James Burleigh
Well-known member
Dear Fang:
I hope you're having a nice time in Sweden with all dose der Swedos. What's it been, two weeks already? Wow! It feels like only two days. So anyway, we're fine. Great in fact. Stay away as long as you like. We all miss you. Really. Oh, and all those Honey-Do jobs you left on your list when you headed to the airport while I was at work earning the money to make this trip possible for you while I stayed home to keep working to pay the bills, well, I'll try to get around to them. Really. In the mean time, I may try to get a ride in.
And that reminds me: I had my ride to Creston, California, yesterday to meet a bunch of SoCal FJR riders for lunch. A long day but a good day, as your sister likes to say. I was up at 6:30 and hit the road an hour later. There was a chill in the air, so I wore my Widder vest and winter gloves to keep warm. The freeways were wide open (early Sunday morning of the long 4th of July weekend), so I had to be careful to keep the speeds off the radar screens of any lurking LEOs . Nevertheless I had to be alert for cars flying past me out of nowhere.
Once or twice (maybe three times; four max, really), I just couldn't help but loosen the reins a bit and let the bike stretch its legs in that crisp, cool air on that broad, practically empty superslab (sometimes Feejer just hates to be passed...). But the fear of a ticket always brought a tug back on the reins (demonstrating the truth of the Principle of Implied Authority).
I met Silent at a Starbucks deep in San Jose 45 minutes later. This was and still is his Hood (he pointed at the gas station across the street, noting that as a younger man he was riding past it when he got T-boned by a car pulling out in a hurry to make the light). We spent about another 45 minutes sitting over coffee and pastry at an outside table, the air warming quickly, and talked about the usual guy stuff: our families, our hopes and fears, problems with women, who of our friends has recently had a "darling" baby, and whether we'll ever become the men our wives deserve.
Okay. Actually we talked about motorcycles for 45 minutes (mostly one sort in particular), and whether Nicky has a chance of getting pole at Laguna, let alone winning it for a third year in a row. Then at 9:15 we hit the road for Creston, a yellow-highlighted dot on our CSAA map somewhere just southeast of Paso Robles.
Leaving San Jose south on Highway 101, we traveled through the towns of Salinas, Chualar, Gonzales, Soledad--Steinbeck country. On either side of us, running from the edge of the freeway into the distance, were cultivated fields yielding unknown crops. The day's work was just beginning as the farm equipment began to move deliberately through the rows. In the distance to our right rose the coastal range, while to our left rose the sun, inching higher into the cloudless sky and casting fast-moving, squiggly shadows of our bikes on the pavement.
Silent took lead (and indeed led all day), while I followed. It was great, because he set a quick but easy, consistent pace. Having someone else lead makes for more of a relaxing, enjoy-the-scenery ride. They make the lane position decisions. But as a matter of fact, following Silent was also good because I was a little sleepy-headed in spite of the recent Starbucks, I guess because I slept restlessly the night before (probably worrying over whether my friend would have to have a C-Section or not). So I'd be following him several seconds behind in the opposite wheel track, his body straight up and in control in that cool-looking gray-and-black Aerostitch, looking like a CHP motorcycle cop, a more experienced and capable rider, lending me confidence....
Then at one point, going about 80 MPH in the fast lane, something about Silent catches my groggy attention: His left arm comes up ever so slightly, and he points to the ground to his left. My mind, trained by some of the greatest philosophy minds in one of the world's greatest universities, stirs from its deep thoughts: "Meow meow meow meow.... F**k!"
Immediately I shove the right handlebar (it's amazing how much force it takes to move an FJR over at that speed--a maneuver I was actually practicing on the nearly empty superslab on my way down to meet Silent earlier that morning, no doubt causing my fellow motorists to wonder if I was drunk or just crazy)--so anyway, I shove that bar hard over, causing the bike to swerve to the right, narrowly missing a big sheet of plywood taking up half our lane. Not the worst type of freeway junk, but a nail in the wrong place..... Anyway, a little later on when we stopped I had another cup of coffee.
And so Silent and I blasted on down 101 toward the Wonderful Land of Creston and all the marvels its name promised.... Suited up in an Aerostitch on the one hand and racing leathers on the other, wearing full-face helmets, and with boots and gloved hands expertly working the clutch-throttle-gears-brakes of these high-performance, state-of-the-art machines, we were like fighter pilot and wingman moving in tandem, effortlessly and unconstrained, across lanes and between cars, always maintaining station a few seconds apart in opposite wheel tracks, truly three-dimensional creatures in a two-dimensional world.
To know our minds at this moment, heading south out of San Jose early of a Sunday morning to meet some of our fellow motorcycle creatures in the Mystical World of Creston, there are only two things one needs to understand: First, that this was a road trip. Perhaps Ishmael explained best what that means in his opening monologue from Moby Dick, substituting where he says "the ocean" with "the open road"--
If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the open road with me.
And second, that we were on motorcycles. We were living a perfect moment....
That's when we saw the dead dog. I thought it was a coyote, but later over lunch Silent said no it was somebody's pet. But there it was, hard up against the center divide like so many dried leaves blown out of the way. Nature's way of reminding to what end everything trends. I shook my head, engaged my throttle lock, rested my right hand on my hip, and continued southward behind Silent, pulled forward by dreams of Creston. "Creston...." Just the sound of it is like sparkling sunlight on a mountain stream.
To be continued....
I hope you're having a nice time in Sweden with all dose der Swedos. What's it been, two weeks already? Wow! It feels like only two days. So anyway, we're fine. Great in fact. Stay away as long as you like. We all miss you. Really. Oh, and all those Honey-Do jobs you left on your list when you headed to the airport while I was at work earning the money to make this trip possible for you while I stayed home to keep working to pay the bills, well, I'll try to get around to them. Really. In the mean time, I may try to get a ride in.
And that reminds me: I had my ride to Creston, California, yesterday to meet a bunch of SoCal FJR riders for lunch. A long day but a good day, as your sister likes to say. I was up at 6:30 and hit the road an hour later. There was a chill in the air, so I wore my Widder vest and winter gloves to keep warm. The freeways were wide open (early Sunday morning of the long 4th of July weekend), so I had to be careful to keep the speeds off the radar screens of any lurking LEOs . Nevertheless I had to be alert for cars flying past me out of nowhere.
Once or twice (maybe three times; four max, really), I just couldn't help but loosen the reins a bit and let the bike stretch its legs in that crisp, cool air on that broad, practically empty superslab (sometimes Feejer just hates to be passed...). But the fear of a ticket always brought a tug back on the reins (demonstrating the truth of the Principle of Implied Authority).
I met Silent at a Starbucks deep in San Jose 45 minutes later. This was and still is his Hood (he pointed at the gas station across the street, noting that as a younger man he was riding past it when he got T-boned by a car pulling out in a hurry to make the light). We spent about another 45 minutes sitting over coffee and pastry at an outside table, the air warming quickly, and talked about the usual guy stuff: our families, our hopes and fears, problems with women, who of our friends has recently had a "darling" baby, and whether we'll ever become the men our wives deserve.
Okay. Actually we talked about motorcycles for 45 minutes (mostly one sort in particular), and whether Nicky has a chance of getting pole at Laguna, let alone winning it for a third year in a row. Then at 9:15 we hit the road for Creston, a yellow-highlighted dot on our CSAA map somewhere just southeast of Paso Robles.
Leaving San Jose south on Highway 101, we traveled through the towns of Salinas, Chualar, Gonzales, Soledad--Steinbeck country. On either side of us, running from the edge of the freeway into the distance, were cultivated fields yielding unknown crops. The day's work was just beginning as the farm equipment began to move deliberately through the rows. In the distance to our right rose the coastal range, while to our left rose the sun, inching higher into the cloudless sky and casting fast-moving, squiggly shadows of our bikes on the pavement.
Silent took lead (and indeed led all day), while I followed. It was great, because he set a quick but easy, consistent pace. Having someone else lead makes for more of a relaxing, enjoy-the-scenery ride. They make the lane position decisions. But as a matter of fact, following Silent was also good because I was a little sleepy-headed in spite of the recent Starbucks, I guess because I slept restlessly the night before (probably worrying over whether my friend would have to have a C-Section or not). So I'd be following him several seconds behind in the opposite wheel track, his body straight up and in control in that cool-looking gray-and-black Aerostitch, looking like a CHP motorcycle cop, a more experienced and capable rider, lending me confidence....
Then at one point, going about 80 MPH in the fast lane, something about Silent catches my groggy attention: His left arm comes up ever so slightly, and he points to the ground to his left. My mind, trained by some of the greatest philosophy minds in one of the world's greatest universities, stirs from its deep thoughts: "Meow meow meow meow.... F**k!"
Immediately I shove the right handlebar (it's amazing how much force it takes to move an FJR over at that speed--a maneuver I was actually practicing on the nearly empty superslab on my way down to meet Silent earlier that morning, no doubt causing my fellow motorists to wonder if I was drunk or just crazy)--so anyway, I shove that bar hard over, causing the bike to swerve to the right, narrowly missing a big sheet of plywood taking up half our lane. Not the worst type of freeway junk, but a nail in the wrong place..... Anyway, a little later on when we stopped I had another cup of coffee.
And so Silent and I blasted on down 101 toward the Wonderful Land of Creston and all the marvels its name promised.... Suited up in an Aerostitch on the one hand and racing leathers on the other, wearing full-face helmets, and with boots and gloved hands expertly working the clutch-throttle-gears-brakes of these high-performance, state-of-the-art machines, we were like fighter pilot and wingman moving in tandem, effortlessly and unconstrained, across lanes and between cars, always maintaining station a few seconds apart in opposite wheel tracks, truly three-dimensional creatures in a two-dimensional world.
To know our minds at this moment, heading south out of San Jose early of a Sunday morning to meet some of our fellow motorcycle creatures in the Mystical World of Creston, there are only two things one needs to understand: First, that this was a road trip. Perhaps Ishmael explained best what that means in his opening monologue from Moby Dick, substituting where he says "the ocean" with "the open road"--
If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the open road with me.
And second, that we were on motorcycles. We were living a perfect moment....
That's when we saw the dead dog. I thought it was a coyote, but later over lunch Silent said no it was somebody's pet. But there it was, hard up against the center divide like so many dried leaves blown out of the way. Nature's way of reminding to what end everything trends. I shook my head, engaged my throttle lock, rested my right hand on my hip, and continued southward behind Silent, pulled forward by dreams of Creston. "Creston...." Just the sound of it is like sparkling sunlight on a mountain stream.
To be continued....
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