I took a cruise up the canyon with my friend Eric today. That was an awesome ride!! We have been talking about doing something like this for years. In fact, we talked about it so long that we finally got our motorcycle endorsements back in 2006 and have been trying to find time in both our schedules ever since then to get on some bikes. Well, today was finally the day. Eric was able to rent an 883 Sportster and we got on the road. We had another guy who was going to come with us, but he had a family emergency, so he had to back out. Man, I tell ya... that was his loss today for sure! It was gorgeous!! The high in the valley was like 83, so up in the mountains it was nearly chilly! I'm glad I had my jacket on, that's for sure. Eric was just in a t-shirt and was fine, but I tend to be a little cold sensitive. The nice thing was that I was never once hot. Why Ride There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don't even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that's just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds. Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you're changed forever. The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver's license right next to your sex and height as if "motorcycle" was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition. But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price. A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets. On a motorcycle I know I'm alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than PanaVision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard. Sometimes I even hear music. It's like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind's roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock 'n roll, dark orchestras, women's voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed. At 30 miles an hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it's as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it. A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane. Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It's a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It's light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it's a conduit of grace, it's a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy. I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I've had a handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn't trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride was one of the best things I've done. Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep, sleep." Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.
Here is a map of our route: (click images for larger views)
We left my house at around 12:30 and headed straight for Snowbird. I'm not sure exactly where it is on the map, but I think it is on the same highway as Alta. Anyway, we went on an amazingly beautiful ride up the canyon to the resort and took a couple pictures.
It was an awesome day for a ride! There wasn't a cloud in the sky and there was just a light breeze in the mountains. It was amazing. I've never been up there before and I had no idea it was such a pretty ride. Coming back down the mountain was almost a sad thing.
We went from there and cut across to Immigration Canyon when we got back into the valley. I had never been up there before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. At first I was a little bummed because the scenery wasn't all that fantastic. It was ok, I guess, but after the ride up to Snowbird, I was sort of expecting more. We wove around for awhile and I kept waiting for the big wow in the view. Then we really started to weave. That was when I realized that this ride wasn't about the scenery. It was about the amazing twists and turns in the road!! Check out that map and look at the yellow route. That sucker kept twisting and looping and doubling back for miles and miles. It was amazing!! Coming back down was even more fun than going up. It was an amazing ride!!
All told, when I got the bike back into the garage at 5:00 on the dot I had put just over 130 miles on it. What a day!! It couldn't have happened at a better time, either. I've been really wound up from my new job and everything, so I needed a chance to relax and get some time on the road.
I don't know if I have posted it here before, but I wanted to do it now. This is a very poetic description of the reasons to have a motorcycle and to take it on trips like this. I didn't have anywhere to be or anywhere I wanted to go, but the ride was incredible!!
Season of the Bike
by Dave Karlotski
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