Just a kayaker and his motorbike.

It was foreign to me. A hunk of metal, plastic, gas. It sat idly in the dying grass of my boss’s lawn. With great care I swung my tight jean leg over the soft cushion of the seat, and turned the key. It muttered to a start. With fuel choked coughs and gags, the engine came to life. My hand tightened, the clutch engaged, my foot slammed the pedal into gear. With care I eased up on the clutch, the motor bike rolling forward. Slowly at first my hand relaxed completely, the gears fell into place, and I weaved toward the dirt road in front of my Chilean boss’s country home. I took a left handed turn for a short circuit to a gate a little ways down the road and back, the dirt flying from my back tire. I tensed my hand, lifted my foot, and engaged second gear. My cheeks and eyes sang in the new found breeze. My hair waving triumphantly in the overcast fall sky, I made it to the gate, tentatively turned around, and slowly navigated my way back to his house. “That was easy enough” I thought as I reached his driveway, turning my bike back in the opposite direction.

Confidence intoxicated my body as headed for lap number two. After kayaking for years this was pretty straightforward in comparison, or so it seemed. I clicked the clutch into first gear, and puttered forward. A few meters more and my foot lifted, the pedal clicked, and I was in second. The engine whined for more. My foot lifted, the pedal clicked, and I was in third. I was coming up on thirty kilometers an hour. Trees rushed past my face, my breath quickened, my senses were heightened. “I see why people like this sort of thing” I thought as my foot lifted one more time, engaging fourth gear, over forty kilometers an hour now. The trees but a blur now, my eyes locked on to the wet dirt in front of me. Left turn, I moved my body, my wheel caught, and I headed for the dirt embankment to the right. I went for the clutch thinking it was my break, I didn’t slow he engine only screaming in confusion. “Oh shit I am on a dirt bike, that is not the back break that is my clutch!” I thought before slamming my front brake has hard as I could. My body lurched forward. I was airborne. I flinched as I rag dolled toward the soft wet dirt. My hair flailing wildly in the air. No helmet. As I floated swinging my limbs in all sorts of odd erratic directions, I though about why I had bought a motor bike. Why? It seemed now as contact with the cold earth was imminent, this had been a bad decision. Not my worst, but then again how many good decisions was I making these days? “Fuck it.” Count down to impact was in affect.

“So you want to care take my house in Palguin?” he asked, “You will need a motor bike or something to get to town every week for groceries and such” My boss had told me months earlier. We where sitting in his house forty five minutes from town, only meters from one of my favorite rivers. The early spring sun had drifted behind the towering green, densely forested mountains to the south. These words hung in my head. They wore on my mind as I spent everyday guiding tourists down the Liucura river, teaching them the basics of kayaking, and finding my limits of patience. Every trip logged in the company books, was another step in achieving my freedom. The ability to go anywhere with just a flick of the wrist and a push of the foot.

A months wages, a few weeks later, and one of my friends had come across the deal of the year. A cheap 2012 Chinese brand dirt bike, hardly used, practically new. We asked if we could borrow the company van to go check it out, then rushed out towards the near by small town of Lican Ray. My buddy Nico drove, it was his connection that had brought us to this moment. I sat the passenger’s seat a bottle of Tequila in my hand, a common occurrence these days. “You know when we get there, I am going to pretend like this bike is terrible, just horrible. Like it has problems” I said in slurred Chilean Spanish. “I will say, ‘no this bike isn’t for me. Thank you, but no thank you’ and when he lowers the price I will say, ‘well come to think of it I do need a bike’ and then there we go, I will have a bike”

Nico listened, knowing with every swig I took the less likely my strategy was.

A few minutes later we swung right up a gravel road, to the entrance to a nice well kept house. A guy around my age emerged, greeted us, then pushed the bike out into the light.

It seemed to sparkle. It may have been the tequila but my heart jumped. Suddenly dreams of driving North into the desert, into the unknown exploded into my head, my imagination always influencing me badly. It was mine. There was no way I was l leaving with out the bike. Before he said more than a few words, I glanced at Nico, he nodded, and blurted “I’ll take it.”

In the first ten minutes of driving the air had tasted sweet. Now I knew the ground would be more bitter, and it was approaching fast. My shin caught the mirror, causing it to have an early demise. The dark red of blood slid down my leg as my shoulder smacked the earth. I slid for a moment, bulldozing the granite soil of the road with my body, stopping in a cloud of dust and defeat.

I rolled onto my back, the last dying coughs of my bike echoing into the late afternoon air. The ash gray blanket of clouds above greeted my swirling confused shocked eyes. “Did that really just happen?” was all I could think, “did I really just crash?” I sucked in a vacuum like breath roaring it out into the earth. “This will never happen again. I need to get better at this” came my next thought. “Never stop. Never accept defeat. Always work towards being better. Always work toward what you love. What gives you a sense of freedom.” I flipped onto my stomach, and quaked to my feet. I wobbled for a moment like a four in the morning drunk, before the world returned to me. I shuffled toward my dead bike. I helped it to its feet and clicked it to life. It struggled for a moment, then slipped away into silence. “God dammit. First day and I broke it!” my brain screamed, lamenting the decision. I flipped the kickstand into place, then fell back to the ground. I sat there, eying the strange metal beast, its dead energy confusing me. I was a kayaker, not a person of metal, gears, combustion. “What had I done? What was I doing? This is not me…”

I stood and started to walk away. Suddenly a thought occurred to me. “Gas.” I had just bought it, surely it was not full of gas. I jogged back toward the bike, and quickly twisted off the gas cap. Dry. I knew it. I pumped my fist into the air! There was still hope for me and metal yet.

My foot lifted, my hand tensed, I clicked into fourth. The asphalt blinked past my eyes. The yellow line all but a blur. I smiled, the vibration of the motor massaging my soul. It had been a few weeks since that first day. “Freedom!” I thought. I was finally free of it all. Free of dependency. I could go wherever, whenever. My hand tensed, my foot lifted, the motor shouted in relief, as I clicked it into fifth. The needle obediently creaked past one hundred kilometers an hour. “Faster!” I yelled. The needed wobbled, wavered, then gave into my command headed toward one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour. The vibration of the motor stole into my soul. I watched as eucalyptus trees blurred past, cars slowly faded into my brake lights, and my breath slowed. “Faster” was all I could think. I leaned forward, my hands tensed, the world had become but a bubble. Forget it all. Forget everything. Just beat one twenty. I couldn’t. The intersection came too soon. My hand and foot dancing to downshift in time to gracefully meet civilization. I rolled into town, weaving past collevtivos, hitting speed bumps too fast, making illegal turns here and there. It was not that I sought destruction, nor risk. It was that I had found freedom. I had found freedom outside of the water. Outside of my mind, and deep inside the whiny predictable motor of a plastic machine. I shuddered at this thought. I swung my bike around in the direction of my new home. My foot lifted, my hand tensed, I was in forth, and I was head back to the mountains. I was headed back to life.