Morning Steve and Tim, Dan and Curt, Ron, Ted and all of you old boys following this thread...
Grey with fog here. Leaf change is over and the long, bland, grind of winter is settling in. I guess it would be OK if I felt more sunshine and life on the inside, but it doesn't come naturally any more, if it ever really did. At least when we were young there was a sense of more opportunity for life and enjoyment later on, like when we were boys dreaming of school's end and summer vacation. Now we are more cognizant of the reality that our days are truly numbered. Most of the sand is in the bottom of the hourglass, so it is especially irksome to be waiting when there is so little time in the grand scale of things.
I can forget about this passage sometimes when dreaming of, working on or riding a motorbike, which is why it has become so important. At those times I am not saying the long goodbye to youth, to the women and places I have loved, children all grown up, to plans and great expectations. I guess the trick is in learning how to savor, to gracefully let go without simply giving up.
I'm not very good at it, I find, so with no small desperation I latch onto a fender even older than I am and admire it's beauty, picturing a summer evening when it will be part of a magical time machine transporting me as a twelve year old cleverly disguised as an old man. And so I dream of summer and a sort of motorcycle, with a grinning dog wearing doggles next to me in her canoe sidecar, riding down a street in Ely, Minnesota on the edge of the Boundary Waters Wilderness. Sharing the street is my Canadian friend on his Indian Tri-Car, also twelve with his life ahead of him and legs not yet damaged. Our wheels touch the road eagerly, antique engines pulling us along into the future. While riding we go off into the unknown, trusting the goodness of long life as timeless spirits, boys on their motor bicycles, smiling, smiling...
I'm grateful to have something to look forward to, some bright spot in the middle of all this grey. And so this forum and my comrades with spoke wrenches give me much to be thankful for. Thanksgiving is a daily thing, reminding me of our riches and common ground.
Coff cup is empty, so back to work, figuring out what I need to fabricate for the shift mechanism so I can go from low to high gear and listen to that old 2 stroke come into it's power... oh, boy! Should the shift lever attach to the copper gas tank or to the frame? Brass lever with a wooden knob? Summer is only half a year from now with much to do so that Indian Hiawatha is ready to roll. I better get a move on....woohoo!
SB