Close Encounters...

It was nose-hair freezing this morning when I went out in my long underwear and slippers to warm up the car—about six below.
I stepped out onto the porch, and something in the turkey pen caught my eye. The birds were milling around as they usually do when it first starts to get light and they see one of us come outside, hoping that maybe we're bringing breakfast and warm water. But one of them was hunched down on the roost all alone, looking small and haggard and bedraggled and pathetic. We had been keeping the guineas inside the shed during the bitter cold, and I was worried that maybe the extreme cold had stressed one of them past the point of no return.

But it wasn't a guinea. I looked at it, and it looked up at me. It was a Red-Tailed Hawk. On the turkey roost all by itself. Inside the netted turkey pen.

The milling about wasn't because I had come outside; it was because THERE WAS A FRIGGIN RED-TAILED HAWK SITTING ON THE TURKEY ROOST.

I went back inside, dropped the car keys, called to Mary to grab the camera, her coat and the fireplace gloves, and hustle outside ASAP.

When I came back outside (still in long underwear and slippers, mind you) the hawk took off and immediately flew into the net roof; he hung there briefly, then dropped to the ground, regained his footing, and flew to another roost in the distant end of the pen. The commotion his passage created among the pen's residents was remarkable for its intensity and fervor.

I snatched the bird net—a long-handled fisherman's landing net with the net bag shortened by half, which I had just gotten a couple of weeks ago to make guinea wrangling a little easier. I went into the pen, and slowly approached the hawk on the roost, looking it directly in its brilliant dark eyes and talking to it quietly the whole time.

 As I got closer, it went into full threat-display mode*, beak agape, eyes filled with rage, and wings held up and spread. It held this posture, never breaking eye contact, even as I slowly lowered the net over it on the roost. It actually rotated backwards, sliding off the roost until it hung by one ebony talon upside-down, never altering it defiant display. It dropped gently onto its back, and I held it to he ground supine, while Mary brought the foundry gloves over.

Holding the landing net down with one hand, I slipped the gloves on one at a time, then slowly reached under the net to secure both of the hawk's shins in my left hand. We never broke eye contact (the eyes are right next to the supremely daunting looking pointy bits), and once I had a firm grasp of its legs, I lifted the net away. (When you have them by the shins, their hearts and minds will follow). I expected a flurry of flapping and struggling, but it never altered its posture a whit; wings spread defiantly, beak agape yet never striking.

It seemed strangely frozen, and perhaps it was exhausted and frightened; if it had misunderestimated the resolve of the turkeys, it may have had a rough time of it before I showed up and intervened. But there was no obvious evidence of a bird-on-bird struggle, and no one on either team showed any overt signs of damage.

Mary took a few pictures of the magnificent bird, and I walked it slowly into the back yard, where I had no option but to place it on the ground on its back, wings still spread wide. It
would not look away from me and would not turn its back on me; it lay inverted until I had been inside the house for half a minute. Then it righted itself, and in one swift and balletic motion, took to the air and swooped down the yard and away into the frosty pre-dawn forest.

*At that very instant, I realized that in my whole life I had never realized that the Great Seal of the United States  presents the eagle in a 'threat display' posture. That's not exactly flattering, is it?

When Things Come Together

It's nice when things come together. Like when the shortest and quickest route from Point A to Point B also happens to be the preferred route.

I'm somewhere in Research Triangle, which I guess is where research mysteriously disappears, or something. I am here for a couple of days to learn something, and because it is relatively nearby, it made sense to drive rather than fly. The time driving to and from the airport, getting through security, waiting at the airport, renting a car at the other airport, then reversing the process less than three days later would be more productively applied to driving.

I say this because I have always enjoyed driving as a pastime, and consider time on the road an opportunity to experience something different. It is productive, and to have the opportunity to meld a business trip with a mild adventure was too good to pass by. In this instance, I had the opportunity to trace a "Blue Highways" route from nearly one end to the other, and a great deal of the trip was over terra incognito,  a transect of my home state I had never seen any of before—a double bonus.

The first hour-and-a-half was pleasant and familiar, covering well-known roads and terrain. Following that, indulging in a little map-less, GPS-less, directions-less dead reckoning offered me the opportunity to get mildly lost and explore some rutted and sinuous dirt roads, more pothole and washboard than road proper. Eventually, I was reunited with my intended route, a minor, two-lane state highway,

I saw hidden gems like the town of Scottsville, (pop. 566) on the James River; skirted Willis Mountain, which has been gnawed away by years of mining the kyanite it contains to feed the spark plug industry, a field somewhere in between with a flock of forty wild turkeys blissfully browsing in the early morning light, and not much later a field with a scattering of bison quietly grazing like clenched fists. All this transpired beneath a November sky of increasing overcast and mood.

Willis Mountain, in the distance

The thing about taking a "Blue Highway" route is that you're never more than a few feet from people's lives. For better or worse, you are witness to ten thousand silent vignettes, snapshots of the endless variety of the human condition. In a brief moment you witness and absorb joy, bliss, sorrow, despair...and then they are all gone, replaced by some other moment of insight into another world.

The road, mostly two-laned, rolled southward through deep hollows and ravines of the piedmont resplendent with the yellow-orange cloak of hickories, oaks and beech, then onto more gently rolling hills given to fieldcrops and pasture. Round bales in abundance; fields of some undetermined cover crop, bleached gray by the frost but still standing. The farther south the road ran, the more the land alongside it was given to plantations of pine and clearcuts now grown back with a low understory of riotous autumn colors, as if to compliment the pumpkin-orange clay.

Roads like this are not the arteries of our world anymore; they're not even the arterioles. They're more like capillaries, essential in aggregate but no one in particular is indispensable—but to those whose lives revolve around and are connected directly to them.

I would contrast this route of choice with my alternative, the first choice of Google Maps and Garmin alike—the inevitable interstate corridor, in this case I-95 and I-85. While the "Blue Highway" places you squarely in the middle of people's lives, what you can observe from the interstate highway is generally determined by those who want to be seen. It is a calculated, calculating, deliberate effort to shape and present a very narrowly tailored message to a specific audience. There is no spontaneity within it, there is no humanity in it, there is no serendipity in it. It is commerce, reduced to lowest terms. You can assume that you are being lied to, in one form or another, when you see something from the interstate. When people live in close proximity to an interstate, they try and screen themselves and their lives off from it, to maintain a modicum of privacy.

There is no need for this screening from the "Blue Highway," because there is no dichotomy between inside and outside; the highway is a part of their life.

In a couple of days, I will retrace my route, perhaps with a few minor tweaks learned from my southbound passage, hopefully with enough time to make a stop in Scottsville. I'm looking forward to it, as much as i looked forward to today's trip.

I saw so much.

Addendum:

• The bleached gray crop was soybeans. I know this because at one point I pulled over on the shoulder and walked to the edge of a field, where I bent down and snapped off a branch from a plant. The leaves were completely wilted but the pods and the stems remained intact, giving a very odd look to the whole thing.
• I filled the tank in the middle of nowhere, for $2.99 a gallon...full service. Yep, Full Service. Who knew? My receipt was hand-written on a receipt pad made from yellowing newsprint. It might just be the only full service station outside of N.J. 
• What is it with company trips and Bald Eagles? I'm driving down a divided highway, and an oncoming car spooks a juvenile bald eagle from the median with something in its beak/talons. I slammed on the brakes and pulled to the shoulder; it flew up and circled above the road long enough for me go get a good look at it but not long enough for me to get a picture. Amazing.
• On the way down, I came around a bend in the road and had to slow down sharply for a woman crossing the road from the mailbox to a small business. On the way home...I came around the reciprocal bend, and had to slow down for the same woman (hairdo) crossing the same road from the same mailbox to the same business. How odd is that?
• What is it with company trips and bison/buffalo? 

  

  Yep. Those are buffaloes. Or bisons. 

• Scottsville is a gem of a little town. I had no idea that places like that existed in Virginia. Lunch at the Tavern on the James was amazing. Enjoyed chatting with Tom at James River Brewing about where they are now and where they're heading. I will definitely be seeing more of Scottsville in the future.

Baptism by immersion

I hadn't given it much thought until just recently, but one of the things that means to most to me about living where we do is the road into our place.

To get here from anywhere means a long stint on the highway, at least some time on the interstate, transitioning from the city fringe and suburbs through the exurbs into a rural area of rolling fields and woodlots, past some working farms and past lots of 'estates' with expensive horses and miles of black three-board fences.

The highway leads to where the balance finally tips to 'country,' to where the mountains reveal themselves in the distance. The spaces between houses widen and the houses begin to diminish to where nobody is looking at 'estates' or living in McMansions so much. It's all pretty much just regular people living in regular houses, just farther apart from each other than they live in Fairfax or Arlington. Some of the houses still stand as remnants of the village that once was— before the highway tore the heart out of it. Others seem freshly squirted from the same extruder that spews generic drywall-and-vinyl sided dreck across the whole continent—suburban tract homes, minus the suburban tract.

The two-lane rises and falls, twists and turns, passing dozens of homes great and small as it snakes along the gentle, open ridge top; an undulating ridge frames the western view. Then the road comes to an abrupt end, leaving two choices: straight ahead, down the gravel road towards the river, or left, down the gravel road to home.

The rough, dusty lane drops west along pastures of sheep and horses, views of long driveways and far-off houses. Then abruptly, it curves and enters the deep dark cool woods.

The trees overarch the road. The sudden shade is disorienting. The lane winds downhill, following an old wagon road for a bit,  through a craggy rock garden of lush ferns, rough-tossed boulders and cobbles, and broken tree trunks, before straightening and rushing to the bottomland cathedral of sycamore and cottonwood and butternut and black walnut. The quiet cool air of the bottomland is rich with smells of earth and water and leaves and plants, and has a physical impact as you abruptly descend into it, and emerge just as abruptly on the ascent of the other side.

That immersion and baptism into the air of the bottomland washes the dirt and sweat and tension of the city off of me like nothing else could. I ride the last bit home refreshed and renewed, and I know that I am home to a most special place.

Stopping By Woods (with apologies to Robert Frost)

Whose woods these are, I think I know.

These are my damn woods. Heh heh. That's pretty cool...

R is For Rocket, S is For Space

When I was in elementary school—maybe third grade—I discovered Ray Bradbury through his anthologies of short stories "R is For Rocket" and "S is For Space." Of course, Bradbury was just a gateway author to others...Heinlein, Norton, Herbert, Vonnegut, Tolkien, Wells, Verne, Poe, Lovecraft...

But Bradbury had a special touch. He managed to seamlessly meld a nostalgic remembrance of an idyllic post-Victorian Midwest with an idealistic idealized future. I still periodically re-read 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' just to enjoy the essence of childhood he captures, and the wonder of small-town life at the edge of mystery and fear.

I thought of Bradbury, who died just last year, the other night.

I lay in bed next to my beautiful wife, watching a live video feed on the viewing computer (connected to a network of other computers that encircles the globe) perched on my lap. I was watching a rocket being prepared for a launch to orbit the moon. I could listen to the various voices giving their go ahead for the launch, one after another. Then, with the go-ahead given and a few minutes left before ignition, we both set our computers aside, put our shoes on, and left the house to drive up the road a mile or so.

There, with a clear view to the eastern horizon, we waited. After a few moments, we saw it.

A sodium-orange teardrop of flame, heading into the cold clear night sky. It looked like a flare from a gun, or a cheap firework. But it left an unmistakable trail of smoke through the darkness. And then it faltered and disappeared. A few second later, it flared up again, and another teardrop of flame arced into the sky...a parabola of light from where we stood, appearing to fly upward then sink back to earth again. But in reality, it was climbing ever moon-ward, gaining altitude by the kilometer as the rocket soared from Wallops Island across the Atlantic towards Africa, and eventually the Moon.

We saw the first stage, then burnout and separation, and second stage ignition and burn. It faded from our sight with the second stage still burning. When it was gone, we went back to our house and in a few minutes were asleep in our bed.

Today, from the parking lot at work, I watched another rocket leave the Earth. This one was not going to the Moon. This one was taking food and supplies to the Space Station that is currently orbiting our planet. Once it is offloaded, the Space Station crew will fill it with their refuse and send it all back towards earth to burn up in the atmosphere.

We really are living in the future. Nice call, Ray.

Postscript: What an interesting character. Ray Bradbury was discovered by Truman Capote, and was friends with Gene Kelly.

Thought of the Day...

I wonder what the fifteen year-old me would think of the fifty four year-old me? I mean, besides "...who's the fat guy?"

I think he might be pleasantly surprised...

Is there a Librarian in the house?

So I'm looking at the bookshelf, and I notice that "Culture and Commitment: A Study of the Generation Gap" is on the shelf with the brewing books. Because Margaret Mead, I guess.

August?

Heated gear, two mornings in a row! 48 degrees & 46 degrees...woo-hoo!

Indian Country

The other day I did something I rarely do anymore, which was to take a mid-afternoon ride to get some air and help clear my head. A hundred-mile commute tends to make optional rides less appealing, somehow.

The destination was about fifteen miles away by road, half that as the crow flies; an area that back in the day we referred to as ‘Indian Country.’ It was a crude shorthand for that transitional area between the far edge of the suburbs and the beginning of ‘country.’ It comprised scattered development and industrial parks tossed among fields of scrub and cedar, areas that had stopped being farms and pastures a while ago, but had neither reverted to the wild nor fallen to the developer’s bulldozers. My brother and I both found ourselves exiled to different purgatories in this god-forsaken wilderness for different reasons at a concurrent nadir of our careers.

In any case.

I headed out to ‘Indian Country.’

It may have been most of a decade since I rode out there; the last official record I have is from a cold December morning circa 2004, and maybe a quick traverse a year or two after. But I can’t recall any visits since we left the burbs for the hill in the woods. During that time, the crowding fields of cedar scrub diminished, displaced by more ranks and files of tract houses and strip malls of cellphone stores, fast-food drive-throughs, nail parlors, Chinese carryouts and tanning salons. Office parks, Business parks, Industrial parks—everything but real parks.

You know, every ride must have a destination, if nothing more than an apogee where you cease heading away and begin returning. In this instance, that point was a little country store tucked tight inside a dusty elbow of the road, with a meager swath of gravel outside the front porch and a little more gravel just beside for a parking lot.

When I was billeted in 'Indian Country,' I frequented this little store quite often. It was a timeless oasis smack in the middle of nowhere that sold cold beer, hard-boiled eggs, laundry soap and clothespins, acrid coffee, big sacks of no-name kibble, hunting licenses, any kind of potato chip, night crawlers, deli sandwiches, fishing tackle and live minnows from a converted set of concrete laundry sinks with a big sign overhead, warning all to not shut off the switch or else the minnows would die. The clerks were amiable and laconic, not eager to waste a word when a grunt would do or a grunt when a nod would do, and there was a dusty, sepia-toned quality about the place.

I recall it as the kind of place where you could pull a long-necked bottle of pop from a cooler of crushed ice, pry the crown cap off with the opener bolted to the counter, then stroll out to the worn front porch and sit by the sleeping hound to watch traffic drift past. A nod and a single raised finger acknowledged all who passed by. It probably was never actually like the way I remembered it, but whatever. I liked to stop there, and drop a buck of two from time to time as an investment in keeping places like it around a few more years. It was easy to find a way to make it en route from Point A to Point B, especially when I had no particular desire to be in either Point A or B.

The approach to the store had changed (heavier volumes of heavier traffic demanded such) but the joint was still where I had left it. A sportsbiker on a Ninja was parked in the lot, chatting up a girl in a dusty muscle car. A van full of dusty painters in paint-spattered white overalls pulled in, nicely crushing the safety cone posted to warn-off the ginormous pothole that now threatened the van’s rear axle. The pile of ladders on the roof clattered violently as the van pitched to a halt.

I ungeared a bit and nodded to the sportbiker as I walked to the front porch. He nodded back, sized me and Beast up, then returned his attention to Miss MuscleCar. I opened the creaky front door into a cleaner, brighter, more open, more airy, more spare…mercadito. Tienda.

Hmm. Instead of tackle, and minnows with warning signs, and nightcrawlers, I find international calling cards and Jaritos, Inca cola and pan dulces, prayer candles and sugarloaf, masa and corn husks for tamales. In the cooler beside the usual red-white-and-blue cans of mediocre domestic beers are Sol and Tecate and Corona and Dos Equis—mediocre imported beers. The clerks, who I can barely see over the top of the sparkling clean deli case, are speaking animatedly (en espanol) to the handful of customers gathered around.

But this particular afternoon I’m neither hungry nor thirsty. For better or worse, there's nothing for me here this time. I slip back out the front door, hoping to not seem rude or abrupt. I really only wanted to come here and see if it still existed. It’s a touchstone; a destination; an apogee. And to hell with the ignorant, hateful people who rail against newcomers. It’s a passing of a torch, a brand new coat of paint on a long-standing tradition. I expect that under the new management, I’ll be able to count on this as a destination for some time to come.

More power to ‘em; I’m now looking forward to swinging out to ‘Indian Country’ sometime just to grab an Inca cola y un pan dulce and sit on the porch y ver pasar los coches por un tiempo.

BMW Motorrad drops out of World SuperBike competition at the end of 2013.

And after all that work on the S1000rr. What a shame...strategic realignment, et cetera, blah blah.

Details and background on "Song of the Sausage Creature"

A long time ago, in one of my very first posts, I quoted a passage from Hunter S. Thompson's essay, "The Song of the Sausage Creature. I noticed that the link I posted to the full text is broken, and it's getting harder to find a good source to link to, so I figured I'd cheat and post the full text below for posterity's sake.

But in looking, I also came across a great Cycle World article from December 2012, written by the poor woman whose job it was to try and get a publishable piece of writing from Thompson to CW's editors while he possessed their brand new, very expensive, very exotic motorcycle. Here's the article about the essay.

And here's the original "Song of the Sausage Creature" from Cycle World, March 1995:

There are some things nobody needs in this world, and a bright-red, hunch-back, warp-speed 900cc cafe racer is one of them - but I want one anyway, and on some days I actually believe I need one. That is why they are dangerous.

Everybody has fast motorcycles these days. Some people go 150 miles an hour on two-lane blacktop roads, but not often. There are too many oncoming trucks and too many radar cops and too many stupid animals in the way. You have to be a little crazy to ride these super-torque high-speed crotch rockets anywhere except a racetrack - and even there, they will scare the whimpering shit out of you... There is, after all, not a pig's eye worth of difference between going head-on into a Peterbilt or sideways into the bleachers. On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.

When Cycle World called me to ask if I would road-test the new Harley Road King, I got uppity and said I'd rather have a Ducati superbike. It seemed like a chic decision at the time, and my friends on the superbike circuit got very excited. "Hot damn," they said. "We will take it to the track and blow the bastards away."

"Balls," I said. "Never mind the track. The track is for punks. We are Road People. We are Cafe Racers."

The Cafe Racer is a different breed, and we have our own situations. Pure speed in sixth gear on a 5000-foot straightaway is one thing, but pure speed in third gear on a gravel-strewn downhill ess-turn is quite another.

But we like it. A thoroughbred Cafe Racer will ride all night through a fog storm in freeway traffic to put himself into what somebody told him was the ugliest and tightest decreasing-radius turn since Genghis Khan invented the corkscrew.

Cafe Racing is mainly a matter of taste. It is an atavistic mentality, a peculiar mix of low style, high speed, pure dumbness, and overweening commitment to the Cafe Life and all its dangerous pleasures... I am a Cafe Racer myself, on some days - and it is one of my finest addictions.

I am not without scars on my brain and my body, but I can live with them. I still feel a shudder in my spine every time I see a picture of a Vincent Black Shadow, or when I walk into a public restroom and hear crippled men whispering about the terrifying Kawasaki Triple... I have visions of compound femur-fractures and large black men in white hospital suits holding me down on a gurney while a nurse called "Bess" sews the flaps of my scalp together with a stitching drill.

Ho, ho. Thank God for these flashbacks. The brain is such a wonderful instrument (until God sinks his teeth into it). Some people hear Tiny Tim singing when they go under, and some others hear the song of the Sausage Creature.

When the Ducati turned up in my driveway, nobody knew what to do with it. I was in New York, covering a polo tournament, and people had threatened my life. My lawyer said I should give myself up and enroll in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Other people said it had something to do with the polo crowd.

The motorcycle business was the last straw. It had to be the work of my enemies, or people who wanted to hurt me. It was the vilest kind of bait, and they knew I would go for it.

Of course. You want to cripple the bastard? Send him a 130-mph cafe-racer. And include some license plates, he'll think it's a streetbike. He's queer for anything fast.

Which is true. I have been a connoisseur of fast motorcycles all my life. I bought a brand-new 650 BSA Lightning when it was billed as "the fastest motorcycle ever tested by Hot Rod magazine." I have ridden a 500-pound Vincent through traffic on the Ventura Freeway with burning oil on my legs and run the Kawa 750 Triple through Beverly Hills at night with a head full of acid... I have ridden with Sonny Barger and smoked weed in biker bars with Jack Nicholson, Grace Slick, Ron Zigler and my infamous old friend, Ken Kesey, a legendary Cafe Racer.

Some people will tell you that slow is good - and it may be, on some days - but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I've always believed this, in spite of the trouble it's caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba....

So when I got back from New York and found a fiery red rocket-style bike in my garage, I realized I was back in the road-testing business.

The brand-new Ducati 900 Campione del Mundo Desmodue Supersport double-barreled magnum Cafe Racer filled me with feelings of lust every time I looked at it. Others felt the same way. My garage quickly became a magnet for drooling superbike groupies. They quarreled and bitched at each other about who would be the first to help me evaluate my new toy... And I did, of course, need a certain spectrum of opinions, besides my own, to properly judge this motorcycle. The Woody Creek Perverse Environmental Testing Facility is a long way from Daytona or even top-fuel challenge-sprints on the Pacific Coast Highway, where teams of big-bore Kawasakis and Yamahas are said to race head-on against each other in death-defying games of "chicken" at 100 miles an hour....

No. Not everybody who buys a high-dollar torque-brute yearns to go out in a ball of fire on a public street in L.A. Some of us are decent people who want to stay out of the emergency room, but still blast through neo-gridlock traffic in residential districts whenever we feel like it... For that we need Fine Machinery.

Which we had - no doubt about that. The Ducati people in New Jersey had opted, for some reasons of their own, to send me the 900ss-sp for testing - rather than their 916 crazy-fast, state-of-the-art superbike track-racer. It was far too fast, they said - and prohibitively expensive - to farm out for testing to a gang of half-mad Colorado cowboys who think they're world-class Cafe Racers.

The Ducati 900 is a finely engineered machine. My neighbors called it beautiful and admired its racing lines. The nasty little bugger looked like it was going 90 miles an hour when it was standing still in my garage.

Taking it on the road, though, was a genuinely terrifying experience. I had no sense of speed until I was going 90 and coming up fast on a bunch of pickup trucks going into a wet curve along the river. I went for both brakes, but only the front one worked, and I almost went end over end. I was out of control staring at the tailpipe of a U.S. Mail truck, still stabbing frantically at my rear brake pedal, which I just couldn't find... I am too tall for these new-age roadracers; they are not built for any rider taller than five-nine, and the rearset brake pedal was not where I thought it would be. Mid-size Italian pimps who like to race from one cafe to another on the boulevards of Rome in a flat-line prone position might like this, but I do not.

I was hunched over the tank like a person diving into a pool that got emptied yesterday. Whacko! Bashed on the concrete bottom, flesh ripped off, a Sausage Creature with no teeth, fucked-up for the rest of its life.

We all love Torque, and some of us have taken it straight over the high side from time to time - and there is always Pain in that... But there is also Fun, the deadly element, and Fun is what you get when you screw this monster on. BOOM! Instant take-off, no screeching or squawking around like a fool with your teeth clamping down on our tongue and your mind completely empty of everything but fear.

No. This bugger digs right in and shoots you straight down the pipe, for good or ill.

On my first take-off, I hit second gear and went through the speed limit on a two-lane blacktop highway full of ranch traffic. By the time I went up to third, I was going 75 and the tach was barely above 4000 rpm....

And that's when it got its second wind. From 4000 to 6000 in third will take you from 75 mph to 95 in two seconds - and after that, Bubba, you still have fourth, fifth, and sixth. Ho, ho.

I never got to sixth gear, and I didn't get deep into fifth. This is a shameful admission for a full-bore Cafe Racer, but let me tell you something, old sport: This motorcycle is simply too goddamn fast to ride at speed in any kind of normal road traffic unless you're ready to go straight down the centerline with your nuts on fire and a silent scream in your throat.

When aimed in the right direction at high speed, though, it has unnatural capabilities. This I unwittingly discovered as I made my approach to a sharp turn across some railroad tracks, saw that I was going way too fast and that my only chance was to veer right and screw it on totally, in a desperate attempt to leapfrog the curve by going airborne.

It was a bold and reckless move, but it was necessary. And it worked: I felt like Evel Knievel as I soared across the tracks with the rain in my eyes and my jaws clamped together in fear. I tried to spit down on the tracks as I passed them, but my mouth was too dry... I landed hard on the edge of the road and lost my grip for a moment as the Ducati began fishtailing crazily into oncoming traffic. For two or three seconds I came face to face with the Sausage Creature....

But somehow the brute straightened out. I passed a schoolbus on the right and got the bike under control long enough to gear down and pull off into an abandoned gravel driveway where I stopped and turned off the engine. My hands had seized up like claws and the rest of my body was numb. I felt nauseous and I cried for my mama, but nobody heard, then I went into a trance for 30 or 40 seconds until I was finally able to light a cigarette and calm down enough to ride home. I was too hysterical to shift gears, so I went the whole way in first at 40 miles an hour.

Whoops! What am I saying? Tall stories, ho, ho... We are motorcycle people; we walk tall and we laugh at whatever's funny. We shit on the chests of the Weird....

But when we ride very fast motorcycles, we ride with immaculate sanity. We might abuse a substance here and there, but only when it's right. The final measure of any rider's skill is the inverse ratio of his preferred Traveling Speed to the number of bad scars on his body. It is that simple: If you ride fast and crash, you are a bad rider. And if you are a bad rider, you should not ride motorcycles.

The emergence of the superbike has heightened this equation drastically. Motorcycle technology has made such a great leap forward. Take the Ducati. You want optimum cruising speed on this bugger? Try 90mph in fifth at 5500 rpm - and just then, you see a bull moose in the middle of the road. WHACKO. Meet the Sausage Creature.

Or maybe not: The Ducati 900 is so finely engineered and balanced and torqued that you *can* do 90 mph in fifth through a 35-mph zone and get away with it. The bike is not just fast - it is *extremely* quick and responsive, and it *will* do amazing things... It is like riding a Vincent Black Shadow, which would outrun an F-86 jet fighter on the take-off runway, but at the end, the F-86 would go airborne and the Vincent would not, and there was no point in trying to turn it. WHAMO! The Sausage Creature strikes again.

There is a fundamental difference, however, between the old Vincents and the new breed of superbikes. If you rode the Black Shadow at top speed for any length of time, you would almost certainly die. That is why there are not many life members of the Vincent Black Shadow Society. The Vincent was like a bullet that went straight; the Ducati is like the magic bullet in Dallas that went sideways and hit JFK and the Governor of Texas at the same time.

It was impossible. But so was my terrifying sideways leap across the railroad tracks on the 900sp. The bike did it easily with the grace of a fleeing tomcat. The landing was so easy I remember thinking, goddamnit, if I had screwed it on a little more I could have gone a lot farther.

Maybe this is the new Cafe Racer macho. My bike is so much faster than yours that I dare you to ride it, you lame little turd. Do you have the balls to ride this BOTTOMLESS PIT OF TORQUE?

That is the attitude of the new-age superbike freak, and I am one of them. On some days they are about the most fun you can have with your clothes on. The Vincent just killed you a lot faster than a superbike will. A fool couldn't ride the Vincent Black Shadow more than once, but a fool can ride a Ducati 900 many times, and it will always be a bloodcurdling kind of fun. That is the Curse of Speed which has plagued me all my life. I am a slave to it. On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME."

...Sweet jeebus. That's how you write a product review.

"...He has given us a secular version of a sacred text."

Nice write-up on some of the back story and present-day significance of Robert Pirsig and ZATAOMM .

Tuesday evening, the 9th of July:

The air outside is like gravy. Thick, gray, flavorless gravy.

#@%$&*!!!

So I was cruising on my way home, just crossed the county line (my penultimate landmark) essentially doing the motorcycle version of SOCMOB (I guess that would RDRMOB) when THWACK!! this ginormous BUG hits me straight in the hollow of my throat at about 70 miles an hour (my doing the posted speed limit of 55 + this crazy-ass bug going twenty miles an hour THE WRONG WAY IN MY LANE).

I actually flinched and meandered in my lane for a second it hurt so @#$%^& much. But I regained my composure, continued down the road to my turn, and proceeded to the end of our lane where I stopped to pick up the mail. Whilst doing that, I reached down to check the slight tickling sensation I felt on my shirt. So, fumblefumblefumble OW OW OW OW OW! #@$%^&*!!!

Yep, it was a #@$%^&*!! wasp I hit on the highway at the posted legal speed limit while SOCMOB, so to speak, and that #%$@^&!! wasp wasn't content to just crash the @#$% into me. Nooooooooooo, he had to come along for the ride, and add injury to insult by giving me a big old sting right smack dab in the center of my sternum for my troubles. And after all that fussing and commotion, he had the audacity to fly off.

#@$%^&!!. ATGATT, my butt.

Footnote: For those of you keeping score at home, that's two snakebites and a wasp sting since Sunday.

Not sure what made me think of this—

The sky was lost and day-dreamy on the way in to work this morning. Vaguely defined clouds, vaguely defined horizons made for a soothing and relaxing trip. Stripped-down Beast, aka the 'R1100-less' seems like a different bike without all the plastic that usually encases it.

Today I added the hardcases back on, because I get nervous riding without all the crap and clutter the cases store—probably about forty pounds of extraneous junk that I rarely touch or use (tools, first aid kit, bungee net...) plus of course the extra drag the cases create. But I feel better having it all along for the ride.

So I guess it was the modest profile and the presence of the cases that reminded me of the 1979 R65 standard with Krauser cases we owned for a brief period back in the day. Brown bodywork and tank, snowflake mag wheels.

The R65 was the older cousin of Campaigner. The later R80st was built using many of the components of the R65; much of the front end, the instrument cluster and control assemblies, the headlamp shell, brackets and turn signals, and some other odds and ends. The R65 engine was a 248 series, smaller and using different carburetors, while the R80st used a standard 800cc type 247 engine.

For a brief run, the monolever suspension of the G/S and ST even made its way back to the R65 (about 1,700 units were built with that configuration) but they all came at the end of the sixty-year run of the air-cooled boxers, and were pushed aside to make room for the K-bikes in the mid 1980s.

The R65 had some issues, for sure. Standard criticism was that it was underpowered and underbraked, and that it was an answer to a question that few people were asking. But a lot of folks thought the R65 was an ideal urban bike, and I'd have to agree with that analysis. It shared many of the strengths of the R80st—short wheelbase, tight turning radius, light weight, supple and responsive handling.

It also had a classic two-into-two boxer exhaust system, and sounded pretty much like any airhead /2 or /5 from anytime. The modest power output of the 248 series was kind of fun in a way. You really had to think about where you wanted to go and how you wanted to get there (I'm not talking about road trips; I'm talking about lane changes).

The R65 demanded that you be working the gearbox pretty regularly, and a lot of riding it consisted of cranking the throttle open and listening to the throaty twin exhausts as those cute little cylinders spooled up and the bike slowly accelerated. It required a great deal of patience sometimes, and was no match for its contemporaries in terms of either speed or quickness. But the R65 was reliable, it was comfortable, and it was more than competent. The R65 is also one of the classic airheads that still looks good today, thirty years since the last one rolled off the line. On the rare occasion I spot one, it never fails to turn my head...and if I happen to spot an R65LS, that warrants a full stop-and-admire. I believe our R65 was the last motorcycle Mary rode while pregnant with Philip, on a very chilly group ride through a May snow squall in Virginia.

There's a lot to be said for the technology of the oilheads (ABS, anyone?) and I have no illusions about the pluses-and-minuses of new technologies versus old technologies. I wouldn't mind having a 247 or a 248 to putt around on, probably wearing a Belstaff jacket with tweed patches on the elbows. Beast is still my go-to bike, and for now I'll just lose myself in imagining it's an R65 from time to time...that's the best of both worlds.

Black Snake Days

I. Saturday morning, bright and early. Taking care of chores early so we can head into town ahead of the heat. In house#1, there is a turkey hen and four keets—half the number there were the night before. In lieu of the keets, there is a large black snake curled up in the corner, partially hidden beneath the wood chip bedding. It bulges conspicuously.

Without thought or hesitation, I locate the snake's head end and grab it; it erupts from the wood chips in a writhing fury and attempts to wrap itself around my arm. Bloated from gorging on our keets, it is slow and lacks the supple grace it would normally exhibit. I am stunned and furious at what it has done, and at how I have somehow failed our charges.

I stand with my writhing captive for what seems like an eternity, deciding what to do. I quickly realize there is only one course of action, and that is for the snake to die. Not to assuage my anger or rage or guilt or sorrow, not for vengeance or retribution or reparation or anything else like that. It must die because if i do not kill it, it will undoubtedly return and finish what it has started, and perhaps inflict harm on the hen herself, though she is too big to become a meal.

So without further thought or hesitation, I kill the snake instantly. Its tail continues to act without plan or guidance for some time, then finally quiets. I throw its body into the meadow for the scavengers to feed upon, and by the next day large sections of it have been picked to the bone, leaving the fish-like skeleton to bleach in the hot July sun.

II. Sunday morning. A black snake slithers along the fence line between the garden and the summer chicken yard, safely disappearing into the deep weeds and cover separating the two. The chickens are concerned but not alarmed.

III. Early Sunday afternoon. Another sighting, this time in the garden proper. I do not see this one, but shortly  afterwards, I see another black snake—significantly larger and longer than Saturday morning's snake—gliding silently among the summer flowers and forbs just inside the garden from the driveway. I walk along beside it for a time, trying to keep track of its head to gauge its intentions. It pauses briefly, as the fencing limits its options, then proceeds to disappear into a burrow. It advances six, maybe eight inches, paused, backs up an inch or two, then resumes its progress until its entire length has disappeared underground. I would not have thought it possible for such a large creature to disappear with such ease. What was it seeking? Food? Shelter? Respite from the baking sun? I have no idea.

IV. Later Sunday afternoon. We are relaxing beneath the creaky ceiling fan when the roaming guineas raise a ruckus outside our room. They are persistent and unusually focused, so on my way out to begin another project I pause to see what has them riled up so. The three clownish heads are staring and screaming at another black snake, which this time has sought refuge in the clutter next to the foundation. I realize there are many ground nests nearby, and we have noticed the occasional egg disappearing. So I step to the snake, and my complacency and overconfidence gets the best of me. As I reach for its neck, I grab too far back and the   glaring, angry head snaps back and bites me, once, twice. The second time, it does not let go, but hangs on to my finger with a fury.

My first thought was "aww...those are like little kitten teeth. Angry little kitten teeth. How adorable this little snake is." And the rest of the angry little snake body, all three-and-a-half feet of it, began knotting itself around my hand and arm. Realizing I was kind of stuck in an awkward predicament, I called for Mary to toss me a glove, with which I could proceed with a little more security and dignity.

Gloving up my unsnaked hand, I tossed the snake away from the house. Unfortunately the snake did not disengage my hand, but instead cut several little gashes in my finger as its flying body dragged its teeth away. Nevertheless, as soon as it was on the ground, it reoriented itself and began for the shadows near the house with great haste. I put my foot on its neck, and again, it struck several times at my shoe. But with safely gloved hand, I reached down, caught it directly behind the head, and picked it up to examine it before deciding a course of action.

I looked at the little bulge in its belly. It was not an 'egg' bulge. It looked more like a 'mouse' bulge. So at the exact same moment, Mary and I realized what the snake's fate would be...it would be dragooned into our service. I took it to the fenced garden, and released it among the many mole-rich rows. Pissy to the last, it writhed angrily as I let it go, and it raced off for shelter and cover among the rich green cornstalks. I hope it has found a nice mole tunnel to call its own.

So many black snake stories, such a brief period.

Seems kinda strange to me.

So today it's Friday, the fifth of July, and I seem to be one of the few folks riding in to work today. But it's nice, because I realize there's a steady stream of sport bikes—onesie-twosie—heading the other way, towards the piedmont and mountains. On a typical commuting morning, I rarely see many bikes heading west.

Some of them are solo, some have pillions; some are ATGATT and some appear nearly naked. Regardless, it makes me happy to think of all these folks having a long weekend and taking advantage of it by getting some road miles in before the heat comes on with the full ferocity the day promises.

But it gets me to thinking...pretty much all the folks I've ridden with in my couple decade-long riding career have given up their bikes. I go back through the years, and can't think of anyone who's still with it. At this point, I only know one other person who even has a bike, and we're not riding buddies at this point.

I look back at pictures from the last three decades of rides, and can still remember most of the names and faces and the places and roads we traveled. But the only long group ride (Tail of the Dragon) is almost seven years past; the most recent long solo ride (Vermont) is almost three years past, and the last ride that wasn't solo was a year ago. That leaves a weird hole in my psyche. I miss all those people, I miss those places, and I miss that activity.

Herons, plural

On my way to work today I saw something I had never seen before—a flock, albeit a small one, of great blue herons. Three of them, to be exact, flying in formation across the low grey sky.

Recently I have seen a pair of the smaller green heron, noteworthy for their brightly colored legs and feet, in the vicinity of the pond at GMU. They patrol the shore and shallows and nearby woods, and fly spectacularly. But they are no match for the great blues, unmistakable with their deep keels, long curved necks, deadly bills, gracefully extended legs and almost comically graceful flight made possible with the slightest exertion of their wingtips.

Earlier this week, a great blue took off from a pond next to where I work, then slowly, gracefully, ponderously gained both speed and altitude until it soared into the treetops nearby and disappeared. With each flap of its long wings, its scale appeared to change; it seemed to grow larger, more massive, with each stroke. By the time it reached the woods, it had transformed from a shore bird into a massive, commanding master of the sky.

I cannot envision anything but ancient pterodactyls when I see them in flight; slow, steady, unfaltering, their gaze fixed to a point on the far horizon. For the longest time, it always appeared to me that they only flew on paths diagonal to roadways; I never saw a heron cross a road perpendicular nor fly along one that I could recall. But recently I think I did see one cross a road at a right angle, and it seemed unnatural.

But I am sure that before today, I have only seen the great blue heron as a solitary traveler.

And Just Like That, It Came and It Went

At twilight last night—the first day of July—we went outside to gather the day's eggs and begin the process of closing up the flocks.

We were both going about our business in the summer chicken yard, Mary looking for eggs in the outside nestbox, me collecting the eggs from the main house, when I noted a strange sound coming from the south. It was not the sound of a car on the gravel road, nor was it the far-away sound of a truck on the highway. It was not an airplane, and it was not the rising of the wind.

We looked at each other.

Rain.

It never occurred to me that the sound of rain approaching is different from the sound of the wind. It is a  white noise, almost devoid of characteristics, made up of countless tiny little granular noises subsumed within one another. In contrast, wind is complex and dense, rich with layers of turbulence and harmonics; bigger chunks of sounds made by lots of large, chaotic things interacting.

We quickened our pace, hurriedly closing the gates behind us. "Can you see it yet?" We looked to the distant treeline, far to the south. As we looked, the treeline disappeared behind a grey wall. The sound became louder, more insistent. The nearer treeline disappeared, then the trees in the backyard. We ran and ducked beneath the overhang of the shed just as the rain reached us, laughing as the roaring deluge obscured the world around us and pounded the earth.

Then, no more than thirty seconds later, it diminished to almost nothing, moving on as quickly as it had arrived. The ground, so recently assaulted, was barely wet; beneath the trees, it had stayed dry. And the sound of rain leaving is nothing to compare with the sound of rain coming.

It's too bad, because we really needed the rain.

"Agnus Dei," Samuel Barber, 1967

Memorial Day, a year ago.

I sat in the sweltering cab of the threadbare truck, seeking a brief reprieve from the sun that baked the deep dry slash along the power line right-of-way. Sweat soaked my shirt and shorts; the glare made my eyes hurt. Small dark things crawled among the hairs of my calves. The last year and a half had been an unremitting struggle. Waking every morning for a job I hated more with each passing moment; barely bringing home enough to retard our long slow slide to the precipice; fighting with a bank the very epitome of mindless, heartless, soulless bureaucracy; waking in the middle of each night to wonder what worse thing the next dawn could possibly bring.

Hanging my head and panting from the heat and exertion, I flicked on the radio. The first notes from the radio seized me, held me, and like a single shard of glass, sliced me open from head to toe. I began to sob uncontrollably, tears mingling with the sweat streaming down my face.

“Agnus Dei,” Samuel Barber's choral arrangement of that part of the Latin liturgy to his own “Adagio for Strings.” Three lines—a total of just eleven separate latin words—sung so the words nearly disappear:

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

I am old enough to have sat through many a latin mass in my formative years. Yet I doubt my conscious mind made a connection between the ethereal music I heard that blazing noon and those ancient words buried so deep. But there is no missing or mistaking the soul-wrenching depth of emotion conveyed in that simple, spare, elegant piece. I have written before about the power of 'Adagio,' yet this version manages to surpass the original in conveying such immense sorrow and release in such a restrained and concise package. 

This is the version that cut through my callus that day: Sung a cappella by the Choir of Trinity College, Oxford, conducted by Richard Marlow. This might straight-up be the most beautiful and moving nine-and-a-half minutes of music I can imagine.

[Addendum, September 9, 2016: I have long wondered when listening to this version why I cannot simply 'follow along with the lyrics.' It is the nature of choral music; the four parts (Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass) sing the lyrics at different paces, passing the melody from one to another at different measures. At the emotional climax of the piece, around the seven-minute mark, the four voices come together on the word 'pacem' ('peace'), followed by a long silence, then reprising the phrase 'dona nobis pacem' ('grant us peace'). For details, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOwRW8ee458 ]