Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
low enough to go under the oncoming SUV, this move looked bound for greasy mangle. Ha!
Except that the boneshaker between my legs wouldn't it under there. Well, maybe it would it
with enough momentum.
Another critical skill is push steering, whereby a motorcycle does not align with the rider
into a curve but is pushed into the curve via the low end of the handlebars. Push steering sep-
arates the posture of the rider, which remains more vertical, from that of the machine, which
is pushed down into the curve. Push steering can feel like steering in the wrong direction,
pressing the bars to the left in a hard right curve. Given the hang of it, push steering can get
a rider through far tighter curves at speed than body alignment steering. The vast majority of
riders in non-fatal motorcycle crashes never heard of push steering.
I knew all about it.
Jerry stands out for a crowning achievement: he didn't wreck my Triumph. I drove his rig
over a cliff. It's amazing, what its into a fleeting moment, and how two moments forty years
apart were as one. Time slows down, making plenty of room for regrets, hopes and dreams,
with a niggling caveat that nothing will stop this action from going down.
The first such warp came in 1970, doing a hundred ten on a Daytona 500, the twin carb
Triumph, slightly smaller than the Bonneville. You can't help catching slower traffic at that
speed. Okay, you keep your wits. Pass like you should. But a truck threw a pebble that grew
into a rock and then a boulder till a megalithic asteroid was screaming toward Earth. It passed
in a flash on a push to the opposite side as the truck flashed pass. I tried a harder push forty
years later to get around an SUV but not to the inside because of the rocky cliff. It seems irre-
sponsible for anyone to go one ten on a scooter doing LSD, even in 1970. But a young man can
take psychedelics better than an aging rider can pull rabbits out of his ass on an intentional
high side with a goose and a push. Now that was radical. And so it went, over the falls.
Shit. Motherfuck.
I must have shucked clear, deferring again to instinct. Bouncing down the slag until the
old bones came to a stop in two piles: one a clutter of stone axes in chrome, the other a road
warrior in denial.
Then came the days and weeks slowing to hours and moments with far less passion. Tic.
Toc.
Recovery time can be productive and free of Pollyanna optimism. It can seek a better
mode of consciousness. Would I make the same effort at self improvement if I were up and
about, tempted by daily life and its blandly satisfying distraction? The attending physician's
nametag says Tsadik below the Hebrew letter called tsadik,
צ
, used for the ts sound. Tsadik
is also a Hebrew word for persons of spiritual renown. How did I know that? Well, in fact I
didn't know that, but then I did.
Tsadik watched me blink and said: intermittent coma.
