I miss my motorcycle something fierce. For years that bike was my church. There's a serenity when you're twisting down a wooded road on a bike. It's just you and your senses. The roar of the bike, the wind and bugs hitting your face... you're hyper aware of your surroundings especially the road. Things you take for granted in a car become super important: the quality of the pavement, the pitch of turns, patched pot holes, branches and gravel... they all race pass you and you acknowledge and access them all in a series of sensory awareness. You are left with little room for daily anxieties. I was a much more balanced man when I had a motorcycle. Family responsibilities kept me from being able to ride and limited storage space forced my hand at selling my beloved ape-hangered steed. Whenever you saw me on a motorcycle chances are there was a Steppenwolf song playing in my head. A nod to the biker movies I loved as a kid. However, a few years ago a close friend and I took a motorcycle camping trip together. We dubbed it our "brotorcycle trip". We rode through the Adirondack mountains of New York, through the white mountains of northern Vermont, the railways and river following roads of New Hampshire and made our way to another friends home in northern Maine. We camped at various secluded lakes and rivers the whole time and deeply appreciated the hot water in rest stop sinks. It was a magical adventure where we saw only one drizzly morning and more stars at night than I thought possible. I yearn for another trip like that. A couple of bikes and a twelve pack bungied to the sissy bar from a "last chance" gas station. For some reason this #katatonia album was stuck in my head for most of that trip. The song "july", while not actually very fitting for that experience became my internal soundtrack. I'm glad I have a good aural trigger for these memories.
