Editor's Note:Jared is the youngest employee on the US Avon Tyre staff. Enjoy his youthful inspiration. –Bandit
I remember a particular enlightening time in my life. It contained quite possibly my single greatest act of stupidity, and ended up teaching me more than I will probably ever be able to really put into words. I was riding too fast on icy roads and lost control of my motorcycle, then highsided into a telephone pole. I blacked out at first, when the bike skidded, but I remember waking up as I hit the ground on my back, unable to breath or move. A lot of things happened after that.
I ended up in the hospital with a titanium rod in my left leg where just a femur had been the day before, and an incision running the entire length of my torso that looked poorly stapled back together. The doctor had cut me open to put all my organs back to where they should have been, sew my lacerated liver back together, and cleaned up all the internal bleeding that had occurred in the meantime.
I almost died, and the creepy thing is that I didn’t even know it until after the fact. I turned and looked at my girl friend when I woke up. She didn’t know whether to cry or smile, and neither did I. I smiled. She cried. I will never forget waking up and not recognizing my own body. I will never forget having more tubes and hoses running in and out of me than I cared to count. Water to this day still tastes like it never did before, because I couldn’t drink anything for a week.
The crash had bruised my stomach and intestines to the point where they would not function, their contents pumped through a tube that ran up my throat and out my nose, green and black and bloody. Just like the urine in the bag below my bed. Drinking without a functioning digestive system will wear a hole in your stomach. So I couldn’t drink, anything. My friends would swab my mouth with a damp sponge. I couldn’t eat for a week either.
I will never to this day, almost 4 years later, let a meal go to waste. Everything still tastes good to me. Doesn’t matter what it is or how poorly it is prepared, It all tastes good.I keep wondering what all this did to me. I don’t think I’ve ever really been the same since. I just wonder where my place is in this life. I struggle all the time. I sometimes feel as though maybe to my friends, family, and loved ones, I am a bit like an animal. You pet it and feed it and are generally nice to it, but you never really let it all the way in. There seems to be something violent about me. The way I take life. The way I struggle to control it and not let it take control of me.
I think that’s maybe why I ride. There is some connection maybe between the act of riding and the way my life always seems to play out. The bike has definitely changed for me over the past years. What it means to me and what place it holds in my life. It was at first an outlet for my aggression and compensation for a lack of self-confidence. Almost something evil. I would be cool and cover it up by saying something like “I ride to live.” I didn't have any idea what the hell I was spewing out. I was angry. Pure and simple. But it’s funny. I think I get it now.
Now I ride for the pure and simple pleasure of it. I catch myself actually living my own lie. Not to live, but to remind me to appreciate why I live. To remind me that I DO live. The sheer violence of the whole experience of riding, the asphalt shredding below you, the wind that pushes and thrashes to fill all void, the power of explosions tamed and tuned into something more precise than a razor's edge driving your foreword, the orchestra of intake and exhaust and valves and gears and chain and resonation; all serve as reminders that death, the end, is always just four inches below your toes.
On the bike, you break free of the box. The world outside isn’t just a part of another movie you see through the box of a window like the boring part of a film you’d like to fast foreword through. NO. You are in it. You are a part of it. You feel it, smell it, play with it, make your peace with it.
Life can be like the road at night. There are the bright spots, were the road is illuminated by streetlights. You'll fly around a corner and the lamp light catches the fog just so, and the entire world is bathed in gold. Everything around you is beautiful. The world glows. But you can never stop in one place. There is always change.
Then sometimes you roll into a dark spot where you are away from the streetlights and all is bleek around you. Your only proof that you are moving are the two lines on your left and right ticking away like the hands of a clock, constant and unstoppable. But no matter how dark it gets, you can always be sure that there is another street light, another bright place, somewhere on the road ahead just waiting for you to reach it. You just can’t stop. And as long as you don’t, you’ll always make it to the next bright place.
When you’re in these darkest places, you can always look up. Up there are the most beautiful stars you will ever see. I looked up tonight and I saw Orion so bright it was like he was painted on the sky above me. I saw this with nothing between me and him but my own eyes, the air I was breathing, and space. No windows, no shields, no filters. Just me. You can’t tell if the tears are from the beauty of it all, the thoughts that enter your head at times like this, or from the wind stinging your eyes. I can’t take all the credit. I have my helmet on. A helmet is a lot like your family. It protects the most important part and always does its best to keep the outside world from hurting you. And without my gear on I'd freeze. Friends are like that. They help protect you as well and keep you warm when you need it. Without any of these things I wouldn't be able to be here. Thank you all.
I guess I don’t know where I really meant to go when I started this. It’s really just all the thoughts that I had to get out of my head while I was riding home tonight. This life keeps me confused most of the time. I try to make a feeble attempt at times to figure it out by throwing my thoughts onto a piece of paper and seeing if they make sense but it always seems like I've forgotten something, just bringing up more questions.
I have so much to learn and it frustrates me. I don’t want another moment to go to waste. I don’t want to miss anything. I don’t want any of it to go to waste.And just like that, the thoughts leave your head like a corner on the road behind you. Still leaning through the corner, you twist the throttle and grab another gear and take enough moments to savor the sound of the engine. She sings her song of potential violence, repeating her own serenity prayer. In your mind you hum along with her.This beats driving a car anyday.
