Holding Patterns

Time does drag when a run's coming up.

I sent my old bags off to Bassman so he could use 'em on the run. He's riding an old school FX, so they should work as well for him as they did me. Starting to see all the Brothers getting ramped up for National. Putting hookups together; giving each other tons of crap about everything -- a predicate for all the smack talkin' that'll go on in the Ozarks. I can tell everyone is in the same place I am:

Time to get on the road, but; it's still a week away.

And that's for the crew out here in the West. Little over 2,000 miles for us to the Hub, so we're pretty much the first to hit the road.

Back in the day (as the modern expression goes), when I was flying the New York TCA, we used to make a lot of circles in the sky. Holding patterns they're called and every pilot hates 'em. You hit a fix (beacon usually) run for about a minute, make a 180, run back the same amount, make another 180 and do it again. And again. And again. If you're a big boy you can get 10 mile legs. Big deal. Kinda like NASCAR, only you go nowhere faster.

In the military we called it "hurry up and wait".

The Geez is ready. oil's changed, tightened everything up, tires look good. Packing doesn't take long -- my standard daily uniform in multiples: 6 t-shirts, 3 pairs of Levis, extra socks. All the rest is "what if" gear for cold and wet. Tools, rags, assorted junk. Got so much room on this big bagger I ride now that there's no art to it anymore. Easy as pie. Roll everything up, stuff it in the pull out bags, slide them into the hard bags, fire it up and roll.

Old guy's dream.

Now it's Monday and I can start to feel it. Just want to be on the Concrete Goddess headin' somewhere. Need that feel of the wind, that hum of the tires and that rumble of the big V-Twin. Need to see Pablo in the mirror, steady on my 8 or 4, runnin' hard on the big road. Need to have that "weather eye" on the horizon, figuring what's coming and how to get by it.

Need to be gone.

Don't get me wrong, I'll miss everyone here -- but heck, I'm at that point in life where I start every long run knowing it could be my last. Don't know how many miles are left in this old tank and, on this road, there ain't no more gas stations. That's not fatalistic, just a recognition of the fact that I get much more mail from AARP, Medicare and Social Security than from friends these days. Definitely more from AARP. And I'm not even a member. I know -- I've got friends in their eighties who are still runnin' the road and I might be at that age, too -- but there are no guarantees. So I savor each run now as I never did when I was young -- it's been said before: "Youth is wasted on the young".

As it should be.