Never-Ending Rain

It’s a ten-hour ride from Knoxville to Chicago. By motorcycle. No dawdling. I’d enjoyed that ride many times before, but I knew it would be different this time. The weather maps indicated solid rain the entire way, the dolorous remnant of a hurricane that had battered the coast just days before.

OK. There’s a certain thrill inherent in riding a heavy machine through pouring rain at Interstate speeds. It gets real old. Real fast. It’s very much a “living in the now” experience. It’s surreal to hurtle through space, blinded by mist, stung by countless watery darts, slippin’ ’n slidin’, teetering on the edge of disaster every inch of the way. I pass an “outlaw” or two. Oh, one certainly pays one’s dues to be an outlaw! Those suckers truly suffer on days such as this...then again, I doubt many are riding all day and all night such as this fool. Riding in the rain, for hours on end, transports you to the world of never-ending rain. One comes to feel as if this is all that life is, and will ever be. Time loses all meaning. There’s simply roar and discomfort, blinding gray and constant chill in a never-ending dance with disaster. Strange world, that.

Life feels like that, too...some seasons...some years. I’ve been quite ill of late, and it’s come to feel like that endless ride from Knoxville to Chicago. Funny how it brings to sharp focus the only things I truly need: warm shelter, dry clothes, a warm glass of milk and a hand to soothe my furrowed brow.

* * *