Riding a motorcycle is so much more experiential than driving a car. You are aware of every mile. Your senses take in all through which you travel. You feel every minute change in temperature and humidity as you ride in and out of hollows. You smell every scent wafting in the air through which you pass. You smell the damp forest litter, the tannic irony odor of wetlands, and every growing, blooming plant. It can't be compared to driving, even with the widows down. And though riding feels a bit like flying, it is so much better simply by the involvement of your senses.
Today I traveled to NH to visit friends and family, and to participate in Laconia's Bike Week. I drove through three thunderstorms east of Keene Valley, along Route 73 and Tracy Road, an otherwise very bike-friendly curvy road.
The Adirondack High Peaks were shrouded in rain. Heading towards them from a distance, I saw the wispy, twisting gray columns of rain as it was blown down from the clouds along the mountain slopes and ridges.
Crossing southern Lake Champlain at the Crown Point Bridge, the panoramic vista and distant horizons yielded a spectacular view of myriad cloud formations - white lumpy cumulo-nimbus, dark-bottomed banks, silver-gray streaked clouds, shafts of rain.
As I approached each storm, I could feel the temperature drop by at least 10 degrees, the air held a definite chill, and within a mile or so I was slowing down, pelted by large-dropped thundercloud rain. Jagged flashes of lightning streaked across distant peaks. Ahead I could see blue sky and billowy white, towering storm clouds brightly lit by sun shine that couldn't penetrate the dark storm through which I was riding.
I scared up two moose wallowing in a small roadside wetland as I was going up the mountain in East Middlebury, Vermont. I scared up a third moose on the back side of the mountain, past the Snow Bowl.
At last I arrived in NH, back home, if but for a few days.
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Trueno Rollos, Thunder Rolls, is my Titanium Gray Honda VTX 1300C
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