mistress

i went out on another hwy 40 ride the other day. this time i wanted to get up into the snow line. before i left my wife asked me where i was headed and i told her i wasn't quite sure. jokingly she said to me "you seeing someone else on these trips out?" i assured her that my only date that day was the road. and as i rode along i began to ask myself what is it that draws me up and down this old road?
part of it is like learning a song by practicing over and over. it becomes familiar, a part of you. the old roads have so much more romance. you're gliding up and down hills twisting back and forth with the landscape instead of cutting through it. the scale also is more human on two lane roads, and i feel i am a living conscious part of all of it. like God's child out to play. and as i passed beneath the one lane train trestles i felt the closeness of the transcontinental railroad and was transported back in time.

you move through little towns along the old main streets and then out again into back country. i passed roads with names like "yankee jim's" and "you bet" and saw so many folk walking along the roadside apparently unaware that this used to be the highway.
and as i rode along i also saw the lincoln highway markers reminding me that this is a part of america's first coast to coast road. i thought about lewis and clark and their quest for a river passage that would link the two coasts and when it was discovered there was not one, thomas jefferson's ultimate decision that there should be a "national road" instead.

i guess that's the other thing i'm interested in. so many people when they ask directions say "how do you get there?", and i'm always wondering how did we get here?