Wow! What a ride....

I've shaken my head in the past and "tsk'ed, tsk'ed" when I see them on the road, sometimes weaving in and out of traffic, as if the rules of the road don't apply to them. How foolish, I'd think, these daredevils who climb on, often without the proper equipment to keep them safe. After all, I've muttered to myself, if they kill themselves, they might take one of us with them, plus somebody has to pay to clean up the mess they'll leave on the road. HARRUMPH, I grumbled in my old lady-ishness!

My, my....how times change, don't they? I'm nine months of the way through my year-long journey of rejuvenation, and I have to say that my world has been knocked off its axis already. I can't wait to see how the rest of the year plays out!

This month flowed by, a river of seconds transforming themselves into minutes and hours until the days were nearly done before I decided how to recreate myself once again. The joy that fills my life now is incalculable, on so many levels. Instead of searching for new things to do, unique adventures to grab onto, I find I have choices  each month now, the floodgates opened to a new psyche. I love it. If you pass me on the street today, I might look like the same person.....but you would be wrong. Seriously wrong. 

So I was ready to step a bit farther out of my box, the one whose sides have been torn by my previous months' ventures as I stretched my mind, my body, and ultimately my very existence into a nearly unrecognizable internal landscape.

So, here I was, riding on a motorcyle for the first time. You know, the machine that mothers everywhere shudder whenever the mere word is spoken, the icy fingers of death poking them in the eye with threats of taking their children.....no matter that those children have become adults with briefcases and mortgages of their own. The insidious things kill people. Smear them all over roads or smash them against cement abuttments on highways.  

I climbed on that back of that motorized killer and loved every minute of it. We didn't go far, but we travelled miles outside of the life I had been so stagnant in, the one where fear often ruled the roost. The day was crystal clear and warm, the sky a bowl of blue above us as the wind blew in my face and the motor purred beneath me.

I now understand the attraction, the willingness to taunt an existence that is always practical, safe. Boring.

As Hunter Thompson said, Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, 'Wow! What a Ride!'

And that can apply to riding a motorcyle on a breathtaking fall day or to just plain getting older.

Thanks, again, J. You keep me on my toes in more ways than one!

“The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live.”

Leo Buscaglia