The day after MayDay... 

I have not been able to ride my Triumph much - its been in and out of
the shop with electrical problems and now recently a radiator leak
gone wild resulted in replacing the entire top end (thank goodness for
warranties!). The nice thing about having the top end replaced around
the 6 k service is that they lapped the valves, which.. um.. gave the
bike ever MORE power (insert HomeImprovement grunting noise here). I
believe that the bike shop doesnt want me to waste money on front
tyres.

Unresolved anger and angst is definately not something one wants to
bring on a ride thru the canyons, and finding out that one's gdxgf is
coming along, riding bitch with a friend is probably pretty high on
the list of things one doesn't want to do to oneself.

Be that as it may, I decided even a bad day of riding was better then
what I've been having, which was no riding at all! Giving up anger and
angst was definately on my agenda today. (The best revenge is a life
lived well...)

Tony Angco, owner of a new SV650 and more other bikes (including two
Triumphs and an Africa Twin) was going to show us the back roads to
Ojai, and I'd made arrangements to meet near his house in the morning
with Kevin K. on his Honda Shadow and Squidboy on his zx-6. We met up
with two other people, Vince on a vfr1000, and Jean who was riding
this cool mixed up honda 750 with suzuki wheels and suspension. Tony
was on his new toy, the sv650 with the new TBR prototype pipe.

Everyone has donuts and coffee (except me - donuts slow me down, and
coffee in the morning upsets my rythmn.) and I antz around, wanting to
GO! the day is cloudy and overcast, and COLD! I forgot to put on a
neck warmer and was really regretting leaving my gloveliners behind -
living in SoCal has left my blood thin.

I dont know all the roads we spent our day on, except we did go up
into Ojai, and i was on 150 and 33 for a while. Think about riding
along roads with Orange trees growing - the scent of citrus filled my
lungs - clearing out all the smog and dead air from the city - I love
that smell. We stopped at a trout hatchery and fed the baby fish.

I remember passing a car along a straight, and catching up to Squidboy
and we just went - I miss this riding - following squidboy down a
windy twisty road. Usually I lose him in a couple of turns, but today,
I dunno - I wasn't losing him. (whoohoo!!! ok, he probably was going
slow so that I could keep up, but we're not racing, we're riding. :)
But it felt 'right'. This feeling is great. 

Just as it was getting really good, we saw the rest of the gang pulled
over at the sandwich place for lunch and had to stop. I then realized
I was frozen, so after ordering I ran inside to sit next to the
fireplace.

We headed back out after lunch, I still felt so 'ON' that i was
starting to scare myself - was I doing well, or was I going to crash?
I didnt feel as if I was pushing, but its definately been a while
since I'd been really riding like this. We're on some roads with great
twisties - not too tight, or technical, and I just went ahead of
squidboy and stayed there - everything was suddenly just gone. It was
just me, the bike, the road ahead - I could see so far down the road,
it was like seeing into forever.

To find this space - where the world is gone, and I'm at one with the
universe with the motorcycle and my own self - I don't know how other
people live without this drug, and I dont know how I get along without
it for so long...

Other cool sights: old yellow triumph for sale, lots of citrus tree
lined roads, little towns like those in New England, a realization
that I'd put less than 40 miles of highway to get 150 miles of totally
new twisty roads.

What can I say? My legs hurt today from sitting like a squid on the
balls of my feet and my stomach hurts from holding myself up off the
tank, yet trying to put weight on the bars - the bike was being
a little squirrely on the tight stuff, and I need to get used to the
new powerband (hey, wait! why is the rear tyre breaking loose HERE?)
but I cant stop smiling.