MM MECC ANICA

My eyes tensed, scanning for debris, oil and an ice patch in the shade of the road; fear gripped my body with the concern that wildlife could take a step in my path at any moment.

My hands tightened, clumsily rolling in and out of the throttle, grabbing the clutch, shifter, front and rear brake with coarseness.

My head and chest questioning: was now the right time to open up, look to the inside, lead the bike? Then moving abruptly, at the last minute unsettling the machine due to indecision.

Thinking, thinking, thinking…

No feeling.

The purest metaphor for how I had been operating most of my adult life.

I crest the pass, the autumn chill of the 10,000’ mountain air mixed with the cylinder and radiator heat out of the fairings freezes the fingers and burns the thighs.

Something settles over me. There is no guaranteed safety, no perfect mechanical operation, no flawless engagement with the machine; only a perfectly turbulent storm working together. No certainty. Only the moment I am in.

Calf and knee begin tightly embracing the frame and tank

Chest and head dancing between the gas cap and the next direction I was going

The tactile violence of wind rippling over the fairings, asphalt and gravel crunching under the tires, and a mechanical symphony of the engine sucking air, valve train clattering and the exhaust expelling thousands of explosions a second engulfed me as I came into being.

No thinking brain

Inner thighs and feet fully connected into the frame and pegs.

Wrists dancing on the controls

Heart rate and breath rapid but calmed with purpose

I entered a place where time didn’t pass; it was. There were no days, hours, minutes or seconds. There were no mistakes.

The smell of every flower and blade of grass and occasional hint of roadside decay filled the nostrils.

This state was one that Hollywood and lore around motor sports racing points us to the crowning achievement of a flow state where nothing else matters and you are one with the machine.

I didn’t need to be in the 14th stage of Dakar, 20th hour of Baja or the last few turns on a MotoGP or F1 track, I found it on a 25 year old worn out Ducati on a mountain pass by my house.

This was the beginning. It wasn’t a slap in the face, it was a moment in presence guiding me along my path, gift wrapped in a space I could accept it.

Over a year before even considering medicine work, meditation, or any of the now routine practices in my life, the purest form of life found me.

Presence. A state where hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds… fail to mean anything… and your heart, mind, body and machine become one.