Among the many discoveries to be made by wandering about this vast, magnificent continent of ours is the realization that… it’s all out there, everything about us human beings… the good, the bad, and the ugly. And, sooner or later the bold, persistent trekker will see evidence of all those features. How much of each there is, the proportionality, seems to this confused passenger aboard spaceship earth to be yet another ‘discovery’ still to be made…

We tend to find what we’re looking for… to see what we seek. When I’m down, blue, or in an outright funk, I do see vividly the darker side of life: The rundown neighborhoods, the abandoned buildings, the tattered clothing of the homeless, the look of sadness, dissatisfaction, and despair on the faces of those for whom life has yielded few if any meaningful rewards… the products of imperfect institutions and flawed human beings… I also see the vultures who prey upon those most vulnerable…

Yes, all that is indeed out there, and it’s enough to break the heart of even the most hardened observer. But, there is so much good out there, too. The generosity and nobility of our species are also on full display, if one looks for them… But, are all those things in equal quantities? Is there as much bad as there is good? Is the unsightliness of failure and dysfunction just as prominent as the beauty of success and triumph? While I do think the good vastly outweighs the other things, I don’t have sufficient evidence for a solid, irrefutable conclusion…

I do know that the amount of each that I see personally appears to be in direct proportion to my current state of mind… my own mental condition. When I’m ‘up’, when I’m in that special groove, life is wonderful, and I see rainbows in every direction… halos over people’s heads, and beauty in all things.  My mind, body, and spirit are in harmony on some elevated plane… I’m happy just to be alive, and I’m deeply gratified to have been able to live the life I have…

I ride constantly in search of that euphoric state that is most readily found when aboard ALI. She is my most reliable refuge from the few negative effects of my self-imposed condition as a rudderless vessel floundering about on the stormy sea of life. Being with her is the only ‘home port’ I claim, and while that can be a disconcerting thought and a lonely circumstance, the liberation it includes and the opportunities it affords more than tip the scales of desirability back the other way.

I can come closer to making sense of things generally, and of ‘life’ in particular, when she and I are alone wandering aimlessly through the fertile intellectual potting soil of the North American highway system… Where the seeds of my best, most personally satisfying thoughts germinate.  Where peace and purpose can be pursued to some acceptable level…

These are not new revelations. I stumbled upon these thoughts early on in my riding career… Even from the very beginning I knew the pursuit of an adrenaline high was not my thing. Nor was the need for speed nor the exhilaration of cheating death. Distraction from ordinary life through the experiencing of superficial thrills was not at all what I needed…

No, what my impoverished, malnourished soul so desperately hungered for more than anything else was answers… and time without distraction to think deeply, objectively, honestly, and to attempt to make some sort of sense of it all… Solo trekking on a two-wheeled wonder machine became the ideal commute, the solution that enabled this eager, earnest, needy student to move from one classroom to another around our wonderful continental campus.

ALI became in time my most satisfactory companion… a magic carpet that transported me to another, far better spiritual place. A place where I could both witness the various aspects of the drama of life on a grand stage, while also having the time to thoroughly digest all that had exposed itself to me. And, to do those things while in an appropriate frame of mind to appreciate what I was learning.

Last month (January 2017) she and I marked our eighteenth anniversary together. We’ve travelled as a couple the length and breadth of our allotted corner of the universe, all the while covering more than 546K miles of mostly asphalt in the process… The legendary durability and reliability of big Hondas made the choice to buy one an easy selection.

We’ve shared the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat together. We’ve even endured a separation that at first appeared to be permanent. Fate and generous other riders, however, have made other possibilities available for us, and so we’ve remained an item through it all.

I’ve been in love with her from the moment I first laid eyes on her on that showroom floor in Hendersonville, NC. The ride back to Florida was our honeymoon, and my journey with her since that long-ago union has been the most momentous, wonderful part of my entire life. Now, talk about a serious and incredibly fortuitous discovery!!!!!!!!!!!!!!