Riding Into Town

Rumbling into town, pipes splitting the silence, they arrive. Each bike bears license plates from a far-away state: each bears a different plate. The bikes are dusty, mud-spattered, showing long miles. Packed with gear, these are obviously not weekend riders, or day trippers.

Dismounting, the riders stretch. They laugh and joke as they fill their tanks. When done, they pull in front of the store, bikes facing out. One looks at his phone, while another fiddles with the gear strapped to his steel pony. The rest saunter into the store, to fill up on Red Bull or coffee, maybe a few odd snacks.

They aren’t dressed like the locals, and their various accents sound nothing like folks talk down here. Leather jackets and vests, scuffed boots and bike rally T-shirts set them apart from the dress of the town folk.

Their eyes show reflections of countless horizons, of sights seen and places been, places far from here. They look curiously or disinterestedly about the town, seeing it not as a familiar place where one lives and dies, where one spends the majority of their lives. Instead, they see it as an Outsider does, as just another place to pass through, just another way-point on their travels.

They see the cluster of buildings in a sort of overlay of all the other places they’ve seen, highlighting both the similarities and differences. The price of gas may vary, or the girl; behind the counter, but in some way these towns are all the same. In important other ways, each is special, unique.

Who knows what adventures may occur here, what mishaps or shenanigans? Through the thin veneer of the quotidian, chaos and unpredictability lurk, ready to pounce. Will this remain a sleepy little town, a mere blip on the journey, or will unexpected occurrences make this town loom large in future memory?

Riding into town, no one knows.

As the townspeople watch the riders, they perhaps sense the same thing. Will these be just another set of customers, passing through along with the sea of humanity that slides by each day? Or will they be bringers of change? Will they cause a ruckus, or provide a break from the dull routine of town?

Either way, these riders are set apart- not only by their bikes and dress, but by their experiences. They have seen places and things most of the town folk never will. The center of their town-based lives is just a mere backdrop to these nomads, these gypsies and wanderers.

Yet the townspeople also have a certain smugness, a security of place about them. Their range may be small, but it is filled with the familiar, and perhaps with the certain. It is definitely filled with the predictable. While these roamers may not know where they’ll lay their heads that night, the townspeople do. While their houses and apartments may not be castles, they are warm and dry. They have doors to lock out the world these bikers are inextricably immersed in.

They have the ostensible boon of safety, of faux security. We are mere vagabonds, with no status, connections, of friends. Our lives appear tenuous, hanging on a thread between cars careening wildly down the road, their distracted and uncaring drivers agents in our potential deaths. Storms and winds batter us, coat our bikes with road dust or road mud, and arrange our hair and beards into outlandish styles.

We seem like less than the affluent tourists the Chamber of Commerce would like to see rolling in. We probably got dope and guns in our pockets, and strange ideas in our heads. Foreign ideas, ideas that could upset the delicate balance of this little town. Hell, we could be like them bikers on that one TV show, or on the news. Grab your guns and daughters, boys, here they come.

There’s nothing quite like rolling into town, especially after a long or eventful day of riding. Just passing through, the place and people have a scant few minutes to make an impression on us, or we on them. It’s a neat and often commerce-based relationship: X gallons of premium-grade fuel (no ethanol, please) for Y dollars. Thank you, m’am.

Most of the cool stuff on the roads happens outside of towns, far from the glaring blaze of streetlights, far from the constraining limits of the sidewalks. Still, what happens of interest in the towns happens in the interstices between these brief moments and quotidian transactions.

Whatever happens of value, often happens in a brief instant – a shared smile, a few words, an unexpected but surprisingly real connection as people. It happens, and with the twist of a throttle, is history. Maybe a few odd Facebook posts or digital images give a brief glimpse of the town. Either way, it is in our rear-view mirrors, supplanted by the road ahead and the Great Unknown.

Left behind as well are the cares and prejudices, worries and concerns that cloud the town like a veil of pollution. We are limited to the exigencies of the road, to field-expedient actions. Here’s the curve Now. There’s where we’ll camp…Now. It’s raining/sleeting/snowing/hailing. Deal with it. No time for worrying about left vs right, us vs them, or other such nonsense. We are faced with the Real, immersed in beauty.

Yep, riding into town is sometimes great. Riding out is just as great.

It sounds corny, but the Road truly calls to one. The Great Unknown is truly Great. There ARE gray spaces still left on the map, places unexplored and unknown. Here Be Dragons…some of the gray spaces used to be labeled that. That’s where we ride to, into the gray spaces, to the place the dragons are.