Revolutions

Today there was spring, glorious heat and jubilation. I felt it in my veins like a wolf waking to the setting sun. I felt love and passion, but even more so today I felt daring. In the dewy morning air I tossed open my garage door and flung the cover from my motorcycle. I knew budding crocuses had reached it too as I mounted and kicked to hear it start up first try after a long, cold winter. As it warmed to life I crouched by the door to have a smoke, gazing as listless breezes experimented with newly opened windows and portals.

Then, when the revs lowered to operating idle, I whole-shotted out of the damp garage, power-slided in the street, then twisted my right hand to unleash the wind. Fuck the garage door.

After straightening turns at the reservoir for an hour I arrived at Albert’s long driveway. Etiquette be gone, I jammed my thumb on the horn button to see him dashing through the door, wiggling his jacket on with one arm while finishing his breakfast from the other. I smiled as his garage door was flung in my own fashion, and backed my SR500e onto its center stand. With both bikes aspirating we could hardly hear his wife at all.

Moments later all our senses were immersed in the season, saturated in speed and liberation like dreaming cheetahs after forbidden gazelles. Deep into forests then towns, blowing through traffic, sometimes stretching our legs on The Merrit.

I knew that in the quiet of that evening I would, as always, promise to never risk myself like that again. But the visceral joy-ride of it all, pulling into Café 101 to see your buddy sharing the smile, slamming your hand into his, regaling strangers with the end of winter you discovered upon the land. Those, also, are seasons; inside myself.