Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Aug 30, 2006

Bastions

Today I did a nice 180 mile round trip to Stockton and back, to visit a friend and do some snarfing.

To my delight, we found a statue celebrating one General Gridley–whose claim to fame was selling the same bag of flour over and over again to make money for good causes of the time.

Maybe not remarkable…but just yesterday, I logged a snarf for the Gridley Store in Austin, Nevada. Same Gridley. Talk about a small world! I squee’d a lot.

All but the most experienced riders have “last bastions” of riding to cross…mine have been u-turns and lane-splitting. On the freeway coming home, near Tracy, an SUV decided to crash so hard that it landed and balanced on its hood. This crunched traffic somewhat. Eventually I got tired of overheating and split lanes for several miles. I have never split lanes before. Thus, I crossed a last bastion. I can split lanes, now.

Because I waited so long to get my courage up, I dehydrated, and took a break. The easiest way to leave my break spot was to do a u-turn. It wasn’t a very elegant one, but I did it anyway. Interestingly, this feels less of a last bastion than a process. I feel I won’t have much trouble splitting lanes in the future, but that I will still have to work at my u-turns.

And now, I’ll amuse myself by watching my cat attempting to catch a fly. ;-)