There is absolutely nothing in the physical aspect of a motorcycle that would in any way indicate that it is a viable, sensible form of locomotion. I thought of this just this morning as I balanced on two wheels and prepared to let the clutch out. Balancing on two wheels when you have the option for four wheels where balancing is out of the equation suddenly struck me as absurd. Who's idea was this? Throw in the helmet and exposure to the elements and you're suddenly facing a situation that leaves Logic well behind, getting smaller in the side-view mirrors.
In Georgia, High Summer generally lasts until deep into September but these mornings lately are bracingly crisp and, dare I say it? Autumnal! The stars overhead burn with a fever and I can smell the dew settling on the grass as I ride. Cats startle and then dart, bats are still swooping drunkenly like college students at a mixer. You pass the occasional fanatic who's up at this ungodly hour, running, and you could reach out and smack them if you chose.
The air is nearly cold and it's jetting up my nose and into my sinuses, and I'll pay for that later, but right now I don't care. It's lovely to rumble along, leaning into the curves and then accelerating smoothly. It's a fetish, sure enough, and since i accept that, I can enjoy it. Clouds are piling up to the west in cotton candy pink billows and the last of summer's insects are droning in the shrubs. They'll die soon but which of us won't? Though my speedometer has been broken for months, I know from the tach that I'm steady at about forty miles per hour and that's plenty enough to blend into the forward motion and lose my solidity. I'm no longer young and, anyhow, I've already gone FAST one time in my life, and that's enough.
When I bought my first motorcycle, back in the white knuckle days of college, Liz and I noted that the speedometer went up to 130 and I knew just as surely as I know anything in life that I would have to peg it out to the limit one of these days, that I wouldn't be able to relax until I had seen and felt 130. It's the sort of compulsion that makes youth a risky proposition, and causes maturity to fear for their own sons . . .
There's a road outside of Athens, Ga. that leads towards a town called Lexington and right about there, somewhere, there's a State Park called Watson Mill. I'm hazy on the geography here and it's just possible that Watson Mill is somewhere else. Nevertheless, on one of those brilliant college days when we had nothing to do but ride, we were riding out that way and the road stretched out straight as a ley-line before us and the time had come - I could feel it. Throttling back smoothly I watched the needle rise past the limit of logic and safety and then I could see very little. Past 100 mph the air became so dynamic and agitated I couldn't see much at all, and friction was dragging the tears out of my eyes and pulling them across my cheeks.
At this speed every nuanced hill in an otherwise flat road causes the bike to lift up on its springs - sometimes leaving the road entirely - and we were in the air now as often as we were on the road, you could feel it in the pit of your stomach every time we broke gravity. On either side of us barbed wire farm fences streamed along like silvery lazer beams and I knew without a doubt that if I were to wipe out now and hit one of those strands of wire I would be diced as cleanly as freshly butchered meat.
Right at 130 we hit a slope that had enough rise that I couldn't see what might be on the immediate other side of the gentle peak and we caught serious air, launching forward like action figures, Liz clutching my back with a death grip because this first motorcycle had no backrest. A flock of vultures, in a curious nod to irony, were feasting on roadkill right there where we came down and suddenly huge birds were everywhere in the air, flying to and fro, inches from impacting us and knocking us into the barbed wire fence. And then they were gone, just like that, and I began dialing the throttle back to 100, then 90, and then a safe speed of 60 mph on this farm road.
I never needed to do it again, but I understood when my oldest son, at thirteen, would lean over my shoulder on one of our rides and shout, Go faster! Fast as you can! Without the speedometer working he had no idea how fast we were going but I'd accelerate to about sixty-five and tell him we were at one hundred and I could feel him settle back against the backrest in intense pleasure while pasture land blurred on either side of us and cow ponds seemed to float in the sky like pewter vortexs . . . .
You doll!
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