I Ride I ride because it's the only thing I've ever found that makes you focus purely in the moment, on pain of death. There is no dwelling on the past when you're dodging potholes and coils of shredded truck tire on 880. There can be no daydreaming about things that might happen in the future when you're reading the terrain to determine if that dark patch up ahead is an oil slick, or merely a shadow. The only things that are in your consciousness, if you're doing your job right, are things that are happening Right Now. The smell of baking bread as you lean into a curve on the highway, holding your line, smoothly rolling on the throttle. The hand of the woman driving the Ford Explorer next to you as it rises, carrying the dreaded cell phone to her ear as she speeds up to 90. The jittery movements of the kid in the Mustang as he zips through traffic like he were on a sportbike, which he's NOT. The feel of the engine, right there, not hidden inside a box of metal many inches away. The wind slapping at you as though it were testing your reflexes. The temperature going from warm to cool in a second, as you ride beneath the limbs of trees. I don't ride because of the danger. I'm not a thrill seeker. I ride in spite of it. I ride because it keeps my tendency towards depression at bay. It rinses out my brain as though I had cracked opened the top of my skull and lain down in a clear, rushing river. Riding has shown me my own strength, my own ability to get myself out of harm's way, to think fast and move faster. And the best lesson riding has shown me so far is this: Look where you want to go, and that's exactly where you'll end up.
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