Clear....

A few weeks ago Ken, Chris and I rode up to Reno for the weekend on the bikes. It took about 6 hours and is around a 250 mile ride or so. Therefore, a respectable journey to undertake on two wheels. Particularly because we had to stop every 75 miles to fill up my puny 2.4 gallon tank.

Rides of this kind are a big reason I like motorcycling in the first place. Everything you need for the weekend is strapped onto the bike, and for the next couple days, it's just you, the motorbike, and the wind. Having good friends along is the capper.

We passed through the gorgeous northern California countryside, cruised around the east shore of Lake Tahoe, and then navigated our way through the wind tunnel that is the Nevada high desert. It was during this part that we went through Carson City, NV. A strange place indeed. Very hot, very inhospitable to human habitation, and full of strip malls. Strip malls in the desert seem odd and somehow sad. Perhaps David Lynch created the whole town as a movie set and then split, only to have people move in and attempt to live there. I was happy to see the back of the place.

Anyhow, I digress.

If you put all the trappings of riding aside, the main reason I have found motorcycling to be so incredibly appealing is that for those few precious moments when I am on the bike, on an open road, and there is no one around me, I can finally get some thinking done. Some clear thinking.

It seems to be a combination of the rushing wind against your face, the constant hum of the engine, the surrounding landscape, and the speed as you move across the world. Unlike a car, which is self-contained, and you view the outside through a framed window, on a motorbike the frame is gone. You are there in the landscape. Not viewing it. It's at this point that my mind slows down its to-ing and fro-ing. Like the sea settling at a low tide. It's odd that it happens this way. It's tangible and I can feel my mind change the way it's working. I welcome it. I love this feeling, and yet if I become too aware of it, and start to hold on too tight, it will slip away. I just have to let it happen. It too seems to ebb and flow like a tide.

I think about the boys a lot. I think about Heather. I think about family I suppose. Not work, or mortgages, or things like these. Just family really, and how blessed I am to have them all. I see my wife's face, my boy's faces, very clearly. How they smile, or a certain profile of theirs that makes my heart swell.

Perhaps, what I think about and feel, is love. Love in its true definition. A love that encompasses family, friends, life, and the privilege it is to be here in the first place.

Nothing else really matters. It's just strange that I recognize this on two wheels at 70 miles an hour.