To Thine Own Self Be True

To Thine Own Self Be True

Jeff Hughes

In the beginning it was simply the road that drew me. Black asphalt, a serpentine layer of coils laid down across the mountain, like God himself had maybe once decided to play with a cowboy lariat and, having tired of the game, let it fall in twisted folds to the ground.

Later, with time and miles, the other things would get added.

The road rises, as inevitably it must in order to track over the mountain. But the rising is more than just physical. It rises in other ways too. Those, too, I would find.

In the end, it would become my catharsis, an oasis, the place I would ever return to whenever things seemed amiss. A place of refuge.

Fortune plays a part, of course. I am blessed to live where I do, with a good road at the end of my driveway, with that leading to other good roads, and those to still more. A patchwork quilt of possibility in the routes I might take. But however else I might put together the pieces of my ride, whatever variations I might toss in on a weekend morning, the mountain has always been a part of it. The part that, even in the hour or more of riding beforehand, has always been there in the back of my mind, whispering its promise.

This particular morning, with summer edging into fall, seems no different from the countless many which have come before. Just simply a beautiful time to be out, enjoying the world on two wheels. The coolness in the air - different, sharper, than the textured, sultry feel of a summer morning - hints at the changes soon to come. There’s a bittersweet feeling to that, the delight in moving through the low-humidity air with its achingly-bright sunlight tempered by the knowledge that the riding season – the good one, at least, the one not requiring layers and layers of clothing – will all too soon draw to a close.

But we’ll not worry about that. Today is a time to rejoice in the gift of this day we’ve been given.

Out of town along Old Waterloo, past the school where my kids used to go. They’re grown now, gone on to other things. But the road is still there, for me, just like always. That, too, is a gift.

A half-mile past the school leaves the last small cluster of homes behind. Then there’s that first, long, left-hand sweeper, the first really nice corner. That’s like a doorway. You step through it into another world. After that it’s just country, a rural landscape I have long loved.

The opening miles are special, like they always are. There’s an intensity to them – the feeling of the road sliding past my tires below; the controls, still fresh to the touch, not yet dulled by time and miles; the air sneaking through the crack in my visor, cool against my chin; the visual cacophony flowing past me on both sides, like I’m in the middle of some sort of high-speed motion picture show; and the feeling of the motorcycle itself, working, moving, alive. It wraps around me, all those things, and I’m swiftly captured by that old magic of being lost in the moment. All the worries and stresses that too-often hang around, whispering in my ear – no different from the things that afflict us all – for a little while are cast aside.

The most special gift of all.

In a studied twist on our usual there’s-too-much-to-do-and-I’m-already-late world, the next hour is a contrived effort to not make time. My route, casually mapped out in my head as I ride along, has but a single commandment: make it as circuitous and remote as possible. It’s a wonderful world where being late getting somewhere is considered a virtue.

That route takes me across Virginia’s western Piedmont, a cornucopia of narrow roads and woods and fields and horses and cows and creeks and sunlight and shade. Out Old Pine, downhill through the esses that I long-ago nicknamed “the slalom”, where a few times I’ve seen deer along the side and you know you have to be careful. Then there’s the slow, curling right-hander leading up onto the single-lane bridge, past that and down through the canopy of trees, where it’s always cool, even on the hottest days of summer. Then up the hill and it opens up, the woods giving way to farms on either side. Over in the field an old man on a tractor is baling hay. I raise my hand and he waves back.

Good roads. Good people.

There’s something else out here, though, something drawing me. However much I love these roads, however I might choose to piece together the parts of my ride today, I’m edging ever westward, towards my beloved Blue Ridge. Towards the mountain. I’ve never had a choice in that.

And soon enough I’m there, the north-south ridgeline of rugged, age-old peaks, mountains which have gazed down across epochs, rising across my view. Even knowing where I’m going, there’s a mystery here.

Roads, like people, have their own personality. Most routes, especially the twisty ones that we hold dear, have a staccato, irregular sort of feel to them. They track across the landscape in uneven wrinkles: a smooth, flowing curve here; a quick hitch and now a flattening over that rise; an abrupt tightening over there. The variations themselves are a treat, delighting us with the twisting, turning, unexpected moves we must make. We even have a word in our sport-riding lexicon to describe them: ‘technical’. As in, “Have you ridden dark hollow? Man, that road is so technical!”

That’s how my last hour has been, a heady mix of twisting turns and unexpected delights, no mile like any other.

But then there are other roads, rarer, which along with their curves bring an uncommon symmetry. These are the roads that, for lack of a better word, flow. They bring a measure of predictability to their cadence. A ride along them has a certain rhythm.

Not that they are necessarily simple – the curves are often a lot more severe on a road like this, those back-and-forth folds of asphalt being the only way the road builders could make their way up the mountain – but their regular tempo imparts a special quality. Ridden at pace, with the suspension working and the bike alive and the mind clear, one is sometimes blessed with something very special: a feeling of grace. And it’s in that feeling, in that rare moment, that we’re reminded why we do this.

It’s no wonder that I love this place.

The first turns at the bottom are just like they’ve always been – creamy smooth and tinged with expectation. I’ve got eight miles of this in front of me.

But, climbing, now heading into the entrance to one of the deeper corners, my reverie is suddenly interrupted by a bumpy, jarring chatter coming from my tires: rumble strips. Lifting my eyes I see the sign with the new – lower - speed limit, and suddenly, sadly, it all comes back to me.

This place is not what it used to be.

Having a great bike is only half the equation necessary for enjoying this sport of ours. If the wonderful machines available today are to mean anything other than simply being interesting engineering exercises, they must be married to equally-wonderful roads.

In that, too, we’ve been blessed – there are a great many roads across this land which are suited to taking the measure of our machines.

We have them today. It’s not at all certain that we’ll have them tomorrow.

If they do go away, if, in the end, we end up losing the privilege to wake up early on a weekend morning, heart charged with the anticipation of the day’s ride, we won’t have far to look for the reason. We’ll need only look in the mirror.

We’ll rationalize it six ways to Sunday, just like we do today. But if we’re ever honest with ourselves, we’ll have to admit exactly where it lies. It’s not our cruiser-riding friends on their Harleys. Nor is it our touring buddies on their Goldwings. It’s not the folks riding through on four wheels. And it’s not those people who live along the roads we ride. And much as we might grouse about their part in it, it’s not the cops or the prosecutors or the judges charged with enforcing the law, either.

Go talk to the paramedics, if you still don’t know.

Mea Culpa. The blame is mine.

Some people think it can’t happen. They insist on living in a make believe world where no amount of excess, no degree of egregious behavior on their part, ever gets a response.

They’re wrong. We’re already seeing lowered speed limits and sharply stepped-up enforcement on many of our best roads: Deals Gap, the Angeles Crest, and the Blue Ridge Parkway, just to name a few. And they’re serious. Come to Virginia and ignore the limit on that long-time favorite road of mine and you will get busted – trust me on this.

And who can blame them? To say that the carnage on the road has gotten out of hand is a study in understatement. When things get to the point that we expect to encounter a crash on the day’s ride; when we come back home in the evening and log onto the local internet forum site just so we can see who went down that day – something is terribly amiss.

The irony is that all of this is happening at the very same time that public access to racetracks - where a rider can ratchet things up to just about any level he desires – is at an all-time high. Track days, unheard of when I started riding, are now ubiquitous, cheap, and easy for just about anyone to attend. Any excuses you hear anymore about why someone can’t are just that – excuses.

Life is funny. Most of what we can expect from tomorrow is hidden from us, a mystery yet to unfold. Occasionally, though, we’re blessed with a glimpse into that future, given a vision that shows us what the world will look like a little bit down the road.

That’s the last gift we’ve been given. We can clearly see the dual futures that sport riding holds. One is of continued advancement of our machines and ourselves; of enjoying many more years of waking up with that humming excitement in our chest. The other is barren; one of road closures and machine restrictions and draconian traffic enforcement and sharply-curtailed riding opportunities; one where the carefree freedom long associated with our sport is long gone.

Which will we choose?