My apologies if I've posted this before, but the recent good weather has dragged it back into my mind..
Beyond Addiction
Glancing from the PC to the open window, I take in the sky, clear except for high cloud almost lost in the atmosphere. As I idly follow the antics of two dancing Swallows, a distant sound pulls at my consciousness, dragging my thoughts inwards. My eyelids droop as the vision clears.
The wind buffets me as I fly down the green lane, lost to an exhilaration that defies explanation. Machine responding to every twitch of limb, I bank over and roar through another sweeping curve. When upright again, I back off the throttle to take in the view and avoid the gangs of midges waiting to assault unguarded eyes and mouth.
The smell of hot leather caresses my nostrils and I almost purr with delight as I lean easily into the next curve, pouring on the gas till my knee is barely an inch from the ground and the hot rear tyre is trying to step out.
I pull her upright again in time to avoid the loose gravel which has been forced to the centre of the road and catching site of a blue ‘P’ half hidden by bushes and weeds, I ease of the gas and finally cut the engine, coasting into the lay-by.
Releasing my hair from the constraining glass fibre shell, I drink in the cool air deeply and smile at the sun. Gauntlets are cast onto the saddle and I lay down in the deep aromatic grass on the banking to gaze at the sky and listen to the tick, tick, tick of cooling aluminium castings. Glancing over to where she stands, I smirk at the chrome-indigo pipes, rippling the air around them with heat waves…time stands still.
Eventually, the sun moves around to bake the leather on my boots. Discarding the half smoked roll up, I crunch across the gravel to where she sits like a coiled spring waiting to be off again, her every line showing the speed she and I revel in.
In no time at all, I’m ready again and touching the small red button releases a throaty purr, like that (I’d imagine) of a Cheetah. Glancing around at the abandoned lane, the tip of my boot finds first and the rev counter twitches to the red line. Dumping the clutch I’m off again, the only evidence of my passing a small cloud of dust and a furrow in the gravel.
If any one were to ask me where I’m headed, I’d probably give them an easy smile and say ‘Over there’ or ‘To see where this road goes..’ You see it really doesn’t matter, it’s the thrill of the journey, absolute control over where, when, why and how…and all just a throttles twist away!
…the cigarette that I was smoking, reaches my fingers..rudely dragging me back to the here and now. In the distance, I hear the bikes roaring up the motorway and sigh deeply..trapped once more by this flawed shell, I tell myself those days are gone…again. Useless really…because I know that the next time that I hear that sound, I’ll be there again, tearing down that road to who cares where…
..until next time..
