sublingua

The heart with a mind of its own.

(Be present.)

The mind with a heart of its own.

(It's past.)

The dream that is your waking life.

(Go there now.)

Smell You Later
Sunday, Oct. 17, 2004

And I Would Ride Five Hundred Miles

I've put almost five hundred miles on Frida since I bought her in early August. To put that in perspective, she is three years old and had 1500 miles on her odometer when her title was signed over to me. She had had two previous owners, both women, the last of whom had kept her mostly parked for the year or so that she owned her. But me? I intended to learn to ride and then to ride her as much as I possibly can.

To that end, I've ridden nearly 100 miles in the past two days. On Saturday, I did the usual ride out to the farmer's market and to breakfast at the place that has the motorcycle only parking area out front. After breakfast, I rode around the city doing errands, then home, then down to the studio with Max. I took a few rides while Max worked and taught a handbuilding class, then I gassed up and rode home. Today, I rode down to The Range. Hottie Jason was teaching, but I didn't stop to talk. Instead, I rode down into the valley, stopping at a food co-op to buy some soy chips and a coffee ("You're not taking the coffee on your motorcycle are you?" the cashier asked), then across the city to have lunch with Max. After lunch, we went to a coffee shop where I sat and updated my travel journal. Then I rode home.

And I also wanted to make note of the fact that one of the interesting things about riding is the smell. It's true that riding offers this kind of extraordinary sensory experience in that the road is so immediate and the sense of vulnerability I feel in traffic increases tenfold the experience of riding, but I have never before experienced the smell of the road the way I do when I ride Frida. For example, I was behind some big dog last weekend. He pulled up to a red light and turned before I came up to a stop. I pulled into the space that he had just vacated, and I could still smell the cologne that he was wearing. Strange to be able to smell another driver/rider. I can also smell restaurants as I ride by and, in some cases, when people are preparing lunch or dinner. Some intersections too smell. There is one near the university that just smells evil. I can't explain the smell really, but it's composed largely of this massive amount of trapped exhaust. Beyond that I can't say why it smells evil. I will say that I always used to hate crossing the street at that intersection especially at lunchtime when it used to back up with traffic (a rare sight in my little city), with drivers so desperate to get through that they'd pull out and sit in the intersection during a red light with cars honking and trying to squeeze through. At this same intersection, in my last semester at school, a pedestrian shot a motorist. So, yeah, it's an evil intersection and it smells it. I can't, sadly, avoid it, as it is one of the few places along the big road (that I must necessarily travel to get just about anywhere from my apartment) which has a sensor sensitive enough to allow me to trigger the light. The sensors at the other lights don't recognize the combined four hundred and sixty pound weight of me and Frida as a valid input for triggering the light, so I had a few mornings of sitting and sitting and sitting at them before having to turn around and go back to the evil intersection. It's not something that I ever had to think about in a car, but that is a problem for motorcyclists.

Anyway, I'm tired from riding and I'm going to go cruise the internet for a while.

Hope your weekend was as roadalicious as mine was, Demons.

retreat or surrender

More lies:
Waking Sleeping Demons II - Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011
Waking Sleeping Demons - Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011
time - Friday, May. 20, 2011
- - Wednesday, Oct. 06, 2010
The Return - Tuesday, Oct. 05, 2010

� sublingua sublingua.diaryland.com.