(photo P Volker)
scramble – make one’s way quickly or awkwardly up a steep gradient or over rough ground by using one’s hands as well as one’s feet.
Back in the olden times, back in the mid 1960’s, I made a big purchase of a 305cc Honda Scrambler motorcycle. For that time and place and me it was an awesome machine. Mine was black although the advertising pic of Roy Rodgers with his showed a red one. I remember they had three models with the 305 engine a sporty runabout, a cushy road bike and the gnarly all business Scrambler. It was an easy choice.
But back to today, to the here and now of early early 2021. Scramble was the word I came up with this morning to describe the present times for me, for us. Life is never easy, right? But from this last year onward it seemed like the whole playing field has been tilted and not in our favor. Now we scramble where before we walked.
I think we just have to take that in and not let it frustrate us. It is always easy to have unrealistic expectations and the accompanying frustrations. Learning to downshift a gear and slow down is what I see as a Way for now.
though not tilted loves, Felipé.
Hola Felipe y Ryck,
This is going to be a “double-barrelled” comment, targeting both of you. You first, Felipe. My 60’s bike was a Suzuki TS 250 SAVAGE. A brawling, crawling, brash desert machine. I rode it on all the tank training trails in Northern Okinawa, and took it all apart and put it in handmade (from mahogany plywood) boxes and shipped it to Marine Corps Base, Twentynine Palms, CA. Don’t ask any detailed questions about any of that, OK? I put it back together one small piece at a time, and it ran like an unleashed Road Runner. The second and third “dumbest things of my life” were done on that bike. Don’t ask about the top dumbest. Cathy would ride with me on the back of the seat out into the vastness of Joshua Tree National Park, and then I would kill the engine and we would coast silently down the long, long descent into 29 Palms. Magic days.
Ryck, your reminiscing about the “house on the hill” was so totally spot on. It was a particularly hot day and I had already been walking for forty some days when I passed by that sight, and it literally drew me off the path and up the slope of the hill toward the house. I flopped down under a tree and allowed myself for probably the first time since I had left home to become “home-sick” for my wonderful Cathy and family waiting for me in Iowa. It was something about the house and the hill that set it off, though there was nothing really similar to my home in the view available there. I remember writing about it that night in my Daily Blog. There were old familiar songs competing for space in my brain as I laid there, but i can’t pick any one out in particular. But reading your account brought it back with a rush. I was looking back through my pix of the trip, thinking I took some at that spot, but I didn’t find any. Maybe that’s just as well, since they might not fit exactly with the way I’m remembering it now almost 8 years later. But, thanks to you for the “jog” of those sweet memories.
PFJ ~ the two of us got you all pumped up! Right, won’t ask about any details. Yea, my motorcycle era was memorable also. Everyone should have one.
And Ryck’s post was awesome. Thanks for relating your story on that. Felipé.