[twistingasphalt.com] - Chasing What Remains

[Ninjette Newsbot]

It is an acerbic expressway, hardened by time and fluid to the touch, yet built through the prism of a window to another era. Egalitarian in construction, its rambling mass flows from one hillside-avenue to another, clasping hands with the countryside as it sways from one event to the next.

A collection of individuality, which runs together as a sequence of dreams laid out before you. The means to its survival fleeting, perhaps even dated. For gødsakes there are new homes to build and schools to construct – society desperately needs to advance. And yet it’s the road that shows us the past. The virtue of our survival. How it got here and why it still stands are pondering questions, thought provoking in their indignity but far less useful than the experience held within them. The experienced held by riding through them. By becoming one with them.

Roads are such majestic creatures. Built by man yet brought to life by nature. By the very means humanity wishes to admonish. We don’t need another shopping center. We don’t need more movieplexs. We need more twists. More turns. More events in our lives. Yet so much of regular society bemoans the journey – that extra corner, or extra bend, the two-laned highway that desperately needs to be widened and straightened out – Because the traffic is unbearable in rush hour. Yet who champions the middle of the day? Who says, ‘yeah, but it’s a blast to ride when it’s empty?’




And really, is there anything better than a brilliant corner flush with excitement? Anything that beats feeling like you’re running on the edge at the top of the world? On a canyon road captivated by rock and wilderness? By the very past?

The way the yellow line frequents each quadrant of the emotional spectrum. You feel the fear, you see the excessive joy, taste the determination of the desire to create it, to build it, to be it. And then you go. Faster. And faster. And faster. And then you’re simply existing above an asphalt adventure.

I don’t need to trek through Africa and I don’t need to climb Everest — I need to ride every ****ing curvy road between here and there. That’s far more powerful. Far more majestic. Far more of a journey.

Because it’s everyday ordinary in excess. Because it’s alive and breathing and fluid and dynamic.




Soon the fences and hedges fly by in a blur. The farms disappear. The singular rustic windmills pace into oblivion. The tactile feeling that’s being transmitted through the handlebars shatters the deeper thoughts and the rhythm of machine etches itself into your consciousness. You feel the undulations below. You touch that realm where blurry becomes a different kind of focus. You watch the clouds climb over the ridge, over the top of the mountain pass. You feel the moisture in the air. The dampness wrapping around you. The way the sea salt can be smelled. You feel placed in control. Seated before your sins and on top of the world even though you’re diving down into the valley below.

Now it is just you and the surface and they way they connect.




A connection riddled with the flaws of humanity but so damn beautiful at speed. The way the brush blows by, the sound of the empty nature, the way the wind basks in the brilliant sunlight, the taste in the air of an eternal landscape. And even the fog in that lies in front of you.

In the hard winter light, you squint into the distance and stare down the gradient sunset while it fades into the horizon line. Lick your lips at the opportunity to chase what remains of the day. A cattle call for adventure and an admonishment of the grind. Here you stand away from so much and yet surrounded by even more.

Who needs a GPS system when you have a hunch?

Once there was an Indian scurrying around this land. Then a settler came roaming through the plains of this very canyon. Eventually the horse became the car and the dirt transformed into this very asphalt. This very avenue of advancement.

And now you’re here.

On the same road as a million other men and yet it’s completely different. Completely new.

Dedicated to the task of chasing the very light you crave down a dark twisted piece of tarmac in the middle of individuality.












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