New Years Day Ride – 2009

The annual New Years day ride was a rousing success. Altered significantly from years past, it was longer, smaller and colder than the 2007 and 2008 versions. After this informal ride grew to proportions never imagined, many of the original group split off to take a different route… to bring it back to its core, to downsize it, as it were. Those remaining, primarily those of us rooted in Sacramento, numbering about 25, were a manageable size for an informal event with no one in charge, no paperwork or disclaimers to fill out, no charities to benefit and no traffic needing to be regulated.

It had everything a ride needs – motorcycles, friends, good weather and a road to ride – and nothing more. Our day started in the fog and overcast at Charlie’s Café in Citrus Heights. After meeting up and chowing down, we made the short ride up Interstate 80 to Auburn. Once above the fog, the chill was significantly lessened, although it was still rather cold. The local Starbucks filled us with coffee as several more Harleys arrived prior to the 11 a.m. departure. After lining up in the Starbucks parking lot, we hit the rode.

Our route was the relatively short stretch of Highway 49 between Auburn and Placerville. It took us across the North and South Forks of the American River, through historic Coloma and onto U.S. 50 where we headed back west toward our ultimate destination – the brand new Red Hawk Casino. The plan (if you could call it a plan) was to have lunch there before heading off on our separate paths. However, keeping a large group together at a casino is an exercise in futility – our separate paths commenced upon arrival.

On my return ride to the Sacramento area, I was accompanied by only three of the motorcycles that we started with. Two were riding solo and two of us had our girlfriends riding as passengers. From Placerville down towards Folsom, the temperature dropped dramatically as we rode right into the same fog bank we rode out of several hours earlier. My girlfriend and I took the last Folsom exit – a longer route, but we were ready to come down from freeway speeds. By 3 p.m. we were at my home in Fair Oaks, lit a fire in the fireplace and reveled in what was possibly the best way to start the New Year – alive.

Harley and Me

My motorcycle has been sitting in the garage since Thanksgiving weekend. Between the very cold temperatures, the rain and a busy schedule, there has been precious little time to ride. I am feeling it. It is not at all uncommon for motorcyclists and their steeds to take a winter break, but in California we are spoiled and this longish respite is somewhat unusual for me… the road is calling.

For the past two years, I have participated in an informal ride that takes place on New Years Day. Its origin is modest, but over the years it has grown to more than 50 local riders from the Sacramento, Auburn and Grass Valley areas. It consists of an overlapping network of friends that often includes re-located friends who now live outside this area. There is no cause; there is no charity, no flyers… nothing official at all. It’s just a group of riders who gather to ring in the New Year in the most appropriate way we know how.

It’s about freedom and fellowship. It’s about gratitude and memorial. It’s about the wind in our face, ribbons of asphalt passing beneath us, the sound and the feel of our motors rumbling. Although most of us ride Harleys, anyone who answers the guttural call of two wheels and too much power is welcome. Currently, the questions are circulating. Will there be a News Years Day Ride this year? Where, when and who? Like prior years, it will just happen. Or, maybe this year, it will not. It doesn’t much matter, if the weather is clear – no matter how cold – I will ride.

When I am on my Harley, it’s just us. Even when in traffic, even when riding in a pack and even when I have my girlfriend riding with me, the primary connection is between my machine and me. Of course, this makes sense from an operational point of view, but it goes deeper than that. There is a connection that I cannot replicate in my car. My car does not depend on my to keep it upright. My car does not require my immediate and constant attention while driving it. My car does not need me. While operating my car, or while attending to the many other things I do, my mind is free to stray.

Not so with my Harley. The irony, however, is that concentration allows my mind to get quiet for extended periods of time. The minutia that is constantly swirling around in my world is blocked out. Despite the physical realities of the wind, the heat or cold, the noise and other vehicles around me, the quiet I feel is unlike anything else. It is the best form of meditation I know of. Riding does not consume all of my mental faculties, but it does prevent those little distractions from entering into the equation.

And it is perhaps the clarity riding gives me that I miss right now. It is an odd time of year – it always is. We reflect, we resolve and move into yet another unknown year. This year has been a good one and the next promises to be even better. Perhaps I just need a good long ride to put it all into perspective…

WordPress ONE

I hate deleting words already written. I once wrote a piece entitled “Married to the Words” that expanded on the term used by one of my past editors when referring to a writer’s reluctance to discard what has already been written. I am, unfortunately, among those who find it near impossible to delete words once they have been formed and organized. Not universally, however. When it comes to putting in the finishing touches after proofing, I can and almost always do rewrite sentences, rearrange thoughts and trim – but the framework has been formed. These are not wholesale deletions.

It is a rare day when as much as two and a half paragraphs of completed, coherent prose fall victim to the delete key. Such was just the case. I ran into a dead end. I couldn’t back out and there was nowhere to turn. The words just weren’t coming. This is not the first time the well has run dry and, although it doesn’t happen often, it is also not the first time I have purged the words into the cyber ether. But more often I’ll save the unfinished document to my hard disk where it will languish in cyber purgatory forever. There are a few lurking there right now. Tonight was different, though.

These words couldn’t be saved and I knew it. I didn’t want to let them go, but I had little choice. There are times when the plain and simple truth really is plain and simple. I was forcing it and the more I wrote the less I knew not only where I was going, but from whence I came. I had to kill it before it killed me. So what does that leave me with?

This. An observation. And what better way to inaugurate a new forum to display my work. After three-plus years of posting my musings using Google’s Blogger platform, it is time to try something new. That is not to say my original blog, “The 25 Year Plan,” will be dismantled or left abandoned, but it does mean a new direction… one that has yet to be determined. Where it leads me will become apparent over time as the evolutionary process unfolds. For now, in it’s infancy and with a permanent moniker still quite unknown (I’m still not sure if “Universal Observations” feels like what it is – or what it will become), it will be a place to try new things.

This space might contain some fiction. It might be highly specialized, reporting my views and adventures related to one of my hobbies (Harleys, snowboarding or photography, for example). Hopefully it will eventually take on a distinct personality, one that will resemble my other blog in style perhaps, but not in content. This first post does not reach that mark – not even close. This is a post that could easily appear on The 25 Year Plan.

Again, time will tell. Welcome aboard.