This weekend I did a spur of the moment, last minute motorcycle trip from San Francisco to Santa Cruz along the coast of California along US-1 Highway. I woke up at 8:30 am and decided I want to get outside of the city. Then I got on my bike and started riding south at 12:00 noon and didn't come back until around 9:30pm. I packed a blanket, two books, an old film camera and a Polaroid then hit the road.
This has always been one of my favorite places to travel along. Starting out in the bustling city of San Francisco, winding my way through Golden Gate Park until I hit ocean beach and then embarking on my journey along coastal highway until I make the turn to go down to Pacifica and visit the most beautiful Taco Bell on earth.
After I reach Pacifica, I don't really have any plans, ideas or goals of what I want to get out of the day other than to just keep on cruising south. For miles I slope through wind sweeped trees, cruise parallel to the gentle and pristine Pacific and past small little beach towns. I love this ride not only for all the beautiful places to see, but for the mental clarity. I am riding at a cool 75 mph along the coast, with deafening winds bouncing around my bike and body. It feels like I'm encapsulated in an ocean of wind that out muscles all other noises and thoughts. It's unnaturally loud with the motorcycle revving at high rpm's, wind from riding, wind from the ocean, but I have a certain type of quite serenity inside my head. A type of mental quietness, that I am hard pressed to find in the throngs of San Francisco.
I usually have the whole host of mundane, trivial thoughts running through my head like what I have to do at work, what am I going to do tonight and can I go another week without doing laundry yet? Sprinkled in occasionally with the much larger questions of "what am I doing with my life?" or "Do I like how I am spending my time?" But when I am riding I have a sort of mental clarity that washes all other thoughts away. I think it's because I have to be so fully and completely engaged that I just don't have the immediate mental space to think about anything else. I have to be fully and totally present in what I am doing. Due to this intense de-cluttering of thoughts, engagement in the present and mental clarity; if often seems that riding for me is a sort of meditation. A sort of moving meditation that works just as well as any other type. I see things but try not to associate meaning too much with them, I have thoughts, but just let them zoom right by, and focus on my breathing and awareness of my body intently. So a nine hour meditation ride is a rad way to spend a Saturday.