Echoes of the Mind

Echoes of the Mind

Jeff Hughes

It’s hot, like only a July day can be, and I’ve got my jacket unzipped most the way. Even that hardly helps, the trickles of sweat pooling under my arms and running down my back. I fight the urge to take it off altogether.

Something different today. Instead of heading west into the mountains, like I almost always do, I’ve turned eastward, back towards suburbia. I’m not sure why.

Heading up Busthead, the haze is thick like fog, a blanket over the countryside. For once I’m not unhappy to jump on the interstate. Every little bit of extra speed helps, even if it’s only for a few quick exits. I get off at Centerville and head down Sully for a few miles, finally getting off the big road when Compton appears. That feels better. Compton is shaded and has lots of curves, though I see they’ve built a lot of new homes along it.

I haven’t been to Clifton in a long time. Not that there is anything much to the little hamlet - little more than a handful of old houses clustered around the general store where the road crosses the railroad tracks. But I used to stop here all the time. We’ve all got those favorite places where we like to stop on those regular routes we run, places where we can stretch our legs and think and laugh with our buddies and gather up again the magic for the next stretch. This used to be mine.

I never really thought about it at the time, but even then it was about the roads. The thing that drew me. The serpentine network of roads around Clifton was far and away the best in the county. So it was, wherever of the handful of places I happened to be living back then, here is where I always came. Heading south on the interstate for a ways, exiting at Lorton where the prison was and the good stuff began. Out to Old Ox and Hampton and from there to Henderson and Old Yates Ford. Eventually coming down the hill into the little town. If it was a daytime ride I’d get a soda and sometimes something to eat at the store. If it was nighttime the store would be closed, but I’d stop anyway. For a smoke, if nothing else. A smoke and a musing on why it all mattered. I wondered about that, even then.

I’ve got a picture somewhere of Jay and me and our XS-11’s out there, in front of the store. And I remember one summer evening there when Dennis, always the mechanical genius, tore down the carburetor of a broken down car and got it going again - the grateful owner more than happy to offer a ten-spot for the hour’s work. Now Jay is a thousand miles away and it’s been a long time since Dennis swung a leg over a motorcycle.

Mostly, it was dark and I was alone. I did a lot of nighttime riding back then, catching my miles whenever I could. Grabbing a few hours after the kids were down for bed, running deep into the night and the darkness, knowing I would be tired for work the next day but not caring. I stood there many times in the darkness across the street from the general store, the only sound the ticking of my bike’s cooling engine and the soft crackling of the tobacco in my cigarette as I drew on it.

It’s been so long since I’ve been here, it feels like an ache. Looking around and seeing the town and trying to remember. At the store I wander in, the rush of cool air from the air conditioning sharp on my sweat-soaked t-shirt. I relish the feeling and take my time, slowly wandering around and looking at everything. It used to be a proper little store with shelves full of all the little groceries that people would run out of between their weekly trips to Giant or Safeway. Now, it’s got a little deli behind the counter and not much out on the shelves. The faded tiles of the floor are the same, though, worn smooth from the decades of booted heels which used to walk here.

After the guy makes my sandwich I head back outside. The heat is oppressive, viscous, a thickness at the door, and sweat immediately begins running from every pore. But that’s ok. There’s a small bench just outside the door and it’s shaded by the porch. I don’t mind the heat.

I’m in no hurry and it’s a slow lunch, breaking off small chunks of the sandwich and washing it down with sips from the bottle of water. Across the street, I notice the old horse railing is gone. The one I used to stand beside, reflecting, as I smoked that cigarette. Like the store which no longer sells groceries, the character of the town has changed. It seems a little stuffy, more a place for all the rich people who now inhabit most of the surrounding countryside on all those five-acre estates. I expect they’re not very appreciative of young men on fast motorcycles, blitzing down their roads. Certainly they wouldn’t approve of that regular nighttime rush of mine way back when, back over the causeway across the reservoir a few miles back, eyes peering intently through the darkness, as if that intensity alone was talisman enough, as I descended the hill with the throttle screwed around to its stop and the speedometer sweeping past across the fabled ton.

I wonder how long there will be room for the ghost of what I once was, here.

Looking at the Gixxer I’m reminded of how far things have come. If ever a machine deserved that mythical appellation of “iron fist in a velvet glove” this lovely little blue and white beauty is it. A thousand cc’s of manic genie, bottled up and washed and made civil. At least as long as you don’t turn the throttle more than a third of the way, whereupon the cork pops out.

One year of payments done. Another two to go. I push aside the dark thoughts of what my continuing unemployment might bring, the growing sense of doom. I’ve got enough dollars in my pocket for a tank or two of gas. That’s enough for today.

Mounting back up, I put my earplugs in and fasten my helmet first, saving my jacket and gloves for last. Even so, in the few seconds it takes to shrug into the jacket and pull on the gloves, sweat is pouring off my torso. I need to be moving.

If the town has changed, the roads surrounding it haven’t. They’re remarkably like what I remember. Every curve and bend seems to be in place. Every dip, every shaded bit. Leaving, I scribe a loop, most of the old loop that I used to run, bringing me back around to the town again thirty minutes later. I never appreciated it back then, what a gift they were. What a great place to learn. Even now, after all this time, I have to shake my head at some of the complexities these roads hold. To ride them well is no mean feat. I was lucky.

I didn’t plan it. But leaving the town the second time, this time running a slightly different loop, I feel it edging into my consciousness. First just a brief thought, a twinge arising out of an old memory; but then more, gaining substance. So I ride east for a few miles. Then turn left. And then, my eyes searching, feeling for the old connections of time and space, turn left once more. Pope’s Head.

It was autumn. Dennis, on his Suzuki GT-380, and me on my Yamaha RD350. We had each bought our bikes within a week of each other the previous spring and had spent the summer riding everywhere, putting on a fair number of miles. Our initial trepidation had quickly given way to comfort, and that to confidence. By summer’s end we were riding pretty hard and fast. Or so we thought.

I remember the bright sunshine that day, the light harsh against an azure blue sky, the road and the landscape sharply etched like an old Kodachrome slide. The cutting coolness. And our game. Never spoken between us, but a game all the same. Whoever is in front hauls ass as fast as he possibly can. The guy following tries to stay with him. Simple.

I was in the lead that morning, though any other details of our ride prior to getting there elude me. Popes Head was a new road, one that neither of us had been on before. Why I turned down it I’m not sure. Just something different, I suppose. Past the several small little homes, I remember winding the wonderfully fast and easy-handling two-stroke up into its power band. A yellow 25mph caution sign flashed by, with both of us firing through the curves that were its subject. Our blood was up.

Ahead, another yellow caution sign, one which has an abrupt, right-angle arrow painted on its face instead of the gentle, rounded arrow one usually sees. This one is pointed left and has a big number ‘10’ below the arrow. “Jeez”, I think to myself, “that’s pretty low”. I downshift and brake as late as I dare – having big balls through the turns is the only way to get ahead in our little game – and a hurried glance at my speedometer tells the tale: 40mph. Too hot. Way too hot. I feel the fear, like a spreading explosion in my chest, but then I’m there, at the entrance to the turn, and there’s nothing left for it but to throw the little Yamaha over onto its left side, and hope. I’m in way over my head, in a place I’ve never been before, and I know it.

My mind allows a single instant of wonder of how Dennis is doing. The last time I looked in my mirrors, a hundred feet back, he had been right on my tail. Now into the turn, there’s no time for another glance. I hope he’s doing better than me. My stomach has contorted into a knot and as the harsh, abrupt apex of the corner rolls beneath me, the road has every bit of my attention.

In a miracle, I manage to keep it on the tarmac. Slicing past the apex and now powering up a slight incline, for the space of a heartbeat I breathe a sigh of relief. Like it usually does on close calls, my fear on first entering the corner quickly starts to transmute into laughter. But then I see another yellow caution sign with yet again a big number ‘10’ painted on it, this one pointed right. I see the sign even as I’m still pulling the Yamaha upright from the first turn and in a flash I realize I’m not done yet. Even as that is registering, I crest the little hill.

I’m aghast. Past the crest the road doesn’t just level off. It breaks and falls away even as it curls hard right. It’s like the road just vanishes – first it’s here, under my wheels; and now suddenly it’s over there, pointing, and how the hell am I going to get there?

Floating in a cloud of adrenaline, I clamp hard on both brakes. The rear end locks and begins to drift outwards, towards the left. And for the first time in my life I experience the surreal feeling of time slowing down. In a way it’s wonderful, like a pillow of soft cotton, the slow motion effect affording plenty of time to think. I release the brakes, stopping the slide, and then squeeze them again. With the same result – the rear locks and starts drifting outwards. Once more, I release the brakes. One more time, after the slide stops, I apply them again. By now I’m hard into where the road has begun its disappearing act, has jinked over there, the place where I should be but aren’t. Then I see the station wagon.

It’s just there. One minute it’s not. The next it is, looming in my vision like some sort of demented apparition. And what little bit of road is left, the road I so desperately need more of, is just – gone. With nothing more left to it, like the pilot of a crashing plane suddenly resigned to his fate, I stay on the brakes that third time.

I’m surprised at how clear it all remains. The images of the road from that day, flashing before me in a single hot moment.

I’ve not been back there, to that double set of 10mph curves, more than a couple times in all the years since. As I approach that first yellow caution sign I slow, peering at the corner oddly, with something akin to shyness, then pull off the road. There’s a driveway that enters the road right at the apex of that first left-hander, right at the base of the inverted ‘L’, and I park the Suzuki there.

With my helmet off and earplugs out and the engine shut down it’s suddenly very quiet. I look around and notice, like I never did that day, the couple of houses set back off the road, the gravel driveways and the mailboxes. People live here. It’s all very normal for them.

It’s funny how space seems so different on foot. Capacious. I walk slowly down the road, soaking in the visual cues in front of me, but also turning every few feet and glancing back from where I have come and seeing that perspective too. There is a web here, something long ago missed, and I very much wish to grasp what it is trying to say.

From the hard apex at the base of the inverted ‘L’, where the Suzuki now quietly sits, the road first rises. Just a little, almost imperceptibly. The suspension would have compressed there. Had I been attuned to it I would have felt the firming, like the flexing of a muscle.

Another few dozen feet and the road crests – mildly and softly it seems when on foot, surely with a harsh immediacy when traveling at four times the recommended speed - and then begins falling away. There the suspension would have begun to extend. And that’s where it all would have begun to unravel.

Looking around, calculating space and time and angles, I wonder. Except for the slight rise, the first turn reminds me of turn nine at Road Atlanta, the hard left-hander at the end of the back straight on that storied track. Except that the road here is far tinier. The second turn is strikingly like turn seven at Mid-Ohio – except this one goes to the right instead of the left – but with the same curling away of the road under negative camber. Looking back at the Suzuki, my eyes scribe a path through the first corner, up the rise, and over and through the second corner. I think about that 40mph on a long-ago autumn day – and shake my head. From the distance of a quarter century, with so many things different, it occurs to me that crashing here was nothing to be ashamed of.

Mounting back up, I ride slowly up over the rise and around the hard curl of the second turn, back towards town. But even with fresh countryside in front of me my mind stays locked back there at that double-tap there in the road and it has me wondering. A whisper of a thought has arisen.

Back at the store, with the Suzuki parked as close under the shaded porch roof as I can manage, I dismount once again. Thinking, trying to push the thought away. From the tail pack I take the bottle of water, the last little bit left over from my lunch, and tip it down my throat. The water has only a hint of coolness left.

I look down at my feet, at the old, faded, black-gone-to-gray BMW riding boots. I can’t even afford to replace those. So why would I even consider such a thing? But I can already feel the slight pick-up in my heart, the blood rushing through my ears, the slight, edgy swimming in my stomach, and I realize that sometimes there’s not a choice.

Reaching back in the tail pack, I withdraw a tire pressure gauge. I used it this morning before I left, like I always do, when the tires were cold and gave a good reading. Thirty-two in the front; thirty-four in the rear. Good street numbers.

Sweating heavily, but not feeling the heat, I bend down and check the now-hot tires again. Thirty-five and Thirty-seven. Nodding to myself, satisfied, I hold the gauge over each valve stem and slowly bleed off air. Two pounds from the front and four pounds from the rear. That should be pretty close.

Gearing up, the world goes all quiet and muted and distant with the earplugs back in. Back alone again. Shrugging back into my jacket, I zip it all the way up this time.

There’s a moment of pause, then I’m on the bike and rolling again. Heading out the same way I did before.

When I left forty minutes ago I had taken it easy, wary that my rusty memory of the roads might lead me astray. Now, with those memories refreshed, and with the need to build some heat into my tires, I push a bit. Not a whole lot – these roads remain ever narrow and dangerous – but enough so that my rolling cadence holds an edgy countenance. Enough that there’s no room to get it wrong.

The riding position on the Suzuki normally seems severe. Now, though, with my boots pulled back tight on the pegs and my gloved hands light on the grips and a serious thought in my heart, it, of a sudden, feels perfect. Like grasping a sword.

The throttle lies light under my hand, a delicate turn of mere degrees enough to unleash power that after a year continues to astonish me with its ferocity. Like gently stroking a bit of miscreant lightning. I find the bidden-nature of the power enchanting, and, wielding it with little bursts, play with the edges of the powerband as I slice through the turns. As the handful of miles pass by, the rolling countryside of blurred greens and browns contrasting with the near-black of the tarmac, the front end goes light under the heavy pull of the motor as I fire out of the turns. I cannot help loving it.

In those handful of miles I have pushed the pace, working more and more lean-angle into the turns. By the time I get back to the stop sign I know my tires have as much heat in them as they’ll get. There’s nothing more I can add. My mind is a half-mile down the road.

I let the clutch out and start down the lane. Whispers in my head. A half a mile. And a quarter century

Gaining speed, I notice the small houses I pass, even as I did a little while ago. Even as I may have on that long-ago autumn morning, but not remembered. My weight is gathered up in my stomach, held there so that my hands are weightless and might do their work. The first caution sign, the one with ‘25’ written on it, is but a prologue and I roll towards it knowing it poses no threat. I’m leaned forward into my crouch, my backside pushed rearwards so that I can just feel the step in the seat, the tail pack atop it, the rushing in my head. My mind stretches out ahead, searching, and those first curves flow under my wheels. The movement is smooth, like spun silk, and I abide the briefest of satisfactions, the merest murmur of delight. Then I’m there.

It has been a long time since I made a habit of watching my speed into a turn. Somewhere along the way I came to understand its irrelevance, its usefulness only as a curiosity. But today I am bidden to other things and so as I go charging towards that first yellow ‘10’ I force myself to break my gaze and look down. The big digital speedometer helps, its feedback instantaneous: 52. Too fast.

There are only heartbeats of time left, but I know they will be enough. My right hand holds the engine under trailing throttle for just a moment and I watch as the digital readout changes: 49, 47,45. And now with the sparest of movements I roll back into the throttle. The last number holds, impertinent, in front of me: 43. Close enough. I lift my eyes back towards the corner, relieved to be done with such artifice. The rest is just riding, what I do.

The corner fills my vision, a silent rebuke, and though I wish I could say it, I cannot admit to a heart full of courage. My stomach is tight, like it was back then, and I know there are no given answers to the outcome.

I have drifted to the right, to the very edge of the road, seeking as much angle as possible on the turn-in. Even so it is a niggardly amount of tarmac in which to turn an entire ninety degrees. No more than a couple of feet. My mind allows a fleeting comparison to that turn nine down at Road Atlanta, at the wallowing spaciousness there, seemingly more than one could ever use, with space to waste even with a mid-track turn-in. Jealousy avails me nothing, though, and I dredge my mind back to the task at hand. None too soon, because now I’m there, at the very start of the turn, like the doorway into another world, where many things must be done if I am to be saved. My heart lies choking in my throat and, against the suddenly-shrill screaming in my head – the dead-certainty that all of this is quite insane - I hold steady on the throttle.

Wearing jeans, there’s no question of leaning off. The most I can manage is a sharply-turned tilt of my left shoulder and hip towards the inside. Like lining up the sights of a rifle. Entering the turn, I’m carrying a preponderance of weight on the left peg, my boot pressing hard. As if that is the nexus, held long and low. As if my will, manifest there, alone will get this thing done.

Once set in motion, once my line is set, there’s nothing more to be done. My mind races ahead to the next turn, even as this one continues to unfold beneath me, the taste in my mouth the only reminder of what lies still in the balance. My eyes hearken towards that ridge, the rise in the road in front of me, and I find a spot, a place to anchor on. My eyes hold to it, burning with an intensity which I know might mean the difference. I’m reminded of faith.

The first day at Mid-Ohio, accelerating in fear up the hill towards the blind crest. And Reg Pridmore is laughing. “There’s a cut in the trees, way back in the distance”, he tells us. “Look at that. Point towards that. You’ll be fine. I promise”. And we did, slowly learning that out of such odd things as watching for a tree on the distant horizon, faith in an outcome might be built.

My eyes hold tight to that spot on the crest of the rise.

You’d think there would be a simple order to things. That one could just do things in their proper order – one, two, three - and be done with it. But sometimes it doesn’t work that way. Riding at speed requires that one’s mind be a couple steps ahead of where you are. And so I’ve already begun setting up for the second corner when I realize – in a flashing moment of awareness – that I’ve made it through the first. It keys an exultation. I’m halfway done.

It lasts for only an instant. Then the firming of my suspension reminds me I have work yet to do.

I have an advantage today, and I know it. Even though the road beyond the crest remains yet hidden from sight, I know where it goes. I know about the hard jink to the right, am aware of the road’s sudden disappearing act. And so it is, even though I can see no markers beyond which to attach, no mutable evidence of how this should be done, I’m already weaving soft markers inside my head. Building them with faith.

Before I get there, to that crest, I’ve got to get the bike rotated up and over onto it’s right side. And I’ve got to do it faster than I ever have before. For I know that ridge, that spot in my vision, is the key. The pivot point, in every sense of the word. If I’m not already deep into turning by the time I get there there’s no way I can possibly make the corner. Even then I don’t know that it will be enough.

Even with the already-low clip-ons, my hands are as much behind the grips as on top of them. My right forearm rests gently on the tank, my left still held hard to the inside, following that leading shoulder. Pulling, pulling, I wait for the space of a heartbeat; and then one more, waiting for the motorcycle to rotate around upright enough to give me just a little more contact patch on the ground. Through all this I’ve held a constant throttle. Now I nudge the throttle the tiniest of fractions. More speed is the last thing I want, but I need help in getting the bike up. Simultaneous with the engine spooling I push firmly on the right grip, at the same time pushing down on both pegs, like doing a leg lift. My backside barely touches as it swings halfway across the seat. Settling, I can feel the merest hint of an oscillation before the Suzuki’s frame dampens that away.

I see a nexus of time and space. Even though my body is already positioned to the right, to what will be the inside of the next turn, the bike is still coming up and around from the just-completed left-hander. I see that rotating motion in my mind’s eye and compare it to my progress towards the crest, which I’m almost upon, and wonder which will arrive first. Which will win out.

The bike does, barely.

Again, like the first turn, there is but the tiniest sliver of road in which to make all this work. Not willing to cross the centerline on this blind curve, that’s the edge I adhere to. With the bike rotating up and around and now over to the right, I’ve already started turning, as hard and fast as I possibly can, when I get to the crest.

Even as I’m arriving, as the crest disappears from my vision and flashes under my wheels, I’ve latched onto those soft markers in my head, steering towards them like they’re heaven’s own horn. Hard right, my silent mantra. Everything is to my right. It’s all a rush now. I can hardly see for the motion. All I have is that vision in my head and I hold to it desperately.

There’s an old notion in motorcycling about trusting one’s tires. That’s never more critical than on negative camber, when the road – seemingly like all the world - is falling away from you. Like you’re being abandoned.

But there’s a mirror there, like in most things. A mysterious joy which comes when you get through it and don’t crash and find you haven’t been abandoned after all. Only tested to see if you had the courage of belief.

Even as I steer towards those soft markers hard around to my right, the old familiar feel of my thigh pulling hard against the tank, I sense the lift as the road is crested. Weightless, I feel it in my stomach. Then the suspension is extending and I feel it, like a cat with its paw stretching. My mind is divided, part of it already around the corner I can no longer see; but part of it under my wheels, searching, feeling for traction. I know if a tire breaks I’ll feel it instantly, but I also know there’s nothing to be done. All that can be done, already has been. The rest is just bearing witness.

Riding is like liquid amber. A magic carpet, the prize of prizes. And sometimes, for fleeting moments lit by rays of golden light, it seems we are touched by grace. As if God himself felt the need for a moment’s smiling pause, and so deigned to come along with us. For just a little while.

Somehow, I knew even then, those many years ago, that I would always seek solace in speed on the road. That there was something special to be found in the melding of our heart and mind with the rush of energy to be found there. That there was something cleansing to be discovered in the loosing of that magic cord, uncoiling far behind us, binding together perfect curves.

There’s nothing like escaping what our minds insist is a near thing to make us thoughtful. To force us to admit the blessings we’ve received. And so my ride home is touched with quiet reflection. I know I did a foolish thing. But it occurs to me that sometimes there’s a bigger puzzle than simply the piece we hold in our hand. Sometimes there’s a puzzle we cannot see, a puzzle that enjoins us in an endeavor larger than ourselves.

What I’m left with is this: it’s about a gift. All of it. A gift to lift our heart in wonder. A gift to heal. A gift to make us whole again.