping.

Large cleft rock approaches at end of turnout. Tanker truck begins to pull back into the lane.

Blue motorcycle, riding centerline, comes abreast of truck.

Road curves left between approaching rock cleft.

Blue motorcycle notes approaching rock at end of turnout, notes closing gap between truck, rock and curve.

Blue motorcycle drops a gear or three and launches. Small rocks cascade down onto the road behind it. Tanker truck pulls back fully into lane just in time to miss blue motorcycle.

Blue motorcycle meditates on mortality for about twenty seconds till the next curve comes up.

2008-04-06T11:22:00.001-07:00

"If the life of the Absolute is to be constructed by philosophy, the instrument will be reflection. Left to itself however, reflection tends to function as understanding (verstand) and thus to posit and perpetuate oppositions. It must therefore be united with transcendental intuition which discovers the interpenetration of the ideal and real, idea and being, subject and object. Reflection is then raised to the level of reason (vernunft) and we have a speculative knowledge which 'must be conceived as identity of reflection and intuition.'"

Why not Hegel, let's replace the Geist with some sodding 'transcendental intuition'. Drag it all down to the level of the mind, will you.

(I love the word 'sodding'. It's phonetically related to the word 'sodden')

By the way, props to Kakashi for making me borrow from the library Copleston's history of philosophy from which the above quote was taken. It really is helpful and goes a lot quicker than mucking through original texts.

2008-04-05T22:19:00.000-07:00

I am confused.

"About what?"

If I knew what I was confused about, would I be confused?

Where is the beginning in this pile of knots? How can a rope have five ends?

"Maybe your problem isn't the pile of knots, [epithet]"

Yeah, [epithet]!

([epithet])

2008-04-02T21:27:00.000-07:00

drinking painted lines like water

skiing asphalt holding tight

wave on wave twisting rocks

left and right

crests of surf hit his face

gulping salt monoxide

watching keenly, weighing distance

he runs gap of closing sharks

merging on the offramp

merging huddling flashing right

runs it through crashing behind

tiptoe tipshift up to a stop

a gentle squeeze and settle

toward silence, composure, left look right

2008-04-02T11:02:00.001-07:00

Some engineer can surely shave a few seconds off those stoplights on the Boulevard, no?

Time to work without stoplights, 8:07 am: 12 minutes
Time to work with stoplights, 8:15 am: 19 minutes

If only I had the balls to lanesplit, the stoplight problem would be considerably alleviated. But I don't. Lanesplitting is something I only do when desperate (like passing on the centerline inside a blind curve)

2008-04-01T09:32:00.000-07:00

Accidentally revved the Weestrom to 11,000 rpm on the way to work today. Redline is 10,500.

I don't think I hurt it...

I really need to get up earlier in the morning. And get to bed earlier on the previous evening. And eat supper earlier, make supper earlier, get home earlier, and leave work on fricking time.

2008-03-28T11:20:00.000-07:00

Twenty minutes to go before lunch, hamstrung at the desk until then. My mind travels back to the white, late model 330i that paced me all the way through town this morning and then all the way up the highway at just extralegal speeds when I wanted to be way extralegal. He (middle aged and balding) insisted on taking his own reasonable time completely ignoring the gigantic evil headlights weaving back and forth in his sideview mirror. Most people pull the hell over. He wouldn't budge. I debated doing a disused trick: a quick pass on the inside of a curve, gambling on no oncoming traffic. In the end I didn't.

It's those small things, the small annoyances like this that keep one alive to ride another day.

2008-03-27T17:30:00.001-07:00

Staring through bugs on your faceshield is like rubbing earthy fingers together after digging carrots. Not the most pleasant sensation known to mankind. Not having time to clean said faceshield is sort of like not having time to wash the hands before wolfing the lunch pbj and returning to business immediately.

2008-03-25T23:11:00.001-07:00

counting yarn, counting bits of yarn one after another, laying red bits of yarn in a row touching end to end. This is what people in psychiatric wards do to waste time, you know. Red bits of yarn turn to green bits of grass, green slime begins to pour up my arm, and my fingers wrap about the impeller blades like rubber bands in a Dali painting. May God have mercy on my patience lest it die a gentle death....

Start, damn you, START! There's fuel, I just cleaned out the air filter, the belts are not broken, it's not overheated anymore there is no reason why this should not be running no reason why none absolutely none it knows me and hates me it knows I exist machines are conscious they know we exist and they have organized to spite us the creature turns against his creator in a fit of impotent juvenile wrath and suffering....laughable in its narrowminded selfishness....mourning the loss of a bird. We have no sense of our own worth, and let that be a lesson, a reminder to calmly bury pride.

2008-03-18T23:14:00.000-07:00

leave the keys in my pocket and the handkerchief in the wind, the glow from the screen lights up the map. Arteries, networks of veins in blue and green and dotted gray cover the wrinkled old skin. Grass shows in the holes, the creases have been folded too many times over; young green blades of grass. An ant crawls across my pants leg. I like ants. They work a lot. Work is good. Very good. But now the sun has set, and it is time to move inside.

To move, to travel is inherently unnatural to man. To seek travel is unnatural. To travel for its own sake, that journeying we sing of and speak of with envy and shyness. No, man was made to work, and from work comes possession, whether of land or of goods. And land and goods imply stability, staying in one place, living and dying in one place with one's work and one's lands.

Goods, possessions drag man down, anchor him to one spot, prevent him from moving about.

Linear motion and circular motion; both species of motion; circular appeals to the infinite in man; linear to the finite. Man is both finite and infinite, and is capable of travel both in straight lines and in circles. To travel for its own sake is to travel in a circle; to travel for the sake of another end is to travel in a line with a beginning, a middle and an end. Man is incapable of circular motion purely and simply speaking; whether he will or no he is either developing virtues or vices and no life activity is apart from this development. All actions are moral actions. All growth is linear motion, rest bounds growth and is circular.

I think that is a live freaking moth up there. Why is there a moth in my tent. WHY IS THERE A MOTH IN MY TENT I can't sleep with insects on my face and I take care to insure that there are no bugs in my tent before I go to sleep

this is why I don't camp

cheapass

oh, and you contradicted yourself about circular motion

shut up

2008-03-15T23:19:00.000-07:00

The ancient Honda motorcycle puttered past me toward the Mission, the rider all but invisible behind the gigantic blue Tupperware container lashed to the back seat.

"Check out that rig," I said to no one in particular. "That dude's got it figured. Hey! That's me in a couple years," I pointed out the disappearing contraption to my companions.

"Yes, that is you. I can see you right now riding down the street with a gigantic milk crate strapped to your back". The Sprit laughed and with a knowing look turned back toward the rows of roses. I hopped up on the low rock wall and began to walk along it.

***** TWO YEARS LATER *****

I rolled the shopping cart next to the bike and heaved the box onto the back seat. Honeywell 16" High Velocity Stand Fan the box said. It was 3" longer than the amount of space on the rear seat, alloted by the tail box. Damn. I guess I could squeeze in there and still drive. The box stuck out on either side by a good four inches or so.

I opened the tailbox, pulled out my assortment of bungee cords, and looked up. There was an old man in the red Mercedes parked across from me, watching me with quiet curiosity. I went to work, lashing the massive (and heavy) cardboard box to the area available. The coffeemaker box went on top of that. (Technically I could have squeezed that one into my tailbox, but this was easier)

Load lashed securely to the pillion seat, I high-kicked myself into the remaining upside-down wedge of seat. Aah, this was very uncomfortable. Start the bike - shift into first - pull away into the street. Definitely awkward. But I can shift, I can steer, I can move, I just have to sit up very straight. Smiles showed on the faces of people waiting to cross the walk zone in front of the Target. Yeah, I guess I look like a bum. A very uncomfortable bum. The front of the pelvic saddle was definitely not designed to hold up my whole weight in this fashion on this uncommonly hard front edge of the seat.

I maneuvered out to the main road. So this is how it is when one can't borrow a car. I watched my rearview mirrors for the expressions on the faces in the car behind me. I'm being far too self conscious about this....

...ha, suck it ya'll who say motorcycles are impractical! I've got a freaking floor fan lashed to the back of my bike, and it'll stay there till I get home!.....

(It did stay there, up to and including about 85 mph. I'm still sore, but I now have a floor fan AND an automatic coffeemaker and I think of the Sprit and her serious look and I smile)

2008-03-11T23:22:00.000-07:00

"Hey um, do you know how this thing works?"

The two of them were standing, silhouetted in the brown streetlight. I couldn't see their faces. Traffic was rushing through the green light, battering the side of the old Accord in its wake, blowing tags off the trunklid. A teenage boy and his girlfriend, fussing over a brand new plastic carry-can full of gasoline. He was examining the nozzle trying to understand how this all went together. She had noticed my puzzled passing glance, saw her opportunity, and flagged me down.

(Why me? Why does the world interested in me all of a sudden? First there was that bunch of forlorn looking kids sitting on a pickup tailgate out of the trailhead up by the school, trying to wave me in. They got a curt nod for their pains; I had to get someplace. Then when I got home I stumbled into the acquaintance of my vertical-kittycorner neighbor whilst standing out on the street wiping bug flakes off my windshield. Talked to him for a good five minutes. I tell you, I have had more social interaction in the last 24 hours than I normally have in a month.)

"I might. Lets take a look." It's cold, it's dark, I want to go home and go to bed. This better be simple. I set my helmet on the trunk lid of her car, swung the backpack with my drafting materials down into the street, and picked up the instructional label.

I wasted about 30 seconds trying to decipher the illustration. The various nozzles, gaskets and plugs that came with this amazingly complex marine auxiliary gas-can assembly made no sense to me whatsoever. Either some part was missing or it was a flawed design. "Wow, this is a problem. I have no idea what this is about, man. Let's try this instead:"

I picked up the brimmingly full plastic jug and set one of the spouts into the fuel nozzle of the car. I began to pour the can into the nozzle.

"We tried that but it's kinda overfull so it was spilling all over the place." she volunteered.

"Yeah, well this is going to be the best way for you guys to get out of here. This should work. It's going to make a mess, ok?" Fuel began to splash down onto the street, bathing my hands and shoes.

No comment from either. "I'm hungry..." she murmured to her friend with a stifled giggle. I had judged correctly. They were more interested in getting out and getting dinner than washing the back fender of the car with gas, or watching a stranger wash his shoes with it. I continued to pour, carefully. The splashing lessened. I estimated that about a gallon and a half found its way into the car's fuel tank, and set the empty can on the trunk lid. "Good luck guys, have a good night."

I collected my stuff and walked off. Crap, now my hands smell like gasoline. Now the hand holding my helmet is going to make my helmet smell like gasoline. I shifted my helmet under my left arm and tried not to touch anything.

The Accord's motor cranked and cranked as I walked away. It was still cranking as I stood on the corner pushing the pedestrian-walk button. They're Californians, I said to myself, they won't crank the car long enough to suck fuel back up into the engine; they'll try for five seconds, run out of patience and give it up for lost for no reason at all.

Strangely, the starter whr-whr-whr continued, clearly audible over the traffic. Keep cranking it, that's right girl, keep cranking it. There's no fuel in the carb floats, that's why its not starting, but if you keep cranking it it will start. Not that you could possibly know what carbs or floats are. The cranking stopped. I looked back down the street. Don't give up, you silly girl. It will start if you try one more time. Try one more time....

The old car fired into life and pulled away, and I breathed a little sigh of relief. Now I can go home and go to bed instead of mothering some nameless teenager home. Lord knows my big brother instincts would have me putting those poor kids on a bus before I realized it was not my problem.

Those poor kids who couldn't get their hands dirty (whose mothers probably used to yell at them for getting their hands dirty)...who would have spent all night trying to figure out how to put a gas-can together instead of making a mess but getting themselves out of the situation....

....(pats self on back. Good big brother. Good)....

2008-03-07T23:34:00.000-08:00

The credits for 3:10 TO YUMA fade into silence, then the file stops and the screen glares white at me, filling the room with ghostly light. It's about 11:20.

As if in echo from the last shootout, a deep male voice cries out help me from somewhere in the direction of the dumpsters. Or maybe across the alley. Or maybe from the freeway. Or maybe...fragments of shouting float across the carport roof. Man, I can't tell how far away that is. Should I call the cops?

Should I?

I look out the window. I see the motion sensor light over on the carport blink on. There is silence. What would I say if I did call 911?

.....

Ten minutes later sirens wail distantly from the street across the drain canal.

Yeah, Friday night in a small California town too close to the city for anyone's comfort.

2008-03-03T21:19:00.001-08:00

The forks chuddered and rattled with their characteristic cheap-hardware clunking over the scattered array of cobblestones. Green light hah green green green revving up banking her hard HARD right yellow silver SUV stay the hell put and let me finish this maneuver... and through.... and past the corner.....

(why is the pavement so close to my right knee? Why is the longitudinal axis of the motorcycle not following the front wheel? It's not supposed to do that.)

(why do I feel like I am water skiing?)

(oh yeeeeah. 'Member last night how you went in and did the tire sidewalls all up pretty in that shiny silicone stuff? And then like an idiot you shined up all the outer tread blocks thinking that would complete the picture?)

(I remember that. Gosh this is weird. It's so smooth and peaceful, just like gliding it is, gliding along athwart the centerline)

(I wonder if the lady in that silver SUV is watching me. I wonder if her kids are watching me. I wonder if her kids are going WOW! Look at that motorcycle SLIDING! and she is going Now this is why you should NEVER think of riding motorcycles!)

(Glad I put those crashbars on when the wind blew this thing over. I hope they protect the engine. And I'm glad I'm wearing my kevlar-lined pants. I hope they protect my legs.)

(Okay, it's been long enough. It's been one and a half seconds and one and a half seconds is way more than enough time. WHY AM I NOT SPRAWLED ALL OVER THE STREET???)

Like a fisherman reeling a fish in on the line, the motorcycle has reeled is back end into its proper longitudinal place (slthrrrpppp - just like that!) and there! is standing upright and humming along toward the stop sign at 20 mph as if nothing had ever happened. I giggled inside my helmet. My motorcycle drives itself. It freaking drives itself! And this is not the first time! Suzuki I LOVE you, you have designed the DAMNDEST machine for beginning riders EVER! I swear it goes on self stabilizing autopilot when it senses the rider is no longer in control. I giggle inside my helmet again as I brake at the stop sign, peek into the rearview mirror and there is soccer mom in the SUV, stopped dead, with her hand over her face.

The trembling does not begin until I am well on my journey, off onto the freeway and giving thanks that I am undamaged, that it is undamaged, and it is just another sunny Sunday of another sunny week....

2008-03-01T23:48:00.001-08:00

I missed the exit and suddenly there was no more ground. Brown pillars soared into the mist, carrying my narrow freeway up into the clouds. The syncopated wail of electric guitars, in rhythm with the expansion joints, filled the ear pockets in the helmet as I flew along, white lines channeling me, railroading me ahead. I had no clue where this was going. I was along for the ride, clenched to the handlebars searching desperately for a cross street, an exit to somewhere, someway to escape this madness carried in the current of cars and trucks. No, please no, don't dump me into West L.A.! Anything but west L.A.! I'll take 10, I'll take Century, I'll take little surface streets I promise I'll never miss an exit again just don't leave me in West L.A.! They say no one returns from there alive!

LAX, spread out for miles beneath me, whirled around slowly as the freeway climbed and arced through the sky. The yin-yang symbol of Korean Air shone softly through the fog over the cargo building. I can't be too far from something I know.

The exit for Sepulveda suddenly appeared from nowhere and I exhaled, relaxing on the throttle and clutch, humming down, gliding down from the heights to the ground again. Normality resumes, taxis and Jettas and black clad Lincolns. A 767 fills the sky, thundering into the air, trailing mist from the wings.

The freeway in the city is a funny thing. It's like a river, it can carry you to strange places and you are only in control of where it takes you about half the time. The other half is left to the vagaries of traffic and the vagaries of your own sense of direction and distance. It may dump you anywhere and leave you stranded on any chevron island as you search for a way to escape your plight. It ebbs and flows with the time of year and road construction, with the forces of bureaucratic physics. It has sand bars and wicked snags, overhanging bridges and burnt-out exit lights. It is covered in trash and graffiti, the scum of the earth take refuge in the concrete nooks of overpasses. Unlike a river and unlike freeways in open country, it knows no peace and no beauty but only the ugly. And the dark and hellish determination and intensity of drivers bent on their own destination, their own exit, their own speed and schedule. Drivers like me. I watch a handkerchief flop lazily along the centerline. A pickup truck mashes it flat into the pavement and it lies there plastered as I race by. No roadkill, not even the dignity of dead birds or tumbleweeds. Just trash...styrofoam boxes....recycle(1)....ASK....

2008-02-29T21:07:00.000-08:00

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)

2008-02-28T21:31:00.000-08:00

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)

2008-02-27T23:39:00.001-08:00

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...

2008-02-24T15:14:00.000-08:00

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....

2008-02-18T12:40:00.000-08:00

Tomato soup.

It is wonderful.