Saturday, June 30, 2007

The Full Moon overhead

In astrology, the "...Moon represents [our] instinctive nature and mysteries of the self that often remain hidden." While I fairly certain I did not solve any mysteries tonight, I do know that the moon looked bright and beautiful as I rolled along under its watchful presence. I was over at TerryHo's house catching up with he and his family (Trevor is getting BIG!). Terry and his wife Kristin are always good times and I really regret not being able to find more time to hang with those kids. A mental note to do something about that has already been posted to the bulletin board. We hung out, watched a couple of movies, and took it easy. Old age is catching up to all of us, it would seem. :)

Eventually it came time to ride home. Thankfully, the threatening skies that muted the afternoon gave way to high altitude drifters, and predominantly clear heavens by night fall. When the sky went deep indigo and the stars began to visibly glimmer, the whole scene made for a beautiful backdrop to the moon in its full glory. Coincidentally, I was trying dad's novelty half-shell helmet on this trip out, since I might be buying a DOT half-shell in the near future, so I had a virtually unhindered view of Mother Nature's greatest creations.

It's times like those, particularly when you are alone with the motorcycle, that you begin to realize just how much we miss from the confines of our 4-wheelers. The coolness in the night air, the stillness of a side street at 2 in the morning, the blanketing glow of the moon overhead. This is the part of motorcycling that gave birth to the saying, "If I have to explain, you probably wouldn't understand." On a night like this, with the weather cooperating so beautifully, you want to take a long ride with neither destination nor ETA. You want to kickstand up and ride around for hours, soaking the night air in and grinning ear-to-ear. I realize now that I should have taken the longer route home, down by the beach somewhere, so that I could park and stare at the stars for a bit. The proverbial smelling of the roses, but parking is the hard part and Friday nights are not the safest nights to be rolling around Pinellas County's streets.

I didn't take the long way home, but I did take some time roll slow and enjoy the ride. Destinations never seemed so irrelevant to me as they do now. That fact is all the more pronounced in those moments when the iron horse is helping you focus on the journey. With that, it's time for bed. :)

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Posted by Erik @ 6/30/2007 02:19:00 AM