A Summer Ride

Ace took a ride on a typical summer day. It's the Fourth of July weekend and he was expecting a lot of traffic but it wasn't the case; it seemed like just another Saturday. The sunny blue sky was filled with billowy white clouds and even at 60 miles per hour the air was warm on his skin. Every ride has a different reason; some are just to get to a destination, some are to enjoy the scenery, or a cruise with your bros. Ace's ride this day was to enjoy the machine. He wanted to forget about work and the plethora of a-holes that complicate his life and enjoy the fascination of his youth; sitting somewhat motionless on a two wheeled machine made of multi-shaped metal that is powered by the fiery, repetitive ignition of gasoline fumes. A machine filled with tanks and tubes of combustible fluids that drive the oily pistons up and and spit hot noxious fumes from its barreled exhaust pipe. Its almost magical to twist the throttle on the handlebars and feel the instant response of rolling energy. Its a bedeviling thought that as the energy rolls you forward and your feet come off of the ground to find the foot pegs, that you stay balanced on two wheels. Yea, that's what Ace was after; and he found it.

After riding down some familiar two lane country highways, Ace approached an intersection in which he's ridden through many times, but this day he turned right to take a road he'd never traveled before. He was pleasantly surprised to pass a beautiful farm on the side of a hill.

The pasture fell away steeply off of the edge of the byway, exposing a vista view seldom seen in Florida. He stopped and took several pictures to add to his ride collection and would have liked to hangout there for a while but for the pickup trucks that sped closely by.

So he rode off and looped around to head back home. He found a favorite backroad and peeled off of the highway and glided onto it. It is a smoothly paved road that runs adjacent to a rock quarry. It gently rolls through a grassy thicket with bushy scrub trees. There aren't any lines on the pavement and Ace can swerve and slalom across the entire solitary artery and feel the weighty bike wondrously surrender to the sway of centrifugal force. The road then cascades down through a woods and you can feel the summer temperature instantly drop by at least 10 degrees in the shadowy tunnel. You can smell the murky cool dampness that transcends time as if it could be prehistoric, the same smell that originated with the earth. The road then proceeds out to an area of small gentlemen farms and bends roundly to the left splitting an old pine plantation. The 30 foot, sun baked slash pines are fragrant in their sentinel straight rows. The road narrows to nearly a single lane along the pastures of the Starlight Ranch. An oncoming white pickup truck slows and navigates to a stop, edging the passenger side tires into the grass to let Ace safely pass. They wave in acknowledged respect in passing. Ace rolls on along the fenced property canopied with Spanish Moss draped live oak trees as corralled horses graze on this summers day. The road ends back onto a two lane country highway. Ace checks for oncoming traffic before pulling back up onto the highway and twisting hard on the throttle. His Harley roars loudly to life and with the wind blowing through his hair he shifts wildly through the gears. Though his ride on this summers day would soon end, Ace has spent these moments of his life doing what he wanted, the way that he wanted. What's more American than that?