I took a ride yesterday, the last good day to ride if you like temperatures in the seventies. A very windy day. I didn’t know how windy until I got out in the country. Then I knew. It blew me off my line, that invisible line you travel left of center near the opposing traffic to command your lane. Unless you see a big truck coming or a motor home, then you ease right toward the shoulder to avoid the blast and suction of the draft, but yesterday had me all over the road, more determined than ever to crouch a bit over the handlebars, set my jaw and keep up enough speed not to be overtaken by that pickup in the mirrors that kept getting closer with its headlights ablaze and a trailer of some sort in tow.
The wind blew right to left over the road, bending unharvested corn to a forty-five degree angle, flinging bits and pieces of silage over the pavement, trash and whatever it could find. Food wrappers and newspapers and blew my gloves right off my lap in the parking lot before I got started on the return when I reached up to fasten the strap on my helmet.
That kind of wind and I got home safe. I have no windshield. I take it all in the face. I wear aviator goggles. The kind you see on pilots in old movies looking down and out of open cockpits from aircraft made of fabric and wood and wire. And yes I have a silk scarf, a voluptuous rag. Pure silk in black with subtle paisley design. The second I’ve owned. The first hangs as a keepsake in my study. They last a long time, but they do wear out and when you consider all they’ve seen, all they’ve touched on and off the bike, you’d never throw one away. It’s a banner. A pennant. A flag. A vestment of moments sacred to the memory.
So what made me think of all this today when the wind is just as strong, but today the temperature will not rise above the mid-forties and the rain last night made a hash of all the leaves of autumn? What made me think of it today when I can’t seem to keep my eyes open despite last night’s good night’s sleep and a cup of coffee at three o’clock this afternoon?
It’s a little piece of brass shaped like a Number Nine on the key ring that holds the key to my motorcycle. A piece of brass I collected in Scotland at Stromness on the Orkney Islands a lifetime or two ago when I dropped out of college with a friend during the height of the Viet Nam War and hitchhiked from Houston, Texas to Bell Buckle, Tennessee and rode a bus from Shelbyville to New York City, then a turboprop airliner to Glasgow and the train to the north coast of Scotland where we boarded the ferry at Scrabster and sailed across the Pentland Firth not far from where the Germans scuttled their High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow in 1919. The little piece of brass reminds me of something essential. Yesterday I knew where I intended to go, although I hesitated to go at all this late in the season. I found the road marked closed for construction and suddenly rather than encounter more signs and markers and cones and warnings even for my own safety, I rode a different direction much further under far more difficult conditions to encounter whatever lay ahead.
On my own terms.
I didn’t go anywhere important.
How I got there is everything.
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