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September 8, 2017
Everything Fades
Slowly, my muscle memory begins to fail. Now, I catch myself looking at the keyboard when I type. My fingers used to know where all of the keys were. Now, they're not so sure.
I find myself at a stoplight, and the light turns green, and I'm in 5th gear. This never used to happen. The hands and the feet would always put me into 1st gear at a red light. It wasn't anything that I did. I wasn't even aware that it was occurring. The hands and the feet used to make the bike go, and I honestly wasn't even aware of what they were doing. I only notice it now because they stopped doing it. Now, I roll up to a red light in 4th or 5th gear and sit there like an idiot. The light turns green, and I'm cussing the bike and trying to jam it down into first. Nothing to be proud of.
The new motorcycle has the controls in different spots. The horn, the turn signals, the starter button. Everything is moved on the new bike, and now the brain can't learn any more. So, I'm riding down the road, and I have to look at my handlebars to see how to make the turn signals work. Frequently, I see that my turn signals are already on, because I forget to turn them off. The thumb used to take care of that on his on. I never had to tell him what to do. But, after we turned, he turned off the turn signal. He doesn't do that any more. It's called muscle memory. And it's gone now.
Yesterday, I was taking a shower, and lost track of where I was. I was literally inside the shower in my own house, and my eyes were searching to try to determine where I was. Like...OK...I figured out that I was in my own house, but I've never had that happen before.
I was in bed watching TV yesterday, watching How I Met Your Mother on Netflix. I was supposed to be at UCLA, but I didn't go this week. And, on the episode I'm watching, Ted is a professor and it's his first day of class and he's in the wrong classroom and forgets how to spell professor. And he walks outside, and he's on the campus of UCLA. I'm freaking out because, how I met your mom is supposed to be set in NYC. Professor Ted Mosby is supposed to be a professor at Columbia University. But he walks outside, and he's at UCLA, obviously. They film there all the time because Hollywood is right next door to UCLA. I kind of feel sad that I didn't go to UCLA this week, and I have a motorcycle sitting out at LAX, and I'm not sure when I'm going back to UCLA, if ever. (We go to oakland next week.)
I was writing some SQL yesterday for work, and I kept coming back to this one line...the Pay Frequency is Biweekly...why is that in there? And then, I'd remember...they told me they only wanted biweekly people....I had this happen at least 10 times....over the course of one day, that I'd look at the same SQL, and think....why in the hell do I have pay frequency = biweekly? Why is that. Oh yeah....they only wanted Biweekly people. And this is the 10th time I've figured it out.
I'm not doing as well riding my bike, as everything fades. Last night, I'm riding back from Lake Evergreen at dusk...between dusk and full-on dark...and I'm rolling south on CO 73. This is one of the roads I like to shoot when I fly out on Monday mornings. I sit in 2A and shoot this little valley here, and I'm rolling south going about 50 in a 40 probably, and I crest a small hill, and a truck is stopped in the road (in his lane), but facing me. It's a 2 lane black topped road. And this truck is stopped in his lane flashing his headlights at me, and it dawns on me that I should stop. I jam on the brakes and realize that 3 mule are cross the highway. If he had not been there, I would have hit that small herd going 45 mph.
I don't know how I've lived this long on my bike without dying. I really don't. It's not that I know what I'm doing. I think I've just been lucky up to this point.
Posted by Rob Kiser on September 8, 2017 at 3:10 PM
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