Eastbound and down with it are we. New Mehico, Tex-ass; devoured. Up next: Oklahomie, Arrrrghcansaws, 10-esee,
Nawf Cackalakey, an’ Ol’ Virginni – all sittin’ pretty on the menu. We eat. We hungry. Only
thing we don’t scarf down is road dust, which gets served to the suckas behind
us. We’re in straight land that does
a lot of hot and dirt. It’s here
that 90mph starts to feel like crawling on your hands and knees, the horizon is
apt to be eaten by mirage, and your bones jingle-jangle to piston rumble. Yet not far ago we were laying a right
number on all sorts of curves like it was a damn road strip club and oh, boy,
we made it rain.
Turnin’ needs talkin’ ‘bout. It’s like hitting a baseball – it’s all
in the hips. Yet on a bike,
throwing your hips means your committing, well, your life. I was thinking about the moment when
you cut it hard and your wheel hits a patch of gravel or tar and slips. All three of us have experienced it
before - that instant when the preciousness with which you hold your life
crystallizes in total, lucid fear.
As this trip would have it, I read a passage in perfect stride that
articulated my thoughts and then kindly one-upped them.
Peter Matthiesson, in The Snow Leopord, tells, “My foot slips on a narrow ledge: in that
split second, as needles of fear piece my heart and temples, eternity
intersects with present time. Thought and action are not different, and stone,
ice, air, fear, and self are one.”
Is it enough to relate to our journey in only one way? NOOOOO!! So Matthiesson kindly continues, “What
is exhilarating is to extend this acute awareness to ordinary moments, as in
the moment-by-moment experiencing of the lammergeier and the wolf, which,
finding themselves at the center of things, have no need for any secret of true
being.”
The journey never ends; the implementation has
just begun.
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