Gently
by Titus Gee
Little Tujunga Canyon, in the San Gabriel Mountains, swoops and dives like a hawk playing on a gusty day. Find the line and it rides better than your favorite roller coaster, but there ain’t much room for error.
The superbike speed freaks that burn past me out there, probably think I drive like an old guy, on my 25-year-old cruiser. It’s true I don’t push the envelope, mostly, but I do love taking a perfect bank at speed, feeling the tires grip and G-forces turning the world on edge. I do like to fly.
My passenger had never gone this way with me before. No one had. Last thing I needed on this road was dead weight on the saddle leaning the wrong direction. Anybody else riding with me and we would have gone around. (I didn’t tell her that, of course.) But we had lots of practice.
My shaded visor hid a grin of anticipation as we eased into the first set of curves, limbering up. Energy seemed to flow out of the pavement into the Nighthawk’s tires, sizzling through the contact points of my feet and knees and fingers. We picked up speed, finding the rhythm of the hills and corners, becoming the bird of prey. My passenger seemed to hold her breath in the tight curves, then whooped and laughed on the straightaway.
But not for long.
We came grinning around a sweet, hilltop bend and pulled up short behind a dopey little two-door cage with “Student Driver” plastered across the back. Some sadistic drivers ed instructor had picked this Saturday afternoon to drag his second worst student up the most winding road in 50 miles.
It must have been the remedial class, too. This kid had trouble staying between the lines on straight stretches, forget about the curves. I wondered how many brake-pumping heart attacks he’d gotten from superbikes that had buzzed past us hugging the edge of disaster. Now he was spooked and crawling down the canyon like an acrophobe on a window ledge in the Windy City.
I dropped it into second and let the Nighthawk idle, watching for an opening but not willing to take the oncoming lane on a series of blind corners bordered by oblivion. There were pullouts, but Junior wasn’t pulling. Curve after delicious curve slipped through our spokes.
I flipped the visor back to chat with my passenger and she laughed at my grumblings. Look at the brilliant sky, she said, rugged, breeze-rustled mountains bright in the California sunshine. At this speed we could even hear the birds.
I still grumbled, but my grin started coming back. Near the bottom of Little Tujunga Canyon, Pokey and the Sadist finally pulled off and set us free.
Hello, throttle!
The wide, sweeping ecstasy of Big Tujunga Canyon soon cleared the grumble out of my internal pipes and brought the grins back full strength. We jogged up Angeles Forest Highway to The Crest. Climbing, curving, soaring through a hundred famous corners. Motor lovers come from all over to ride here, even though the road has been a dead end for half a decade. (Big storms in ’05 scraped miles of asphalt off the mountain side, and Caltrans spent more than four years putting it back.)
I felt my brain melting into the road. Pavement Meditation, I like to call it. Throttle, brake and lean and throttle and lean and brake and grip and burn the straightaway and lean . . .
A pat on my shoulder broke the spell and I looked up. A tiny, gloved hand pointed to the right and I throttled back to look. Holy Smoke, what a view! The road here was stapled to the rock above a sheer abyss, and stretching out below us, framed by evergreens, the whole of Southern California in miniature. And beyond my passenger’s finger, hanging motionless a stone’s throw off and above it all, a hawk. The genuine raptor. Sleek and sharp and perfect, flying an effortless benediction over our journey.
The road never swallowed me again, that day. We cruised up to Newcomb’s Ranch in third gear, drinking in the landscape with hungry souls. We grabbed a bite and headed back as late afternoon shimmered toward sundown.
We got halfway down the mountain before the sunset climaxed in a rush of color so brilliant it taught me the true meaning of the words “heart-wrenching beauty.” It struck like a physical blow and held me rapt, hardly breathing. We slowed to a crawl, my passenger hugging me tight and fairly vibrating with wonder. I tried to look for a place to pull off but each new viewpoint seemed to outshine the last. I couldn’t stop for fear of missing the next intoxicating vista. So we rolled down the mountain, enraptured.
As the light began to fade, the colors coalesced into a shining curtain of vibrant, golden orange rising from the horizon to caress the first stars of evening, throwing the mountains into deep black silhouette. Gradually, it slipped, shimmering, over the horizon leaving us breathless.
This was Beauty.
This was Transcendence.
This was Awe.
It marked us. And months later my heart still races a little at the memory . . .
To the rocket jocks who chose that moment to buzz past us at 90 on their way to a sudden stop, or a night of keg stands and Irish car bombs:
You missed it.
Maybe next time, take a lesson from the old guys on their cruisers.
Cool it off a little. Slow it down a bit.
Feel the smooth curve of the road and the soft hug of the girl behind you.
Drink in a little sunset as it fades to evening stars.
Take it gently.
Just once in a while.
