[twistingasphalt.com] - Why Canyons?

[Ninjette Newsbot]

The beer is bitter but exactly what I need.

As the last sip settles, I place the half-empty glass back on the table. Notice the small dots of perspiration that have built up around the base. The sweet from a hard days work.

Slowly she leans in.

The blonde locks swing forward from her shoulders towards the center of the small circular metal table. I see the strands sway. They seem so linear. So straight. So individual.

Yet so little about today has been as simple as connecting the dots.

Slowly her eyes lift. The corners of her mouth descend. And I see a wily smirk build.

“What’s your deal with these canyons?” she asks innocently.




My head tilts sideways as I ponder the question.

Almost instantly see trees, and guard rails, and dire cliffs flash by… I imagine the corners, the curves and that feeling of dipping and diving in harmony with the asphalt. The smell of the small creek. The echo of the old growth trees. That sense that you’re flying through millenniums of effort and ecstasy.
I picture the first rock, the first raising of the plateau, the earthquake that set this or that mountain free. The rise of the rocks. The birth and creation of something I can’t exactly comprehend. Life. Freedom. Nature. Verticality. It’s hard to believe that what lies off the coast today once wasn’t there. It seems to immense. To large. To real. To built.

“What? Nothing?” she says.

I shake my head. I think of the land and the fruit and the beer that’s sitting on the table. How does what we experience there affect here? How does one articulate the joy of the odyssey versus the much more normal and nominal payday?

“It’s hard to explain,” I finally sputter, while taking another sip…

I’ve known a number of female folk over the years, and yet it’s such a fraction of a fraction that ‘get it’ and appreciate the ‘wonder’ of the road. That sense of diversion and difference. Perhaps to ride is to be the lone gunman who has to leave town. I don’t know… How do you explain what binds you to a canyon wall in succinct terms? How do you ply forward with the knowledge that it’s a seldom understood occupation, and perhaps an even less misunderstood release?












Click here for full story...