Guy Boutin's Motorcycle Touring and Travel Pages

Adventures in Sport Touring with the Honda ST 1100, 1300 and the BMW 1200RT

Exploring North America...One Road at a Time

Living
February 2002

You win the experts agree, if the game is played in your rhythm.  You lose if it isn't.  A football coach once told me, " I want y'all hitting those receivers when they come off the line!  Mess up the timing of the routes, Don't let the quarterback get any timing with the guys he's trying to throw to."  How many times have we heard, " We want to control the tempo of the game."

But how many of us know the same thing is happening to our lives everyday?  How many of us see we are letting someone else set the rhythm of our lives, or we are facing the equivalent of a blitzing linebacker every morning when we get out of bed?

The clock is where it starts.  It controls our day.  It tells us when to eat, when to sleep. A hour is a hour, it makes no distinction between morning or afternoon.  Aided by electronic daylight, it doles out equal minutes till the Late Show, then lights out, go to sleep.

I discovered that to be wrong on my West Coast trip.  I knew that time shortened and lengthened without regards to a minute hand on a watch.  I found that there is a ebb and flow to a day that escapes the clock.  I came to realize this tempo is unique to each individual as his DNA.

Riding breaks us way from that life, if only temporary.  When I am on a trip, my day is my own.  If I get a late start, so what?  If I decide to eat lunch at 11 am, who cares?  And if I want to spend a extra day with good friends, I can.

On my California trip, I forgot my watch.  At first I missed it.  By day 3, I no longer cared about it.  I broke camp, in the morning dawn, and I went to sleep when it got dark.  I ate when I was hungry.  I rode and discovered things in between.  If I wanted to stop, and take 3 pictures in a mile, I did.  I was my own boss.

There was a time we could sit and listen to the rhythms of our own clocks.  Now they are covered by the din of society's clocks.  Most of us, are no longer masters of our time.  We commute, and work.  We have 3 day weekends, and 12 hour work days.  We have migraines, ulcers, and heart attacks.  

The full court press of the herd is there.  Making us fit to their hours, to the demands of THEIR clock.  Making us change to their tempo. Marching us all the while to the herd's drummer.  Destroying our game plan.  Choking off what we do best.

Luckily, I don't live in that world.  I escaped it.  Not totally, but significantly.  Riding across the country, just because I want to, is a manifestation of that feeling.  Warping across the Mojave, I was no longer prisoner to their artificial time and mechanical clocks.  I was riding across the desert, living my life at its peak, and I thought about one of life's great ironies.  When you finally retire, and leave this crazy world of time, they give you a watch.

Most of us live the good life. Our lives pretty much a bore. Commonplace, flat, and uninspiring are a few more adjectives that also come to mind when describing it.  I am one of the favored few, whose job is in conflict with the "good life."  But for many of us, riding is our connection with the spirited struggle of life and excitement.

Our bikes are our means of escaping the doldrums of everyday life.  Given the choice many of us would give up the reality of today, for the memory of yesterday or the fantasy of tomorrow.  Desiring to live anywhere, but in the present.  That is incorrect brothers.  Live in the present, to the fullest extent you are able to.

"The trouble with this country," wrote James Dickey (ex fighter pilot) "is that a man can live his entire life, without ever knowing if he is a coward or not."  Ordinary life fails to provide the arena for the ultimate test.  For Dickey, that could only come while engaged in a dogfight.  He writes, "nothing compares to the feeling of  engaging in a essential action for a great cause."

I worry when I retire, how I will deal with the absence heightened life I have lived fighting fires for a living for 25 years.  I know I must find outlets, such as riding to keep me from wasting away.  The adrenaline riding gives me, is very addictive, heck y'all know that, no need to explain it here.  You know what I speak off, and that is why I come here to share it with my brothers.

Where can we find those qualities in our 9-5 existence?  I say on the open road, on a motorcycle.  Certainly not as dramatic, but satisfying nonetheless.  When I complete a long tour, I have the same feeling I have of returning from a fire safely, and it also recaptures the feelings of accomplishment  when I completed one of my 6 marathons.

There are days, when the ball just won't go in the basket.  Days when nothing goes right.  You feel trapped and pressed.  I say on those days, play defense.   There is never a excuse for playing poor defense.  On those days, don't force the ball, drop back and fend off whatever comes at you. On the days wit, invention, and resourcefulness disappear, keep working hard.  Defense does not require such things. All it takes is will.  Don't waste a day, because there will be a time you wished you had it back.

Creative thoughts, are like good offenses, they flow.  Defense takes work, and concentration, you can still do those things on a bad day.  Your offense may suck, but you can still be productive.  At the end of such a day, get on your bike, even if its dark outside, and reconnect.  Taking a ride maybe the turnover you need to get back on offense.