Into the Sunset


It had been an ordinary Sunday. I had gotten up early (but not as early as on a work day), walked for over an hour, bathed, dressed, and gone to Sunday school. After lunch I took a nap and did some quiet reading. Around seven, as the blistering Arkansas summer heat began to moderate, I rolled out my bike and got ready to ride.

I had not ridden in several weeks, thanks to busy and rainy weekends. The previous evening I had let a rainy-looking sky bluff me out of what could have been a pleasant ride. Now I was determined to go. I checked my oil and lights and turn signals, and pulled on my helmet and riding jacket. For a little while I sweltered in them. After I got up to speed the breeze from the slipstream felt pleasant.

Once I had gotten well out of town heading north I had the highway almost to myself. That suited me fine. The miles of “rain grooves” north of town did not suit me as well. These grooves are corrugated sections where the pavement appears to have been milled in preparation for some repaving that never took place. On a two-wheeler the grooves make your tires bounce around. The resulting wobble is essentially harmless, but it can be scary to a novice rider. Until a few months ago I would go out of my way to avoid sections of rain grooves. Now I’ve learned not to let them scare me. I still don’t much like them.

Past the rain grooves I moved onto a stretch of good road that had been rebuilt a few years back. The evening shade and the western clouds made the sunlight mild. I did not need my sunglasses. A few miles north of town I reached a crossroads marked by an old forestry tower. Here I turned east onto a county road.

It was a pretty road leading through a patchwork of timber and fields. I had not traveled this way in a long time; I’d never ridden my bike on it before. The road was moderately curvy. Every curve represents a little technical challenge. At each curve you must make a series of decisions about which side of the lane you’ll ride in going around, what speed you’ll run going into the turn and how fast you’ll accelerate during it, how far you’ll lean and at what rate you’ll steer. Curvy roads are a lot more fun than just riding in a straight line for miles.

I especially enjoyed the hairpin turns where I had to shift down, negotiate the turn, and roar back up to speed on the other side. One of these turns put me heading south for just a little while, along the edge of an especially large field with the sinking sun on my right. I noted how beautiful this spot would probably be in a little while, once the sun had dropped from sight and left the ephemeral golden “magic hour” glow behind. Then another hairpin turn turned me back due east.

As I cornered I tried to make a point of practicing countersteering. To steer a bike at anything like highway speed, you must first momentarily turn the handlebars in the opposite direction of the way you want to head. This puts you into a lean, from which you can make your actual turn. Some riders adopt this intuitively; others struggle with it at first. Evidently I was one of the more intuitive riders, since I’ve not had much trouble getting the bike to go where I want it in curves.

But to become truly proficient you have to practice things like this consciously. And proficiency is what you want. Riding makes me feel more alive, and I really want to stay that way. Bikes are far less forgiving of sloppy handling than cars, with their four wheels and seatbelts and protective metal shells. Dad told me long ago that a motorcycle is as safe as you make it. You can make it almost as safe as a car. But you’ve got to work to do it.

As I passed the frowning walls and barbed wire of the county jail I noticed that my trip odometer, which had read 99 (kilometers) early in my ride, still read 99. It had gotten stuck! This was not good news. Since I have no fuel gage I rely upon the trip odometer to judge how much fuel I’ve used. At this point I had at least fifteen more miles on the tank than the odometer indicated. By now I had reached the town that would serve as the rough halfway point for the ride. I should have had plenty of fuel to get back home. Just to be on the safe side, I stopped for gas.

As I pulled into the gas station two other riders did the same. They approached me, assuming no doubt that I could not have come too far on that little bike I rode, and asked about motels and campgrounds in the area. I did not know of any around the town we were in, but told them there were places to stay in the town I was from, about fifteen or sixteen miles to the southwest.

This led to a short conversation with one of the riders. He rode a Harley Davidson Heritage Softail Classic, a handsome retro-styled bike with about six times my little machine’s engine displacement. It was loaded for bear with sleeping bag, ground pad, and other gear for a long journey. He said that he and his buddy had come from Georgia on their way to New Mexico and the Painted Desert. I observed that they had quite a ride. He commented that with gas prices like they are, this was the only way people can afford to travel on vacation now.

I paid for my own fuel (it cost two and a half dollars to fill the tank) and headed south out of town, returning by a different route. A few miles to the south I turned onto a road that would take me almost due west. I had planned my return along this route so that I could hopefully catch the most beautiful part of the sunset on my way home. The sky had plenty of clouds for the waning sunlight to work with. They turned many shades of red and orange and pink. It was indeed beautiful. The only drawback was more miles of those annoying rain grooves.

North of town the highway rejoined the road I had set out on. As I rode back through town I saw that the sunset still looked lovely. So when I reached the main highway heading west I rode on a little further, to see some more. By the time I had made my way through all the traffic lights and past the industrial clutter, though, the best light was about gone.

When I reached the western end of town I felt an urge to just keep on going. In that direction lay home, the real home where I had grown up and where my parents and others I loved still lived. But they lived over two hours away, and I had a work week coming up. So I found a place to pull over and turned back around.

As I rode back into town through the gathering darkness I met a pair of cycle headlights and heard the rumble of big V-twin engines. I wondered whether they were local or distance riders. If the latter, they would have close to an hour of riding in the dark in the direction they were headed before they reached a good place to spend the night. I silently wished them a good ride.

Just got around to reading this one, Daphne. Beautiful work, as usual.