Sunday 29 December 2013

Life & Bikes: The Spiritual Recharge.

Joni Mitchell wrote Woodstock about the incredible music festival held in 1969 in New York State. Crosby Stills and Nash recorded a version of it… after adding a line.


We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon;
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden"

Do you know what the change was?

"We are billion year old carbon"

Last night I was on the Gold Coast at my old school mate Robert Fysh's 60th birthday. And as Debra is away in the bush for a few days visiting the rels, I rode the Yamaha down there and back. It was great to have been invited, Robert and I met in 1966 at Hendra High School. He and I were mad amateur astronomers and spent many nights on my front lawn with telescope and binoculars peering out into the darkened southern night skies. Magic!

We lost touch with each other for over 40 years, although fate had us bump into each other twice in that period. Once in 1981 at K Mart at Chermside and again in 1988 on a dirt track out the back of Samford when I came across Robert's broken down car. Jump start and away he went!

Happy Birthday Robert.. really pleased to be there with you and family and friends… felt special to be included!

Anyhow.. back to the theme. Riding home late last night in a small amount of misty rain listening to Joni Mitchell on the helmet stereo I came to realise how much I like being out there on the bike.. and as my old mate Motor Bill Windsor used to say.. "You need to get out of the city often to have a spiritual recharge."

A Spiritual Recharge.. yes.. that is what the country is to me. Taking the road less travelled, be that road a C bitumen road or a dirt one, the Australian bush possesses that magical ability that for me at least.. recharges my mind.. in a spiritual way!

And although I have seen a lot of the Australian bush through the windscreens of various 4 wheel drives.. there is nothing like being on a bike to take it all in. 

Rather than passing through the environment, one becomes part of the environment with the breeze, the smells and that feeling of being one with the bike.

So as the next "Big" birthday ahead is the Three Score Years and Ten…. I need to take more time out for the bike.

Time to….. "get myself back to the garden!"



On the road from Birdsville to Windorah 2011