Happy.
Breathing. Reaction. Focus. Riding single track on a moto, as fast as you can - 1st, 2nd, 3rd, clickclick 1st, 2nd, 1st - bike moving underneath you, on the pegs pulling the front end up and laying it into a tight right-hander, breathing, smiling, and then hard on the gas again, locking in again. The combination of everything working together - you, the bike, the trail, the morning. Smell overload, pockets of sage so strong it almost stings, a.m. freshness that makes even the hottest summer, or the wettest fall seem perfect. And the sound. Anyone that says that the sound of a moto doesn’t matter, is just not in tune with what they’re experiencing. The unconscious, super-satisfying connection between wrist-throttle movement and the sound that it creates is something that I find myself being acutely aware of pretty much all ride long. The happiness of Braaaap. And when you’re nearing the end of your session - your random connection of single track and 70 mph fire roads that you do over and over and over again, nearly every day – flat tracking out the gravel and dirt road, pulling high-speed wheelies over the huge speed bumps/water breaks toward the short piece of pavement that leads to home, everything starts to slow down even though you’re going 60. Life is much, much slower than riding. Which seems impossible, because, well, life seems pretty fucking fast.