“The Edge…There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others-the living-are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
My late mother, who taught first one-room school and later special ed, recognized early on that I could not sit still, and that I was always interested in three things at once. She worked with my teachers to help them see I was not trying to be disruptive, that I just couldn’t sit still. She also worked with me on better focusing my attention. I suspect on the spectrum of hyperactive – attention deficit disorder, I’m somewhere to the right of “normal.” The thing that I always appreciated is that my mother always recognized that and helped me harness it to my benefit rather than try to coerce or drug it out of me. (For the record, my mother never did approve of my motorcycle riding.)
My father also recognized it. All my life I’ve had an interest in photography and journalism, as well as science. My father, as well, had interests in all these areas. But my father went into physics – first nuclear physics and later acoustics, while I studied science journalism, anthropology and sociology. In a conversation Dad and I had several years (decades?) ago, he noted quite accurately that I did not have the patience for physics, and he did not have the impatience for journalism.
Ralph and Howard on Idaho 55.
I’ve never viewed this as a handicap or defect – rather I view it as being different. But it does mean that I’ve always been in motion. The local newspaper wrote a story about me a couple of years ago when Howard and I returned from our trip to British Columbia, the Yukon, and southern Alaska with the headline “Ralph Hanson Likes to Go.” Truer words were never written.
I’m home now, recovering from my injury. I mishandled some deep gravel on a dirt road. I’ve got a hairline sacral fracture that keeps me from putting much weight on my right leg. In addition to the mobility difficulties, I have a low level ache associated with it. Being stuck in the house and limited by crutches is pretty hard on me, but it’s even harder on my Dear Wife, who has to pick up all the slack from the things I can’t do.
I’ve long been a fan of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. He was another one who was always in motion and found excitement and pleasure from motorcycles. (Also from alcohol and drugs, which are not my style…) He wrote a lot about being in motion (The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and perhaps most notably The Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga.) Almost everything he wrote was about discovering limits. But as much as I have always admired Thompson for his writing, I’ve always found my limits at a much lower level than he has. In his legendary article for Cycle World magazine, “Song of the Sausage Creature,” Thompson wrote:
Some people will tell you that slow is good – and it may be, on some days – but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I’ve always believed this, in spite of the trouble it’s caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba….
But while I’ve never lived the sentiment of the quote, I’ve always loved it. I suppose in my own mind I’ve always substituted “motion” for “speed.” And except when I’ve been executing a pass on a secondary road, I’ve never felt a big need for lots of power and instant speed on tap.
I suspect that’s why in the 20 years I’ve been riding as an adult, more than 10 of them have been spent on two different Kawasaki KLR 650s. This is a single-cylinder motorcycle that has 35 horsepower on a good day. It has many virtues, including that it can go almost anywhere, but speed is not one of them. But the KLR excelled at keeping me in motion.
With this most recent injury, I have cause to ask myself where my limits are. I have seen how close to the edge I’m willing to go. I suspect that riding on two-track mountain dirt roads more than 1,000 miles from home is on the other side of how close I can go. But I know I need to stay in motion, and a motorcycle is a great way to do that.
Howard’s and my route through the Idaho backcountry. Funny that the track ends in what looks like a question mark.