Brian A. Hopkins
Adventure Stylin' Made Easy

Oklahoma Dualsport Rally
12 - 15 Oct 2006

-- A Squirrel for Breakfast --

My rides start in a variety of ways.  There is, of course, the packing that generally starts several days or even as much as a week in advance, an odd habit since in the days when I traveled all the time for my day job, I was always a last minute packer.  I guess my moto adventures just require a little more careful preparation and time to consider what I might need versus what I can stand to leave at home.  Weight consideration and the space available on the bike is always an issue.

For this ride, I had some yard work I needed to accomplish first, but I managed to have a little bit of fun doing it -- reference this story. I also needed to change the oil on the CRF, but decided to take the old oil to Lake Draper and cook it a bit more instead.  Rich and Daniel went with me, and Rich nabbed this photo with my camera:

Sometimes there's a varmint that needs its head blown off before I go (reference this story).  Or maybe the swimming pool needs covered.  Or Danny's bike needs wired so that he can finally use that heated vest he bought more than a year ago. It's always something, though, because ... well, because that's the way life is, always poking its finger in your ribs and saying, "Psssst!  Hey, buddy, got something here I need you to take a look at..."

This is the thing I love about life: that it's always interesting. Sometimes good interesting.  Sometimes bad.  But ALWAYS interesting.  You just have to keep your eyes peeled; pay close attention to what's going on around you.  Most people, I've observed, don't pay very much attention and they miss just about everything.  Me, I walk around with my eyes wide open, looking up, down, around and under things -- EVERYWHERE.

The thing I love about living out in the sticks is the critters.  (Yeah, even those damn gophers.)  Critters are always up to something, whether it's digging holes in my yard, stealing Lucky's dogfood off the back porch (surely she doesn't purposely share it with them?), weaving intricate webs, or just plain peering out of the woods at me, wondering, perhaps, exactly what I'm up to and thinking that the world is mighty interesting  as long as you keep your little critter eyes open and pay attention.  (Bear with me, Dear Reader, because all these thoughts will get tied together, explaining -- perhaps for the first time even to myself -- exactly why it is that I love riding motorcycles so much.)

So, this morning, I noticed something odd up on my roof.  (When was the last time you glanced up at your roof?)  There appeared to be something strange near the peak. Tufts of fur perhaps?  What the hell is it?

I retrieved my binoculars from the house for a closer look. The binoculars revealed ... FEET!  Holy crap, there were dismembered feet on my roof!  Naturally, this deserved further investigation, so I got the ladder out of my shop, scaled the roof (very steep!) ... taking the camera with me, of course.

What did I find?

Obviously, some hawk or owl had eaten a squirrel on my roof the night before ... or that very morning.

How freaky is that?!?!?

And just before a ride scheduled to span Friday the 13th?  Yikes!

When I emailed the two photos above to my mom and dad in Gulfport, MS, I was completely shocked when my mom replied with this photo, saying they had just found it in their yard:

(Photo courtesy of Nancy Hopkins.)

Oh my!  Squirrels everywhere are being murdered while we sit warm and snug in our homes!  While we load our bikes in preparation for some great offroading in the Kiamichi Mountains!  While Osama Bin Laden remains at large!  What can it all mean?  Surely these are signs of the coming Apocalypse?  The end is near!

That didn't stop me from saddling up and heading for Daniel's house Thursday morning, though. I mean, I might not be a He-Man, like James Pratt, but an ominous little omen or two ain't gonna keep me from a good stylin' opportunity like the Oklahoma Dualsport Rally!

Preparing for this ride -- pacing the floor in my office as I anxiously anticipated the adventure -- it occurred to me that the Harley-Davidson crowd have at least one thing right, whether they actually understand their mantra or not -- and that is the fact that riding is all about being free.  Pacing my office, I realized I was like an animal in a cage. More importantly, this was but one of many cages in which society had confined me. In which society has confined YOU.

We seal ourselves off in our homes, each year spending more and more time isolated from the outside world, reinforced by technology (television, telephones, computers and the internet, ebay, iPods, etc) and an ever diminishing focus on/interest in social interaction and fellowship. When we do go outside, we quickly transition to the cage that is our vehicle, once again disassociated/disconnected from the world around us by our air conditioning, our stereos, our tinted windows, and computerized suspension and handling systems that each year make operating a motor vehicle something even a chimpanzee could perform. (I could tell you all about how much trouble I had three years ago locating a Nissan pickup with a manual transmission.)  Sealed within the confines of our mobile cage, we might smell the dead skunk beside the road, simply because it packs such a potent odor, but, hurtling down the blacktop focused solely on our destination, we miss the subtle aroma of wildflowers beside the road or pine boughs leaning out over the pavement to fracture the centerline in a chiaroscuro of sunlight and shadow. We miss the tingle of ozone from an impending storm.  The purple hue of twilight as it paints the cumulus. The chill as the barometer drops.

We're no longer part of our world. Rather, we've become an outside observer ... and because, as I stated earlier, people are so inattentive, we're very poor observers. It's as if we've gone to the zoo only to focus on the glass wall that separates us from the Tiger, never really seeing the Tiger.  And, of course, it's not the Tiger that's caged. It's us.

Cages ... they're everywhere.  From the amalgamative shopping experience that is a Walmart Superstore to the modern classroom to your fenced-in back yard.  This is my space.  I tell myself I am safe here.  I tell myself none will intrude uninvited. The world can't touch me ... and, more's the pity, I am not touching the world. We're told time and time again how safe we are, by our leaders, by the manufacturers who hawk their products at the aforementioned Walmart ... by all those who desire to keep us confined to our cages where we can be consumerized in one fashion or another. This safety -- real or imagined -- is important to us because safety has become Society's number one concern (which is another soapbox topic altogether!). Risk of any sort is unacceptable, which is why 99.9% of the population are too terrified to ride a motorcycle. They've been told again and again how unsafe motorcycles are. What's more, they make a habit of constantly telling me how dangerous it is, as if I actually need them to tell me about something I've been doing the greater portion of my life.  "Maybe," I sometimes tell these well-meaning individuals, "I ride simply because it is dangerous." Of course, they don't understand this. It runs contrary to everything they've had drilled into them since Mama first said, "Baby, don't touch that flame because you'll get burned" ... (that same mother would be quick to point out the dangers of riding motorcycles)  ... since they surrendered their fingernail clippers to airport security in order to feel just a wee bit more protected from terrorists ... since they agreed to have metal detectors installed in their public schools.

Our cages confine us ... and eventually define us.

But on my motorcycle, I am free. The only compromise is my helmet, with its impenetrable tinted visor serving as perhaps my final cage, but this dichotomy gives me just enough of a shield -- a bit of anonymity or mystery  if you will -- to ensure I don't reveal too much of myself until I am ready. Revealed or not, however, the world and I interact. Co-mingle. Share each breath and exchange our molecules. Every scent comes to me clear and strong. The sun burns my flesh. The cold raises the hairs on my body. The rain sinks into my pores. The wind sings a song that echoes deep within my core. I am free and alive. Every ache and pain, every discomfort, is welcome. Every danger is appreciated for the challenge it represents, for the opportunity to rise above it and demonstrate that safety isn't bought by sealing oneself off from the world, but rather by training oneself to face everything the world is capable of throwing at you.

So I pace my various cages and await the next adventure. The clock ticks away each confined moment, time that I'll never get back, unbearable. I survive it all -- the office politics; the endless stupidity of this program and that program pushed down from upper echelon goobers who haven't a clue and nothing better to do than dream up programs which they hope will make them seem intelligent to the equally idiotic managers just up the endless food chain; the insincere people who actually think you're stupid enough to believe they're really interested in what you have to say, listening just long enough to be polite before moving on to what they really want from you; the religious zealots who think they have everything figured out; and on and on and on -- only by knowing that when the clock ticks past that last moment of incarceration, I can run from my cage, straddle my moto, that wonderful glorious life-affirming machine which surely has a soul every bit as adventurous as my own, and fly on the wings of exhilaration, skip the light fantastic just one more time before I pass this mortal coil, slip like a ghost though the endless miasma of those soulless individuals drifting back and forth in their cages.

Like the critters on my acreage, I exist within my world, an integral component ... not isolated from it.

And that, in part, is why I ride.