Here are some post-scripted thoughts on this gent.

When my riding brother passed the age of 70 many years ago, he had one of the best minds of all my acquaintances. It had not been destroyed by madness, frailty of the body, or starved hysterically naked into clicking endlessly on digital internet ads or cat video hot links. Despite his recent storm riding, his mind remains sharp and focused.

As he had been in his beloved Corps, he has remains a man in full who challenges himself and those around him with all his heart. To its aficionados motorcycling often gives riders the opportunity to be courageous and reckless to a degree only found in the military during combat, yet civilian society surprisingly condones and licenses it. A motorcycle is in fact a singular human device for combining solitude, good company and the sublimely scary. And for some obscure reason in my friend’s case, motorcycling in a hurricane was also a proper medium for such an insane extravagance.

It is not often the clear sighted who successfully lead men into battle nor the change world for the better during peacetime. In my experience, great achievements have often been accomplished by those possessed by a blessed, warm, mental fuzziness that accompanied an obsessive desire to explore and test limits. Someday, I hope he shares with me what he intended to accomplish here.

Finding two wheeled fulfillment and peace under troubled skies and snapping trees is difficult but not impossible. For after those dangers pass, there will always be a jukebox somewhere playing Elvis, a Subway for the empty growling stomach, and another quiet moment to consider the next leg of the journey.

Marlow

October 12 2018
Crazy Great
Coastal Empire

​Robert Duval in The Great Santini

I have a friend, who is a former Vietnam era F-4 aviator. He picked up the motorcycling habit back in his mid 50s, when I, a thousand mile away, also reacquired that addiction from my teens and twenties. In yesterday’s morning darkness, I thought to ask him via email how he and his long abiding bride, Saint Margaret (his respectful nickname for her), were doing as Hurricane Michael’s eye passed over their South Carolina abode.

As a preface, I must tell you that when introducing him to the members of civil society, I would advise the innocent, the naive and those with poor self images or incapable of self defense that he had flown all of the airborne F-4 scenes for the movie The Great Santini.

So, it was no surprise that he responded thusly later that day:

At this moment, I am in a Subway in Tupelo Mississippi, home of the King, after following the eye up to SC. When I last talked to the wise one, she was following me and the storm on her phone and all was well.

(Please also note that the “wise one” made him install a satellite tracking device on his motorcycle years ago.)

Very few of us are Santini the Great or the Not So Great. Most of us did not come from behind the moon, out of the dark, or unannounced. Yet, both my friend and I did face the same problem decades ago when we left military service — we had no war, journey, or quest to embrace. So, we created them. Mine were long distance motorcycle riding the world’s blue highways and seeing my bucket list of places.

I loved riding with this unapologetic, unforgiving, manly man whose soul came from times long since past. When his behavior from time to time became insufferable, my response was to utter in front of members of the public, especially the fairer sex, the only words that could cause him to halt — “Bite me.” And, his warrior code needling would cease. Together we didn’t water down, bend, make logical, or edit our souls’ passions according to fashion. Rather, as we did then, he still follows his most intense obsessions mercilessly.

Greatness of soul does not end when one leaves, once and for all, the cockpits of a nation’s warplanes. It comes not with the saddle of a rumbling, Harley Davidson, big twin powered scooter. No, it comes from a crazed but loving heart.

Ride to live, live to ride.

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