I was leaning hard into the turn when the bike began to slide.

The drive two days ago on 101 North was stunning.  I'm still on that highway in my mind.
The redwoods lean over the highway so much that in some places there are signs instructing you to turn on your lights.  When you ride into those shadows the temperature drops sharply and the air feels cool and heavy and the smell of wet pine needles fills your nose.  In those places I was glad to have Mr. T's heavy leather riding jacket.
I had just left the Chandler Tree, there in Drive Thru Tree State Park, and was feeling good.
I could feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, having ridden over 4,000 miles up to that point, welling up inside me.
The picture of me, on the bike, inside that famous landmark, made me happy.
Another little goal checked off a very long list.
As I turned left, back onto 101 towards Eureka, I hit the play button on the Ipod and grinned.
Blue sky, beautiful open road, the whole scene right out of an Ansel Adams photograph, only now, in bright, crisp and clear, living color.
With music pumping, I was thinking of all the roads that I've been on and places that I've seen  since leaving home and I marveled a bit that I had actually ridden all the way across the country to the Pacific Ocean.
Since my junior year of high school, when I read William Least Heat Moon's book, Blue Highways, I had been dreaming of just this.   "Bill" had driven an old Ford cargo van across the country taking only the back roads, the blue lines on the map, and written a fantastic book about it sometime in the late '70's or early '80's.  A chapter of his book was in my junior high English book, which I read cover to cover in class, and then I immediately bought Blue Highways and devoured it too.
For a misfit and slightly contrary teenager in Middleburg, Florida in 1987, the thought of spending months on the road, seeing the the country, meeting new people, and to be honest, just getting away from Florida and what it represented for me at that time, seemed like heaven.
When I threatened to buy the multi-primered, falling apart van from the rednecks down the road from us to drive cross country, "The Source of the Trouble" lept into action and somehow found a dark blue, 1977 Chevy Van up for sale by an officer at N.A.S. Jax.  "El Duece" came up from U.F. where he was going to school at the time to test drive it for me.
For $2,000, I was officially in the cross-country driving business.  Thank you, "tSotT"!
Within the next few months, I had put a rack in the back to sleep on, tinted the windows, and generally started fitting it out for my long distance desires, and started saving a little money for the trip.
On graduation night, after spending the entire evening with "High School Sweetheart Fred" and her parents, watching "America's Funniest Home Videos", I was hit by a drunk driver.
I was sitting at the stop sign, there at Highway 218 and Stoney Ridge Lane in Middleburg, waiting for the truck to pass when, at the last possible second and for no apparent reason at all, the driver jerked the wheel hard to the right, and slammed into the front driver's side of my van. He was driving an early '70's Chevy Luv pick up, a very small, Toyota-esque vehicle, but hit me hard enough to bend the frame of my full size van in 3 places. I bounced around like a ping pong ball inside the van but other than a sore neck and a terrible headache was unhurt.
The van, on the other hand, was in terrible shape, and the post graduation trip put on indefinite hold.

And then twenty-something years slipped by.

A move to Atlanta.  Starting a business.  A marriage.  Houses.  Divorce.  Sickness.  Rebuilding.
Starting another business. Heartaches.  Surgeries.  Life.

Then, after a New Year's Eve snap decision made while visiting "High School Sweetheart Fred" in Asheville just this past December, I bought the bike and started planning the trip.
Where to go.  What to see.  What should I take.  When can I leave.  How long will I be gone.  Who will take care of the dog.  The business.  Mom.  Ms. X.
More or less arbitrarily, and only because I felt that I had to put something solid and irrevocable on the calendar, I chose May 13th.
Turns out that May 13th was Mother's Day and, I don't know about you, but it seemed to me, that maybe leaving town on Mother's Day for several weeks just might be sending the wrong message to Mother, so I pushed it back a bit.
And then work went crazy.  And then it went a little more crazy. And May 13th receded into the distance, and the trip started to become a bit of a joke in the neighborhood as my departure date became more and more uncertain.
And, maybe there was some truth to the joking.  I had to admit that I was a bit afraid.
I've never even owned a motorcycle, much less ridden one across the country.  My longest trip was to see Mr. T and "The Charming and Unstoppable D2" in Chattanooga, only 2 hours or so away.
All those doubts about whether I could or should do it, did, in fact, start to creep in, and in those last couple of weeks in Atlanta, I worried that if I didn't leave soon the reasons for not going, for not doing it, reasons for staying put, would continue to pile up, right next to all of the gear I had been collecting for the trip itself.

And, now 4,000 miles later, 6 weeks after leaving Atlanta, here I was, weaving thru those majestic redwoods, feeling that cool air rush up the sleeves of my borrowed jacket and out around the collar.
All the lush greens, wet with fog, all those deep browns, the rippled bark edged in black; the entire scene looked soaked and so full of life, and sometimes it was hard to tell if the wetness was there on the landscape or only in my eyes.
Although I had always wanted a motorcycle, the time, or the money, never seemed right, and my entire experience actually riding one could best be described as few and far between.  I hadn't actually sat on a bike in ten years when I bought mine in February and, I didn't even see it in person until the truck pulled up in front of my house and lowered it to the ground.
My first thought was, "Jesus Christ, that thing's big!" and my second thought was, "Please do not let me drop this in front of my neighbors."
And, then, flash forward to a beautiful sunny day in the woods of Humboldt County, California, and me pushing that rig with my bags bungee-corded to the rear fender north bound up 101.
Incredible.
I wanted to take my hands of the bars and raise them into the wind and take it all in - to feel that cool breeze slip thru my fingers and somehow find a way to take hold of it, to keep it and make it a part of me.
The road dips and winds thru valleys and races up the face of one peak only to dive down the next.  There are moments on the bike when you feel lost in it.  Maybe that's what they call zen.
Everything is working together so seamlessly that it's beyond thought.  You don't have to tell yourself to push or lean or brake or give it more.  It happens like breathing and you feel exhilarated and calm inside.
I was leaning hard into the turn when the bike began to slide.
For what must have been the tenth time that day, I had crossed a narrow gorge on a thin wisp of a bridge where the winds sweep up from the valley and push you to the west as if they're trying to take you down to the ocean.  On the far side, the road began a long, slow decent over a wide, left arc.  It was gorgeous.  I was centered and perfectly in tune and felt completely in control.  I had been watching my speed creep up slowly as I gathered downhill momentum thru the turn and then, there in the center, the rear wheel lost traction.  There was a brief ripping sound and my spell was broken.  I immediately let off the gas, and in an instant of panic, tapped the rear brake.
I'm sure my more experienced friends will tell me how that was exactly the wrong thing to do and now, experience has proven them right.  The bike fishtailed wildly as I tried to regain control and get my speed back down.  It all happened very fast.  I rebalanced the bike but realized that I was definitely not going to stay on the road and had just a second to pick my point of departure and aim between two metal posts just off the highway.  I'm guessing my speed at that point was somewhere between 45-50 mph and I braced for what I was sure was going to be an abrupt and unpleasant landing.  There was a loud metal groan as I left pavement and the front wheel made contact with the dirt and I slammed down hard on the rear brake.  A cloud of dust erupted around me, and, with The Kings of Leon still blaring in my ears, I skidded to a stop, still upright, and amazed that I could screw up so badly and not get hurt.  My heart was beating frantically in my chest and I sat for a few minutes to collect myself, music still playing, dust settling around me.
If I had to choose any place on that road to lose it, I could not have picked anywhere better.  A road crew had cleared a small patch of land on the east side of 101 and the ground had been turned up, making it soft, and then covered it in hay.  The earth was soft enough to absorb my momentum and bring me to safe stop.  I looked up to the blue sky and thanked the heavens that I was still in one piece.  When I got off the bike to walk around and check for damage I saw the problem (other than rider error):  after 4,500 hundred miles, the rear tire was in desperate need of replacement.  I had been aware that it was getting low and was planning on replacing it eventually but now, when I looked closely, I realized how little tread was actually left and I felt like an idiot.
Actually, a dangerous idiot.
Lesson learned.
The last couple days were a little nerve racking until I got to Paradise Harley, just outside of Portland, and put a new tire on it.  But now, with a lot of new rubber and a little hard earned wisdom, the trip continues.

Sex on Fire - Kings of Leon