EPILOGUE

"MIDNIGHT ON THE COAST HIGHWAY"

San Francisco, 1965

All my life my heart has sought a thing I

cannot name.

--Remembered line from a long-forgotten poem

Months later, when I rarely saw the Angels, I still had the legacy of the big machine -- four hundred pounds chrome and deep red noise to take out on the Coast Highway and cut loose at three in the morning, when all the cops were lurking over on 101. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head, but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz...

There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. Into first gear, forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out... thirty-five, forty-five... then into second and wailing through the light at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals. Then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water off a high board.

Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind... so, the lever goes up into fourth, and now there's no sound except wind. The needle leans down on a hundred, no room at all now for mistakes... and that's when the strange music starts.

The Edge,

there's 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. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both the means to an end, to the place of definition.

- Hunter s. Thompson

Annons

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February 2010