Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Responsibly and, as I would discover at 5:45 AM this morning, rather fruitlessly, I turned in at midnight sharp yesterday evening, hoping to claim a full seven-and-a-half hours of sleep. But before I hit hour six, I woke to the sound of that goddamn motorcycle from the nearby apartment complex, going through its warmup routine. Now, you might say it was better I slept early anyway, since the revving was bound to wake me, but a broken stretch of rest is just as rough as a solid, albeit truncated portion of sleep.

I understand that much like cars, motorcycles fare better with a start-up period. The engine needs to ease its way back to life, after all, and hitting the accelerator mere seconds after jamming in your key certainly doesn’t do it any favors. The fundamental question, though, is whether your start-up period requires revving the fucking thing for 10, 15 minutes, while smooth R&B pipes through those tinny speakers, and then gunning the engine like a bat out of hell.

Whenever Evel Knievel finally achieves liftoff, leaving me in that hazy purgatory between wakefulness and oblivion, my thoughts go to a dark place, and not just because the sky is typically devoid of sunlight. I’ll be honest with you. Every time I listen to that crescendoing roar, I secretly hope to hear it cut short by the sound of crunching metal and glass, followed by an encore of sirens. Terrible, right?

I chastise myself for even entertaining such imagery, rationalizing that the fellow likely has a long drive to an unpleasant job that’s needed to make ends meet, and maybe the commute is the one bright spot in his day. Everybody has their things, right? I get it. I love that feeling of motion, too, and speeding down empty thoroughfares. Then, of course, I hear the follow-up whine as he pulls onto some side street, and it’s, like, I wish you all the best. I hope you make it back safely today, preferably as a smear on the grille of a Mack DayCab.