Marveling at Hell…

The legend goes that the way to boil a frog is not to stick him in boiling water (he’ll jump right out), but to stick him in pleasantly warm water (he’ll like it and stay) and slowly increase the temperature. He cooks without even knowing it.

This actually inaccurate legend) is also how you get people used to great changes…they occur slowly, not in obvious leaps and bounds. Incremental change is barely detected by our distracted consciousnesses. Our ‘simmer temperature’ is slowly being turned up, and we don’t even realize it, or we have our noses rubbed in those changes and wonder how it could come to such a thing. Maybe we’re even a bit hurt and indignant, that someone who was supposed to be paying attention to these changes didn’t warn us, so we could take action in time. But now it’s too late, so fuck it…we’ve gotta get to work tomorrow or mow the l;awn now, or something. So we just grumble about it, accepting what we see as a fait accompli, a done deal.

We all have experienced the major changes I’m talking about, even if we’ve only been on the planet for a relatively short while. What we once called the Land of the Free is now beset by some very non-free manifestations, and ‘United We Stand’ has turned into ‘US vs. Them’. It all happened so fast, it seems…or so insidiously. One minute you’re walking your dog, waving at neighbors, and the next minute you’re shaking your fist in rage at ‘some Toyota’ that cut you off. Crazy, right?

Well, sometimes this change occurs so insidiously that we don’t even grumble, that we don’t even recognize it when it stares us in the face. We simmer happily, perhaps commenting to each other how dang nice the water in this pot is.

We ride through the unseasonably warm weather, and post on Facebook how…nice it is. We enjoy the fact that we can go out in a Colorado mid-December and not have to take a jacket, much less a winter coat. We send each other pictures of the gloriously colored clouds at sunset, or perhaps at a (suspiciously) rainbow-colored cloud in mid-afternoon. Wow, that’s cool.

It doesn’t occur to us that much of what we see is refraction of light off the horrible pollutants that float through our sky, in the very Breath of Life we breathe each day. It never crosses our radar that in the Good Old Days of Yore (pre-industrial/pre-pollution America/Earth) these type of cloud formations did not even occur. The fact that those chem trails we saw painted all over the sky all day have coalesced into a cirrus-looking layer of dangerous chemicals does not mar our enjoyment of the sunset panorama we dig so much.

The fact that the snowfields we previously had to cross to get to Pawnee Pass don’t exist anymore (and haven’t for some time) is not allowed to ruin our eerily easy trek to the Continental Divide…in winter. No snowshoes, crampons, or skis required; well, great!

Whatever side of the Global Warming Lie you are on, you loosen your coat and turn your face to the sun. You are glad you aren’t freezing like you used to as a kid, and share this gladness with your friends and loved ones. We even post a lot of pictures and comments on what a great time we had, doing things we normally couldn’t do in winter.

I get the image of a couple walking through Hell, holding hands. ‘Why, isn’t this nice, George? It’s not much hotter than California. And look! There’s even a T-shirt shop and a boutique. Let’s go to that cute little cafe when our walk is over…’

I suppose you might as well enjoy any situation you find yourself in as much as you can, or at least as much as is appropriate. After all, we as a society have apparently decided that happiness and enjoyment are our primary goals. So if you’re in Hell, it just makes sense to try and enjoy it, right? Right?

After all, the sun’s been shining a lot in December, and we have less and less cold days. It’s been like that for a while now, so…ain’t that…normal? We fidget, sensing the illogic behind our new subconscious ‘reasoning’. We justify. Well, it’s the New Normal, and we just have to deal with it, right?

Right. But I think dealing with it doesn’t necessarily mean just slathering on the sunscreen or coconut oil and sitting back to enjoy the day. It might mean actually doing something, changing something. Or not.

I mean, this is how it is now, and I am all about being fully present in the moment and not arguing too much with the IS. But I also know bullshit when I smell it.

I don’t care if this warming (or at least rapidly and wildly changing weather patterns, unlike anything in recorded history) is caused by humanity’s pollution, nor do I care. Maybe it is a natural trend (perhaps sped up by our uh, …input to the ecosystem) and no one is to blame (especially Big Oil). I don’t care.

Whatever the reason, the reality is undeniable. California burns due to drought, while somewhere else in the world floods and monsoons deluge the place. I ride in warm December sunshine, while in Florida and Texas it snows. Almost daily, we set new records for high temperatures. The previous records were not from 1897 or something, but from the previous year. Each year successively sets new records, yet we whistle past the graveyard, actually digging the change.

We drown in our own filth, ingest it, and the cancer rates rise. That’s okay, we sweep it under the rug, or ignore the elephant in the living room, while unprecedented numbers of people die from (quite possibly) food and pollution-based cancers. We just make some more Cancer Treatment Centers, employ some more people to put a bright face on it ($10 per hour, background check, drug screen, and social media investigation required). We make a billion dollar industry out of it and call it good.

Yeah, we just adapt and roll with the changes, as R.E.O. Speedwagon told us to when we were kids. We let it be, as the Beatles advised. We keep truckin’, like the Dead said. It’s all good.

I suppose it is a natural response, and maybe a pretty good defense mechanism. After all, it might drive us crazy (or to demonstrate in large numbers and get arrested, losing our ten buck an hour jobs and causing us to miss those all important car/truck payments, those pesky mortgage or rent payments) if we thought about it too much. We’d have to miss Fox Thursday Night, and hell, that would suck. We’d best just keep quiet about all that (did you see the new laws criminalizing protesters? we quip at the office or on Facebook…we make shocked or angry emoticons to tell the world this just is not OK).

I can get it, we all read 1984, and know how to act, right? I can dig the silent grumbling, the ostensible obsequiousness, the passive-aggressive behavior. It’s a little harder to wrap my mind about us getting into these new developments, actually embracing them. Not only do we make the best of them, we seem to almost welcome them. See, it is the apocalypse, we crow gleefully. I told you. Look, you evil Republican, we are going to hell in a hand-basket, and this latest study (or meme) proves it! So there! Take that!

Global warming? Beach day!

Ocean fish polluted? Eat farmed fish!

Living in Hell? Buy good real estate!

It’s a bit comical, and more than a bit scary, this trend I observe. Or am I just the Evil Media spreading fake news, and the rest of the world are sober, well-reasoned beings, working diligently to do their parts to make this world a better place to live? I dunno, I’m just some guy, some biker. How could I possibly know anything?

Besides, I’m just sayin’, just passin’ the time until my new pipes get here and I can ride gleefully through the unseasonably warm Colorado December, thanking ‘God’ and my lucky stars for the Great Lie of Global Warming.

It’s time to ride!

My Pipes

I love my pipes. Is love too strong a word? Maybe not. As trite and cliche as it may sound, my loud pipes have saved my life many times.

My bike turned 24 this June 13th (you can tell your Harley’s birth date by decoding your serial number, typically stamped on the engine casing and on a sticker on the frame down-tube).

So of course, she’s had plenty of pipes.

I put the screws to the stock Harley pipes after a while. While the stock pipes then were much louder than those today (in the world of more ‘polite’ and wimpier Harley manifestations), they were still a bit tame for me. So a long screwdriver popped in the baffles made ’em sound a bit louder (and way cooler). Oh, the things I thought back then…

Sometimes I wonder if it would have been best to stick with the ‘stockers’, with the horizontal equalizer tube between pipes. Surely there’s a reason engineers smarter than myself put those on there. But alas, they went the way of dinosaurs and old Led Zeppelin T-shirts.

Them Python P3s were pretty cool, and sounded real nice. There’s nothing like the sound of your Pythons as you accelerate up a hill, or around a slow semi. The resonant, semi-modulated rumble was something that was so cool the copycat Jap bikes tried to duplicate it, and Harley (to their and our embarrassment) tried to patent and sue the Japs over. Yeah, there was no sound like that rumble.

Even the Cycle Worx headers my son put on while I was in Iraq were pretty cool. People knew when you were coming, and if you wanted to semi-quietly rumble through a small town (or into your driveway at three AM), you could. They stayed on a long time.

After tens of thousands of miles, they became discolored and blued, the chrome hanging on, but just barely. Still, I dug them. There’s nothing like the sound of your bike ringing in your ears, modulating and resonating with your buddies’ pipes as you roar along, like you owned the place. You truly have to experience it to appreciate it. It can’t be duplicated on rice rockets, or on copycat cruisers, I don’t care what type pipes you have.

It can’t be likened to those Flow Masters on your old ’46 Chevy Panel Truck, as the 3/4 race cam spins its elliptical magic. Your BMW doesn’t even sound close, not even with the pipes off. It’s sort of a Harley thing. Sort of an older Harley thing, before they had computers and a ton of bells and whistles hanging off them, before they had catalytic converters and other car nonsense bolted onto them, in a vain effort to appease the government pollution regulations and John Q. Public.

Yeah, those were different days – and different sounds. No modern bike (Harley or not) could sound that way, not even loaded with CVO crap and a pair of expensive Rineharts. Just like you cannot duplicate the sound of a KZ-900 or 1000, you cannot duplicate the sound of those older Harleys, before the Great Japification of motorcycles.

I didn’t expect my pipes to make my bike good at the drags, or even to give it a performance increase. More horsepower and more displacement is a wienie-wagger paradigm, a non-Harley way of looking at the world. Good God, if you have a hundred horsepower, is three hundred really better? Do the guys who own race-track bikes even get close to redlining them? It’s the classic wienie-wagger philosophy question…if you have a twelve-inch dick, what do you do with the other four inches? All that extra junk is superfluous, mere numbers for the insecure to crow about.

My good ole EVO was plenty fast for me. If I wanted speed, I’d still be putting Yoshimura Stage 1000 on my KZ…or an S&S 144 incher to replace my ego…I mean EVO. My good ole EVO is still plenty fast for me. It goes as fast as any sane person needs to. It goes as fast as the Speed of Pleasure. That’s the speed I ride at. Beyond that speed, all your focus is on the road, and not on the journey. That ain’t for me. I done gone fast already, okay?

But still, the sound of my pipes is reassuring. It sounds like I am going fast…and that is enough for me. Ya know, eighty is actually pretty damn fast, no matter what high speeds we are used to, or dream of in our perverted GTA-5 minds. Next time you’re going eighty and a wreck happens in front of you, you’ll realize just how fast that is…or next time a deer jumps in front of you.

But enough of that nonsense. Back to the pipes…

My old pipes were pretty worn and well-used as I pulled into Texline, on the NW Texas/New Mexico border. I was more than two thirds of the way through a thousand mile day. My pipes had been staying hot, as I was running a steady 85 through the 40-50 degree weather.

There I was, back at Texline, when I discovered my chrome heat shield way loose. On tightening it, I discovered a hairline crack in my rear pipe, about 3 inches down the down-tube portion. If it weren’t so cold (and I hadn’t been burning so much daylight), I might have tried to rustle up a drill and put a screw at the very end of the crack, to stop it from spreading. I didn’t, and as I raced across New Mexico and up Raton Pass towards Colorado, the crack widened.

The sound of my pipes changed subtly, and then as the miles passed, more noticeably. As the sun fell, the temperatures dropped below freezing, yet my pipes stayed hot, my speed unabated. The sound deepened, and I thought I could hear my output valve clattering a bit. Damn.

Anyhow, I made it home, but not before my pipe had cracked in a cross shape, maybe three inches on the long side. This sucked. I knew I’d have to deal with it and soon, if I wanted to keep riding through the post-apocalyptically warm weather of a Colorado December. As a field-expedient fix, I tried to use J.B. Weld’s Heat Weld (or some such name) to ‘glue’ a piece of tin over the crack, and then put heat tape over that.

Well, as with all temporary fixes, it was temporary…all too temporary. Before I knew it, the goofy sweet smell of melting J.B. Weld permeated every stop, and followed me like a dirty cloud over Pig Pen. It didn’t really work and the crack widened. I knew I could be damaging my valves with the reduced back pressure, and limited my riding, all the while dreaming of new pipes and how I would get them.

Well, one day I decided to take my bike all the way to Denver, to attend an MC Thanksgiving celebration. We had ridden about halfway (ripping along peg to peg) when I felt the pipe crack burst open. The hot air on my calf clued me in as well as the horribly increased sound. With no other choice, I pushed on…

Well I arrived in style, at a fairly upscale neighborhood, with my bike sounding like a herd of Harleys, instead of a lone bike. Looking closer on arrival (after some comments on my new sound…damn, you are a dirty biker, aintcha?, etc.) I discovered the pipe had broken clean through, a jagged cut, and the heat tape half burned off. The rattle of the loose end had (along with my previous thousands of miles) loosened the nuts holding the pipe to the frame. Not only had the pipes been blowing out the crack (now split), they had been blowing straight out the cylinder for a few miles! That is definitely not good.

So after the party, we gathered in the garage and tightened the loose nuts, giving me at least a semblance of a pipe (and back-pressure) to ride home on. One guy (vice president of the chapter) offered to ride back with me and weld it together in his shop, for free. Another (president of another chapter) offered to find me some pipes for free or cheap, and insisted I call him the next day. Good ole brotherhood. I just rode her back (probably against what prudent advice would say) in the cold, and have pretty much garaged her since then (the weekend after Thanksgiving).

It’s sorta been killing me, not riding. Colorado (thanks to the lie of global warming) has been experiencing unseasonably warm days while Florida and Texas (and a large segment of Dixie, I understand) get snow. Thus, I am missing a gift of perfect ‘extra’ riding days, while my pipes sit cracked.

Well, the other day I’d finally had enough. There’s nothing sadder than a biker who ain’t riding (unless it’s a guitarist without a guitar), so I said (in best biker tradition) and said fuck it, ignoring common sense and mechanical realities. The December Colorado sun was shining (our trusty and beloved ball of plasmic hydrogen and helium), so I took my bike out.

As I backed it out of my garage, I pulled the primer and cranked her up. It was pretty loud, idling as I smoked a cigarette. Every time I’d rev her up (just for fun) heads would turn. I smiled. After a good warm-up, I began riding into the beautiful day. As I rolled onto the main road, I cranked open the throttle. Jesus, it sounded like a freaking tank, or tractor. Man, them pipes were loud!

A laugh burst from my lips unexpectedly, a particularly wicked yet joyful laugh. Let ’em rip! Here I come, suckers! I freely admit to the gleeful and somewhat sophomoric joy that rose in me, as heads turned and cars got out of the way. Another laugh burst forth as I rolled the throttle on. Man, it was good to be King!

Yep, there’s nothing like it (or should that be ‘nope, there’s nothing like it’?). I was King in that moment,as anyone looking could plainly see. And everyone in earshot was looking. Now, I’ve never had real loud pipes (on a bike at least, except for that one week my KZ-1000A2 was missing the back portion of my 4:1s), so this was a treat, even if it did put wear (or even possible damage on my output valve).

I ripped only a few miles in that condition, to the weed store and then the gas station for some cigs, but before I’d gone a hundred feet, my consciousness had shifted…out of the box and back onto the Road. It was maybe a limited freedom, but it was a loud and entirely real freedom, if only for a moment. My spirit soared, like an eagle, like a dove, like…a 1993 Harley Davidson 90th anniversary FXRS-C, the best damn bike the Motor Company ever made.

I’m here to tell you, brothers and sisters, that’s soaring!

I rode back, exhilarated but with my throttle-induced high slightly dampened. I couldn’t continue to miss days like this. With Christmas coming and still owing my brother some money, along with the fact I had to pay three hundred plus to get my partner’s car out of impound (along with other growing family situations requiring money) I just didn’t have the money to do it, and steeled myself for the rest of the month not riding (something Nature normally ensures in Colorado).

But then today, in a burst of incredible self-centeredness, I logged into Dennis Kirk.com to check on the Vance & Hines Short Shots pipes I’d had my eye on. There had been only eleven of them in stock, at a ridiculously low price. I checked curiously, half eagerly. They were gone! Holy shit! All the other pretty good deals were more than I wanted to spend, and nowhere near as good as this deal.

The Universe had spoken. Or had it? Come to think of it, fuck the Universe! I’m a biker, and I ain’t listening to no one but my conscience. I’m a sovereign, free-riding fool, and no dang ole Universe tells Jeb what to do! I’m a biker, and I need to ride, goddamn it.

So I logged into Revzilla.com and whadda ya know? The same pipes were there, and for an even more insane price, an even better deal. There was one set in stock. It was like forty four percent off. Saying damn the torpedoes, fuck it, charge, and all that other stuff in the back of my mind, I placed the order.

Well, now I may not be able to get my daughter out of jail, or the woman I like a present, or even buy smokes at the end of the month (I’ll still have flower), I’ll by God have some pipes, come hell or high water. Wahoo! Free delivery guaranteed by 22 December. I’m gonna get one of those green scented trees you hang in cages (cars) and put them pipes under it when they arrive…for about a minute. Then I’ll go to my garage, bolt ’em on and…

Ride into the Colorado wilderness, come what may. Ride, through rain or snow, sleet or hail or cold. Ride as I listen to the rumble of My New Pipes. It’s gonna be great.

Who says there ain’t a Biker Santa? It’s me. No one else in the world is gonna take care of me (well, except maybe the Bike Fairy, if I’m in a super pinch and the stars align just SO) or get me pipes, so I’ll damn well be my own Biker Santa.

It’s gonna be a great Biker Christmas, and Biker Festivus…ripping through the countryside on my new Vance & Hines pipes. I can hardly wait. Time to ride!

 

 

Under the Stars…

I just hate waking up inside a box. My day seems to begin with obvious and tangible limitations, with boundaries. The linear closes in on me before my spirit even has a chance to soar into the new day. Nature is purely theoretical at this point, hidden by walls. Held at bay by wood and gypsum, the world is just an idea, not something I am part of. Before I even fully sense the walls, I feel them close in. No, self-imprisonment is definitely not for me.

When waking under the infinite sky, the day begins differently. The sights, sounds, and smells of nature greet me. My spirit soars. Looking up, I am reassured by the presence of my bike, waiting patiently to take me to new places. Maybe the last few stars linger, as the growing light reveals more and more of the place I am in.

My nostrils take in the free air, unencumbered. The smells ignite my brain, energize my body. As I stretch on my saddle blanket, the world seems to embrace me, the sky enfolds me. I wake as people have for millennia; hugged between Mother Earth and Father Sky. My back feels great. I am alive. It is a new day, filled with potential and possibilities.

It’s a different experience waking inside a box.

Under the sky, I wake alone, but I am somehow together with the planet, with the cosmos. I am indubitably alive, in every sense of the word. Waking inside walls, I am alienated, cut off, a separate being. It truly sucks. In that minute, I’d trade all the warmth and comfort in the world for a cold camp outside.

My attitude is different, as is my subjective experience. Waking in the epitome of separation, I feel separate from the world, an un-integrated part of it. I feel…alone. This isn’t the good alone of riding by myself, hiking through the woods. This is the alone from which isolation appears. It is the alone of dungeons, of prison bars, and of alienation.

Waking outside in the world, I am literally a different person. The cares and woes of ‘civilization’ seem far away, something the city folks down below have to deal with. It sets the tone for the entire day.

I ride under the sky, hike and climb. I eat outside, my meal seasoned with Reality, with a capital R. My day flows along smoothly, in harmony with the universe. I am One…one with everything.

Like Papillon, my soul withers in the self-induced imprisonment of four walls. All I can think of is how to get OUT.

Now, I have learned how to keep that wild and free space open inside me, wherever I am. But it is an effort when caged. It flows naturally when free. Inside walls, the troubles of the world seem oppressive, weighing in on me. They are magnified, exacerbated. Some essential part of me becomes grim.

It’s not as bad waking inside a lodge, a tipi (teepee, as the Box People know it). The round sides and peaked top lead my spirit upward and out, into the free world waiting outside. Even a tent is bearable, for the world is undeniably outside the thin nylon walls. But inside solid and square walls of the Box People, I sense the reality of my existence…trapped inside a box.

I wither. I fade. My soul seems to shrivel.

Damn this box! Damn the comforts that make me weak, isolated, and angry. I long to move, to get out.

Once outside, the healing wind plays over me. The sight of distant horizons or mountain skylines soothe me. It’s gonna be okay. Clouds float by, marvelous wisps of gossamer, reminding me that moving on is what we do, the clouds and I.

Leave the boxes for the Box People. Give me instead a cold, wet camp. Give me the infinite sky, lit with its infinite possibilities. Give me freedom, liberty, for to give me otherwise is to give me death, a slow ugly death.

I pray to die outside, with my boots on. I hope I am engaged in some heroic feat, but would be happy if I was simply walking down a path somewhere. I don’t care if I was just sitting and gazing enraptured at the scenery, as long as it was outside.

When I am gone, I would wish to be buried directly in the soil, so I can return the chemicals I borrowed. That’s all the eternity I want or need – to return my eternal; chemicals to the Earth so they can be used again. Chemicals never die…To be buried in a box would be hell to me, as hellish as ‘waking up’ and discovering there actually was an afterlife, that I would be chained to an ego existence for eternity. Ugh…that’s not heaven, it is hell. By Odin, I’ll do everything I can to ensure I end my life outside.

Inside a house, I die a little each minute. Inside a building, my essence scurries frantically, like a bird with its wings clipped. It is a slow, terrible death, padded with TV and Pop-Tarts. It is a senescent death, a willing bequest of our power to no good purpose.

Waking inside is a terrible fate.

Under the stars, that’s where we feel connected. That’s where we get a sense of perspective. That’s where we belong…where I belong, at least.

 

Bikers and Banana Seats

I wonder how many of the ‘old school’ bikers started on a simple pedal bike – the ubiquitous Schwinn Sting-Ray, with a ‘banana seat’ and maybe even a sissy bar. An old baseball card held by a clothes pin simulated a motorcycle sound as it was flipped around by the spokes. Some of the cool kids even had those hand-grips with the tassel thingies sticking out of them.

If you were totally cool (and your parents were rich), you might even have a model with an actual shifter, like they used in race cars.

…and those ape-hanger handlebars, well, they were downright groovy.

It just didn’t get cooler than that. There weren’t a lot of different types of bikes, but they were all good, solid American-made stuff. Good for making jumps off the big hills in the construction lot, carrying brother on the ape-hanger handlebars and a sister clinging to the back, holding onto the sissy bar for dear life. They could carry a load of BB-guns for miles, to the next BB Gun War site. They were our first steel ponies, giving us extended range, a sense of freedom, and serving as our trusty steeds with which we could explore the Great Unknown (which was most of the world back then).

If you were really cool, you might have a Fram or STP sticker on your seat. Yeah, these bikes were basically the same, but everyone made their ride uniquely theirs, by the little things we did (and failed to do) to our mounts.

These babies could make as big a jump as you had balls for (even though most of our balls hadn’t dropped yet). They would carry you to adventure, onward as far as you dared? Did you have it in you to pedal to Devil’s Kitchen, or to Giant Springs? Would your daring and endurance carry you all the way to the Highwoods? Was that even possible, for a kid? Well, we could dang sure find out. Powered by PBJs and baloney sandwiches, there was no place we couldn’t go, for we were powered by Kid Energy.

These faithful horses were not only the vehicle for numerous adventures, but also for a series of cool wipe outs. Skids and burn-outs, side-sliding around a gravel corner, these vehicles gave us both thrills and bruises. They may well have saved our lives, preparing us for the time we could first twist some throttle on a real gas burning motorcycle, maybe a Hodaka ComBat Wombat or something else as unlikely and…dangerous.

That was okay, for we were already inured to danger, accustomed to it by the shenanigans and hi-jinks we performed on our beloved Sting Rays. We’d already met the elephant, faced the beast, and bled the blood. We’d wiped out and discovered…we would survive.

Yes, these Schwinns were instrumental in our education in being bikers. We learned the ethics of the Road, and of brotherhood on them. We developed (or learned) the code.: never snitch, stand by your brothers, ride like hell. We learned the meek wiped out, while those who stayed strong and ‘rode their line’ made it. We learned to fight when the time called for it, and to make peace when circumstances allowed. We were becoming bikers, although some of us didn’t know it then. I’m not sure Schwinn even knew the Grand Purpose they were serving; they were just making sturdy American bikes, bikes that would last forever if you took care of them. We were the ‘X’ in there equation, the unknown variables from which unknown results would spring.

This was before motorcycles had even entered the consciousness of some. Or maybe it was during this time that bikes…man bikes…adult bikes…began to enter our consciousnesses.

I’ll never forget being on a camping trip to Yellowstone while fairly young. A band of Hell’s Angels was stopped by us, complete with wild women and backpacks strapped to their bikes. The mix of choppers and cool bikes fascinated me. The old bikes and the occasional ‘bagger’ seemed to promise unlimited freedom – if we could just live long enough to get one, if we could just make that next jump on our Schwinns and survive. We could be like them – wild and free, going where we wanted, calling no man Boss or Sir. We could be strong and wild, like the mountain men or the cowboys we read of in books, saw in the movies. We could be…well…heroes of a sort.  When I saw those Wild Ones rip[ past our old VW camper, I new I just had to do that too…as soon as I possibly could. When one of the guys gave me (looking through the window, enchanted and enraptured) a cool wave, I knew I was going to. When one of the women flashed up her hippie shirt, I absolutely knew I loved bikes and breasts.

I’m not even sure Schwinn  even knew the monumental part they played in all this; they were just making sturdy, American bikes that would last forever if you took care of them. Although they were all basically the same (foreign made bikes came later), each guy (or girl) made the bike theirs by what they did (or failed to do) to it. Each made it theirs by the forged bond of experience, by the places they went to on them, and the experiences they had on them.

Now we’ve grown up, gotten older and wiser. We have experience, have been taught by Time and the School of Hard Knocks. Hopefully we know better. But we don’t.

Inside us all is this nine year old kid, sliding around a gravel corner, zooming into the night, half out of control. Skids and burnout, jumps made without knowing if you’d survive…roads taken, not knowing where they were going. The trusty old Sting Ray was our vehicle, our Great Enabler. It took us to these adventures, and in style.

Through an inadvertent keystroke, I lost half of the (believe me, honest) masterful rhapsody I wrote on this subject. That’s okay, I could wax poetic forever on this subject. I could write forever on that indescribable feeling, known only to those who did it, to those not wearing helmets and protective gear, to those with their young asses out on the line, with some real skin in the game.

Man, that’s living. That’s the Real, staring you in the face as you rip down a hill, bouncing and half on, half off your bike, your hat long gone and a wild and maniacal laughter bursting from your lips as you careen towards Certain Death, towards the Great Unknown.

 

The Wild Hogs of Texas

“I wouldn’t go up 93” drawled the Texas sheriff. “Them wild hogs out there make it right dangerous for folks on motorcycles.” I nodded politely, thanking him for the information, while thinking ‘hell, ain’t no stoopid ole hogs gonna scare me off.’

It seems wild and feral hogs have created a virtual infestation in the south, with up to 39 states reportedly  infested.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-plague-of-pigs-in-texas-73769069/

Seems the varmints been terrifying tourists, stopping traffic, endangering motorists (hitting a four hundred pound hog at 60 mph will crunch up your car or truck, and is most likely fatal on a motorcycle). They tear up parks, attack household animals, and even invade towns and suburbs.

Texas has declared an unlimited open season on wild hogs, in an effort to get rid of the (surprisingly smart and well-organized) pets. Sounders (herds of hogs led by female sows…boar males are typically solitary) can get up to fifty of more, and roam wild, foraging for food, attacking household pets, and challenging any human in their path -no, daring them- to do something about it.

Now, a two hundred pound hog with seven inch tusks is nothing to sneer at. Pigs are surprisingly fast for their bulk, and incredibly strong. They are ‘opportunistic omnivores’, which means they’ll eat almost anything they can get their grinders and cutters (names for the top and bottom sets of teeth, respectively) on.

Heck, you start bleeding around a sounder (especially if you are wounded and partially incapacitated), and all folks are likely to find later is your clothes. That’s how they used to get rid of horse thieves in the old days, when trees were scarce and rope precious. Just hamstring the rascal and throw him to the hogs. There’ll be nothing left but torn up clothes and a few cracked bones in no time. Sometimes (so the oldsters say) they’d even eat the thief’s boots!

So, this Texas sheriff wasn’t joking when he warned me about wild hogs. The dang place is crawlin’ with ’em. They are big and strong and fast and smart, and ain’t takin’ no shit from anybody. They could care less if I was some badass biker; they’d gladly knock me down and chow me for a snack.

Hell, just one more thing to worry about (or to not worry about, and damn the torpedoes). In addition to the chance of deer and other critters jumping out in front of me near sunset, these hogs might run out at any time. Come around some corner going seventy and meet a sounder of hogs in the middle of the road, and the jig might just be up for you.

To hell with crazy cagers, texting and not paying attention. These hogs are probably smarter and assuredly more dangerous. Well, of course, I tucked all that info away in the corner of my mind and (as usual) rolled on the throttle for wherever the hell I wanted to go, consequences be damned.

So there I was, rolling down a misty Texas highway, dang near dozing despite the cold and damp, when I saw a series of dark shapes in the mist before me. Almost locking up the brakes (well, actually Harleys of my bike’s age don’t have brakes per se, just speed reducers), I managed to come to a stop maybe ten to twenty feet from the leader, a large sow who stood as tall as the tank of my bike, and must have weighed over three hundred pounds.

A clamor of squeals and grunts erupted at the sight of me, as they all regarded me with their beady, soulless eyes. I revved my bike, hoping the loud sound would cause them to scatter. The cacophony continued, with more emphatic grunts and an occasional bellow added. It sounded like a chorus of demons, until the leader shushed them with a grunt and a tersely squealed phrase. The sonsabitches were actually talking!

Well, they hadn’t moved a muscle when I had approached like a bat out of hell, and the noise of my pipes hadn’t scared them. They just stood there implacably in the mist, ominously. The image from a Monty Python movie crossed my mind, and I giggled as I realized the basic translation of their message; who goes there? None shall pass!

Now these weren’t just wild hogs, they were wild Texas hogs. I’m here to tell ya, it don’t pay to try to force a Texan to do anything. They’ll just dig in their heels and get this grim Alamo look about them.

Well, I stared back at that lead sow with my steeliest glint. I’m the fuckin’ Man here, and I’m gonna be the Alpha in any group, you fucking hog. She just stared back. Try it, Two Legs. My hand crept toward the .38 special in my pocket. Before it got there, I realized that ammo (even with the higher-velocity ‘Plus P’ rounds) would do nothing more than piss off that ornery and Brobdingnagian sow. The .45 caliber 1911 in my pack might stop her…if I shot her right in the eye, or a weak spot. Problem was, there were scant few weak spots showing, and I was pretty certain there would be even less when she charged me.

Well, there happened to be a short sword within easy reach, and my hand crept toward it. If they came running, I was determined to chop and shoot as many hogs as I could before going down. Fuck, I’d even take a try at that lead sow just for defying me…if she was alone. But she wasn’t. Them other hogs looked right mean, too, and I’d bet them young’uns wouldn’t mind takin’ a chomp off me once the fur started flying.

I revved my bike again, louder this time, and they scoffed. The mist closed in, and it was starting to drizzle. The comforts of the next town seemed (and were) far away in that moment. No, it was just me and these dad-burned hogs…and I liked it like that.

Steeling myself, I began to idle towards them, going slow. They didn’t budge. I knew any one of the larger hogs could head-butt me and knock my bike over, especially at the slow speed I was creeping along at. Once down, skin scratched by asphalt, they’d smell the blood, and…it would be on. I had as real a sense of present danger and the possibility of messy death as I’d ever had in Iraq or Afghanistan…or anywhere.

Well, fuck it. Ain’t no damn hog…even a Texas hog…tellin’ me where I can or can’t ride. I continued to inch forward into the mist, and they continued to stand their ground. The mist swirled, but remained silent. It would tell no tales. I imagined that Texas sheriff finding my bike and a splotch of blood on the road, and shaking his head. I tried to warn that damn-fool Yankee.

Yet I rolled on, taking an angle straight ahead (but slightly away from the Hog Queen). The snuffling and oinking increased. My jaw set in a grim line, I continued. They slowly began to part, grudgingly moving away from my bike (or being pushed away by my knee as I passed). It seemed to take forever, and the road ahead, obscured in the mist, could have hidden hundreds more. I recalled the sheriff saying (against the published wisdom of experts) that the sounders could get up to two hundred hogs, if left alone. At the time, I thought he was exaggerating, upping the numbers for a passing and gullible tourist. Now I began to wonder…

With a death-grip on the handlebars and a clenched jaw, I rolled on, the lit cigarette in the corner of my mouth (lit in a sign of bravado as I first regarded them) forgotten. Easy now, Jed. Simmer down now, you fuckin’ rebel hogs…

…eventually I motored through past the herd, and it ended like a lot of experiences do…with an anti-climax. No one dead, no one kilt, no good fight-to-the-death stories to tell later. Just a cold, lonesome biker with many miles still to go, and rain and darkness falling faster. Hell, I wish I could have told you (or made up a story) about how I valiantly fought off the hogs, or how me and my trusty Harley plowed through that pile of obstreperous and implacable pig meat. But I didn’t.

I learned one lesson from the encounter, though…

That durn ole Texas sheriff wasn’t joking.

 

God bless Texas, and hell, god bless Texas hogs. Leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone. I ain’t a-gonna come down there hunting you, or roast yer carcass on a Texas campfire, under the Texas stars. I’ll just motor along down the road here. See, ole Jed’s got places to go and things to do.

Everyone just wants to get home, right? Still, I wonder. That could have gone any of a number of ways, some of them real bad. Still, it was an experience, one I’m glad I had, and one that reminded me that the Wild, Wild, West was still alive and kickin’ out here in the west. It may seem like an adventure, but just remember next time you’re zipping down a Texas road, as free and uncaring as a bird. That ole sow’s still out there, and I’m here to tell ya, boys, she looks mean and tough. Texas tough.

Wanderlust…

It’s in us. That driving desire to see what’s on the other side of the hill, to experience the wild, free sensation of discovering new places and experiencing new things. It’s a compulsion maybe for not even that, but to be moving, roaming free across the land. Wanderlust, I believe they used to call it in the olden days.

When I was camping with my parents when young, I always wanted to explore every trail. Any trail splitting off from the one I was on seemed to beckon to me, inviting me to explore it, to learn the ways of its wandering, to see the scenes it revealed. If I couldn’t do it then, I vowed to come back and find out later.

Some of my brothers and sisters wanted to stay in or around camp, or maybe stick to the main trails. Not me; I wanted to know every little deer trail, and every hint of a trail. Quickly, the places that beckoned me were not limited to trails made by others (man or beast). A ridge-line beckoned, a couloir begged to be climbed, an arete or peak practically pleaded to be ascended; come up here and see the views and experiences and feelings I’ve got to offer. The siren’s song of the Great Unknown played loud and sweet in my ears.

I’m sure it was the same for all of us…we probably all wanted as kids to be able to wander free, knew we were going to (at some point in our lives, at least) when we were adults. We may have even tried to soothe that wanderlust with the modern American version of traveling; go from one TSA search point, onto an enclosed and climate-controlled box to fly to somewhere else, where we would pick up our rental climate-controlled boxes and drive to the climate-controlled hotel boxes, where we’d spend our vacations, with occasional forays out onto the beach or wherever. Of course, if the weather turned or night fell, we’d scurry back to our boxes and sit it out.

It didn’t soothe our wanderlust. A series of trips like this to Thailand and Mexico left us wanting, unfulfilled. Even the more adventurous vacations seemed a bit quotidian, when placed in a TSA-airlines parentheses, on arrival and departure. We were missing something. We were missing…the journey, the monumental act of getting there.

There’s a reason pilgrimages exist. They were maybe not so much about arriving at the Holy Rock or Sacred Temple, but instead about the journey (and attendant transformation), and in the ‘simple’ act of getting there. A pilgrimage to Mecca doesn’t mean much if I live next door, or it I take a plane to get there. It’s the journey up the Nile, not getting to the headwaters.

It’s like the Sturgis rally; it’s fairly removed from the mainstream, so it requires a bit of a journey to get there. As is obvious to anyone who’s ridden there, the Black Hills and its rally cannot be fully appreciated or experienced unless seen in the context of the journey to get there: in the endless plains, the storms and clouds and vistas, the people you meet and the experiences you have along the way. Taking a plane somewhere is kind of like trailering your bike to Sturgis; it just takes something out of the experience.

Well, us nomads are all about the journey. We could care less for destinations. We just gotta be out there, in it. Who cares where, just go.

Many of the Box People and our more sedentary friends and family might think we are running away from something, somehow escaping the ‘reality’ of ‘civilization’. We maybe see it more as running toward something – the Great Unknown. Or perhaps more aptly, just running, moving, free and wild. Instead of escaping from reality, we maybe feel we are moving in it, that the true reality is perhaps more accessible when we are moving, out in the open, heading towards God Knows Where (one of my favorite places).

Yeah, we like to ride, to roam, to wander. We surrender to that lust, and suppress it our danger. We may limit it a bit to accommodate jobs and families and friends, but if we stifle it too much, we will become what the world needs less of -stifled people, people not living their dreams and desires. We will wither and shrink, like fruit rusting on the vine. We will become angry and bitter old people, the same type of people we encounter now, shaking their fists at us and cutting us off, driving along with grim looks on their faces as they fail to notice the brilliantly sublime sunset happening all around them.

Stifled, we would become less than ourselves, and fail to manifest our true and authentic selves. So we do the balancing act of Life; trying to make two possibly opposing paradigms congruent, burning the candle at both ends, or whatever metaphor applies to being a born wandering nomad biker with having a fairly ‘normal’ life (in a definitely abnormal world). It’s an ongoing process,,,

Some refuse to compromise their wanderlust. They wander, and the world be damned. They meet the world wherever they go, and if an occasional return to friends and families among the Box People and the Ordinary World is not enough, then so be it. Most of us compromise to varying degrees, depending on the exigencies of our circumstances, based on considerations only we can know.

It’s all a balancing act.

It’s just yoga in action, an exercise in both balance and stability. An exercise in Being Present, of being fully in the Here and Now. Somehow, being on the road, throttle cracked open and the world unfolding before us seems to do it for us…force us into an awareness that we are IN IT, truly in the here and now. Crystal-clear reality flows around us and through us in those precious moments, and we cannot in those moments avoid being an integral part of the Infinite Radiant IS.

It’s almost religious, by God, and definitely Divine. In fact, it goes beyond those concepts, merely resting in the Now. If we are lucky enough to share this experience with other riders, we have then ridden as close to the Face of God as is possible. To get there, we may have to ride past the Abyss, past the Void, through loneliness and uncertainty.

We don’t care about that, we just ride.

 

See, we’ve got the Wanderlust.

Arkansas

Most people think of Arkansas as some sort of hillbilly sanctuary…they can almost hear the banjos of Deliverance playing.

Some laud (or despise) it as the home of Ceegar Bill Clinton. A few know it as the once biggest hub of cocaine and arms trafficking in the US (Clinton again and his buddy Tyson -from the chicken company again), according to many accounts. But at the end of the day, the general consensus (from people who have never been there) is Arkansas is some kind of redneck and hillbilly-ridden backwater, thankfully out of  the way of the Mainstream.

Well, I rode through Arkansas this fall, and it was definitely not what I expected. I came in from the southeast corner, at Texarkana. After riding across the Texas panhandle, the place looked lush, almost tropical. Riding up through the west end of the state (through the Oachita Mountains) I saw some of the Deep South scenes people expect…but I also rode through some nice country, through quaint villages, an odd mix of rich and poor (not separated like in most places, but mixed freely along the tree-clad roadsides). I met a lot of nice people, no different than you or I (except perhaps for the accent, which can be a little thick in places).

 

The riding was tremendous; sweeper turns, mixes of tunnels through trees and occasional vistas, lots of short elevation gains and losses. The Arkansas Highway Department (or traditional usage) planned the roads well, almost as if they had motorcycles in mind. You could keep up a decent (albeit semi-slow) speed and still have it be fairly fun (due to the rising and falling sweepers, disappearing into the trees and opening on the hilltops).

I was thankful I could ride without a helmet. By skipping Oklahoma, Kansas, and those type Nazi states, I had avoided having to wear a helmet since I left Colorado. That’s why I came so far east, into the Occupied Zone, where life is more uh…regimented. So I rode with the wind (or rain) blowing free through my hair, glad to be in a relatively free state.

I wish I had taken more pictures of the place. The fact was, I was enjoying the ride too much (and hurrying towards a rally in Fayetteville) to stop for many pictures. It was nice and leisurely, though. The mountains are older, more like foothills in the Rockies, but mountains nonetheless. Since I’d seen mostly wide open plains since leaving New Mexico, it was a treat to see the mountain skylines. I’m a mountain boy from the start, born and bred. It was real nice.

Blue ridges and shades of color revealed a succession of hills and valleys, mountains, and dales. Light dappled through trees and refracted rain and mist into a series of hues any painter would love. The graceful paintbrush of Nature had done its work well here. I rode, and I smiled, through rain and sun, coming ever closer to the Blues, Bikes, and BBQ festival, and a meeting with some fellow Misfits, Nomads, Wanderers.

Fayetteville (north of Fort Smith) seems to be a section of modern America set in the northwest corner of the state, amidst the Ozark Mountains. Its proximity to Wal-Mart headquarters has brought in a plethora of Yankees, outsiders, and new ideas and attitudes. As home of the Razorbacks (and the University), it is a center of modernity…and of modern problems.

I liked the town though, and it seemed like every biker in the state (and a few from surrounding states) had come to the rally. Although fall, the weather was nice, and as the front had moved out, sun bathed the proceedings, pleasantly warm but not too warm (which I could easily imagine it being, in summer). The town was a nice mix of modern and traditional, with a lot of cool old brick buildings in the downtown area.

The rally itself was nice. Not a ton different than any other rally, but somehow the people seemed a lot more into it than those I had noticed at Sturgis. The cops (while present, in fairly large numbers) were less intrusive than Sturgis, and seemed more friendly. There was rootin’ and tootin’ going on til all hours; those ole Razorbacks partied with a will, going at it in a style that would do any bike rally proud.

 

A couple odd incidents failed to mar the experience for me:

1. Having been camping by the side of my bike, I entered the rally with a six-inch sheathed Buck 119 hunting knife by my side. After exchanging pleasantries while waiting for the light to change, the cop at the street crossing (from parking lot to main venue) asked me if anyone had spoken to me about the knife at my side. I replied no, but added that I always checked knife up.com to make sure I knew the local laws. The cop replied that yes (with a tone that implied no) the knife was legal….then added if (and I assumed only if) he thought I was using it for its intended purpose. I looked around, for this part of the rally was held on the ground of the University, near its stadium. Hmm, there was no need to be hunting or camping here, so any other purpose of the knife must seem nefarious to a suspicious (or hyper-alert) cop. Either way, the knife’s presence seemed to (lol) make the well-armed cops nervous, and identify me as someone who would bear watching. I asked (hiding my rising incredulity, and suppressing my rising indignation) if he…wanted me to…the cop nodded. He wanted me to take off the knife at my side. I thought for a moment about the J-frame (and the doob) in my pocket, considered well, and said (with a bright, helpful smile)…sure, I’ll walk on back (in the heat) and put it in the pack on my bike. The cop’s demeanor instantly returned to Good Ole Boy. He smiled and said it was nice to see a cooperative and polite biker. I smiled and said aw, shucks. But it sort of rankled a bit, when I thought of it later. Self-preservation be damned, I let that cop (partially) disarm me, despite the protections of the Constitution of the United States. But in the end, that cop (and his buddies watching, who he surely told about it later) knew I was just a Good Ole Boy too, not some devilish, black-hearted rebel with a sack of weed and a jar of hash oil, or a pistol in my pocket without a license. Not some evil bastard from Colorado, a Green and White spreading the poison of cannabis, bound to undermine their society and everything they held dear. I guess it was good for them to see me as a Good Ole Boy, but the price was…what? politeness? a slight knuckling under to authority? (is there any such thing as a slight knuckling under?) Either way, it was an odd experience, and indicative of the growing trend in the US to see carrying weapons of any sort as some sort of threat to society, not as an inherent right guaranteed by our most basic legal document. I didn’t expect it in Arkansas, where people generally seem to use and carry (and accept) weapons as a fact of life, as tools and implements, rather than as evil and dangerous objects.
2. During the rally, the word was passed around (from the rally organizers, I presume) to the vendors that any vendor caught selling rebel flags or anything with the word rebel on it would lose their non-refundable deposit, and be asked to leave (costing them thousands of dollars of lost profit). I’m not sure of the veracity of this (having heard it secondhand), but I do know vendors who normally carried such things no longer had them on display. Well,. of course I bought me a do-rag with the rebel flag as soon as I possibly could. How dare they! Now I am a western man…I don’t get embroiled in the north-south, black-white nonsense. We don’t roll that way in the Cool State. But by golly, the minute someone tried to squash freedom of expression, I had to resist. Hell, if they’d have said the African colors so many racial extremists on the African American ‘side’ wear was illegal, I’d have bought one of them. For the fact remains…the right to free speech depends on the right to free speech for all. Once you start limiting speech, or trying to make certain speech a ‘hate crime’, you tread down a Gestapo-ridden path. I just won’t have it, or support it. I will actively rebel against it. For fuck’s sake, I’d wear both a Dixie flag and a Black Panthers patch, if someone tried to tell me I (or my fellow Americans) couldn’t.
3. One vendor (who is fairly well-known on the ‘circuit’) told me later that a young woman came to interview him at his tent during the rally. He sells an assortment of things, fur stuff, cool buffalo helmets and other Native American headgear, and other various biker things. The woman interviewed him, seeming to take interest and be positive. Yet later, an article by her came out in some newspaper (local Fayetteville or University) describing how this poor, innocent ex-Marine, who treats all people the same, as far as I know) as being a hate-monger and danger to society, a divisive element…an anachronism…just because he sells rebel battle flags (or something along those lines; look it up). Arkansas had recently removed the Stars and Bars from its state flag, I believe, under pressure from extremist groups bent of limiting freedom of expression to keep a segment of the populace from being ‘offended’). It was tricky journalism, at best. The girl didn’t directly ask him about those issues, or get his answer as to why he had the flags, just blindly characterized him as some African-American, equality and liberty-hating rebel scum……So while Arkansas is a pretty dang cool state, and I like the people there (in general), it has its problems, just like the rest of America. I suppose being part of Dixie and the South and the Bible Belt, those problems are amplified. Thank God we don’t have them to that degree in the Cool State. No time for that here…there are only 86,400 seconds per day, and a ton of mountains and plains to explore, a ton of weed to mellow those aggressive or thin-skinned people out. Although I had previously vowed never to go to such divided and potentially oppressive and regimented states, after my experience there, I will look forward to going to another rally there next year. This time, I hope not to be working, but just riding and having fun the entire time.
4. So that’s it, a quick glimpse of Arkansas, through my hurried pen (I am killing time waiting for my brother).
5. BIKER BROTHERS AND SISTERS…RIDE FAST AND TAKE CHANCES. If YOU LIVE WITHIN A FEW STATES OF aRKANSAS, i’D RECOMMEND DOING IT ON THE WAY TO aRKANSAS, TO MEET ME AT THE NEXT bIKES, bLUES, AND bbq RALLY (OR WHATEVER ORDER THOSE bS ARE IN).
9. vERSION tWO…
11. tHE rOAD BURROWS BETWEEN TUNNELS IN THE FOREST, IT ZIPS PAST LIMESTONE LEDGES, INVITING, AND PAST LITTLE DELLS AND HOLLERS, VALLEYS AND NOOKS. iT SLIDES PAST A VARIETY OF HOUSES…ABODES IN VARIOUS STATES OF REPAIR FACE THE ROAD, THEIR FRONT PORCHES FACING THE HIGHWAY dIXIE FLAGS FLY ALONG WITH us FLAGS (OR ALONE) AT VARIOUS HOUSES. i SEE A BLACK AND WHITE us FLAG, WITH A BLUE STRIPE IN THE MIDDLE TO SIGNIFY…WHAT? sOME OF THE CURIOUS STARE AS i RIDE BY, A REBEL KEPI HAT PERCHED ON MY HEAD, MY BIKE HEAVILY LADEN. i LOOK AS HILLBILLY AS THEY DO, IN MY WORN cARHARTTS AND (REALLY A TWO-LANE ROAD THROUGH THE WEATHERED FACE. a COUPLE OF THE HUGE THORN i GOT AT THE ROADSIDE IN tEXAS STILL PROTRUDE FROM THE EYELETS OF MY COMBAT BOOTS. i MUST LOOK A SIGHT.
12. tHE STATE LOOKS A SIGHT AS WELL…ABANDONED BUILDING SPEAK OF GHOSTS AND POVERTY, OF PAST OCCURRENCES PERHAPS BEST LEFT UNSAID. uNSPOKEN. a SERIES OF SMALL TOWNS DOT THE PATH, CAUSING ME TO SLOW DOWN LEST i MEET THE LOCAL mAN IN A WAY i DON’T WANT TO. bUTTERMILK PIE AND HAM THAT ALMOST MELTS IN YOUR MOUTH BECKON AT TINY VILLAGE RESTAURANTS AND GENERAL STORES. tHE TOWN NAMES RING OF THE EXOTIC, OF NAMES AND PLACES UNKNOWN. mY FAVORITE LITTLE TOWN IS OARK, A TINY VILLE WHICH WOULD REQUIRE AN ENTIRE BLOG TO EVEN HINT AT…rIDING INTO THE STATE ALONE, i RIDE OUT ACCOMPANIED BY ANOTHER oZARK NATIVE, A COOL COUNTRY BOY CALLED cODY (OR cOOKY, DEPENDING ON WHO YOU ARE AND THE EXPERIENCES YOU SHARED) FROM MISSOURI. hE’S HELL-BENT IN SEARCH OF PIE AND SCENERY, ON A QUEST FOR MORE CURVES, MORE TURNS, DISCOVERY OF EVERY UNKNOWN ROAD ON THE PLANET. hE’S A CHARACTER WHO IS ALMOST LARGER THAN LIFE, AS ARE THE OTHER NOMADS WITH WHOM i OCCASIONALLY RIDE. bUT FOR NOW, IT’S ME AND cODY/cOOKY, ZOOMING THROUGH VERDANT TUNNELS, SWOOPING UP AND DOWN HILLSIDES, CAREENING AROUND CURVES AND CORNERS. EVENTUALLY, WE RIDE (RELUCTANTLY, FOR WE ARE BOTH mOUTNAIN mEN) OUT OF THE MOUNTAINS, AND ONTO THE PLAINS, FERTILE WITH COTTON AND WHATEVER ELSE CROPS GROW HERE. wE LEAVE THE SECRET MEANDERINGS OF THE BACK ROADS, AND COME ONTO THE INTERSTATE, WHERE WE ROLL HELL BENT FOR LEATHER TOWARDS THE mISSISSIPPI AND mEMPHIS (cODY HAS SOMEHOW CONVINCED ME, IN HIS EASY YET IRRESISTABLE sOUTHERN WAY) TO REVOKE MY VOWS AND CROSS INTO oCCUPIED tERRITORY, EAST OF THE mISSISSIPPI, WHERE A MAN IS FORCED TO WEAR A HELMET AND SUBMIT TO CHECKPOIINTS ALONG THE iNTERSTATE, ILLEGAL SEARCHES AGAINST THE fOURTH aMENDMENT, AND RACIAL DIVISION, POVERTY, AND IGNORANCE. a PLACE WHERE YOU CAN GO TO THE PEN FOR A LONG TIME FOR HAVING A SINGLE DOOB IN YOUR POCKET, BUT WHERE THEY MIGHT (IF YOU ARE WHITE) DISMISS THE FACT YOU HAVE A PISTOL IN YOUR POCKET. IF NOT, IT’S THE CHAIN GANG AND YEARS OF HELLISH CONFINEMENT. hELL NO, i DON’T WANT TO GO THERE, BUT A SENSE OF HONOR COMPELS ME, AND i RIDE OUT OF aRKANSAS THE OPPOSITE OF HOW i RODE INTO IT…APPREHENSIVELY. gONE WAS THE MAGIC OF NEW PLACES, AND FACING ME WAS A HUGE AND GROWING STORM, AND THE FACT THAT i WOULD HAVE TO PUT A HELMET ON. dAMN ANY STATE WHO WOULD FORCE A MAN TO DO SUCH THINGS. suCH THOUGHTS DISTRACT ME FROM THE GROWING AMOUNT OF TRAFFIC ON THE INTERSTATE. wE ARE BACK IN THE TYPICAL aMERICAN PANOPLY OF REST STOPS AND RUSHING, OF mCdONALDS AND bURGER kINGS, TRUCK STOPS AND MOTELS…ALL THE SAME ACROSS aMERICA, WITH ONLY THE INTERVENING ‘SECENERY’ BETWEEN STOPS DIFFERING.

Watch Out for Crackheads…

The life of a biker is beset by various ‘dangers’…inattentive cars and trucks, outright aggressive and angry drivers, wind, hail, rain, and storms. Until I saw that sticker at the Daytona Biketoberfest (or whatever it was called), I didn’t think of crackheads as a danger.

But they are…they wander out into the street when our attention slips to dig the sunset or a cool view. They smoke up all the crack, dang ’em. They pester you for change during gas stops. They lurk in places that bikers might find cool to camp…or rest.

Darn crackheads. I thought the sticker was funny as hell when I first saw it, but later realized (with no small amount of horror) this was a real warning. There are enough crackheads and meth-heads lurking in Florida to fill up a small state.

Bikers are not known for compassion, but I have compassion for them. Hell, if they had a good job, they’d maybe work. If they had a good companion, they might just get with the program…of life. If they had a cool Shovelhead and a sense of adventure, they might get out on the Road and experience the REAL.

But they sit around sucking on a glass pipe. Now, I ain’t no cop or drug counselor. I stick with the old adage from the days of the Land of the Free…name your poison. It’s your life…trash it if you want. So go on and smoke up, you rascals, is what I say. They just may have some lessons to learn from it, or karma to work out. I dunno – I ain’t no philosopher or fortune-teller. I’m just a biker.

Now, I’ve smoked some crack in my day, and I’m here to tell ya it’s dirty. Anything that takes the money for our new Vance and Hines pipes ain’t so cool. Anything that takes our desire to get out on that Road just plain sucks. Forget the health issues; I ain’t no doc (but the issues are real). Forget the damage to families; I ain’t no counselor (but the damage is severe). I’m just sayin’…anything that keeps us from being the wild and free bikers we are maybe ain’t a good thing.

So yeah, watch out for crackheads. Watch out you don’t become one.

Dirty Freakin’ Bikers

Bikers…real bikers, not the affluent RUBs (Rich Urban Bikers), weekend riders, or sports-bike enthusiasts with Go Pros on their helmets…are generally a dirty lot, true to their generic image. I mean, you’d be dirty too if you had been riding through a desert for the last week, with scant few showers and only two changes of clothes allowed in your packing (over-packing) scheme.

Yep, we’re a dirty lot…in more ways than one. We cuss and spit and generally don’t conform to anyone’s expectations. Few of us have girlfriends, or real jobs, or anything other than a plan to get on down the Road. It’s the well-adjusted RUBs who have those things…girlfriends and houses, ties to the Box People, and all that. Bikers (dirty bikers) typically got nothing…other than a band of other dirty bikers (if that).

I am a lone wolf. I don’t have friends or family, and I generally go wherever I want. I am dirty; I’ll admit it. While I wanna love the world, I might just kick yer ass if you get on my wrong side. I don’t conform to anyone’s expectations – and don’t wanna. I’ll try to be nice, but might end up doing something dirty.

I think that’s something you can’t just put on like a suit, or a lifestyle you can adopt. You are born that way, or not. Many try to adopt that way (God knows why), and they are easily seen through. All the leather in the world won’t make you as biker. All the miles on the road won’t, either. Anyone can be a motorcyclist, but only a few are born bikers.

It has always been like this, long before bikes were invented. They called ’em saddle tramps back then, or vagabonds, drifters. They called us rebels, or misfits. You can’t adopt that, or put it on or off like a suit of clothes. Besides, why would you want to? It is far more comfortable sitting in a parlor somewhere, listening to your ‘boss’ or the minister expound on some non-biker nonsense. No wind, no hail, and no hungry and lonely camps. Why would anyone want that, for fuck’s sake?

In the fronting culture like we’ve developed here, many seem to think they can adopt it, or at least play like it. Crowds of people wear Sons of Anarchy ‘cuts’, and many more exchange their Brooks Brothers suits for leather on the weekend. Why not? I don’t blame them, but let’s make no mistake; they are not bikers, or they’d be out riding.

This begs the question of why I am not riding, and instead wasting a perfectly good afternoon writing stuff to a non-existent audience who could care less if they did exist. Why the hell not? I’m a biker, and will do whatever, I damn well please. Besides, I gots to get some new pipes and a brake job before I can head back out into the Great Unknown.

I’ll head alone, with scant money in my pocket or gas in my tank. That’s okay. I won’t have an MC or any ‘brothers’ to look after me, or stand by my side. That’s A-okay. Fuckin-A, Skippy, it is.

See, I share something in common with many bikers…I don’t give a fuck for the Box People or their stupid society. One look at the news can tell you how much sense ‘civilization’ makes. We bikers all share a sort of disdain for those who sleep every night in climate-controlled boxes. Come out on the weekend, shake my hand and call me brother…we can see through that. All we usually want is some weed, some more gas, and maybe a beer or two. Some want a woman to ride with them, but good luck with that, you dirty ole biker. You don’t conform to norms and expectations, and no woman is gonna like that. You don’t even have a place to invite a willing woman back to…unless it’s your camp on the edge of town, and the chance to share a sleeping bag and get bit to death by bugs and mosquitoes. What woman in her right mind would want that? So we are typically alone.

Ostensibly, we are poor, with little to show for our wanderings. Yet in things that count (to us), we are rich. We call no man boss. We go where we want, when we want. That is a sort of richness few can comprehend, few have experienced. Fine with us. This ain’t for everyone, and if it was, we’d probably do something else.

We won’t sit at our computers, stewing in the fear the media sells us, or the lies government sells us. We ain’t buyin’ no wooden nickels…just a tank of premium and a pack of cigs, thank you.

We stop where we want. We aren’t tied to phones or electronic boxes (or feel slightly ashamed when we become that way). We ride and value our freedom to ride.

Now, don’t get me wrong. We need Box People, to sell us beer, and play music for us at the rallies. If we do meet women, we like it if they have a box, so they can show up freshly washed and smelling incredibly like women.

As a biker, I suppose I am also slightly misogynistic. I mean, face it, very few women want to ride away from home or well-feathered nest…at least, not for long. Few want to sleep on the ground, or work haying in Manitoba to get gas money. That’s okay. Young men always find a few who will, and older men always scoff at the rest, having been there and done that. If the Great Pumpkin wants us to have women, He will place them in our paths.

Bikers are typically a godless lot, ascribing to no one else’s philosophy or theology. We find our God (or most likely, Goddess) in the glint of the sun off our chrome, in the light around sunset, and in the way it feels to ride into the unknown. We find It in the present, not clothed in robes and a beard and found in platitudes made by old reprobates who want to be Priest over others.

Yeah, we’re bikers. They’d probably crucify us in the olden days, or imprison us. In fact, they do a lot of that now. Bikers are demonized as a grubby lot (to which I have already admitted) and rude, crude, and socially unacceptable (which I will admit to now). Of course, the townsfolk see us as a sort of wandering plague, as hated and feared as the locusts who eat their crops, or the corporation that employs them. Part-time bikers or reformed bikers are much more palatable to society. At least they have jobs and bosses and families and responsibilities, and everything anathema to bikers.

Of course, everyone wants to claim to be a REAL biker. They say if they get on a bike and share the same dangers, then they qualify. Well, no. Fuck, no. That is the definition of a motorcyclist, not a biker.

If you look closely at the situation, no one really wants to claim that, do they? No ties to towns or friends, family, and social organizations. Shunned by society. It ain’t a gig most pleasure-seekers would want. It ain’t a gig most wienie-waggers would want. All they want top do is wear the clothes and be recognized by other Box People as…different. Well, different is as different does. If being a biker is just having a motorcycle and wearing leathers or Joe Rocket Kevlar, then the whole damn AMA membership are bikers -and they aren’t. They are sane, helmet-wearing citizens who want to play it safe, to make motorcycling safe when it ain’t. They want to make the biker lifestyle fit with their girlfriend’s (or family’s or boss’s) ideas about what they should do and where they should be in life. We don’t do that, and we don’t care.

We give zero fucks about that. All that shit you aspire to, all those material possessions and statuses you aspire to mean less than zero to us.

Maybe the Man has imprisoned or outlawed most bikers by now, but one is born every minute. We’ll always be here. You can’t eradicate us. We’re here to stay.

Yet, it is a lifestyle that is hard to sustain. Hell, my engine hardly cooled from my last foray, when I was embroiled in the cares and woes of the Box People…immersion into the fear-mongering, the division in our country, and in the cancer of social media. No sooner had I lay down on a nice mattress than my back began to hurt (something it rarely did when sleeping on the ground by my bike). I had barely begun enjoying the comfort of a box in winter, than my sinuses began to dry up from the dirty, heated and recycled air the heater pumped out. I had hardly hung up my hat when I began to feel those momentarily-welcome walls closing in on me.

Of course, I also benefited from the comforts of the Box Society – I met a wonderful woman and began to fall in love with her. Problem is, she has a box, too…and most likely wishes I would share it with her, feathering the nest and letting my trusty FXR gather dust, to be be aired out on occasional weekends.

What a fucking quandary. It seems as difficult as all the other quandaries and soul-killing worries the Box People have. To bikers, these potential problems are easily solved…with a twist of the throttle. Yet that isn’t always possible.

The occasional bikers (e.g., motorcyclists) and RUBs can get an idea of how this feels…trapped inside their garages by cold weather, they look at biker magazines, or work on their scoots, or endlessly polish their chrome (if any). They dream of the weekends in spring, summer, and fall (if avid) that they will ride…or the commutes to the box where they work that they will make. They get an inkling of how bikers feel when ensconced (caged?) within the Box World.

But back to the dirty biker part. We not only admit it, we seem to revel in it. We often make a point of it. We embrace it, and embody it. Is this something in us that is malformed, crazy? Or is it crazy to accept as normal a society where people are virtually enslaved, their ‘representatives’ seemingly gone mad and pillaging their pockets and the planet for profit? Who is crazy, the biker who rejects a crazy society, or the citizen who embraces  an insane society?  Sadly (or happily, in our case) there is no ultimate arbiter of who is right and wrong, of which paradigm is the ‘correct’ respopnse to a crazy and chaotic Life. We suggest (no, demand) that there is no correct response, only the one that comes naturally from within us. And that, my car-clothed friends, is being a dirty biker.

Well then, why this fascination and repulsion with us by the Box People? Maybe because we dare to be different. Maybe because we are authentically what we are, and claim to be nothing else). Who knows? Who cares? Bikers just ride, and let the free wind in their hair…clean those kooky box-induced thoughts from their free brains.

We get away from the infernal and insidious radiation of cell phones and blue tooth and wireless gadgets. We get away from streetlamps and sidewalks, from ostensible safety and security. We ride, as fast as we can, away from such nonsense. We are dirty bikers. What else do you expect from us?

Caveat/True Confessions Section:

Okay, since I am, being extemporaneously candid, I guess I must admit it; I am not a true biker, in the sense described above. Sometimes, I do live in a box. (I am trying desperately to get rid of it). I am sometimes drawn by the comforts the Box World offers. I still have lingering dreams of love and sitting on a couch somewhere kissing. Maybe those dreams don’t extend to bosses and jobs and (ugh) commerce, but they exist. I love that kissing and warmth stuff, think a mature and evolved relationship is key to happiness. The problem is, I as a dirty biker, don’t know how to merge my dirty biker lust for freedom and new spaces, the desire to camp each and every night by my bike, under the stars, with the implicitly box-confined strictures such beautiful relationships seem to require (at least in my current case). That’s the crux of the biscuit, brothers. How do I balance my biker-ness with the expectations of the world? The previous answer was…I fuckin’ don’t; I’m a biker, and I do what I do.

Now, there are plenty of real and true bikers who have eventually come in from (or at least partially in from) the cold, into the boundaries of society, at least as much as they could tolerate or integrate. If they did it, I surely can. Or can I? Do I even want to?

I guess these are questions that occur to a dirty biker…if he lets off the throttle long enough to ponder such nonsense.

I need a ride.

Post Scriptum:

I could go on an on about this subject, but had to take a shower. My girl is coming, and she will dig being inside this warm (and hopefully well-scented ) box. I look past my porch at the ridgeline of the Continental Divide, and my heart …no soul…soars there. My heart remains here (in a Box, on at least the porch of one) waiting for Her.

Dang, a rider can sure get himself in a fix if he lets up on the throttle for even a minute, can’t he?

I smell good, not at all like a dirty biker. My bike is parked harmlessly in a garage. Hell, I am almost unrecognizable in this minute from a durn ole yuppie. But I fear inside lurks the dirty biker, one who has grown up with the adage ‘when in doubt, throttle it out’ burned into him…and I fear for any thing as fragile and box-oriented as a relationship or a home or (gol durn it) responsibilities. Maybe my road fever is just a cover for basic irresponsibility (or a symptom of it…cause of it?). I dunno. I just wanna ride. Or kiss this woman who just came in….

 

 

A Quaker with a Gun?

I’m a biker…and a yogi. I’m a Quaker, if pressed into a category. I resist categories and categorizing or defining people as anything other than humans. Quakers and yogis base their philosophy on the notion that violence never solves anything.

With Quakers, this is a fundamental principle. With yogis, it is critical – none of the rest of the magic works unless it is based on non-harming, of self and others. Yogis would rather die than take a life. Quakers would rather re-build damaged houses than participate in war.

Yet I, who sometimes call myself both of these things, also support guns. Hell, I have a pistol in my pocket. This sort of begs the question…how can you be both, and not be a hypocrite to either side? How can you have a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other?

There”s no real answer to these questions. Well, no real ‘right’ answer. I can claim to be a Gemini, capable of understanding each side of any issue, or being able to simultaneously manifest and balance two seemingly incongruent viewpoints. I can talk about the inherent dichotomy of the human experience, or ramble on for hours citing references, facts, and statistics.

At the end of the day, I still have a (metaphorical, at least) Bible in one hand, and a gun in the other. What’s that all about? If you’re reading this blog hoping for answers, you’ll be sorely disappointed. All I have is questions.

I know by experience and observation that violence never solves anything. Even violence in response to outside violence rarely has results like those intended. People get hurt. That just ain’t cool, in anyone’s book. The bullet you thought would hurt a ‘bad guy’ instead kills an innocent child…or it kills the bad guy and you dream about it in brilliant Technicolor every night, in excruciating detail. The words you thought you’d end up hurting your ‘ex’ with end up harming you even more. Yeah, violence rarely (if ever) really solves anything. We all know that.

Yet the serene peace of the yogis, Quakers, and all non-violent people seems far from my grasp or desire, if I am faced with violence directed against myself or the defenseless. Heck, I’ll shoot ’em one if they try raisin a ruckus – hurting innocent kids or old people, or my bike or girlfriend. Dang right, I’ll shoot ’em one!

Does this exclude me from being a yogi? Quite possibly; it certainly excludes me from being a good one. Does it exclude me from being a Quaker? Fundamentally yes, but Quakers are a non judgmental lot, and pretty much leave a person’s relations with the Divine personal…and private. Does it exclude me from being a good human? I dunno – you tell me if I shot the guy tryin’ to rape you, or kill your kid.

Ya see, I am the cavalry. I am a warrior – I can’t deny that. It is in my blood and perhaps my karma. I used to struggle with that, but realized that sometimes, people just need the cavalry. Sometimes we as a society need defenders, and protectors. I am that.

So if I seem an anachronism, or a bad yogi, that is okay. I am what I am. I am a warrior-poet, and that’s all there is too it. No one wants peace more than a warrior – yet no one is better prepared for war. If that’s an anomaly, then I can accept that.

Actually, it does not matter if I accept that. I swore my scared oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It went beyond my likes and dislikes at that point – it became a duty. That duty does not end when you ‘get out’ of the military. That obligation for readiness does no expire.

Saying I protect and defend an inanimate object does not seem to make much sense. It doesn’t. The ideals therein, however are another story. The Bill of Rights protects people, it doesn’t establish laws or guidelines an out-of-control Congress or Supreme Court can overturn or deny.

What it means is that I will risk my life to defend your right to free speech, to free assembly, to all the other rights entailed in the Bill of Rights and the rest of the constitution. I will risk my life to ensure the safety and security of all Americans, regardless of race, color, or creed.

I will defend myself, against crooks and greezy fucks who would harm me and mine, who would take the food from our plates or the house from around us. All that yoga stuff is well and good…until the wolf is at the door. Perhaps it is even more important then. But face it, sometimes ‘bad’ people aren’t convinced by words. Sometimes, only Misters Smith, Wesson, and Mossberg can convince them.

Now, I want no trouble, but I sure ain’t gonna let people roll all over me and mine. So while it may be a contradiction to be a yogi (or more accurately a sadhaka, an aspirant) and still have a gun, then so be it.

I am Arjuna, I am a warrior. I am also a yogi.

I always give people the chance to meet as people first. I always temper my power with the code of Budo, the coed of the Warrior. I restrain myself with the love I feel for all. Still, I stand ready. The cavalry must. There’s trouble out there, and people are hurting innocent women and children. Do I have a gun? You damn betcha I do.