Free Book Excerpts

Ride with an avid motorcyclist as he narrates a series of fantastic adventures with passion and humor. Find out why, ‘It’s About the Ride’.

Excerpt

Introduction

“Why do you do it?”

Shivering and clutching my extra large cup of coffee gingerly between my stone cold, unfeeling hands, I slowly turned from staring out the window to face the convenience store clerk. The young, pretty, sandy-haired girl looked at me from across the counter with an expression of polite interest while I carefully considered my answer. To buy myself a little more time I took a few sips of the steaming creamy beverage.

There was no use pretending that I didn’t know what she was asking about. The weather had turned on me and I’d been caught out unprepared. This Texas-bred boy was slowly freezing despite donning all the riding gear I had stashed on the big Valkyrie motorcycle. After fueling I’d stumbled into the store and my hands were shaking so violently she’d had to help me pour the coffee. She’d also had to add the sugar and cream…I couldn’t even grasp the small packages, much less tear them open. I’d been riding in the freezing misty conditions for hours, and right now I just wanted, intensely, desperately, to get home.

I turned back to the window. Looking through my own reflection, the cold misty evening outside was cruel and repelling. This night’s conditions were going to be absolutely brutal. I shivered violently and wondered if maybe, just maybe, this could be the time I simply wouldn’t make it. Home was still an awfully long way away.

Why do I do it? Yah. Good question. Right then I was wondering that myself.

When I started writing the ‘Life Is a Road’ series, I hoped to include stories that helped to answer the question of: “Why ride?” For a time I thought I’d succeeded, but then found the occasion to wonder if I really had. How could it be possible that I had answered that question, or even attempted to answer that question, when many times I wasn’t sure of the answer myself?

I ride tens of thousands of miles every year, and have experienced extremes of the fantastical and the mundane, as well as everything in between. I’ve seen beautiful and stunning landscapes that could truly take my breath away, and just as often, I’ve ridden through hostile and forbidding places that seem to go on forever.

Folks often ask me why I choose to include certain stories in these books, and then completely fail to even write down others. The answer’s not clear. Some places, some people, some rides find a place in my memory. My experiences, both tragic and amazing write themselves into my soul long before they find themselves being put to paper. The tragic ones I used to write down and then shred. I suppose I was hoping this in some way would help me purge them from my experience…cleanse them from my soul.

That would be the easy way. Yeah, I know, the easy way seldom works. In the end, we are the sum of our experiences. All of them, good, bad, magical, and mundane, make us what we are and help determine what we can become. We can’t hide from our past.

In this volume I’ve chosen a series of short stories I hope help to illustrate that.

The clerk was waiting. Despite all my experience, despite all those rides, right then, standing there, I found myself completely unable to answer what for me should be a simple question. I looked out at the cold and hostile wind-swept world, lonely, uncertain, and shaking from the cold, and simply wondered why.

I glanced at the heavy cruiser and even in the gray light and covered with road-grime she still seemed to call for me. The trees across the road whipped in the wind and a smattering of sleet rattled and skipped across the parking lot. The windows of the store shook in the moaning wind and distorted my reflection. It was cold. It was ugly. It was brutal. But it was time.

I. Simply. Had. To. Ride.

I turned to the young lady, crunching my now empty coffee cup and tossing it in the trash. She was eyeing me closely. Hers had not been an idle question and I was taken aback that I didn’t have a ready answer for her.

My mouth worked. The windows rattled, as the sleet, heavier now, blew under the canopy to bounce off them. I looked up sharply at the noise. I’d have to work hard to get south before the roads got too bad to navigate the big machine on. That would be a challenge, but already my heart quickened, looking forward to the prospect.

It is the experience that drives me. Excitement, passion and lust for the journey are parts of my core. I learned long ago that life is a road, and it’s how we travel that road and what we see and do along it that define us, not some intended destination at the end of it. It’s really not about life—it’s not about getting there. It’s about living—it’s about what we do along the way. I smiled. Yeah. That’s it. I did know.

I pushed open the door and winced at the cold blast of air that cascaded into store. I had an answer for her, but I wasn’t sure what she’d make of it. Why do I do it? As I forced my way into the harsh, darkening, windswept evening I stopped and said over my shoulder with a grin, “It’s about the ride babe. It’s all about the ride.”

Life is a road. Live. Ride. See. Fly.

Are you ready?

Copyright 2008 Daniel Meyer. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Buy The Book