Space

 

Someday I’d like to write about the many and varied parallels of meditation and motorcycling, but for now I’ll just touch on the importance of allowing space between activities. Space to breathe, reset, reflect, pause and transition to the next activity.

Independence

 

What a great start to summer. My weekend was packed full of activities: motorbiking, BBQing, hiking, and floating with friends new and old.  I knew I wouldn’t have time to bake between those activities, and I knew I wanted to bring something for  the BBQ and the float, so I spent a the night prior to the weekend baking away.  First up, Whirlygigs for a 4th of July BBQ.

0 for style, 10 for the dismount.

I knew when I headed out yesterday that it would probably be my last chance to get into the mountains  on the bike for the rest of the year.  We’re due for snow any day now, and I’ve got busy travel schedule that leaves me in the state for less than two weeks between now and Thanksgiving.  With that in mind I knew I wanted to visit my favorite coffee shop in Nederland, explore some new roads and spend the majority of the day out and about, enjoying nature and the gorgeous day.  I’m happy to say that, that is what I did!

This ended up bring my route. It was all mostly there-and-back, normally I would have continued North through Nederland to Estes Park and environs, but that is one of the very few routes into and out of Estes Park and that area, so I figured I’d stay out of the way. No problem, plenty of other roads to explore. For the most part it was all state highways & frontage roads,  just a little I-70 between Clear Creek and Idaho Springs

Premier Solomoto

A couple of weeks ago I went on the first ride of any meaningful distance on my own.  I’ve done multi-hundred days, and 1,000+mile trips, but always with a group of motorbike friends.  I want to do some rather long solo trips on the bike and figured I should probably start with some shorter-longer trips to get myself comfortable with it.  Some friends from NYC were meeting in Grand Junction for Rock Jam, and while I wasn’t originally planning on joining them, at the last minute one of them convinced me to come and surprise everyone. It was a good distance, and had some pretty roads along the way, so I packed my bags (and replaced a rear tire thanks to an ill-timed staple acquisition) and set my course.

Canyon Morning.

Today’s agenda was clear: red lipstick, motorcycle, coffee. Repeat as necessary.

Because I can be whomever I want to be inside my helmet.

Because cow.

Moving and muffins.

Ahhh. It’s been awhile, blog. Since I last baked, there’ve been a few changes. I’ve successfully relocated to Denver, making a few fun stops along the way.

Leaving.

Kickstart.

Beer fueled bets are rarely intelligent ones, and for me, they are bets rarely won.  This is me trying to kickstart a friend’s ATK.

This is not the first bike I’ve kickstarted, but this one just…mocked me. Mocked me hard. I have a whole new appreciation for electric starters.

Turn around.

Around 3pm today I took off on the bike. No destination, no plan, just needing to get out.

I woke up this morning at 4am, fretting about things I have no control over but will inevitably affect my life. Does fretting about it solve anything? Not really. Though I did come up with an action I could take, somewhat relieving The Fret. I fell back asleep, waking up much after my alarm went of and was ignored, my day in a jumble. Everything felt off today. Just slightly out of place, like a picture on a wall that you think is slightly crooked so you keep adjusting it, a little to the left, a little to the right but you can’t seem to get it straight.

I headed up Laurel Canyon, it was filled with traffic. I didn’t mind. It gave me a chance to look at all the houses, the new scenery (everything is new scenery right now).  Sick of traffic, I headed west on Mulholland.  Free of traffic, but full of sun glare. Tight corners and on coming traffic to my left and a steep drop off to my right. Unable to enjoy the road due to intermittent sun blindness, I feel myself getting frustrated again. Then the obvious occurs to me: ” Nothing has tied you to this path, why don’t you go the other way? No sun. No traffic. Problem solved”.  So obvious. At the next intersection, I turned around and headed back the other way, enjoying each turn, each lean, zen-ing out for a few short but cherished miles.

I have a bad habit of continuing down a path, even after it’s obvious it’s not working, solely because it’s the path I decided to take – not because anything, person or logic is keeping me there. I’m stubborn and I’m scared of being “wrong” so I keep on, hoping I can make it work, no matter how hard or frustrating.  The smarter thing would be to change paths and find something that works better, has less resistance and still leads me to my goal.

Thanks motorcycle.

Weekend.

A rare motorcycle related post. I rode my motorcycle more this weekend than any other this summer.  I’m glad I got it in, but man. There needs to be more of this, and less of…all that other stuff.

8pm Saturday. Headed home from a friends BBQ off Lake Washington.

Morning. Sunday. On the climb up and around Rainier, via 410.

(Photo yoinked from moto compadre, Iko)

Later morning. Far side of 410. About to descend into Naches.

(photo yoinked from moto compadre, Iko)

Astonishing! About to head down that road to the left (410), into Naches

200+ish miles & 7 hours of motorcycle makes a happy/tired face. (Also the face of 125 miles between me and  home & muscle relaxants…)

They can’t make nice faces, I’ll keep them anyway.