90 minutes from the west coast

Okay, first things first. I’m having mechanical trouble. Yesterday the bike started to have trouble downshifting into first. Then later in the day I lost the ability to get into first at all. Tricky. Fortunately, I limped it to my friend’s house. Last night ended with Dana, and Ken, and Zeke dining on whiskey glazed smoked salmon on their beautiful deck with a perfect gentle breeze. They are the definition of hospitality. I healed up last night. Hopefully, I can get the bike some healing today.

A few years ago I had an ongoing discussion with some friends about the concept of beauty. Now before you think you’ve stumbled on the wrong blog, give me a couple more paragraphs. Every now and again, we all stumble across something that impacts our senses in a way that makes us catch our breath. Beauty doesn’t GIVE us anything practical. We don’t need it in the same way we need food, shelter, water, …working motorcycles. And often the idea of beauty is attached to wildly different ideas of poetry, prose, music, paintings, clothing, architecture, dance, theatre, food, make up, sculpture, pottery… pick your art form. There’s an old Latin saying, “In matters of taste there can be no disputes.” The idea is that we all have our preferences and they cannot be argued away.

However, there does seem to be one universal acknowledgement of beauty that transcends history, culture, and ever changing taste. It’s crossed boundaries and lifetimes. Nature. In it’s limitless forms and colors and contexts, nature has always represented the idea of beauty. It’s inspires people to make other forms, maybe in some way trying to create something as complete, as fulfilling, as soul feeding as what we see in the natural world around us. My ride yesterday let me go through God’s handiwork.