[twistingasphalt.com] - Pendulum of Confusion

[Ninjette Newsbot]

F4 at the Rockstore


The engine is howling with anger as it sucks down air and explodes. Blows Up and instills its will. Rev by Rev, the road surface bears the brunt of this rage. For an instant it’s easy to imagine bits of tarmac being ripped right out of their cohesive molecular bonds and spit backwards, towards the remnants of the traffic behind me.

Asphalt Hell it seems is alive and well…

At five-grand I’m already doing seventy-five or more on the freeway and that’s not even a quarter of the way up the tach – I shutter to think what would happen if I really lit it up… Though the phrase ‘prison bitch’ comes to mind…

Slowly, or at least I think slowly, my hand instinctively rolls back the throttle anyway. Soaring speed like this is too much fun to ignore – to cathartic to miss – regardless of the consequences.

The sound of the engine goes up a notch. Becomes more intense. More sinful. More vicious. More maddening. Even with ear-plugs.
Quickly, I short-shift into the next gear in a sub-consciously ridiculous attempt to at least keep the speed limit in sight and the next thing I know, not only is the rest of the everyday world far, far behind me, but so too is the freeway itself.

It’s gone.

Vanished.

Behind four legendary MV Agusta exhaust pipes, which right now are bellowing out a purely wicked tune.




A moment later I come up to the first traffic light on the Pacific Coast Highway and am forced to stop. Cease dreaming and start seeing. Reality is back, in a big, big way.

It sucks.

More cars, more people, more dreams, more of the real-world once again. Lots of people on Bluetooth headsets chit-chatting away. I feel bored. My eyes search. Seek out something to focus on. Then they arrive at the clock in the dash.

It’s now an hour ahead.

Think to myself, ‘I ought to change that’, before stumbling through a series of vague Italian electronic solutions that make programming an ordinary VCR seem simple.

Its moments like this that make me question Italian Traction Control.

Seconds later the clock rolls back as the traffic rolls forward — It’s time to go again.

Finally.




Looking down the road, the light is harsh. The shadows starker and living more horizontal than I remember them before…

But then it’s been quite awhile since I was regularly riding.

Quite awhile indeed.

Can’t tell if I’m guilty about that or just plain angry with myself for letting it happen.

To many days have come and gone this riding season without a ride taking place. I’d say it wasn’t intentional, that it was a series of coincidences that in the end added up to form one horrific non-riding riding season, but then I’m not exactly sure that’s true either. I’m not really sure what is true right now. At least when it comes to riding and, well, more importantly work.




It seems once again, I’m living on the extreme edges, and perhaps for the first time in my life I find myself wondering if that’s a good thing or not anymore.

Somehow the journey seems harder right now than I think it should be. Harder to live with. Harder to justify. Harder to believe in. Harder to verbalize in a blog.

And yet it’s amazingly good right now too – On a personal front, it’s good in ways that it has never been before – Very, very good… The kind of goodness that makes you think you might actually be lucky enough to have finally found that missing piece to your life.




It is as if the pendulum of confusion has swung one-hundred and eighty degrees to the other side; Where there was once comfort from the profession and yet personal-side confusion, now there’s security in the joy the other parts of life and perplexity in the my working-world dream.

Why does that happen? How does that happen? What the hell is going on here? Is it impossible for life to be 100% good – does the journey we take always need some amount of uncertainty? Some amount of confusion?

I don’t know, but I’m starting to think so…

A beat later, the F4 roars back to life as the road opens up and I smirk with a diluted sort of self-confidence. The kind of confidence that I fear has been missing 9 to 5. There are lots of rocketships on the market right now and many I quite admire, but few that elicit this sort of emotional response. Something about the MV F4 is more evocative, more alive, and more vivid than any other machine I’ve ever known. Even when life seems to begin and end on the edges.

With a nearly full tank, a sunny, mellow temp’ed day and an open road, all that’s left is to decide where I want to go…

























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