Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Just biding the time with a motorcycle

What's up world. It's Tuesday night, and if you know me well enough you know that Tuesday nights deeply calm me. I've written quite up a good outline on why that is in one of my previous posts. Check it out if you are so interested.

I wanted to write a little bit tonight about riding. Riding is not what I had expected it to be. I had expected it to be a toy. I was expecting a giant expensive toy for my bad-ass self to play with. I thought it'd be something like a seven year old boy getting one of those Hot Wheels looptyloop tracks; something I'd get excited for due to how fucking cool it is. Something where I'd be like "look Mom! Look at how fast it is!" and invite my friends over to come see it just to make them jealous.

Of course that's all part of owning a Ninja, but it's the actual riding part that has given me more happiness than I was exactly anticipating. I basically break down the feeling of riding into two categories.

The first is exactly what I was expecting. Riding is a sport that I could expose myself to and eventually learn, offering a good deal of expensive and dangerous fun. This includes the high intensity aspect of my riding; racing down roads as fast as I can while working on any semblance of technique I could render. It's the fun in seeing a warning sign suggesting not to go over 30mph on a turn, then slowing from 70 to 55 and seeing the pavement three feet away from your helmet. It's the fighter pilot in me. Have a fucking monster, go fast, go hard, or go home. I have such a small but efficient device that can turn me into a missile, so use it.

Then there's the second category of riding, which I was not expecting. This is the aspect that rather caught me off guard. Going fast is the whole point, but you have to go slow on most of the roads closest to me. But even when going slow, through boring neighborhood or park roads, riding is such a satisfying ordeal. I see things differently on a bike versus in a car. In a car people take the most efficient route possible and don't see shit. They see Shelbyville road to and from your house and that's it. Whatever gets them where they need to go. On my bike, it's like exploring. As long as I take the road in the right direction, I'd rather see a new road and take the path untraveled to get me places. Traveling this way in a car is a pain in the ass, on a bike it's extremely satisfying and nostalgic.

Whether it's a new road or not, everything I see from the saddle of my bike somehow flips a switch in my mind and brings a buried memory to the surface. As you could tell from this blog, I really enjoy reminiscing in good memories. It reminds me of how great my life is and my head is completely swarmed with good thoughts. It's euphoric and I feel sorry for people who never find a way to feel the same way. It's also hard to explain, but I can list of examples endlessly.

Just today, I was chasing a train down a side street like the cliche movie ride-off. Being so close to a train, I thought of how crazily excited I would have been at 8 years old (I used to love trains). Simultaneous almost every memory involving a train that I forgot I remembered came to the surface. I was riding down Lucas Road at 35mph thinking of the train set my dad and I played with for hours on end, watching trains go by from the backseat of my mom's car on the way to the grocery store, or pretending to be a train operator on my mountain bike using the sidewalk as tracks. That all stemmed more memories of childhood friends like Nick Hawkins, and the games we used to play. And it only takes a few seconds of this flow of consciousness before it feels like my head is light with everything good.

Then I pass a street sign that reads "River Bluff Rd" which directs a new flow of happy thoughts to the surface. This causes me to remember when I first rode my mountain bike to Doug's house, passing a road called "Lake Bluff" at the bottom of a hill, and wondering what a 'bluff' is. I was familiar with the fictional Tauren Capital City of "Thunder Bluff" which had quite similar scenery to the Golf Course adjacent to Lake Bluff Circle, which was from a videogame my friend Alex and I took a bit too seriously. From there I remembered many good times with Doug and Alex and even took into account how often I would ride my bike from Doug's, Alex's, and my house.

Less than a minute after passing River Bluff Rod, I came across a warehouse that reminded me of a warehouse I once drove past on the way to my first high school party. Then I remember once flying over that same house and recognized it from the air, and in the same flight flew over another party house, Dani's. Then for the third time, my stream of insight shot at machine gun speed with every good memory of parties I'd forgotten I remembered between those two houses. And then settled at a stop light with the cozy thought of having such a successful party career through high school, and pleasantly thanking myself for not letting it get in the way of college, or my master goal.

And for the time spent riding when I'm not trying to kill myself, those three paragraphs describe what's going on in my head constantly on my bike. The overwhelming amount of happy thoughts make it satisfying and blissful incomparable to most anything I've done. Even flying.

Most pilots say that when flying they experience the same stress-free mental heaven I'm describing. However, I for some reason don't. Flying is on a whole different level of satisfaction to me. I'm not one to usually go into "fate" or "destiny" as a means of logical explanation, but I think the reason I love flying enough to devote my life to it without being able to even explain to myself why, is because I'm simply meant to do it. The universe simply designates me a pilot. That is what I am. That is what I do.

It fits into place with what I wrote about "home", and that I just belong in a cockpit. I don't do anything as fluently and easily and pridefully as flying. Whether it's showing my girlfriend how to work the APU and generator on a Boeing 737NG, or talking to a Colonel in the Air Force about ratings, I display to everyone that I am clearly an aviator without necessarily trying.

In short, I can't think of a reason I would spend so much energy and effort doing something when it's not a hobby, or relaxing, or blissful like the reasons people ride, golf, paint, and why a lot fly. I feel like I do it because it's just what I do. And I won't be truly sound on the inside if I'm not doing it for the rest of my life.

I'm like an archerfish. This particular Southeast Asian tropical fish eats by shooting water out of its mouth in a narrow stream, sniping an insect off a tree ten feet above the water. This fish is similar in size and shape to the rest of the fish in the stream, and could easily just eat worms and larvae and frog eggs like the rest of the population. But it decides to shoot water out of its mouth at its dinner. Why? It's just what it does. Like lightning bugs flashing, flamingos standing on one foot, or the Easter Island Natives making statues.

And, I doubt the universe would make me an aviator if I wasn't able to become one of the worlds most successful airline pilots. I'm positive I have the ability to get a pilot slot in two years, and a lifestyle of ten hours between each city. I'm just biding the time with a motorcycle.

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