I did have a nice 200 mile ride east of the Susquehanna yesterday weaving together some of my favorite stretches of road--Route 443, the lovely Goldmine Road (where I someday want my ashes scattered), and routes 125, 225 and 849.
The first part of the ride was great but during the last hour I ran into a number of fun thieves lumbering slowly along twisty roads with no passing areas. That's always a risk on weekends.
I picked this ride because my GPS is once again in the shop so I needed a route that I knew well. This will be the fourth replacement or repair of my Zumo 220. Garmin has some serious quality control problems. Since I normally use the digital speed display on the Zumo, I found myself pretty much disregarding my speed. Luckily I only hit one speed trap and was behind a truck and a line of traffic at the time. So my ticketless string--I was last cited in 1998--continues.
During a quick afternoon ride on Friday I was in a trance, flying along Route 997. This is an amazing little road that twists for 15 miles through Amish farm country. It's not unusual to ride the whole stretch without seeing a car on the road. But then I came roaring around a curve as a pickup pulled out in front of me. Luckily once the driver realized that he'd screwed up, he stayed on the gas rather than hitting the brakes so I was able to scrub off 20 miles per hour of speed and swerve around his rear. It was a buzzkill, knocking me out of my trance but could have been disastrous a few years ago when my riding skills were less developed.
I've been thinking about something during recent rides. I almost always listen to music on all the shortest rides, usually electronic dance music like techno, house, and trance. This is a bit strange since that isn't something I'd normally listen to. But here's my theory: being physically awkward, I never danced. On the bike, though, I can be graceful and elegant. When I'm really in a groove it's like I'm floating above reality. So riding is my dance and I'm drawn to dance music.
Since I have lots of time to think while riding (which it part of its appeal), one other thing recently popped into my mind. When asked why they ride, many people say, "the freedom." When I first started, that made no sense to me. After all, a car can go pretty much anywhere a motorcycle can. But over the years I've come to understand it even though it's hard to explain.
In part it's because on a motorcycle you don't have all the passive protection you have in a car--air bags, steel beams, and so forth. You live (or in some cases don't) based purely on your own skill. That is psychologically liberating. On a quick, agile bike like mine, there is also a physical freedom since with a slight movement of my hand I can flick the bike wherever I want it to be. And there's also the fact that you're part of the environment rather that being separated from it. Birds fly right by your head, you feel cold, heat, rain, and smells more intimately than in a car.
So it's like you've been freed from the thousand pounds of metal that encase you while driving and, at times, from the laws of physics. It almost seems as if there is no machine involved. All of this is a form of freedom but it's a type that's very hard to explain unless you experience it.
I do have one ride thing coming up--in June my boss and I are planning to ride to a conference our organization is involved with in Kingston, Ontario. The plan is to take a leisurely two day ride up hitting the state parts of north Pennsylvania and New York's Finger Lakes district. We'll spend the night in Geneva, NY then cross the St. Lawrence River by ferry. The last day of the conference, I've plotted a 95 mile ride north of Kingston around Fronteac Provincial Park. We'll do the return in one day, re-crossing the St. Lawrence on the Thousand Islands Bridge, taking I-81 to Cortland, NY, then cutting over and picking up Route 15 which will bring us home. We just have to hope for non-horrid weather since that might kill the ride.
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