Scooter in the Sticks

Exploring life on a Vespa Scooter and Royal Enfield Himalayan motorcycle.

Warm Day, Cold Day

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Two motorcycles parked by a farm field.
As spring approaches more and more riding days appear.

A Bright Light

A faint wisp of steam rises from a mug next to my easy chair in the living room as I watch large snowflakes descend from the heavens. The aroma of cinnamon toast fills my head as I wonder why winter has been such a burden. Despite efforts to blame it on pandemic uncertainty, rising prices at the pump and grocery store, or a raging war in Ukraine, I can’t quite help but think I’m merely suffering the effects of age on my body, mind, and spirit.

While I don’t feel it’s universal, it is common, and I can easily enumerate a list of changes that have no other explanation. I’m powerless to change some of them, but others are absolutely within my arena of action.

Two days ago it felt like a warm spring day as I went for an afternoon ride with my friend Paul. The sky was clear, the sun bright in my face, and a breeze seeming to clear away any gloomy energy hanging in the valley. It was a good ride. I was a good day.

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Thoughts on Church

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Vespa LX150 in front of old rural churchThose Places

Central Pennsylvania is dotted with churches.  Some dating back to the arrival of the first white settlers. Others are modern facilities complete with media installations to support an array of electronic age preaching. I see the buildings while I ride and am curious about the people and services that take place inside.

I’ve had a long history of interest in churches as examples of architecture and culture.  As a child, my mother dragged me into every church in Bavaria and beyond.  The human history in those places made a lasting impression. The nature of religion and faith were only words, but they played a part in the history I was learning.

Religion was problematic for me. I recognized early the adult hypocrisy reflected in the personal politics of the congregational leadership.  Hearts and minds.  When I left for college, my religious education had pushed me toward agnosticism but ending up a dissenter. There was a mistrust of the people behind the words heard in the church.

Vespa scooter in front of the Sinking Valley Presbyterian ChurchGod is Still Speaking

While four decades passed looking at churches from the outside. While I held a belief that a Prime Mover existed, distrust of the establishment running the church continued. Perhaps the best reflection of my own feelings of church and God were found, accidentally, in James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales which begin with The Deerslayer.  The protagonist, Natty Bumpo, reflected an awe of nature that he roughly equated with God.

Vespa GTS along a forest roadChurch in the Forest

God, religion, faith — all personal choices and explorations that provide meaning or solace that may make sense for me yet be utterly incomprehensible to another.  Riding through quiet places, finding solitude, and being alone with my thoughts is where I find God. For a very long time I could not bring myself to apply that label for reasons stretching back to my teenage experiences in church. Time and experience has revealed the presence of some higher power that I can rely on.  I don’t try to explain it or justify it to others.  I require no proof or scientific evidence or argument beyond my own senses.

Zion Lutheran Church in Boalsburg, PennsylvaniaWalking Through the Door

A little over a year ago a reader suggested I consider attending a service at a church just down the street from my home.  I had been considering attending a Christmas Eve service — motivated primarily by nostalgia and the desire to remember times I spent with my mother and father.

The church, and it’s services, are surprisingly familiar.  The spoken words, the rituals, it’s as if nothing has changed in 45 years.  Except me.  And I’ve sensed none of the congregational intrigue that I witnessed as a child.  There’s a genuine feeling of caring and fellowship.  But still I’m guarded.

My natural uneasiness with groups of people is in play and always leaves me feeling an outsider.  I prefer to be alone.  More than one other person is a crowd.  And a congregation, well, it remains a challenge.

I consider church, and faith, an ongoing personal journey.

2017 Brave, Bold Blogger Challenge

This post is part of a month long writing prompt challenge conceived by Kathy at Toadmama.com.

Walking Stick

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Steve Williams with walking stickA Walking Stick

A recent rainstorm coupled with drought hardened ground, and neglect in keeping rain gutters clean, combined to fill my basement with water.  A few hours of after-midnight cleanup and 18 trips carrying a Shop-Vac up steps to empty was all that was necessary to create a returning patient for my chiropractor.

I have an old yoga book that I’ve glanced at a few times over the last 25 years when the idea I should care for my body takes hold.  There’s a line etched in my memory — “You’re as young as your spine is flexible.”

I’m not too young.

A week of incapacity and riding-free life has passed.  Mornings of struggle to get out of bed and strategies to get dog food bowls to the floor have passed.  New ways to tie shoes were developed and standing up straight is a reason to celebrate.  I’ve been walking slowly through the garden to help  limber the lower back and hips while hoping the dogs don’t run into me as I play the fragile aging man.  And from this place of woe an old friend emerged — my faithful walking stick.

I’ve had this walking stick since the early 1980s.  It’s a long staff reaching almost to my shoulder and has travelled along on many hikes and backpacking trips.  It’s tapped along the Maine coast and the Appalachian Trail.  Now it provides welcome support to an otherwise shaky existence.

The back is much improved but I’ve come to appreciate the form and function of a walking stick.  I’ve often wondered why people use a cane when a walking stick is far superior.  You can lean on it, pull yourself up, and keep an angry dog at bay with it.  It is a damn function bit of technology.

The Complete Walker

My love of walking sticks grew out of books by Colin Fletcher, especially The Complete Walker.  This book fueled a love of walking and hiking and is full of stories and reflections of a life on foot.  Between the lines of much of what I write is the influence of Fletcher.

The morning may bring enough back recovery to consider riding to work.  If I do, the walking stick will have to stay at home with the dogs…

Riding Resistance

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The intrusion of work, life, age and weather conspire to build powerful physical and cerebral riding resistance.  As the interval between rides (or blog posts) grows, the energy required to regain motion increases as well.

Or so it is with me…

Snow covered drivewayEvaluating Snow

Our new snow blower, cardiologist recommended, cuts a fine path to push the Vespa scooter out of the garage and into the world.  I did the winter riding dance, testing the road surface, evaluated the quality of snow, traffic and forecast for more of the white stuff.

Riding a scooter or motorcycle in winter, especially in snow, demands a long checklist of considerations.  On this morning I stopped at “Snow tires mounted”.  My Heidenau snow tires are sitting in the garage waiting to be called to action.

It’s been a week since I went for a ride and already I’m feeling the resistance.

Vespa GTS scooter on wet rural roadFlights of Euphoria (or not)

Last weekend I abided the damp chill of a light rain and temperatures in the upper thirties as I wandered the countryside pondering thoughts trespassing my serenity.  Some rides are flights of euphoria while others chained to the noise of existence, the scooter, like a team of draft horses, part of a forced toil dragging my grey cloud spirit along in hopes of finding clearer skies.

View of snow from Pump Station Cafe windowRide Cancelled Due to Snow

The view from the Pump Station Cafe in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania as I write this post.  Part of me wishes the Vespa was in the picture.  Most of me is happy I drove the car.  What sort of Vespa adventurer does that make me?

I don’t care.  Contentment, serenity and attendant happiness arrived when I grew comfortable with my choices and actions.  Wish it hadn’t taken so long to get here.

Eight inches of snow are on the ground with more falling.  Deciding not to ride is a good choice.  Provides an opportunity to respond to a mountain of unanswered email, write a post, rub the dog’s bellies, make pancakes, and generally frolic in the little joys of being alive.

Except for that part about email.

Vespa GTS scooter in a farm field on a rainy dayCenter of the World

I know my photographs of the scooter in the center of an empty space are metaphors for my brooding on life — especially the pathway decorated with murals of aging.  I’m not sure what’s more thrilling; riding to these places, or thinking about them later.  It’s a gift finding joy in both.

Everyone observes their path differently.  A quote from the movie based on Larry McMurtry’s book Lonesome Dove that I’ve come to recognize:

“The older the violin, the sweeter the music.”
— spoken by Augustus McCrae

Steve Williams and his Vespa GTS scooterResistance is Futile

The scooter always takes me where I want to go.  I may not know the destination or the reason I’m on the road but there always seems to be a mysterious arrival at the right place at the right time despite the rocky mental roads along the way. Riding resistance has continued to melt as the call of the road becomes louder.

For now, the snow will keep the scooter in the garage while I attend to other matters.

All is well.

 

Poisonous Tradition

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Central Pennsylvania sunset

The end of a busy work week was blessed with a magnificent painting of light and color in the day’s end sky.  It’s hard not to feel grateful to just be alive and breathing in the world when presented with such a scene.

The feeling followed me home like a faithful dog.

And then the crisp fragrance of autumn leaves and clean night air was assaulted by the repugnant stench of woodsmoke.  Not the aromatic scent of apple wood or hickory, dried and cured for crackling action in a fine fire, but the rather more nasty and poisonous spew from too green oak and other loathsome fuels.

A poisonous tradition holds sway here in the heart of Penns Woods among burners and firemakers — so much so that elected officials who’ve long banned the burning of trash and brush and other waste as noxious and unnecessary are unable to address the friendship fire which is equally noxious and arguably less necessary than the others.

Harris Township so far doesn’t have the courage to address what they consider a nuisance to be dealt with by the police rather than by ordinance leaving the poor police department holding the sticky end of the lollipop with no real criteria to assess a “nuisance”.  Talking to one of the township supervisors at election night this past Tuesday about this issue his response was, “People love their fires…”.

Yes they do.

“I have a right to burn a fire!” is a familiar refrain I’ve heard many times expressed with upright patriotic fire.  Less often do I hear “I have a right to breathe clean air!”.

Whose rights win in that argument?  Burn but don’t let your smoke leave your property?  Hold your breathe until the fire goes out?

The argument reminds me of the ongoing argument concerning loud exhaust systems on motorcycles — my right to bolt on loud pipes (and save lives) versus my right to enjoy a little peace and quiet in an increasingly noisy world.

With both situations there seems little intelligent dialogue and instead more self centered, self interested actions based in childish “I want what I want and it’s a free country and don’t tread on me because it’s my land.”  Or something like that.

But perhaps it doesn’t matter.  We’ll all die of something anyways and maybe the particulate ridden cancer swollen smoke won’t trigger enough mutation to cause lung cancer or the asthma won’t be bad enough to kill you.  And the carbon pouring into the air because I want a fireplace or wood burner or friendship fire doesn’t matter because climate change is a hoax much like the Apollo moon landings and Elvis’s death.

The sky is still beautiful.  The air still stinks.