Daydreaming

An ordinary day like any other. A red light. An unsuspecting span of San Diegan road. This is the setting for what is about to take place. As I sit on the tarmac awaiting the green atop my vehicle's purring engine, a convertible enters the scene. As he pulls up I glance over. Eye contact is made. A slight nod is exchanged. I turn my eyes to the road ahead, a grin curling around the edges of my lips. The light has suddenly become a countdown; zero can happen at any second. I kick the bike into first, clutch in, waiting for what seems to be an eternity. Seconds tick by; feeling more like millennia than tiny fractions of a minute. Then, in the blink of an eye, the unspoken moment arrives. Before the orb of green can fully illuminate, time slows. My body reacts as only it knows how, infinitely faster than normally required. The clutch is forgotten, throttle cranked to full. The sleeping beast centimeters below my seat screams to life like a wild banshee straight out of hell. I put all my weight forward, but the front wheel still manages to defy the gravitational laws of the Earth. Twenty miles an hour disappears as quickly as forty does. Gears are consumed faster than they can be fed, and the lust for speed becomes all-encompassing. The opponent is forgotten about, left in the exhaust fumes. But he has not given up. A quick glance in the mirror confirms this. One hundred comes up out of nowhere, and vision becomes single focused, the landscape and road smearing away into colorful oblivion. A single obstruction comes into view: traffic moving at a comparable standstill. A twitch of my knee sends me a lane over, a steady hand keeps me in control. My opponent chooses the opposite lane and soon we are head to head, moving in and out of seemingly parked vehicles in a fashion that an observer might compare to a ballroom dancer shuffling cards. Mind, machine, and body are one, yearning for exponentially greater velocity. Nothing else matters. In this moment, life has no other meaning. Suddenly, in the distance, a flash of yellow, and then a steady red. My body works in reverse, slamming pegs downward while micromanaging both brakes. My bike finally comes to an idle pace, a rhythm that my heart is nowhere near. I glance to my side once more. The man in the convertible smiles and nods. I give a short salute. The red light continues to glare at us like a disapproving mother. Green comes once more. I go left, he goes straight; our shared experience not about to be forgotten. As I think the events of the last three minutes over, a smile comes uninhibited.

*I actually didn't do this, but I've wanted to write something of this sort for the past day or so.