Love to fly

Walking is so slow, riding is where it’s at. Every girl dreams of flying and horses. When we grow up we buy motorcycles with lots of horses. We sail along, pushing through the corners, feeling the tires cling to the pavement as we become horizontal. German metal pounds into our skulls (if we’re into Die Krupps and the like) and pushes us faster and faster. The feeling of flying is addictive, it’s solace.

The road is always a downhill run even when your climbing a mountain, the road pulls you and when you finally hit that corner just right, it sucks you through, pinning you to the seat of your bike and then throws you out of the corner, high as a kite and ready to do it again and again. Once you get your mojo on with a bike and the corners, your unstoppable, until the reality fairy comes along and kicks the tires out from under you.

One minute your flying, then “Crap” you slam into the ground at thirty-five miles an hour and slide across the pavement, shredding your favorite jeans and smashing your ipod into a rectangular bruise on your hip.

The adrenaline makes you stupid, you forget what a kill switch is for but, it also makes you strong, you don’t feel the pain of your damaged ankle and massive bruises till much later. You get up, shake it off, get your bike back to shiny side up rubber side down and if it runs you get back on the road and try to find your mojo again.

Mojo is a tricky thing though, it flees at the first sign of danger and catching it again is like grasping at flies, you see them but catching the lil buggers is a bitch. Then once you’ve got your mojo back you have to watch out for complacency. You can’t just relax and enjoy the ride. Every second you have to watch for deer because jousting with wildlife is not fun.

You have to watch out for all the caged drivers because they are ALL out to kill you. It’s not paranoia it’s a rule of the road, a simple fact that when acknowledged could save your life. Everyone and everything on the road wants you dead.

You have to watch for oil and debris on the road that could send you flying into guard rails or skidding off the side of a cliff…and speaking of cliffs…there is always that bizarre pull, when your riding along the side of a cliff, where you feel an urge to rev the engine and truly fly off the road.

It pulls at you and you have to make a conscious effort to not look at the cliff because the bike goes where you look, it’s a part of you, attached. To corner on a bike you don’t ever look where you are going, you look to where you want to be and the bike takes you there as if by magic.

You look to where you want to go and you move with the bike, dropping an elbow, shifting your weight subtly on the seat, leaning forward just a little, letting off the throttle before the corner and gunning it halfway through to emerge exhaultant on the other side. Your bike is a friend, partner and an extension of yourself, not just a vehicle that you ride.