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.

Summer Special: Learnin’ Pie.

Another Summer Special!

There is a really great pie shop just on the other side of the lake.  It’s called A la Mode Pies and man, they dish out some mean pies. I had been to the shop only once when they started offering classes, and I knew I had to try it out.

The class was great. It was 2 hours long, taught by the owner, Chris in the kitchen of the pie shop. He told us his story and how he came to be the pie man, and walked us through how they make their pies.  We were divided into 3 groups to make 3 kinds of pie: french apple, sour cherry, and marionberry.  I was in the marionberry group.  The crusts were already made (I was a little disappointed by that, but I understand that time doesn’t allow for us to make our own), we just rolled them out for our top and bottom crusts.  Similarly the berries had already been mixed with sugar, starch and lemon (again, I was a little disappointed by that, too) ready to be dumped into our pies.  While the pies were baking we went to the front of the shop where we tasted as much pie as we could fit in our stomachs (which is always more than you think), washed it down with coffee and chatted with our classmates and Chris. As each pie came out, the individual baker grabbed a pint of Bluebird ice cream and headed home with their warm pie and a booklet of recipes so we can continue to make pies on our own.

It was a great opportunity and hopefully one that leads to more good business for Chris and the rest of the folx at A la Mode.

On Motorcycling

Motorcycling has brought me and taught me many things. I’ve found: confidence, my sense of self, boyfriend(s), responsibility, new friendships, knowledge, patience, adventure, glimpses of my own mortality, loss, heartache and unending joy.  When I started riding, I had no idea of the scope of emotions, responsibilities and experiences that came with that motorcycle.  I thought it was going to be great fun, a new skill to learn, and, if we’re going to be honest, probably garner me some attention from the opposite sex*.

Even though I have thousands of miles behind me, I still feel like a new rider. I’m learning and improving every time I get on the bike.  I make mistakes. I ride harder. My technical ability improves. My confidence improves. Every once in awhile I scare myself.

I don’t feel like a new rider in that I’m not comfortable on my bike, or in traffic or on the freeway or in poor weather.  I feel like a new rider in the sense that there is a whole world of things for me still to learn.  There is so much room for growth, improvement and expansion of my skills.  I ride a sport bike of medium size. I want to learn to ride in the dirt. I want a larger bike more suited to long-distance touring.  I want to go on thousands-of-miles trips through other countries, across continents. I feel like I’ve just started on a journey with no set route and thousands of miles to go.

I knew I was going to like motorcycling. I had no idea how much I would fall in love with it or of all the ways in which it would change my life.  How it would make me take part in activities or challenge myself in ways I wouldn’t have done pre-motorcycle.  I can no longer imagine a life without motorcycles.

I started this project after a little over a year and a half of riding. The same time period also brought a geographic move, a lot of growth, and a good dose of heartache. This project is a way for me to remember everything I’ve learned, how I’ve changed, what I’m still learning, how I’m growing and as a means to heal.

There will be good stories. There will be bad.  It’s a learning process, hopefully with pictures.

 

*I was right in that. What I didn’t realize at the time was that 95% of that attention is very much unwanted.

kickstart my heart

There have been three times that my bike, inexplicably, wouldn’t start.

Inexplicably is a bit of a misnomer: there was always a definite and specific reason why it wouldn’t start, there just had not been any trauma to the bike preceding the non-starting.  Each time, the last time I had ridden the bike, she’d been running fine, had been parked in my garage, and when I went to ride it a day or a few days later, she wouldn’t start.

Each of these times, the failure to start was immediately after having my heart kicked by the guy I had been dating.   The first time it happened, I thought “oh really? FML” and wrote it off as bad luck. The second time it happened, I thought “again? Seriously? All I want to is ride my bike and clear my head”. The third time it happened, this morning, I couldn’t help but think that my emotional state and the mechanical state of my bike were, for better or worse, correlated.