Charlie Steinman's Mid-Ohio AHRMA Trip Report

So there I was . . .

Nine days on the road 2660 round-trip miles behind the wheel of an F150 pulling a bike trailer 56 hours of driving time four exhaustion-clouded hotel-room beds three nights on a cot embedded in a track paddock all for 33 laps of the Mid-Ohio Roadrace Course, 16 of which while racing, preceded by days and weeks of bike preparation, all for maybe 70 total minutes of track time.

Worth the effort?

I don't remember much of the road-trip portion of the Mid-Ohio Vintage Days motorcycle racing event. I did remember those highway miles between Austin and Ohio Interstate-70 very well. At one time my soft-smooth wife and I drove those miles maybe twice-a-year.

Candle-flame drawn.

Closing the distance.

Driving 'Home' for summer vacations. Driving 'Home' for Christmas. Twenty-somethings on the road.

All through the heady days of the 80's pre-kids no real roots other than work and that work hadn't yet used a lifetime to push its tendrils into our lives not yet molded us into middle-aged . . . middle-aged what? Funny how time and effort and days spent doing, mold a man, mold a woman.

But those times, those fast-track highway zooms in the 80's are a blurr to me now.

Thrumming along on this trip though, the concrete joints of the original thumping Interstate long now since rebuilt into a glass-smooth asphalt ribbon, drifting along the highway and back through a lifetime of memories of other roads and other trips, especially for some reason along and through those weird and special Kentucky counties underlain with caves, huge caves melted through a million years of gentle piedmont rainfall melted from the limestone bedrock, ground pocked by sinkholes, especially for some reason along those highway miles because those were the sweet miles years ago traveled by two young and in love college kids, recently married, not a care in the world, no luggage, no credit cards, no mortgage, no kids, no plans, no tomorrows, just each other and the road and every day was new and unique and laughter and love was all and everything and the road smelled sweet in the morning dew and cool through the night and hot through the open-window winded days rolling better mail some beach sand to the summer-school instructor to say we won't be in that class this session better things to do love to do laughter to do quiet talks through the rolling ever rolling wind-roaring summer road trip days . . . of that summer . . . that sweet sweet summer . . .

I wonder if living inside of a growing cloak of more and more years means living more and more in the lives lived before and less and less in the life lived now and the lives to be lived tomorrow no more nows, only was, only was . . .

At Mid-Ohio the racing was intense, as usual. Huge flowing crowds of dust-rising spectators drinkers of the motorcycle buzz watchers and riders and shoppers and the simply curious. The track beautiful and now burned into my mind. Funny. A year ago I listened as an outsider to racers speaking a shorthand speaking a language of radii and exits and braking points a language intimate with dozens of race tracks hundreds of races a shorthand only they shared now I know a word or two can follow the flowing talk know the verbs and nouns racing spoken here . .

Riding as breathing
Cool focus, friction and speed
Few know such glory

In one moment of one race I tasted the taste of victory over just one rider one newbie rider pushing his limits while I pushed mine both of us in the exhaust and the dust at the back of the rubber-tearing racing pack two neophytes in a world with one purpose a world with one religion just a whiff of the deity worshipped by all these racers all these disciples . . . victory one moment of victory modest and unnoticed except by two wide-eyed winded neophytes limping in the rear.

I wondered all along the road 'Home' this time in the opposite direction from the trips 'Home' of the 80's if the deity named victory who lives at a race track actually lives at the track or is maybe brought to the track by the disciples somehow for some reason able to draw crowds of watchers maybe to catch the heart the soul of just one neophyte each gathering each short-lived rising from the usually quiet asphalt ribbon the usually empty stands the quiet curves the quiet straights able to live for only a short time amongst the gathered believers able to live in only the briefest and fleetest and sweetest of moments...of victory.

This feature originally appeared in August 2007 - Updated: 05/13/08