Feet Up and Relaxing
Twisting the throttle as the scooter leaves the driveway is like turning a knob and pulling open a door to a secret room. Pulse quickens, eyes wide, body vibrates in a primal reaction to the unknown. At its best, riding is a reminder of what it means to be alive at the most basic level — one fueled by the senses and written by the mind. Each moment sings and for a short time, I feel comfortable in my skin.
Like a thirsty man in the desert spying the chance for water, you would think every opportunity to ride would be obsessively grasped — quenching some existential craving that can’t quite be explained.
Or perhaps a lack of honesty keeps that knowledge hidden. Isolated and distant. Or maybe there are some explorations riding can’t make.
So I find myself indolent, lost in thought, wandering on foot or slowly rocking, feet up and wonderings where I am.
Dogs Love to Play
Riding the Vespa always slows in summer. The hot weather is my least favorite season to ride. Still, I find myself on the road from time to time wondering where I’m going — literally at times, figuratively always. Retirement has revealed how riding help soothe the noise and tolerate the chaos of a career. With that gone, the need to ride has lessened. Or maybe other options have surfaced to help give voice to the parts of life that cause question or pain. And the avenue to pleasure and joy has widened. I don’t have to wander beyond my own backyard. The expectant look of a dog wanting one more fetch of a tennis ball can cause a smile.
Vespa on Down the Road
I’ve been riding. The odometer tells me so. Few images result save for those in my mind as I lack interest or energy to train the camera toward the Vespa. Or so it seems.
I’ve not been creating many blog posts. Imagination whispers the earth is moving again through an energy field that only affects me and is responsible for my creative sloth. Or maybe I’m like the squirrel gathering food for winter, storing experience and ideas for stories to be written another time.
Vespa in the Forest
It’s crazy how much I enjoy being on the road and how little I’ve ridden of late considering how much time is now available. Instead I’ve been working on other projects. The house has seemingly endless needs. And I’ve been wandering more with a camera on foot.
Shadow Self
It’s been years since I’ve seriously explored with a camera. The old obsession is near the surface and I can feel the pull of making photographs again. Working on a Scooter in the Sticks book is percolating and I have made plans for an exhibition of riding work in August of next year.
I don’t know where the road leads or what the days have in store. Blogging has taken on a different meaning that simultaneously more personal yet hampered by a sense of privacy.
So I’m finding my way along, through rides, through this blog, and through life in general.
It’s a fine trip.
Emerging from the Fog
The past two mornings have been shrouded in fog. Nothing draws me out onto the road like those mysterious vapors. There are posts ahead to share some of that experience. As I find my way, I’ll affirm a rhythm again with riding, photography, writing and posting.
Soon. The thrum of patterns is where I function best. This new found freedom courtesy of retirement requires some structure.
So off I go with dreams and plans. I’ll be finding my way.
If you’re not familiar, check out Youtube videos of Jay Maisel. He always gets me going (photographically) when feeling uninspired.
Thanks for the suggestion. When I was a young photographer I admired his work along with Art Kane, Bert Stern, J. Fredrick Smith, Pete Turner and others who were working with form and color. Watched one of the videos and will watch more. Maisel is great.
Retirement is settling in., for you.
More practice is required, much more.
You do not have a fixed schedule of employment
rather an unfixed schedule of your own making.
So throw the ball one more round for Junior,
it is time.
I practice every day. It’s great sport!
Aaaah, all is right in my world again. A calm spirit, a cup of coffee, a quite room, and a post from Steve putting in to words my on thoughts. Thank you Steve.
Glad to help!
From time to time I imagine that there is no greater task than … just being.
It is also the case that the state of ‘just being’, offers significant rewards.
I think just being allows us to recharge our batteries.
The need to ride has lessened with retirement. A very good way to put it and something that I’ve noticed as well. I still ride regularly though the “need” to take the scenic route just to unwind is gone. Though I still want to take longer rides. I missed that this summer.
It surprised me how much my job required a ride to detoxify. Pretty nice now to not have to resort to riding as medication!
Since I stopped working eighteen miles from home my mileage has dropped considerably. I became steeped in only riding for purpose I find taking rides for fun hard to do. Since you are planning a book riding will both work and relaxation related. It gives you new purpose.
I agree. The book will fuel some additional riding. And it’s time to start serious work on the book!
“And the avenue to pleasure and joy has widened”
As I now have more time too the season’s riding distances have lessened but not so the pleasure derived. The deliciousness of deciding not to ride on a glorious day has been liberating and has enhanced those days I do ride. Thanks Steve
Over the years I’ve heard a lot of talk about riding and freedom — as if the act of getting on a machine and going for the ride provides freedom. For me, I’ve come to realize freedom comes from being, as you say, liberated from some expectation or requirement. The ride may help me see how I’m chained, but alone it won’t make me free. Fun and free are different.
The shortening of days are coming on strong ride now. It does make you appreciate them more I think.
This think piece of yours reminds me of when I left the 9-to-5 world years ago (not of my own volition). As avid a cyclist as I was back up in Gotham, a sizable percentage of my weekly mileage was commuting, to the point where I built up a bike specifically with commuting in mind – years before most bike manufacturers cottoned to the idea of there being a market for such a thing, and well before NYC had anything approaching the cyclist-friendly infrastructure City Hall brags about now. The moment I was out of the proverbial rat race, my mileage went way down: my weekend-warrior forays had shrunk somewhat since relocating from Manhattan to Brooklyn some years before, when my out-of-town day trips from the Upper West Side over the George Washington Bridge to North Jersey and back through New York to Nyack, some thirty miles total. My handful of longish rides morphed into somewhat more short rides. Jumping the Hudson to Asbury Park two years ago shortened the rides further still – now most all of the “utility” riding had been stripped away, and I was riding principally for fitness – and given how flat the terrain here is, one has to work a bit to get a proper workout going. So, like you, where the workaday schedule made the riding (motorized for you, pedal-powered for me) commute a form of therapy, the absence of regimen made the need for that particular form of riding a good deal less urgent.
The entrance of the Vespa into my life, nearly two years ago to the day, also complicated things. The GTS, like a sweet but wily mistress, seduced me with almost ruthless efficiency. And it’s no one-nighter, either: I’m just about as giddy about the thing as the day I rode it off the lot. Thank the gods Le Wife isn’t jealous.
Nonetheless, I’ve ben pedaling around a bit more on all three of my bicycles lately…not as much as I’d like, but in time. My biggest problem is with the GTS: I’m wanting to put on a good deal more miles, and assorted “stuff” gets in the way. Working on that, though.
It’s interesting how entwined our life choices become with the things we love to do. Often it’s only in retrospect, or from a vantage point of change, that we can see how things play out. Your career changes and locations of home affected your life on two wheels — both need and quantity. As you say, similar to my experience.
The Vespa scooter is on a different plane entirely. Your description of how giddy you are with it two years in is exactly how I feel 12 years in. I can only explain it as magic.
In regard to miles — I don’t chase that. I do chase time in the saddle though. They’re different.
Have fun working through your own “stuff”!