Rise Above

Phase 6 Prologue 

I had a thought some time so late on Friday night it was really Saturday morning and I know it was important, but even if you put a gun to my head I couldn't for the life of me tell you what it was which would probably have something to do with the third of a bottle of whisky that was left in the door of my fridge when I dragged myself out of bed sometime around when the sun was reaching its zenith the next day, although I do remember that I spent a good few of those pre-dawn hours on one of my YouTube binges, that before passing out I spent 26514 Qantas Frequent Flyer points on tickets to see Wage War in Melbourne with Boldilocks a couple of months from now, and that I left myself a new Post in Drafts with nothing but a title and a link for context, so expanding that into content for you here, now, feels like a good way to start: GUNSHIP- Tell Me When The World Stops Ending

I bought that bottle of whisky earlier in the evening because I wanted to celebrate; I've been doing that a lot lately, because it feels that I've had plenty of reason to. Friday's excuse was receiving the first proper paycheck from the new gig - more money than I'd earned in the last two months before I landed it, remunerating me for the work, if you want to call it that, which I'd done over the last two weeks of May. I've worked another two since those timesheets were submitted, and some time after I file the invoices for the next two fortnights I'll get paid again. 

And again.
And again.
And again,
for another ten and a half months, assuming I serve out the rest of my current contract, 
assuming I don't fuck up so bad that they serve me my notice. 

Don't laugh, it's happened before. 

Some time in and amongst that I'll get to do some actual work but the lack of effort I'm being asked to undertake notwithstanding, they seem pleased with my performance so far. 

I didn't curse Previous Night's Pete for the hangover I pushed myself through to head down to the garage yesterday afternoon - he did what he needed to do, he knew the consequences even if he wasn't going to have to pay them, and impulse-buying tickets for a band I'll really enjoy seeing with a friend I REALLY owe a visit in a town I've not found an excuse to drag myself to in far too long just goes to show that he had Future Pete's best interests at heart. I wasn't going to wave it off either because I had work to do, and no bike to ride until it was done. 

At the end of my first week in the new gig Scott drove me up to Goulburn to collect my new baby on Friday May 15th, with signed vaccination certificates and notarised adoption papers in hand. By Thursday May 28th I'd completed the required 1000km Getting To Know You Dance run-in, carefully working up and down the gears whilst keeping the needle on the tacho under the prescribed 5500RPM, without letting it sit in any one spot for too long. 

When they emerge from the Hamamatsu Plant in Shizuoka, the black 2026 Hayabusa looks like this

but red ain't never been my scene. Sadly, Suzuki has never made a Glass Sparkle Black Gen III Hayabusa with Pearl Vigor Blue - that accent's always been reserved for the Pearl Brilliant White one: 

Me, I had other ideas in mind. I'd ordered some of the panels using codes from parts lists of the 2024 model. Others I selected from fleaBay and Ali Express. The part I couldn't find was that swoop between the 隼 and the air vent, so last weekend I snagged the two-part spray paint I needed when [insert name of a particular ultra-inexpensive motor-vehicle supplies retailer here] had it was on sale, and after knocking off work from my day-job on Wednesday night I got to work dismantling the fairings so I could finish the fucking job. 

When I was done laying down the 5th and 6th layers of clear coat the swoops turned out to need, wiring the USB charger in under the right-hand cockpit shroud, drilling holes in the fender eliminator bracket to hold the license plate 9mm higher, working out how to put the ECU in Dealer Mode so I could clear the Oil Change Alert, painstakingly laying down the rim-tape I spliced together out of a set of blue and a set of silver, and completing the 3D jigsaw puzzle reconstructing fairings which Suzuki entrusts to takumi-level craftsmen, I caught up on Super Genius Boy's adventures over the last week and a half since he's got out of a London psych-ward whilst I rehydrated and waited for the pain to subside, then geared up in the helmet I hand-painted Tron-like lines on with a Posca Paint Pen and the hand-written Enter Shikari reference that no one gets, and my hand-made Archangel hoodie, and went to take some photos using the Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 lens I'd splurged on using the paycheck from Week #1 so I could introduce Gideon II to the world: 

It took some shuffling around to get my head lined up with the glowing ball in the dragon's claw, but I reckon it was worth it...

When I was done I leaned against the mural and posted them to Instagram with all the obligatory hashtags, a metalcore cover of that Italian Europop cliché I loved so much I bought the album AND the single on CD back in the day, and a haiku: 

All the red is gone

I've got a shiny new lens

Time for some photos!

...

#suzuki

#hayabusa

#jinbaittai

I followed up with a bit of ChatGPT-assisted editing: 

Unlike that little guy, I got plenty of people to listen, although I don't correct them when they send me messages telling me "she's beautiful!"; I just acknowledge with a deep-blue <3.
It don't matter if they're listening tho, because when I get it over 5500RPM that unbaffled VanDemon exhaust screams like an oni announcing that the world is ending. 
Then the arrival that snarling clarion call announces is backed up with the presence only 30 years of Japanese Fuck You-volution can engineer, hand-built by 匠, ripped apart and clumsily rebuilt into something manifestly unique, and utterly mine, by the incompetent fool who's been a 30-year-old-boy for 30 years now and counting, and is about to climb off the back of it with a shit-eating grin, hook the key with it's DON'T PANIC tag to the carabiner hanging from his cargo's and light a cigarette. When we leave I'll throw my leg back over the solo-seat to dance our way to the 11,000RPM redline on the edge of our Bridgestone S22 Hypersport tyres. 

Meet Gideon II - the "Raven Special" Hayabusa. Mazal Tov! It's a Boy! 

The first time I rolled across the carpark with a cigarette in my mouth and my helmet on the tank of the Triumph, Ava yelled "Holy fuck, you're iconic!"

The last time she climbed off the backpack seat she sighed "Oh, Conor is SO getting laid tonight!" 
I threw my leg over the tank, reached past the vape to pull a cigarette out of my pocket, and as I lit it replied, "well... just make sure he calls you 'Pete'."

But more importantly, what's been running through my head for the last couple of hours I've got carried away listening to 80's-chic synthwave whilst writing this, and adding tabs to my browser as I fact-check in parallel, has been how the peregrine falcon my bike is named for can soar at altitudes of over 5km before it tucks in and stoops, reaching speeds Gideon II is forbidden from reaching thanks to Safety Standards and Gentleman's Agreements, and whilst everyone is focused on "how high" and "how fast", I can't stop thinking about how much effort that motherfucker had to put in to get up there in the first place, and that it feels so good when you are. 

Way back when I was Ava's age, an old friend told me the story of the one time she took her life in her hands and flew Aeroflot on a dare. She chose the shortest route she could find (from Helsinki to Moscow), and after an uneventful flight an announcement came over the PA saying in Russian, Soumi, then English:

"We are about to begin our descent into Moscow. 
"Our staff will shortly be distributing vodka."

At this point, the story goes, the bespectacled, bearded, bear of a man to her left who'd been snoozing since 5 minutes before take-off woke up, came to attention, and did a little dance in his seat singing

"A-hey-Hey-HEy-HEY-VODKA!"
"Why are we drinking vodka?" she asked him. 
He replied, "because WE ARE ALIVE!"

A lifetime later and I still can't dance for shit unless my feet are on the pegs or something's on fire, 
but I've a job that pays which I can do, 
and my choice of bikes to ride, 
but ride now I'm dancing with Gideon II. 

Confused? 
Not sure what that means or was all about,
or where it was going?
Oh fellow-traveller-of-mine, you are amongst friends,
because so am i. 

... and if that isn't cause-enough to celebrate, i don't know what is. 

Welcome to Phase 6.

Make It

 So the 'busa has been off the road again for the last little while; I learned three (3) painful lessons the hard way cruising down Fairbairn Ave at 2AM on my way home that night: 

1. Possums are solid little bastards;
2. When they decide to commit suicide-by-hyperbike they act like a Pete-seeking missile; and
3. Aftermarket ABS fairings are brittle as fuck. 

There was no sign of the little fucker when I went back the next day to pick up the pieces of my shattered left-side fairing, but there was enough of it stuck to the bottom of my left fork and oil-cooler that I reckon one of the local foxes got a free meal at the cost of Gideon's not-quite-month-old party frock. The oil-cooler took enough of a knock that it was spraying a fine mist of oil, and the possum got to take my left foot-peg with it to Valhalla. Fortunately JB Weld Cold Weld Epoxy is both oil, and heat resistant and seems to have sealed the cracks nicely, and I had a spare left peg from the pair I bought after the last crash. The fairings, on the other hand... 

I've spent the last month arduously gluing a piece back on, waiting for the epoxy the cure, then gluing down the next one, adding nylon fabric to the rear-surface for reinforcement where it looked necessary, then sanding back, levelling, priming, sanding, priming, filling, sanding, priming, and preparing. I finally got it to a point where I felt it was ready to take colour, so have laid down 3 x coats of the Metallic Blue I found quite fetching, then 5 x coats of 2K Clear Coat. I'll need to leave that for a few days to cure before I mask it off and do the lower section in Matte Black, so whilst I wait I have some time to kill. 

Workshop Music: Faderhead - Destroy Improve Rebuild

When not riding motorcycles at silly speeds, applying for jobs, riding motorcycles with reckless abandon, having emotionally-loaded encounters with my Ex, riding motorcycles at 2 in the morning, and sending possums to Sto'Vo'Kor, I've been putting a lot of time and energy into Making Things. It used to be that my focus was Fixing Things, but I got through my backlog a while ago. If doing the same old shit was going to get me anywhere I figure it would have ages ago, so in the interests of switching things up it was time for a bit of creation; I'm still recognisably 'me' tho, so my preferred building materials are still Broken Things, with a bit of productive destruction thrown in for fun. 

Like the mirror I made out of the tempered glass front of the old watch winder I finally gave up on trying to repair after something like 6 years. 

Whilst shopping for paint I discovered a product called Glass-To-Mirror Converter and thought it would be fun to try; I thought it might be good for making mirrored helmet visors or bike screens, but I really needed to test it to see how it worked first. Whilst introducing Dropbear to the original 1995 anime Ghost In The Shell one night around the start of the year I spent an hour or so carefully masking out a pattern that I thought would be fun on one side - a thin line, a thick one, and another thin one representing dot-dash-dot (the Morse Code for 'R'), and a pair of diagonals because I thought diagonal lines would break things up nicely and wanted to practice making diagonal lines. Before heading off to find some food we popped downstairs to the ghetto spray-booth I made in my storage cage out of the box Damo The Vet's new couch came in so I could show him how to lay paint down, then we did another coat on the way back up to put on the 2017 version with Scar Jo. I encoded an 'R' out of vanity, but I gave it to Dropbear when it was done because he has a thing for girls who's names start with that letter plus... it was finished, and I realised I'd stopped caring. 

Came out nice tho: 

I was shopping for paint because I had a small horde of parts left over from the 'busa - ordering a full, custom-painted fairing kit was about the same price as the three panels I'd broken, so went that way; it also meant that I could finally get rid of the gold-coloured 隼 kanji on the sides and replace them with silver. I've wanted to do blue highlights on my accessories to bring out out the blue mica in the Pearl Nebular Black (Suzuki colour code YAY) for... oh, I don't know... a decade and a half now, so finally I'd be able to without it clashing. The original guard had a pile of scratches on it, so decided to use it for practice. I must have fucked it up at least three times in one way or another and had to strip it back to the plastic before I finally got the finish right, but now it's been redone in Matte Black with a fetching Metallic Blue stripe carefully laid down in the groove. 

I'll probably fit it at the same time as I fit the repainted side panels - it's the same blue and black paint, so it might actually look intentional instead of a back-yard bodge. 

The hoodie Dropbear gave me wasn't broken, although it did need a wash, but even after the smell of BO and boy-sweat was gone there was something I found offensive about it... or maybe 'offensive' is the wrong word here... 
not boring, either... 
Incomplete? 
It had these little 3M Scotchlite Black reflective strips on the arms and back that looked like someone aimed for minimalist, but landed on half-arsed instead.
It needed... More. 
I'm pretty sure it was Archangel by Pendulum that put the idea of cyber-angel wings in my head, so I snagged a free easel off Buy Nothing and a box of chalk, and did some prototyping with the words "wings", "feathers" and "speed lines" in my head whilst waiting for the nylon-backed reflector tape I ordered to arrive: 

Then I moved on to masking tape: 

I had a rough idea in mind based on sets of of 3; some might call that "predictable", I prefer to think of it as "a design language". With the basic theme laid out, I decided to break it down and started with the arms, going through at least half a dozen iterations before I got to an arrangement where the 'feathers' were cut to a ratio of 3:2:1, laid out slightly splayed when vertical so that when you bend your arms they look almost straight: 

The back took at least as many different iterations of the same "sets of 3" and "1:2/3:1/3" before I got to the layout I hated the least, but worked within the constraints: 

Yes, that IS a pillow I'm using to give it shape clamped to the easel - do you have any idea how hard it is to prototype something which needs to follow a human form using only shit you can find around the house or pick up for free? Likewise, I'd originally planned on stitching it all down, but that idea went to hell in a handbasket because keeping the strips straight whilst sewing with clumsy, nerve-damaged fingers was an exercise best described as "NOPE". Spotlight sells quite serviceable Fabric Glue Tape for not many monies, so I used that instead. I had grand intentions of using the tape to keep it in place for stitching but it's proven wind-, rain-, and generally bomb-proof so why turn something fun into not-fun? There's no ego-trip for me in making it harder for myself unless it improves the outcome, and this got the job done. 

The reflective paint is made using microscopic glass beads embedded in a grey paint, and the whole arrangement is pretty fragile - the beads rub off with friction, and the paint fractures with movement. It's already starting to show wear, bits are less reflective than when I first put it on, and some of the edges are starting to wear away. I considered looking for ways to protect it, make it last longer, then I realised...

Fuck it. It's not a bug, it's a feature. 

Over time the wings will fade, looking more and more tattered. 
Just like I have. 
Art imitating life, after a fashion.  

It's received plenty of positive feedback when I've been out, and I'm told it GLOWS in people's headlights. One thing's for sure tho: 

People are going to know EXACTLY who's in front of them. 
From half-a-kilometre away.

Not everything's been motorcycle-related... 

Pfft... 

No, of course it has. 

"Jinba ittai" has occupied an adjacent vertex to bikes in my mind's knowledge graph since the day I first heard it. You've seen the image I created by breaking down the font I found in Faderhead's More Is Never Enough clip into vectors, and rearranging pieces to build the kanji. A few weeks ago I finally got around to getting them printed: 

Whilst waiting for them to arrive I ran into Her randomly at Arbo after She'd Blocked me again. She told me just how poorly Her dog Millie's surgeries had gone, and how much money She was bleeding. I decided to put my art to a good cause, upped the asking price, and told everyone I was selling them for charity. I'd already thrown Her more money than I ever expected to make from selling decals, so it was VERY easy to put my hand on my heart and solemnly swear I was up to no good handing all of the proceeds over to help with vet fees. One of the first people to fling cash at my PayID was Damo The Loose Unit, who's also been taking lead on helping make Millie well again - his contribution paid the entire cost of printing, and more besides. Now I'm down to 24/50 of the original batch, and made nearly $400. 

Good deeds aside, pulling up at a meet and seeing my art on a dozen different bikes in a row is a fucking amazing feeling: 

I'm still playing with an idea for adding it to the hoodie rearranged vertically down the spine using iron-on vinyl, along with a line of logos down the front-left - Suzuki, 隼, Triumph... 

Eh, I'll get to it when it feels fun. 

In the meantime I have an idea for something that can hang in a window... a mason jar or something like it, which has been broken and glued back together kintsugi-stylez with some of the leftover Mirror-To-Glass paint sprayed on the broken edges. My theory is that when the sun shines through it the light will reflect off the surfaces and refract through the pieces, spraying sparks and shattered rainbows around the room. I ran the concept through Gemini to see if it had any suggestions on how to pull it off, and it said: 

"This is a brilliant, "mad scientist of decor" kind of project. The aesthetic you're describing—internal reflections and fractured light—is essentially 3D puzzle held together by hope and chemistry," then it helpfully added, "it won't be watertight or food-safe."

Hope & Chemistry. 

Sounds like the sort of name I'd give an Art Project... 

If it's right, it should look something like this: 

And when I'm done, I'll probably just give it away.

Time to go practice smashing glass jars... 

Destroy. 
Improve.. 
Rebuild... 

Washed out and fading into the distance...

 Musical misdirect: Pendulum - Hold Your Colour

There's a drum&bass rave going off in my helmet but I can only put on a snare-and-hi-hat Drum Show with my left hand whilst my feet double-kick the pegs because my right is busy holding the throttle steady to hold my position in the formation and even though I know that if I were to skip ahead like a stone across the river of lost souls flowing through traffic that I've joined not a single one of them would judge me, I'm perfectly comfortable following the leader rather than encouraging the pack of over-enthusiastic puppy-dogs to chase me if for no better reason than that I have absolutely no idea where we're going and having to stop and let them catch me so I can ask for directions is straight-up awkward for everyone involved. 

I must look like an absolute dickhead waving my arm around and headbanging, but that's not why I'm about to stop; we've just gone through the Cotter Rd speed camera and are about to top the rise that follows, and this is the point on this route where I like to flip my right leg over the tank and sit side-saddle waving at the cars we're overtaking on the straight where the Parkway goes part the Arboretum. 

"Wheeeeee!" 

I did not say wheeeeee, but I may have been thinking it pretty hard. 

I started grooving to the private discotheque coming out of my helmet's integrated speakers because I was bored, but wanted to look like I was having fun. It didn't take more than a couple of songs before I realised I actually was; now I do it all the time, regardless of whether I'm in a group ride or not. "Dance like no one's watching" the cliché says; "Let them watch," I thought to myself, "or not; I don't have an actual fuck to give, so I'mma dance like that instead." 

At least until shit gets real and I need to actually concentrate on my riding because it's hard to keep grooving when you're hanging off the side of your bike to take a tight corner at speed, and even harder to keep drumming with your left hand when its fingertips are dragging along the surface of the bitumen whilst pull-steering and maintaining throttle-control with your right to keep yourself from veering into the concrete barrier a handful of metres to your right. I shouldn't complain about having to make a choice; I've seen the videos Cash captured of me doing both, and I've been told that both look ridiculously fucking cool. 

"Man, like... you're such a good rider, and you ride all sensible," Young Corey confided in me a during a stop a couple of weeks later, "but you're still So Much Fun to ride with!" 

He nailed his front wheel of his R7 3m behind and 1.5m to one side or the other of my rear for the rest of the ride, and I made damn-sure to make it a challenge for him to keep it there, but not so much that he'd over-cook the right around the roundabout in front of the War Memorial. 

Musical sleight-of-hand: Pendulum - Watercolour

Gideon and I have been sitting here staring at the horizon for a couple of hours now with our left foot on the ground and our right kicking the bass-line which my rear-view shows me is creating in a pattern of red light that would tell anyone behind me who can read morse-code that I'm either listening to Pendulum again or having a stroke, but I'm unconcerned about any of that because my mind is as empty as the asphalt in front of me with dash-dash-dash-dash-dash written in white paint and shards of broken glass repeating in the darkness in front of us until it converges with the solid white lines on either side. The space just outside my peripheral is full of a great many things which can't seem to break through the barrier imposed by my enviable ~220deg field of view, and since they owe me nothing and moving my head would mean breaking my staring contest with the vanishing point I'm disinclined to pay them any attention but even though I can't see them I know they can see me, so I can't help but be aware of them. 
I know there are particles arrayed left and right and behind me which are straining at the imposed inmomentum of the Red light in front of us, all pointed in the same direction, but all aimed on different vectors. 
I know that my personal velocity is zero, because even when I have speed, I still have no direction unless you can quantify 'thattaway'. 
I know it's a Saturday, but beyond that I have no idea what day it is. 
I know that's a ridiculous thing to say because it's not day, it's night. 
I know I should find that thought hilarious, but still I'm not laughing because it's the point in the distance which consumes me. 
I know it's time to take another breath. 
I know there's a light at the end of the tunnel 3.2km further up the Parkway, but it's the flash for the speed camera 50m further down this road, so I'll need to be travelling at-or-under 100kph when I pass through it. 
I know we'll be ending the ride at Mandalay Bus because I accidentally scored us a standing 20% discount with Stu when I last dragged a group of bikers there after a ride. 
I know I'm probably going to order a Salt & Pepper Squid and a Chicken Satay Roti when I get there. 
I know that none of this matters, and the weight of my past and my present and my future are an illusion, because nothing actually matters, except that for now I need to wait. 
I know that time is a construct created by our minds which is just there to prevent everything from happening to us all at once. 
I know that when the time comes a dozen wrists will feed the fire of a dozen internal-combustion engines and a dozen exhausts will roar as we all launch and all of those dashes merge into one. 
I know that when we do, by the time we cross this intersection we're the one they'll all be chasing because they're all coming with me. 
I know now it's time to go and take me out of here, because the light just turned Green. 

Musical impulse: Pendulum - Colourfast 

The colours polarise when you're moving at these sorts of speeds; white is what's behind you, red is what you chase, Red means Stop, Green means GO!!!!!!!, and Blue... blue lights are to be avoided at all cost. 

Suddenly there's a flash of a different colour entirely in my peripheral vision as a yellow-and-black Suzuki GSX-R750 pulls alongside and falls into formation off my left wing, and the drum-beat of my heart stops. My eyes dart away from the road ahead and take in the spill of red curls streaming down like a rust-coloured waterfall from under a white helmet covered in 8-bit gaming icons and technicolour speed-lines, soft blue eyes sharpened with razer focus, plushie bee tucked under the pillion-strap, and slowly, quietly it begins to sing. 

It's Her. 
Right there. 
Keeping pace. 

Seconds stretch into eternity as we sit there perfectly still with neither taking the lead on our Suzuki's as we ride up Drakeford Drive at 80kph, and all I can think is, "fuck me fuck me holy shit fuck," because I honestly believed that I'd never get to do this with Her again... 

...and now here I was. 

Gideon sees the light ahead of us turn Amber before I do, and I can almost feel the thud of Her foot hitting the road when Her front wheel stops at the white line in sync with mine. My eyes don't deviate from what the map tells me is north, no matter how hard the Magnetic pull on the needle of the compass in my head tries to drag them toward the shooting star to port. As the seconds tick away I find myself cataloguing all the things I know to stop me thinking about the one thing I can't not care about until hours later the light turns Green, my right-wrist drops like the bass, the compass swings to stern, and the chase is on. 

Let's see if She can catch me... 

Moving fast with nowhere to go...

 I've been standing here looking casual and relaxed with my eyes focused on a light on the horizon though the dark-tinted visor of my helmet so I can keep my head stationary whilst I concentrate on controlling the muscles in my neck and shoulders, carefully measuring my breaths to hold my lungs at 50(+/-20)% capacity using the same technique a sniper might to steady their aim, and I used to use to maintain position in the water when riding the current during drift-dives, to minimise the movement of my chest so that I could remain absolutely still for the last 6 seconds. In another 4 seconds I need to move as quickly as possible one half-pace left and three fast steps left again in... 2... 1... go. 

Safely out of shot, I flip the dark visor of my helmet up and take off my gloves as I count 3 seconds... 5... then give it another 3 to be sure before walking back over to the Triumph, check the app on my phone mounted to the headstock which is linked by wifi to the camera sitting on a tripod 3.1m away, and see how the shot came out: 

I nod to myself, finally satisfied after the 4 or 5 previous attempts hadn't quite worked, take my helmet off and pull the thumb-sized torch off my keyring to try some light-painting. : 

When I got home some time after midnight I sifted through and culled the dozens of setup- and test-shots I'd taken, ran the two that had come out the way I wanted them through a quick colour-correction, and posted them to Instagram with the caption: 

"Been ghosted so much, sometimes it feels like you can see right through me..."

knowing that She'd probably never see them. 

Phase 5 Opening Theme: Pendulum - Cartagena 

2 days later I was sitting on the balcony watching the rain clear up and decided to go see if I could find some puddles with nice reflections in them to take photos of. I picked a tshirt which sent a different message to my last photo session, loaded backpack with camera gear, and hit the road. I spent 45min or so covering 29km without moving further south than Parliament House scouting out spots that might have nice angles, eventually winding up at the far-end of the Museum to play with the colour-shifting lights on the braille-wall, but nothing the camera caught was grabbing me. No one was hanging around Mirrors on my way out, so I gunned it up Lawson Cres at my now-typical 100-ish-kph when I glimpsed the lights of the foreshore at Henry Rolland Park where I'd been taking photos with Dropbear and Ruby 10 days beforehand, so I headed over there. It took longer to find a spot where the lightpoles and benches were spaced out and the curve of the embankment angled just the way I wanted it, then adjusting the Triumph's parked position a few millimetres forward and an inch or two to the right, and work out my body position, spent an hour or so taking photos, and after only 26 takes eventually I got one in 2-esposure-stop HDR just the way I wanted it: 

Jason was dubious when I shared it with him - he's still checking in when he hasn't heard from me in 4 or more days, and I've made a game of making sure he never has to. By then I'd kept the streak going for over a month. 

"You'll probably know better than me but those street/path lights not doing you any favours"
"Using what I got. I'm practicing, so using the environment that's there...
"The light was tricky, but look at how I lined up the shot with some guide lines added:"

"Wow
"That's pretty cool
"I wouldn't even take those into consideration"

<s'ok, I don't really expect anyone to> I thought, any more than I'd expected anyone to be paying attention to the specific 30-sec snip from the last track of the new Pendulum album which had been playing in my helmet throughout the photo shoot, and I'd tagged in the Instagram post I put up later that evening with the caption: 

"On my own playing around with light in darkness"

3 days later I received a message and screenshot from Gorgeous George: 

"You're loved apparently 😂😊"

And just like that, on Xmas Eve, after months of sitting around the Dairy Farmer's Hill Carpark, chatting with random strangers, helping people who really should have been wearing their P plates adjust their grips and levers, occasionally exchanging contact details, and riding around on my streetfighter more and more like a fucking hooligan whilst wearing a helmet with a bloodstained-chainsaw grin, I realised that I'd been accepted into the Canberra street-riding community. 

But that's not where any of this started, not really. 4:32PM on Friday November 7th isn't really where either, but it'll do for now because that was when I met Dropbear. 

Wednesday and Sunday afternoons were times I'd decided would be my Regular Arbo Times, usually from ~4 - 6:30PM - in September/October it was late-afternoon, leading up towards sunset, around the time people would wander up after work, but a time which I knew would be Safe because unless She'd changed her schedule She'd knock off at 5:00PM and head home, take Millie for her walk at 5:30PM, get back around 6:30PM, get her shit together by 6:50PM, and fang it up Parkes Way to arrive around 7:15PM, so if I was gone by then I had a window of opportunity to exist, and connect, and not tread on Her turf. "She doesn't own rider hangouts, and it's a Public Space, so I'm allowed to be here, right?" I figured, "This is one spot out of many, and word will get around pretty fast that I've been hanging around here so if She wants to avoid me it'll be easy..." plus it was picturesque and a fantastic piece of track to practice my cornering. I was adding Friday afternoons to the list because I was trying to spend less time at Peacemaker, but I could still catch the tail-end of Happy Hour if I was moving by 5:48PM. 

When I pulled up there were cars in most of the spaces, but there was plenty of room to reverse in next to a 2001 Triumph Speed Triple 955i, plonk myself down next to its owner, and join him in staring into the distance. 

"Nice 'busa." 
"Thanks man, sweet Speed - fucking classic streetfighter right there..." 

The conversation rolled on like 160kph from 80 in 4th gear; I'd had mine for 15 years and counting, he'd not had his for not very long - it was a cheap replacement for the Suzuki Bandit 1200S he'd only just recovered from binning; I was riding solo after a traumatic breakup, he was riding solo after a traumatic breakup; he was heading to FNR, I wasn't because that was Her patch, and I didn't want Her to think I was going to places I knew She'd be trying to find Her; he said he was having some problems with his suspension and rear brake, I told him to save the $50-100 he was going to spend and and bring it over mine the next day instead; he agreed and went to FNR, I went to Peacemaker for a pint with New Friend Lou. 

Later that night I was bored and antsy, so decided to head to Kita for a late-night Teh Tarik on the 'busa: 

On the way home I crashed it - a wrong turn, a dark street, a headlight dipped a little too low, and what I though was going to be a straight-shot through Narrabundah to Jerrabomberra Ave and Monaro Hwy turned out to be a dimly lit T-intersection covered in gravel. I grabbed a fist-full of brake, felt the front wheel wash out, and the next moment I was sliding down the road on my right hip and armoured shoulder, watching my beautiful bike spin down the road ahead of me leaving a trail of sparks behind it. 

"Because fucking of course I did..." I thought as I picked myself and the snapped foot peg up off the bitumen, then deftly lifted 230+kg of 'busa back onto its wheels and rode it home with my right boot perched on the heel-rest. It wasn't until I was nearly at Kings Ave that I realised just how easily I'd picked the bike up, and remembered that I'd not have been able to do that a month or two ago, when a skilled chiropractor started fixing the scoliosis I'd been living with for something like 30 years. 

It's amazing the difference it makes when your muscles aren't being dragged out of shape because your spine is actually something close to straight; I won't say that I went from living with constant pain to an agony-free existence overnight, but, y'know... a month or two later it sure does feel that way. Likewise, I could tell you that I went from relying upon drugs to sleep to none at all and that babies don't sleep this well, but I'd be lying and I remember saying I didn't do that; I now take FEWER, and LESS POTENT drugs to help me sleep, and I sleep a hell of a lot better for all three of those things. The other thing, which led to my being able to lift my bike again, is that I can now LIFT again. I used to try to build some strength and muscle with a pair of 5kg weights and never seemed to get anywhere; suddenly I was blazing reps with the 5's so hard I upgraded to 8's, then added a pair of 12.5's (although I had to back those off when I discovered I needed to rebuild some of the smaller, supporting bits of my shoulders first). When I caught up with Scott the other day he commented that I was standing straighter, head held further back, and my shoulders were squarer. I've definitely noticed that there's a bicep emerging when I shave, which is... good for the self-image.

I was certainly a bit achy when I went to sleep later that night with an inbox full of confirmation emails from the small pile of parts I now had on order, but the grazes on my leather jacket had been treated and were now mostly invisible, the graze on my new helmet adds character, and apart from a few bruises which would fade before the week was done I was none-the-worse for wear.

The next morning I threw 3 months' rego on the Street whilst drinking my coffee, and had my tools together in time for when Dropbear turned up. We checked his Speed over, confirmed the parts we needed, and whilst cruising to Fyshwick in the FrogRocket we started the trade stories. By the time we got there it struck me just how quick we'd been running through the "getting to know you" dance - I'd tell him about something that had happened and he just... got it, no explanation required. Likewise, when I made a clarifying query about part of his, he'd just nod and say "yeah, that." Not having to explain why something had left me gutted, or defend my right to feel something, was one thing; being treated like an instant mate by a guy who wasn't even alive when I got my first bike, and not like some weird-old-guy or ersatz-dad was just a little bit special.

Back in the basement-garage we fitted the springs to keep his exhaust in place, tweaked his suspension to give him better corner-feel, and adjusted his rear brake so it... y'know... worked, then...

Then we went for a ride.

An hour or two later we'd run up to Arbo for a hot-lap to test his new suspension settings and a cigarette, he showed me where Flags was, then we went the long-way up to Mt Ainslie trading the lead back and forth on our Triumphs as we jinked around cars at 120kph. I took photos at each stop, and posted them to Instagram with the caption: 

"Look at us being Triumphant..."

I didn't expect Her to ever see that either, but if you want to mark your calendar with "The moment Pete's life finally turned around (4096x2072, 1/1216 sec, f1.7, ISO 50, 6.57mm, Nothing A024)", 7:01:46PM (-35.270439, 149.158056) on Saturday the 8th of November, 2025 is probably about as precise as you're going to get. 

"So what's with all the photos?" you might be asking. "and who's this Gorgeous George guy anyway? Are you hanging out with that Doctor who stitched you up?" 

Well that's another story you're going to have to wait to hear... 

... for about 2 seconds because fuck it, we're only at 2100ish words so based on recent stats it's early-days yet. 

Back when I was heading up to Arbo with a regularity you could set clock by so long as it wasn't COSC-certified, on an afternoon who's dates and events I can't in any way remember, I pulled in just past a Honda CBR650R and Yamaha XSR900 parked side-by-side, reversed in at a respectful distance, took a seat on the composite-rock wall, and pulled my phone out to check my messages. The rider wearing a cheap, too-big-for-him suit wandered over, spoke admiringly of the 'busa (which I'd learned to capitalise on; whether Gideon is a 'panty-dropper' is unverified, but 'conversation-starter' is undeniable), and we got chatting. He'd just had a job interview, hence the suit, and was out for a ride with a mate. 

"Yours the CBR... 500? 650? Sorry, they all look the same..."
"No, the XSR. The CBR650R's my mate's."
"That's a Yama, yeah?"
"Yeah, 900."
"Man, I'm rusty on the smaller bikes. Nifty-looking cafe-racer... 
"Wait... CBR650R... is that...?
"HEY, OSCAR!"

The other rider, still wearing his helmet (because that's a thing the cool kids seem to do these days; She used to do it all the time) looked over, feigned sudden acknowledgement (because there is precisely one bike like mine in Canberra, and I knew that he knew who gets to ride it) and waved. I wasn't going to push it further than that because last thing I heard he was a Very Close Friend of Hers, but fucked if I wasn't going to be friendly and polite even if the situation was seriously fucking awkward. 

"Sorry, I kinda know that guy.
"Anyway: Pete."
"George."
"Nice to meet you. So what was this job interview? Reckon you got it?"

I ran into George again with Oscar a week or two later after acquiring a new scar on my arm, and chatted some more, then again later-still, sitting around with Mia. "Polite and friendly," I thought to myself as I masked up and be friendly and polite to another Very Close Friend of Hers. 

"Ey Gorgeous George, 'allo Stranger."
The motions of "how've you been" rolled through with casually warm tones expressed with an undertone of guarded superficiality, which led to me asking one of the typically empty questions you throw into a conversation when it starts to run dry: 
"So, big plans for the weekend?"
"Don't know yet, might have a date," Gorgeous George replied, because of course he fucking did. 

<freeze-frame>
The thing you need to understand about Gorgeous George is that he generates a Cognitive Dissonance Field.
You meet him, and he's absolutely unintimidating - medium height and slight build which suggest a complete lack of threat, sandy hair tussled in a way that can only to be the result of careful de-reconstruction or having just pulled off a bike helmet, a smile which exudes just a bit too much casual charisma, and ice-blue eyes which look at you earnestly and project such utter sincerity that puts you so immediately and perfectly at-ease that your lizard-brain goes into full-blown Admiral Akbar mode.
You find yourself bracing yourself for it to be a trap...
... which somehow doesn't spring because it was never there in the first place. 
He's simultaneously modest about his abilities, and utterly assured that he's the fastest motherfucker in the room.
Because he is.
It's not ego; it's simple fact and he knows it, but it's also not arrogance because he straight-up doesn't care. He's demolished me on rides and shrugged off congratulation; I've passed him on the outside of a corner and pulled so far ahead that I already had my helmet off when he pulled up to the stop and given me real, meaningful tips on how to be FASTER. 
He's the only person I've ever met who achieves gravity without mass, magnetism without a trace of iron, suave without a hint of smarm.
Of course Gorgeous George has a date this weekend; when you put all the pieces of him together identikit-stylez and feed the image into Nano Banana with the prompt "what is this?" you'll receive the reply "This is an image of the taxonomic ideogram depicting a calculated construction of what it would look like if evolution and selective-breeding were to create God's Perfect Fuckboi". 
And it will be absolutely and undeniably correct whilst also being completely and utterly wrong. 
Gorgeous George is both none of the things he appears to be, and everything it says on the tin.
Both parts of my brain want to be friends with him whilst fighting to the death over why the other is full of shit. 
Let them fight.
I was going to be either way. 
</freeze-frame>

"But next week is free," he continued, "come to FNR, my crew'll be going for a ride."
"You know I can't go to FNR," I reminded him, even more for Mia's ears than his, "it's my Ex's patch and I REALLY don't want Her thinking I'm there trying to find Her." 
"Nah man, send it; you need to stop being afraid of your ex."
"But..."
"She's not been going to FNR," Mia chimed in, "and when she does she's been turning up in a car."
"...
"Why would She be turning up in a car...?"
"Some fucker tried to steal her bike - she's been off the road for like 10 weeks."
"Shit... what...? Damn... She was so happy when she got that, we went up to Sydney to pick it up," I showed them the photo of Her grinning like a dork leaned against the Suzuki GSX-R750 She'd owned for all of 4 hours at the point I snapped it at the Marulan BP we stopped at on our way back to Canberra, "did they... how much damage did they do?" 
Conversation ran through the professional- and mechanical-ineptitude of Eye Candy Motorcycles and the crime-rate in Queanbeyan. 
"See? She's not even going, you're fine."
"...
"...
"I guess... maybe it'd be Safe? 
"But I'm not showing up alone... what would people think?"
"Fine. Meet me up here, you can arrive in a group."
"..."
"C'mon man.
"Send it."
"I... OK... fuck it.
"But if She's there I'm just gonna keep riding...
"...
"... and if I leave in a hurry, you'll know why."

So 8 days later I arrived at the Friday Nite Ride nexus-meetup at the tail-end of a convoy on my Triumph with Gorgeous George and his friend Kaesi, with the thundering of my pulse in my ears drowning out the sound of prejudgemental guilt I felt for having the audacity to even be there in the first place coming out of my helmet comm's, scanned the crowd as we did the lazy bog-lap I'd never told Georgeous George I'd need to do, and after a panicked false-positive pulled up, reversed in, and got introduced to a crowd of new friends. 

Then we went for a ride. 

Running around late at night practicing my photography was Gorgeous George's fault as well in a roundabout sort of way, although Dropbear provided plenty of encouragement of his own. On one of those afternoons sitting at Arbo he was talking about wanting to get some nice photos of his bikes, and having a whinge about how much money motorcycle-centric photographers charged. 

"Well... I've got a vaguely decent camera I keep meaning to learn how to use - if you can show me some examples of what you want I'll do it for free. I've got a lot of time on my hands, and I could use the practice..." 

We tried a few at Arbo here and there, and I was talking about it with Dropbear who wanted to try some near Carillon with his new girlfriend Ruby. They were the ones who taught me the main rule of motorcycle-photography; "no plates, no faces," is mainly to do with records of people breaking road rules, but I decided to adopt it generally anyway because I find it incredibly liberating. I hate having photos taken of me because I'm completely unable to pose naturally. I'm fine if someone snaps me when I'm not paying attention - sometimes I even look pretty decent, but the moment I try to make my face smile something happens to the fabric of the universe and what shows up looks like someone left a rubber clown mask draped over the collection of bobble-heads they keep blu tack'd to the dashboard of their car whilst it was parked in the sun during a heatwave. Give me a mask to wear, especially a biomechanical skull with blood dripping off its chainsaw teeth, and I actually look pretty fucking cool... even when being a bit bromantically silly: 

I got some REALLY nice ones of all three of our bikes one afternoon Gorgeous George joined us because of course they already fucking knew each other - turns out he ALSO owns a CBR650R: 

I took to saving them to a public share on my private photo server, which on a whim I published as Jinba Ittai. Whether that was before or after I designed a custom decal from the kanji probably wasn't worth remembering, but what I really should remember is to put in the order for the prints because it'll be, I reckon, pretty fucking cool: 

"So... now what? Where's all this headed? What's the plan and what's the point?" I can imagine you asking yourself, and the answer is: 
"Fuck knows. Nowhere. There isn't one."

I had plans, I thought I knew where I was heading, and I failed those Phases so hard I got Blocked from ever getting there. I don't know what I'm going to do next, when job will happen, and...
I've stopped caring. 

Welcome to Phase 5. 

I know that tomorrow is a public holiday, and Dropbear and Gorgeous George were talking about doing a Mt Mac run. 
I know I have a design in my head for a nifty pattern using reflective tape I want to sew on the back of the kevlar-lined hoodie Dropbear gave me in exchange for the new front brake master cylinder I paid for. 
I know people who are spinning up a new ride crew called Sanctum, and have invited me along to the photo shoot they're doing for promo pics and vids, which should give me a chance to try out an idea for another ghost-style photo, this time where I roll the bike into the frame from the left-hand side with the lights on, then stop and sit still for the rest of the exposure to I get the light-trail effect, and both me, and my Buzzsaw helmet, and my Triumph look a bit intangible. 
I know that I'll do all of these things when I feel like it, for the sole purpose of having done them, then post them to Instagram, and if people like them then that's great for them, but beyond being interesting enough that people want to hang out with me I really don't give a fuck so long as I have fun doing it.
I know that half the things I make I won't care about once I've finished them, and will just give away because the point was to work out how to do it, not to keep whatever it is.
I know I'm stuck here, and for now I don't have a whole lot better to do, but filling my days with weird creative projects, pretentious photography, sitting around Arbo talking shit with strangers, keeping Dropbear company when his depression is biting just a bit too hard, getting wheelie lessons from Gorgeous George, and rediscovering how to have FUN has been making that a whole lot easier to deal with.

I know that no matter how much I'd love to share all these things with Her, She'll probably never see them.

And I know I'm going to do them anyway because I CAN, and I fucking feel like it.
I'm not doing any of it for Her, I'm doing it for me.

Rabeh would be SO proud. 

But y'know, I've said it before, and I may even one day say it again اگر خدا بخواهد:

"Rebirth (or Resurrection) is never gentle, let alone kind. You have to die before you can be reborn after all..."

Oh my god 

We're going for a ride... 

Going nowhere fast...

 Musical accompaniment: Twenty One Pilots - Ride 

The gusting wind is making the 'busa rock against my outrigger-leg as we wait patiently for the lights to change, less like the rocking of a dinghy afloat a rolling swell than having very large man nodding along to a slow reggae groove whilst leaning against our right-hand fairing. The light changing from red to green sets in motion a choreographed set of movements with twenty one years of practice behind them; my right hand starts to squeeze just as the tension in our left starts to release, the outrigger pushes off, retracts, and stows itself away securely, then knees press into the tank to push our butt back to the rear-edge of the seat. Ready for take-off, there's a moment when we're sitting perfectly still on a pair of contact-patches no larger than a pair of outstretched palms, balanced on little more than intent, a prayer-given-wings, and the confidence that by the time physics stops being distracted by our sleight-of-hand acceleration and angular momentum will have kicked in. 

Two seconds later we're travelling at a speed that will see us a kilometre down the road a minute from now, my helmet is tucked behind the screen, and the buffeting is gone; with a drag coefficient resting half-way between a Porsche 911 Carrera and an Airbus A330, and a displacement an order of magnitude smaller than either, the 'busa doesn't cut through the wind like a hot knife through butter so much as slip past with a series of polite "excuse I", "don't mind me", and "thank you ever so kindly"s the rest of the way up Northbourne Ave. Leaning on the edge of the knife-edge of rubber on the left edge of the tyres we carve a line along the grippy tarmac between the slippery white lines of the pedestrian crossing onto Barton Hwy, straighten up again, turn our tail to the wind, and present it our posterior. 

Extroverting my introspection has provided me with a peculiar perspective over the past few weeks; just like someone standing in the Emergency Stopping Lane on Barton Hwy might have seen a horse-and-rider glide past in a blur of poetic motion and dopplering exhaust, had they launched a drone and set it to keep pace to starboard that same horse and his boy would have looked utterly motionless whilst the world slid past in a blur. Look at the footage closely tho, and you'll see that my feet are resting on the pegs whereas it's the wheels that are spinning. The 'busa is doing all the work; I'm just along for the ride. 

Another day, another dichotomy. 

The "Terminal Semicolon" series started as a random accident I precipitated, crossed with a random thought I had, influenced by a random episode of Red Dwarf I'd made Bridget watch so she'd get the reference I make to a joke I heard once but no one seems to remember any more. By the end I'd spent 8400 words of which only 10 were "fuck", laid two and thirty years of my historic self-hood bare, and catharted like a motherfucker. I didn't set out to pick up all the threads I'd left hanging from writing about "where I was" and weave them together to explain "what I was going through all that time" when I jotted down some notes one night about an accident caused by peripheral neuropathy borne of chronic illness any more than had I instead folded them into a thousand cranes and woken the next day to find out that the tornado created when they flapped their wings had flung an under-educated girl in an indigo-checked dress, and the house she lived in, from mid-west America on a Technicolor(TM) adventure, crushing Elon Musk to death in the process. 

Either way, when it was done I looked at the result and muttered "Oh Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck..." under my breath because I'd taken the last two years of chaos and turned them into something beautiful. I started the recently-ended phase of my life by saying "resurrection [...] is never gentle, let alone kind. You have to die before you can be reborn after all", and I keep saying that sometimes you need to destroy what's in the way so you can rebuild something better. "If you want a thing done well," Napoleon is credited as having said, "do it yourself." 

Especially when the only thing standing in your way is your self. 

I put more effort into creating It's not you (I'm giving up on), it's me... than I have into anything I've ever written; the Sandra biopic, the speech I wrote for her wedding, and Sunset & Twilight: Art made with Lasers & Maths are the only things which have come close, but all of those were ultimately for other people; this one I wrote to share, so you could see and (I hope) understand, but I didn't write it for you. I wanted to cook something of myself up, create and make-real something delightful out of a very harrowing time of my life which you could swallow, and digest, and take away with you, so that later when I'm pouring you a digestif with one hand and offering a bowl of antacids with the other, I can look you in the eye and know that you're seeing me. 

Or not. 

Maybe you'll just get reflux, make your excuses, and leave before dessert. 
Maybe you'll not show up in the first place, and I'll find myself dining alone with the void filling the chair you were supposed to be sitting in. 

(In the interest of civility, I think I'll call her "Jeremy"; that seems a cromulent name for a complete lack of substance.)

Maybe I'll get to enjoy the whole bottle of armagnac to myself (Jeremy said I could have hers; she has to drive), and eat leftovers for the rest of the week. 

Either way, I'm going to help myself to seconds. 

Backing track: Incubus - Drive 

I've been trying to reconcile the ridiculous number of things I seem to do in my day with the absolute lack of anything I seem to get done; after a while the expenses keep piling up and there's only so much you can sneak into your "Consulting Fees" and "Meeting Expenses" accounts before your accountant starts asking pointy questions because "Blackhearts & Sparrows" appears to be a bottle shop. I guess this is what you get for engaging an accountant who's good at her job, has a finely-tuned nose for bullshit, and shared a house with you back in your late-20's, but I digress. I feel like those pitiful plebs I keep seeing through the window of the gym on Lonsdale St running on treadmills when I'm walking to-and-from the local Coles with another backpack-full of the pre-packaged chemical energy I feed my failing meatsack to ensure it fails a little more slowly. I keep telling myself "at least when I put one foot in front of the other I'm a step further forward than I was before, so I'm better-off than those cunts," but it's a lie and I know it. If anything, they're more honest about it because whilst we're both going nowhere fast, at least they're not pretending; our pursuits might be equally pointless, but how much more authentic does it get than merging mouth with money, and paying for the privilege of proving it? 

I do know one thing they don't tho, because I know that what both of us are doing is futile, and the whole thing is fucking absurd. 

OK, that's two things, but who's counting? 

In the beginning, a less-hirsuite-than-average ape somewhere in what we now call Africa who'd never heard of pants looked up in wonder at the glorious firmament of the heavens above, and thought "What the fuck?" 
Some time later, another ape who'd realised that pants were a pretty solid concept looked outside themselves and thought "Why the fuck?" 
By the time pants were considered prosaic, a German ape with a Niet mousta-zsche looked down at the world around them and thought "What's the fucking point?" 
A hundred years later moustaches were out of vogue, pants had been around so long they'd started getting shorter, and a French ape who was born in Africa stood between another bunch of apes with a ball and the net they were trying to kick it into in a pair of shorts, looked inwards and Camus'd to the realisation that "... there isn't one. How fucking funny is that?" 

I used to identify as a Nihilist because in the cold, hard light of maths, there always seemed to be a divide-by-zero; it makes no difference no matter what you do. Everyone who won, and everyone who tried, and everyone who failed, and everyone who didn't, all wind up dead. Nothing we do matters, and everything we were and everything we did turns to dust in the end, so what the actual fuck is the point? Regardless, I kept moving because doing something has always felt a whole lot better than doing nothing, and given the alternative I've had nothing better to do. After a while I realised I'd been missing the punchline that whole time, because I keep forgetting that I'm terrible at maths. 

Our whole short lives we keep trying to square the circle that we know, no matter how sophisticated our calculated reasoning evolves, will always show up on the right-hand side of the ultimate equal-sign. We know, because we can prove it, but we keep trying because we need it to not be true, but that's because we've only been paying attention to the first half of the story. 

"In the setup [...] you tell a story and there's an assumption made by the listener, and what they'll find is that rug will be whipped out from under them and the assumption they made was erroneous, suddenly revealing a fact that was previously concealed, and they realise they've made a mistake."
- Jimmy Carr

I find it all existentially hilarious that we know it's pointless, but we keep trying to find a way to say it ain't so. It's all so fucking ridiculous, but that's the actual point because life is also sublime; 

It's all a fucking joke. 

So when I walk past with a wry smile on my face, it's not because I'm judging the lycra-clad ape in the window because whist paying a bunch of money to run on the spot is ludicrous, ultimately the only thing dividing us is a pane of glass and logically, if: 

I:\> $you = 0
I:\> $me = 0
I:\> $you -eq $me
True

I, riding the superposition of these perspectives, have been doing my best not to look to windward because the gusts are coming from behind me, the hurdles I might trip over are in front, and I'm trying to get my feet back where they belong between my face and the pavement. 

Besides, Phlebas is dead, and beyond caring. 

Chase the sunset...

Musical accompaniment: Mr.Kitty - After Dark 

The sky over Black Mountain was a lithium fire with the Telstra Tower at its core as I crested the last rise on Kings Hwy before its descent into Queanbeyan, and for a moment I thought what a shame it was I hadn't got around to reconnecting the cameras so that moment might have been recorded. Remembering that I'd left Captain's Flat maybe 18 minutes beforehand, and another word for "record" in these circumstances can be "evidence", I decided it was for the best. I could have pulled over and pulled my phone out of my pocket, but why spoil the moment by actually dropping below the speed limit? 

I took a mental snapshot instead, and shared it with my Penpal (with whom I trade such photos on occasion out of thematic amusement) in spirit if not in deed, before indicating around a slow-moving SUV, clicked back up to 6th gear, and tucked back in behind the screen to coast the downhill descent. 

I've been meaning to go for a decent fang since I got back; there've been plenty of "not here to fuck spiders, let alone waste time" runs, but no decent excuses to work through the rev range and get my knee out terrorising a few apexes whilst spraying an atomised mist of ablated rubber. There are roads around Perth where you can get in a bit of a fang, but the ones that aren't a mission to get to are few, far between, depressingly short, and too well-known by Mr Plod. Canberra's diminutive size, situation amongst all these hills and valleys, and its connections to a plethora of country towns, means it's blessed with access to hundreds of kilometres of tarmac seemingly built for technical riding. Bringing the 'busa with me was a no-brainer, and sitting on my balcony enjoying my (barely) morning coffee I realised I had absolutely nothing better to do so it was time to adjust my suspension, throw some lube on the chain, switch the pillion seat for the aerodynamic hump, and get amongst it. 

Plus, I hadn't managed to make the trip to check out Sandra and Timo's new place in Captain's Flat, so I pinged her. 

"Pondering going for a fang this afternoon. Should I burn some rubber in your direction?"
"Sure."

I wouldn't usually spend an hour travelling each way for a cup of tea and a scone, which goes to show how far my priorities have skewed in the wrong direction; the last time I lived here Rick and I would think nothing of riding an hour out to Bungendore via Queanbeyan for a pie and an iced coffee, then looping back up the northern route along Macs Reef Road. These days I need an excuse, but as with so many things I've needed over the years that's something I know I can rely on Sandra to provide. Of course I delayed my homeward departure half an hour or so beyond what would be considered sensible, which is how I found myself chasing the sunset along Captain's Flat Road through the deepening twilight at speeds well above where the average Cessna would even consider stalling. 

It's times like that I feel ashamed of myself for keeping my beloved Hayabusa caged like a songbird in cities with all the straight lines, 90degree turns, and lumbering four-wheeled bovinity. Exiting the roundabout for the 43km run down Captain's Flat Rd earlier this afternoon I'd dropped into a racing crouch with the visor of my helmet a hands' span from the tip of the screen, relaxed my right wrist, told it "OK, you set the pace," and as we slipped into jinba ittai-sync we opened our throat, unleashed legs of cast-aluminium, sunk claws into the horizon and with an internal-combustion roar dragged it towards us. 

Heading back a few hours later I said "It's getting dark and there'll be roo's out so let's take it easy," and dragging my wrist downwards in response it whispered: 
"No." 
"You sure?" 
The answer came in a wave of need that was part hunger, part lust, and as the needles climbed the dials in my lower peripheral our intake screamed "GO!!!!!!!" 

So we went, devouring the road in pursuit of the setting sun. 

Musical improvement: Mr.Kitty - After Dark (Iam Ian Remix) 

Penpal - And now for something completely different...

 Thinking, thinking, always thinking;
ideas, memories, smells and colours;
Sifting, parsing, sometimes recombining.

Friday evening has been bouncing around my head, as you can only presume from receiving your second email in two days (not counting corrections), two (effectively) strangers finding something akin to joy through the sharing of their respective misery. It occurs that my emails cleave closely to that sort of theme - there are jokes and laughter, but in a "teeth gritted through the pain" sort of way. I decided it was time for a reframe and tone-shift, so I set myself a challenge: I'm going to try writing something hopeful (because 'happy' is a bridge too far).

To select your soundtrack for this I delved into my music collection to find something suitable and came up with Angels & Airwaves. It's not happy (I mean, it's Tom de Longe after all, and by the time they recorded their third album he was so badly messed up on opioids he barely knew what day it was), but I've always found them light (as in full of). Three songs, because you said you read these three times, which suits me nicely because this is me and I've always found both balance and completeness in three.

Heaven
Valkyrie Missile
The Flight of Apollo

I'm declaring this at the start because I have no idea how, or what, or where this is going. I'm taking you with me on a ride. We may go round in circles, or nowhere, or crash and burn, but you're finding out in real-time, same way I am, and only when I'm done do you have my permission to cry.

Now strap in and let's do this. 

---

My email yesterday was bashed out sitting in Haig Park, killing a couple of hours before my friend Marcia was free. A stretch of dead time filling the nothingness in my schedule between when I needed to leave one place,  before I had any reason to be at another.

It was far from an unpleasant place to be - cool, quiet, and still. I usually write these sitting in my hacked-by-hand reclaimed kerbside-shopping-network chair under the tattered remnants of my solar-powered gazebo, but if I was going to do something different, a change of scenery was called for. I stuck A&A in my ears (OK, I did a little bit of prep), got my bike's battery on the charge so it'd start, slammed the bare-minimum chores out of the way before grabbing groceries so there'd be food in my fridge (not just condiments), ditched the car, pulled my helmet on and twisted the throttle, propelling myself to the place I had in mind:

I've just had to move to follow the shade, by the way.

I've been coming here for almost as long as I've had autonomy; on days like this in my teens I used to ride my bike to the river (10ish-km), then follow it along the far side from here another 10-15km before turning around and heading back. Later in high school my best friend lived a couple of streets away and we'd come down at night to feel transgressive. Later we'd steal some beers from his dad (or play on how I looked older than I was and go to the bottlo) and do the "rebellious teen drinking" thing. When I moved back in 2010 I'd strap my roller blades on a bit east of here, skate a couple of km's west into the wind and back again. Here I've had picnics, watched the Australia Day fireworks, and brought tourists to look at the city lights. When I was still with Jenna, Kat and I would hang around the picnic tables, chain-smoke and talk about everything and nothing. It's been the setting for both first and last kisses, and many of those in between. It's pretty, and peaceful, and alive. It felt like a perfect place for this purpose. 

Welcome, glad you've come,
To my favorite place in Perth.
I hope you like it.

There's a group of girls (young ladies?) playing kick-to-kick off to my left; joggers chasing after fitness dodging families taking a stroll; dogs being taken for walks and Smelling All The Things(!); whilst I sit here with my laptop and A&A in my ears, apart from them all, but in the wide-angle panoramic shot it looks like I'm a part of it.

I used to use Mt Ainslie in the same way:

Above, but amongst.
A quiet perch to watch from.
Apart, but a part.

Where I am, where I'm going, and where I want to be, are rarely the same location. That feeling of satisfaction, comfort, contentment, seems so incomprehensible. That sense of being the right person, in the right place, at the right time, eternally elusive and just out of reach. Watching this perpetual parade of peaceful people, I wonder if their perceptions are parallel, whether they ponder as they pass their places in this performance? I don't know, and somehow I suspect that if I were to ask them neither of us would understand. If we spent a lifetime trying, we'd never grok each other; the terms of reference in our language are too far out of phase. 

There's a beautiful paragraph in Stranger in a Strange Land where Heinlein explains the word "grok":

"Grok means 'to understand', of course, but Dr. Mahmoud, who might be termed the leading Terran expert on Martians, explains that it also means, 'to drink', and 'a hundred other English words, words which we think of as antithetical concepts. It means 'fear', it means 'love', it means 'hate' - proper hate, for by the Martian 'map' you cannot hate anything unless you grok it, understand it so thoroughly that you merge with it and it merges with you - then you can hate it. By hating yourself. But this implies that you love it, too, and cherish it and would not have it otherwise. Then you can hate - and (I think) Martian hate is an emotion so black that the nearest human equivalent could only be called mild distaste."

I don't need to describe to you what a curse it is to see everything, all at once, as it really is.
I won't even try expressing the indescribable gift that is to be seen, known, and accepted; not for what you were, what they want you to be, or might one day become; but for who, how, and what you are. To have someone say "I see you" and not try to guess who, or how, or what they perceive. 
Nor will I make an attempt at the sense of explosive stillness, thunderous calm, or cacophonous peace from not having to wonder. 

I do, however, find it rather pleasant.

Now, I think it's time to pack my laptop away again and slip into jinba ittai. 

Regards, 

Peter.