Life and Island Times July 23 2016 – Day One Minutiae

This one is from 2013.

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Editor: As a professional keeper of secrets since his early youth, Marlow was apprehensive about committing to writing the intimate details of his existence that might be revealed to others. Jotting down his reactions to that first day’s ride consequently proved an uneasy task. A reporter should never be the story, so he thought. His just-the-facts approach would reveal truth. It always had.

As he rewrote his trip journals, he discovered that he had confused secrets with mysteries. As a pre-Vatican II Catholic he had accepted that life’s mysteries were unknowable; secrets, however, were.

With nothing in his honeyed life seemingly at risk of being lost or compromised, he decided that night to take the leap. The important thing about mysteries, he said to me later was not that mysteries are unknowable but that they are unpredictable. Moreover, that meant he could no longer ignore them.

As a spook, he had worked hard to identify, explore, describe and counter opponents’ secretive and mysterious behaviors. He looked for the new and the unusual in a search for discontinuities which often upon reflection revealed insights into opponent’s intentions and potential secret weaknesses. Along with fellow war gamers he practiced what-iffing. When planning or supporting contingency operations, it was brainstorming. He kept his ear to the ground. Mental energy daily poured forth into these usual grooves and avenues enabled analysts to pierce the gauzy veil that hides.

Somehow without knowing really why, he sensed that no meaning would come from a simple elicitation and arranging of the facts, numbers, the who’s, and that is what we saw in the last section which he shared with friends soon after the trip.

With some trepidation he began that night on grocery store paper bags.

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Reflections

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for vast and endless sea. Antoine de St Exupery

Cohongarooton has wondrous old brick and wooden ship ballast cobble stone streets on which my bike rumbled today. We passed sunrise rose-hued, row houses built by mariners centuries ago. Very few homes were stirring with the new day’s activity. My Harley’s headlight illuminated them like a candle moving about in a tomb. At this hour of the day, the last day of the week, the southeast quadrant’s streets were deserted. When I came upon the George Washington Parkway, the broadening tidal river vista felt infinite. Gazing at the shore’s and roadside’s manicured appearance for the vehicular and pedestrian use of the public, I over-shifted causing the bike’s engine to stumble, stagger and then nearly quit. The resulting gag of fuel-enriched, muffler soot almost choked me as the bike jerked about. Was this an ancient seadog warning of destruction that lay ahead? A sign of traps that awaited those who let their attention slip? The sun’s hastening orange hues accompanied my down shifting and up-throttling the bike back on a steady course. Thus cautioned, I gathered myself upon hearing the bike’s growl that announced our presence. We pushed on to open the doors of the vast unknown interiors that lay ahead.

Motoring on, the bike came upon dimly lit, tree covered Northern Virginia byways of centuries past. Forsaken by traffic once they were skirted by new multi-lane commuter arteries, these thoroughfares brightened in the early morning, revealing seasonal tranquil beauty to their infrequent visitors. Looking up from the curvy roadbed of Hoos Road, I saw the weathered sign that announced the narrow wooden bridge of worn hardwood planks which crossed Knitocca Creek. Almost two centuries ago, Hoos Road was built by a Dutch ferry owner and operator on the Occoquan River to increase inland grain and tobacco farmer use of his service. It had long been a dirt and then gravel path up until the early nineteen seventies. Crossing the bridge and driving almost straight up to the hairpin and S-curves at the top had always held a Deliverance-like attraction for local motorcyclists. When covered with wet leaves or ice, the unwary would wipe out into the hairpin’s steep dirt banks.

Slowing to cross the bridge, the creek’s torrents from the previous night’s thunder storms washed me with a misty spray. This not unwelcomed shower made me shudder. The creek’s unruly waters, the bridge’s dilapidated timber deck and wood and iron beam structure and the road’s narrow unfriendliness would likely not long survive the burgeoning mass housing development needs of the imperial Capitol city.

Rather than mourn their coming passing, I mulled over my growing fascination with these types of queer places and structures when the bike came to a straighter section of the road. These places earthly ruin and gentle austerity stood in stark contrast with the rest of region’s cold hardscape.

But no more grief for things in decay could I afford for we were craving what only long distance motorcycling to vernal springs could provide. There might be plenty of things like this yet to come.

But first let me introduce you to my riding partner.

I had spent almost thirty straight years in the close company of the riotous noise and affection of sailors. Whenever the day’s work was done in port or upon gaining liberty after many months at sea, we would roll into a town like starving wild bears who had just exited their wintry caves in the Rocky Mountains. We would make a straight wake for the closest bar where drinks were poured all around. The liquor would soon reach our brains, diminishing whatever limited capacity for self-control we possessed, and we would begin frolicking about most raucously.

None of these behaviors could survive the daily hazards astride a vibrating two wheeled, high horse powered machine along roads of anonymous quality, let alone the probity of small towns which lay beyond the beltways of east coast big city life. So it was never contemplated that I would invite a shipmate on such a voyage.

Until I saw one such fellow two wheeled mariner who held himself somewhat distant while motorcyclists would engage in day-trip, bar-hopping. While not wanting to spoil the merriment of his brother riders with a sober face, he refrained from as much hell-raising as possible.

Steve stood six feet in height, with broad shoulders, the arms of a weight lifter and the physique of a short track runner. His voice was without accent, perhaps foretelling of much travel during his youth. Such a face! It stopped all women in their tracks and struck them mute. His almond shaped brown eyes, bronzed skin and Chippendale male stripper good looks acted like curare on the tender set. During some meals and gasoline station stops in the past, a snail trail would form about him. What was more amazing was his utter indifference to all of this flushed estrus floating about him. When he rode, what you saw was what you got. He anticipated well; small flaws due to long distance riding inexperience needed correction only once; and his road reading and reactions were one hundred percent predictable, reliable and safe.

To be continued.

Copyright © 2016 From My Isle Seat