Newsgroups: rec.motorcycles
Distribution: rec

Riding home, about six pm, the thunderstorms over the mountains
looked ominous.  The gusting winds from the west were filled 
with dust and water missiles cracking against my shields.
It felt like riding through a dream, riding into a nightmare.

She said I was gonna get wet. I thought I could outrun it, 
but from the look of those thunderheads, she was right.  
The large sail area on this bike kind of shoves me around 
on this narrow road.  Good thing I raised the handlebars 
last weekend; high, more my style, less John's; I feel I 
have better control in this gusty blow.  It's dark, so my 
normal hyper-paranoid attention to the road surface is 
attenuated by the blackness.  The growing darkness of night 
sucks up the headlight, reducing its intensity to a pale 
useless wash.

Cars struggling through the oncoming squall are nearly stationary 
as I wire past them.  They can't really even know I'm here;
I'm gone as fast as I reach them, just another gust of wind.
Waiting for passing marks on this night is a luxury I can do 
without. I turn into the storm and bare my teeth to the gritty 
wind and roll, faster and faster into the thrust of the blast.  
The few miles shimmer quickly by as I drive into the storm, 
shouting defiance at the rocky, wind-scoured fangs looming 
massively ahead.  As if to answer my defiance with revenge, 
the skies open and shrapnel me with small, wet, stinging missiles 
that plunge between my windshield and the visor of my helmet. 
They smash into my cheeks and mouth with shotgun intensity.  
This passionate fool would ride into a hailstorm without a 
face-shielded helmet. I think I'd ride into the furnaces of 
hell wearing my most decadent, defiant grin just to have something 
to talk about.

This machine, this Suzuki multi, is such a mechanical marvel,
its limits exceed my own by such a goodly margin that speed, quickness
rather, are constrained only by my own fear envelope.  I was more in
tune with Norton; its limits and mine own were closely allied.  My
soul, in highest kindle, resonated perfectly with the three or four
or five thousand rev heartbeat of that Norton big twin in full cry.
We, the old brit and I, strove to find and slip through the crack twixt
our limits to a synchronized performance; every nuance of road texture
fed back to me; engine note, wind note, wheel note; I listened with my
open surfaces to the valves, rods, pistons, to hear the chain, the
pulses of fire, all a joyous clatter of striving, straining for the
forward distances.  Morganstern, however, outperforms me widely.
With this bad rear tire, of course, I'm still hyper about road surface;
an injudicious application of throttle on sand or wet divider paint
spins the rear instantly; leaned over it kicks out sideways and demands
instant application of all my years of dirt knowledge to recover,
survive.  But still, no great skill is required to be fast and quick
on this machine.  And no dark cloud of mosquitoes could buzz more
incomprehensively than the high frequency whine of this overhead,
cam chain, four cylinder behemoth.  So, in a balls-out foot race against
Norton, it wins hands down.  But, esthetics?  Passion?  This whirring
and clicking robot of a machine loses badly; no Leonardo masterpiece
painting of Suzuki, no Bobby Burns ode to a Japanese motorcycle, I'm
sorry, none.  So, I'll have to satisfy my esthetic needs elsewhere,
perhaps Chopin.  And passion, perhaps I'll slake that thirst by
reading rec.motorcycles.

Lately, reading rec.motorcycles has not been an overly heady adventure.
Where, my friends, are your passions?  You have them, I know you must.
I know you, many of you, and you are passionate people, you ride fast
and thrill to the wind and the speed, the sound and fury, the danger.
Where are the passionate, emotion laden postings of the bygone era?

The ride home last night launched me into the thick, broiling,
turbulent teeth of that storm.  I was filled with the sound and fury
of the thunder and the wind; heart raging with the pure, animal lust
of thrusting myself and my machine into the womb of that vicious storm.
Sand, dust and hail were rattling off of my teeth.  My mouth was 
grinning rictus wide, and I was growling, howling and jumping up 
and down in the saddle with the unbelievable excitement of that short 
but memorable ride.  

Later, well into the night, laying in bed, wide-eyed and rushed to
the limit of my blood, I pondered the thrills and excitements of many
previous rides.  This one, this ride through the boiling torrent,
was just the latest in a series of great, memorable experiences on a 
bike.  These moments, the near disasters that gushed adrenaline
into my veins, the vistas atop the rise where the sun, clouds 
and skies sucked the breath from my lungs, the solitary nights 
under the stars that reminded my spirit of its necessary harmony
with mother earth and father sky, encompass, the pain, the cold,
the joy, the love of motorcycling.  

So, that night, I lay there and thought of you, my friends, and
wondered where your passions are.  Somewhere in the flood of nouns
and verbs, in the cold flames, and the hot disputes, I miss the
gusto.  The luxurious wallowing in the thrills and chills of this
sport.  Where are you hiding, folks?  Hell, I could write a computer
program to generate dialogue more interesting than the dreck that
has lately clotted this net.

You love, the beautiful pianist, Middle Eastern scholar and linguist,
feverish student of the Bahgavad Gita and Omar Khayyam, who wrote of
tunneling through the night on a Chicago freeway, where is your frenzy?
Are you posting your love to some other group, or holding it inside
of yourself.  What wires you? What brings you to a seething boil?
Paste wax?

Or you, lurking in the distant Toronto, prowling the hallowed halls
of learning, thinking vast subatomic thoughts, yearning for the days
of the perfect knuckle, thrashing the copying machine, a silent spider
passing the days dreaming of .... what?  Have you forsaken me, given
me up, written me off as a traitor to the cause as you, long ago, gave
up casting heartfelt pearls about real motorcycles before the swine
on their rice?

Or you, my crazy ski pal, with your pockets full of love letters
from the CHP?  Your near suicidal passion for speed is absolutely
manifest, as your joy of technical perfection, your delight at 
confrontation, your love of the rousing argument.  Humor, intellect,
but fire?  What fires you, what makes your eyes flame, your gut
wrench and your ass contract to the size of a needle-eye?
What moves you?  Where is your passion?

All of you, my young brave friends, who would ride so far, so fast to
join in the Assault (tm), from Troy, California, Alabama, Illinois,
through miles and endless miles of speed, tedium and exaltation, 
to spend a few short, charged hours with me on my mountain.
This speaks greatly of passionate hearts.  
But why does it speak so mutely?

Who have I omitted?  Who of the Chucks and Ilanas and Sarahs and
Bobs (welcome back, BTW) and the Hessians and Alex's and Stefans
and Karishes and Laszlos and Pauls and Rons and Dougs, are 
holding out?  Perhaps you have tucked away in your quiet privacy
something to craze me, fill me with fantastic visions of the ride,
that ride of a lifetime?  You who are instead, posting a blizzard
of words about car wars, battery terminals, paste wax, throwing golf
balls at tailgaters, tires and oils and cleaning solvents; these
are all very important things, granted, endlessly enlightening, but
dietetic fodder to the hungers, the needs of a soul that yearns to
be stirred, awakened, aroused, enraged, enraptured, and terrified.

And what of the distant lurker, you who would sit at your terminal
day after day, reading but never voicing your opinions, your 
responses, your secret thoughts.  Maybe you're too terrified to find
your brand of cleaning solvent is an unpopular choice among your peers?
Do you ride because your life's desire whispers of the seduction of
chain lube?  Or does your closet contain some thrilling, chilling,
secret passion that dissuades my portrait of your concerns
over helmet hair?  Surely your passions are lurking within you
yearning to be loosed into the world, to reach the ears 
and eyes of starving, kindred spirits.  

The sharing of such excitement, such apetite, such enthusiasm,
would stir the soul of at least one thirsting denizen and would 
be no less than a desireable enhancement to rec.motorcycles?

What words speak these brave hearts?
--
    66
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     ^ .................. brucer (DoD #0002, 303-538-5401)