When you ride a motorcycle, you find yourself in the middle of a liquid, kinetic dance. This is a dance between you and many other partners. Surrender and power. Light and shadow. Experience and intuition.

For example, how do you go around corners? Most people say “by leaning,” but it’s more than that. Leaning is a side effect. In the dance, cornering is really controlled falling.

The fastest path through a corner is as straight a line as possible. As you approach a corner you “pick your line,” which means to visualize the straightest path through the corner. You drift to the outside of the lane, then at just the right moment you back off the power and countersteer toward the outside of your lane, making the bike fall to the inside, and downshift to set up for the exit. You’re still banked over as you clip the apex of the curve, then, at just that instant, you apply power while countersteering to the inside, which lifts the bike back up and shoots you out of the corner. Surrender and power.

Sometimes, beneath a canopy of trees on a bright day, as you move at speed through the patterns cast by sun and trees, the flickering can be dangerously hypnotic. Light and shadow.

You ride as a part of your surroundings. It all touches you.

On a hot day, you can turn a corner into shade and suddenly find yourself in a pocket of air twenty degrees cooler. You can smell a fire before you ever see the smoke. You can ride so fast in rain that even through the jeans and gloves, the drops sting.

Years of riding are no guarantee of safety, but they do give you an edge. It’s like the mildest of psychic abilities; not precognition, but rather a predictive radar that is right too often to be mere chance. As you’re in the passing lane getting ready to blow by a truck, somehow you know that the guy in the Mustang caught behind that truck will suddenly turn inpatient and jump into your lane to zip around the truck you were about to pass. You back off and watch it unfold just as you knew it would, out of harm’s way. Experience and intuition.

You armor yourself: jeans, leather jacket, gloves, and helmet. More than this, you arm yourself. The most important weapons are those you carry in your mind: know that you are invisible. Don’t just expect the unexpected – know that it’s coming. And know that you’re still not good enough.

Beneath the gas tank in front of you, chaos is miraculously contained and controlled. The engine mixes air and fuel into an explosive mist, and a cylinder head compresses it to volatile potential, just as a spark converts it instantaneously into mechanical energy, forcing the cylinder head back down, thereby revolving a crankshaft that spins a gear that drives a belt that turns a wheel that pushes you down the road.

And how do you control all of that power? Gently, gently. Riding well involves small, precise movements. Your left hand covers the clutch lever. Your left foot changes gears. Your right hand works the throttle and the front brake (which is the only brake you’ll need most of the time). These work in harmony with each other, and must be used with a zen-like touch. All of this power and weight is controlled with a slight squeeze here, a mild twist there, exactly the right movement at exactly the right moment.

You need each other. Without you, the motorcycle is sculpture, cold and dead. Without the motorcycle, you are ordinary again, diminished, slow and clumsy. Excluded from the dance.

Your humble author, circa 1974

All of these are reasons enough, but mainly I ride because the motorcycle is a time machine. To ride well is to be young again, fluid and flowing, moving fast without effort, climbing hills without pain.

So that is why I ride. I have been riding for 40 years. I am just a beginner.

No, that’s not the name of my favorite porn film (that would be Poodle Spankers 3: Bad To The Bone). What’s in Pandora’s box is your favorite music – even if you haven’t heard it yet.

Okay, I know that most of the people that I pretend are reading my blog already know about Pandora, but if I can turn even one new person onto this amazing service, I’ll have made the world a better place.

Pandora Radio is a website. You can signup and enjoy it for free. It’s a fantastic concept that’s easy to understand: using alien technology discovered in the 1947 Roswell crash, Pandora will stream to you music you don’t even know you’ll like yet.

Just go there, tell Pandora what kind of music you like, and it will start playing music it thinks you’ll also enjoy. As each song plays, tell it if it’s right or wrong, and the results get better and better – in amazingly short order. You can create many different “stations” (styles of music or favorite artists) and switch from one to another at the click of a mouse.

For everyday listening, I gave up on radio for iTunes, because playlists meant only songs I like, no commercials, no talk. Now I’ve given up iTunes for Pandora, because it’s still only songs I like, no commercials, no talk – but I’m constantly discovering new music and new artists that I also like. I’ve even installed Pandora on my iPod Touch (free in the Apps Store in the iTunes Store).

Sadly, it looks like Pandora’s future may be at risk. Let’s hope that minds saner than those in the employ of the music labels prevail in time to save Pandora, or we may have to go back to blowing the dust off our radios to try to discover new music we like, wedged in the nooks and crannies between generic jocks, loud commercials, and incessant traffic and weather updates.

Pray it doesn’t happen. Once you’ve had steak, it’s hard to go back to cardboard.

…and bear in mind, I looked at myself in the mirror for 1 minute and 39 seconds this morning. This is still better:

 

Sit Bob, sit (good bike)

Last Saturday, I threw a hamhock over the saddle on Bob (my 2007 Harley Street Bob) and hit the road. This was a special ride for me, because it was to be my first attempt at a nice, normal day ride in several weeks.

Here’s what happened: about 3 months ago, my left hip started hurting. It was annoying, but I plugged along, keeping my spirits up with ceaseless bouts of insufferable whining. I saw a chiropractor, I got a couple of massages, and I whimpered to my personal trainer, but nothing really helped. Then, I got one last massage.

Now, you wouldn’t think this to look at her, but “Nadia” (not Erica’s real name), an attractive young woman in her early 20’s, is apparently possessed of spider strength, a knowledge of human anatomy well suited for The Inquisition, and a deep hatred of middle aged fat guys.

In all fairness, she did warn me that the deep tissue work she was about to do would be quite painful. But she didn’t tell me that this session of pain was a gateway to a whole new level of pain.

When I left 45 minutes later, congratulating myself that I had not screamed, cried much or wet myself during the session, I had hopes that I was on the road to recovery. I was soooo wrong.

Within 48 hours, I was in the worst pain of my life. That’s saying a lot – I’m 54 years old and have some significant mileage on me, including being hit by a car 30 years ago that totaled the motorcycle I had been riding. This. Was. Worse.

A couple of days later, I went to the ER. Their best guess (without an MRI) was “sciatica,” which is latin for “you were Hitler in your previous life, and you are finally getting what you deserve.”

For three weeks, I could hardly move. I spent my days laying on the couch and my nights laying in bed. Most of that time was used trying to find a position to lay in that didn’t make me yearn for my own demise. While I normally don’t even like to take aspirin unless I have to, I now found myself eager for each of my three daily doses of cyclobenzaprine, ibuprofen 800s, and Vicodin. When those were gone, I got the Rx’s refilled. When those were gone, I found an unused bottle of Tylenol 3s that had expired three years earlier, and munched them over the next several days.

Since then, for about 4 or 5 weeks now, I have tried to get back to normal. I’m working again, and I’m going to the gym 4 days a week. I only have to use my cane about half the time now. And I’m off the Rx’s, although I do have to take 1,000 mg of acetaminophen plus 400 mg of ibuprofen 3 times a day to get by. (I know, but I’m hoping my hip and back will stop hurting before I actually need a liver transplant). 

The Comeback Trail

Anyway, the point of all this is that, after small test rides around town the last two weekends, I finally felt strong enough to try an all day ride. With a full tank of gas and a full bag of non-prescription painkillers, I left Portland and headed out Hwy 26 toward the Oregon Coast. It’s only a 90 mile ride in a straight shot, but the whole point was to get some mileage on Bob and myself, so I turned SW onto Hwy 6 and rode thru 50 miles of beautiful, gently twisting scenic highway to Tillamook, an Oregon coastal community known for it’s cheese and… uh…

Anyway, then I headed north on Hwy 101 to Cannon Beach, a small town that has embraced tourism the way the 1980s embraced bad hair. Once there, I took Hwy 26 east all the way back to Portland, stopping just once at a huge log cabin restaurant that evidently prides itself on serving the World’s Worst Clam Chowder.

At the end of the day, as I finally pulled back into my garage, I looked at the trip meter: 235 miles! I congratulated myself on an amazing comeback. Then I proudly fell off the bike and crawled into the condo, whimpering all the way.

I’m not a member of any organized religion, but that doesn’t mean I’m not spiritual. A yearning for transcendence and years of shallow thinking have led me to the following observations:

Proof of a kind and loving God:

• Motorcycles
• Mac OS X (and most Apple hardware)
• Women (ever see one naked? OMG, that is seriously great design)

 

Proof that even God has room for improvement:

• Donuts are bad for you and beets are good for you (I mean come on!)
• I’m not filthy rich (okay, that may be a bit arbitrary)
• Falling off something tall can kill you (just seems a little harsh)

 

Proof of the existence of Satan:

• war
• disease
• bluegrass music

I have written these words, and you are reading them, which proves that I have successfully launched a social networking website. Therefore, I want to announce that I am seeking an initial round of angel funding, or better yet you can just buy me out. If you can’t afford to make a serious offer to Mark Zukerberg, you will be pleasantly surprised by just how little I can be had for.

While I’m waiting to become a complete sell-out, I’ll try to think of some random stuff to blather on about. Don’t miss a precious word – be sure and bookmark me.