Winter Plans ...?

The winter months pass by slowly for a motorcycle enthusiast, at least those of us who live in northern climes where there is precious little good riding weather between Novemeber and March. The winter can be a trying period, where ones patience is tested while waiting for riding season to return once again in spring.

In order to pass this time there is always the exercise of "Planning". That is to plan the upcoming summers trip(s). To look over the map and decide where you want to go, and when you want to go there. And what you may want to see once you arrive.  This activity is a fine way to spend those cold months waiting. And to get organized and ready to go is an excellent exercise, albeit a wasted one often.

What I mean is that once a motorcyclist actually gets on the road..the plans are subject to change almost immediately. I realized this on some of my early adventures. That a perfect plan is often useless once you actually get moving. This phenomenon seems  to only affect my motorcycle travels however , as when I travel by car, train or plane the schedules are fixed and firm. The flexible nature of riding a motocycle is what really allows for this variance.  The very act of traveling by motorcycle is by nature one of defiance and rebellion to the conventional. When most people want to go somewhere they choose more safe, and comfortable means of transportation - within the common guidelines of everyday society. A motorcycle enthusiast decides to operate outside those boundaries and ride a less safe, and often less comfortable vehicle.  This simple decision of conveyance is one of style, substance and conviction.   Not so much that one has to act outside the societal behavioral acceptance (lawlessness?), but wide enough of the norm that the rider can take price in choosing the road less traveled....

The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Everyday Awareness

I have resolved myself to make at least one new post each week. In this manner I will be pushing myself to continue observing, and making note of, the world around me each week. I think that is a keystone for a good writer..to be aware of ones surroundings and notice the little things that make each moment unique and different. A good writer finds the salient points in any moment and condenses them down to their very essence in order to recreate them in the printed form for a reader to digest.

Knowing that I wanted to make a blog post today I was keenly aware of my environment this morning as I left the house.  The weather once again was making the world a cleaner place to live, the fog and warm air had combined to create huge beads of condensation on everything. The car was covered in these drops of crystal clear water and I watched as they blew off the surfaces as I gained speed.

Today I was consciously making note of things as I looked for a good thing to blog about . Thursday is to be my writing dayt whenever possible, and even though some of these posts will be abbreviated, I am going to try to write a little something consistently.  Then luck intervened and I found my muse for this post.

As I drove to work this morning I noticed the air was clear, and warm, and it felt very springlike. This of course in encouraging for any motorcycle enthusiast and I too felt the stirring of my wanderlust longing to be in the saddle again after this gentle winter season. I have driven this way countless times over the 20+ years of living in our house but something caught my eye today. There is a section of road the parallels the main highway I was on, it functions as a frontage road that leads to several houses. I think they added this road to keep traffic off the main road which flows by at higer speeds. It is not uncommon for me to see kids waiting for their schoolbus on the corner most mornings, but today soemthing was different.

As I drove pat I noticed a man crouching in the center of the street. He had his dog with him, and on a leash, and they were both being quite still. As I went past I saw why they had stopped there. The man had a large camera mounted on a tripod aiming toward the northeast. He was working on getting a picture of the area. As I said I have driven past this place many many times and never before noticed what a picturesque place it was. But this morning, because the man with the camera was there, I noticed the view he was capturing. It wasn't breathaking nor panoramic. Just an old farm, with a rundown barn, all framed by the rapidly melting snow steaming slightly as the air warmed it.

So that was my lesson for the day...Taught by an anonymous photographer...to look at everything which is seen daily, and to find the uniqueness of it. To see the steam rising, and to realize the light was perfect at that exact moment.  A lesson of awareness.

Hard to believe it has already been one week since I started this blog. The main idea was to have a place to deposit  my motorcycle adventure stories, and then allow people to read them from all over the country (world?).  I found it was cumbersome to try to share a long story like All the Way to the Water - how does one easily send this size to a friend in another state? E-mail files were huge, the printed matter was excessivly costly to mail, and to sned a disc or usb memory stick was pricey as well.  That is the genesis of this blog.

I also thought that perhaps I could share my thoughts and ideas and chronicle them in a place for my friends and family to read as well. In my heart I always wanted to be some kind of writer. I think I can bring a unique perspective to the things I experience, and with some luck present them in a manner which the reader will find entertaining and perhaps even enlightening...That would be a very wodnerful thing for me indeed.

One thought that has been in my mind a lot lately is a very brief experience from mid-January 2012. The winter has been unsually warm, and the weather (or lack thereof) has been something I often pay attention to, which may be a consequence of being a motorcycle enthusiast as I am IN said weather when I am riding.

We had a rain shower overnight that was simlar in feeling and intensity to a more common spring rain shower. It was not a heavy downpour, nor raging storm, simply an extended rain shower with little wind but lots of rain water. When I went outside the next morning I found the air to be wierdly clean, and clear. The rain had washed the world so completely everything looked ...different ...? The road surface was clean, the house was clean, the grass seemed spring like, the air smelled and tasted fresh. Even my car, parked outside overnight, was clean and shiney like it had just been polished..?

I have no proof of this idea, but I think it may be reasonable...I think the rainwater was in a very pure form. The winter cold air is quite dense and will hold scarce few pollutants (hence the better air quality index found in the dead of winters). I think this rain was so clean, so pure, so freash that it had a cleansing effect on whereever it fell. The Ph balance must've been perfect, each drop falling to earth without collecting dust, and pollen and pollutants on the way down. No acid rain, no ash from a distant fire, no fallout from a reactor somewhere half way around the globe...just pure clean fresh water.  Further - I wonder if this was the type of rain that ALWAYS fell on the world before mankind came along and started adding tons of exhaust carbons into the air. When the world was growing and green and lush.  If that is the case..then early man had a wonderful place to develop and grow...perhaps even a "garden" all centered on this simple thing - rain.

Groundhog day 2012.
Perhaps in some ways a fitting spot in time and space to start a blog. After many different writings and postings in cyberspace I found that it was all too non-interactive. I want to share my thoughts, my views, my insights and opinions - primarily about my travels and motorcycle adventures, but also about life and the myriad twists and turns if brings.

As this is an idea and effort in it's infancy, and I have no real preconcieved concepts of what it will be, I can only say it promises to be interesting and the final product at some distant time will provide these answers.

Please pardon the typos that are inevitable and the expected poor grammer - a reader would do well to focus on the content I offer, and not the delivery. Some of the posts promise to be rambling thoughts, and other well conceived plans. Some will be be storys from days past, and others just flights of fancy...

Please enjoy while I continue to Just Explore - never really lost....