100 days on and I still see the Barack stickers on the back of cars out on my rides. Many people still believe. They hope his message of change will come to pass. I wonder about those that removed the stickers, not just because the event is over, but because they've lost hope in that change. The people of America are so firmly entrenched in their sides. A few issues go round and round again. The members of congress gerrymander and earmark their pet projects to gild them through the next election. They want to continue to be the debutant at the ball and not the one giving the concession speech to upset supporters. Supporters that stupidly boo when the obviousness of the truth is finally acknowledged late in the evening. Hating the other team isn't the same as supporting yours.

Now 100 days on cars still passing me with their stickers proclaiming their support for Barack. We sit on the brink of a world, country and climate spinning out of control. Work place shootings and family annihilators are a weekly occurrence. If you find time to rest your mind from all the real fears there are plenty of manufactured ones waiting to fill the gap. Peoples minds never have a moment to rest, the tension is brought to a peak day in and out at 6 and 11 or 24 or on demand. In our lives we lose contact with our fellow man and ourselves through the constant distraction of television and the Internet. America is a place without class. Consumerism taken to its logical degree. Everything designed to keep eyeballs fixed and wallets open.

Detached from the world we pay to go to a gym to run on a treadmill. As I ride by the large windows and see people inside on the treadmills, safe from the rain that is pounding all around me, fighting with an energy bar which is now hard as a rock from being hit with the cold rain. They see me, I see them, we both think the same thing, poor bastard. It's the reality of life made into a movie scene, freedom versus safety. As the rain starts to bring the cold into my body, I know that up ahead is a rise and with a bit of effort it will be up and over and I'll be fully warm again. The extremities are the only thing that can really bother. The nerves in my hands are sensitive and its worse when it rains. I have to watch how I position my hands or bolts of lightning run through my palms and up my arms.

On this 3 and half hour ride I have several, what mothers would consider close calls. Those times cars get closer to me then I'd like. When I was younger, I was fast with the middle finger. I thought I had some sovereign unalienable right to life, liberty and this piece of road. The constitution is a dead document. The only rights you have are the ones you can enforce. Courts only work for tort. That is why guns are so popular. They are a flashlight in the darkness. Now those close calls don't even phase me. Even when it's close on purpose, I don't even think about it. By the time the anger reaches the reasoning portion of my brain the situation is already over and worrying about close calls is no way to live life. Sometimes I shrug my shoulders but usually not. Typically I'll just say, out loud, you talk to yourself a lot on the bike, that I wasn't thrilled with how close that was. I don't think about it though, when it's my time it is my time. Having done the things on the motorcycle that I have, at the speeds I have, things on the bike just don't seem as scary. They develop so much more slowly and there are so many more outs.

I believe in the second amendment. I believe even in this day and age the best protection against tyranny is a well armed populous. We are a lot less sophisticated and post modern than we think we are. I'm just so disappointed with how frequent gun violence in this country is. The classless society has turned out to be a horrible thing because we all still know its there but we don't acknowledge it. Feelings of inferiority is the sum of most evils in America. With no stratification there is no machine to rage against. Killing your family or co-workers or classmates isn't raging against the machine. It's the ultimate expression of cowardice. The only way in which America is a classless society is that as a society we have no class. America is a nation in desperate need of character. We have so few people, role models in our lives that have any character that the nation itself has little.

One car came so close that I almost had to push off. I noticed that I was inside the range of his mirror. Just as I started to lift my hands off the bars to push off, to gain separation, the car passed me. I caught this car at the next red light. I didn't acknowledge the incident in any way before or even now, I was too caught up in my own world to get worked up. Other humans are just like deer to me. A dangerous moving target that there is no use in getting mad at. As I came to the red light, the cars, including the one in question, had started stacking up in the right lane. I, loathing to stop, dived to the left lane to gain as much ground as possible. I was still moving when the light turned green. The first gap I saw in the right lane I jumped into. It was in front of the car the had come so close. I wasn't worried but was well aware of its position should the same happen again. It didn't though, the driver pulled into the left lane and into a strip mall. It was only at this point my instincts kicked in that this person had confrontation in his mind.

Maybe I'm wrong, but my instincts told me now that he was going where he was to get away from me. Then it suddenly seemed that the close pass before was intentional and a rise in the tension and anger was exactly what he sought. Him in his 1/2 ton steel behemoth and me protected by a layer of lycra and a 6 oz, expanded polystyrene helmet. He blinked first. I would have, had I realized we were having a confrontation. I imagine the sight of someone so much more vulnerable, completely unafraid of him brought out his inner coward. Which obviously lives close to the surface anyways to have made that first close pass. I'm not fearless, just the perceived level of danger during the entire event never rose above the background noise until he went out of his way to get away.

Now the night I dodged a deer going 70 mph along the back roads, that was fear. The huge surge of adrenaline afterwards told me so. To be scary a situation has to develop in a dreadfully short amount of time. My brain is so wired from so many years of bicycling, skiing and motorcycling to always be resolving. I'll probably die doing one of these activities but I'll do so while taking action and devising a strategy to escape the enclosing fist of danger. So many times the fingers have wrapped around me and so many times I've made it out before they've closed. So many times too though, I haven't. My body is rife with scars from all the times things haven't worked out. I've crashed just about everything that rolls or slides.

When I was younger and the situation was collapsing out of control my brain would flip into what I called crash mode. It just shut down, I target fixated and it was over. Over the years though as the speeds and hence consequences have become greater I never seem to go there anymore. I do something, anything, and usually anything is the right thing. It's always better than nothing. One day I was screaming down the highway outside of Cleveland at 130 mph and a car pulled over into "my" lane and I was forced onto the berm where there was glass and jagged bits from tail lights. I knew that I was very close to losing my life at that moment. Poor bastard in the car probably shit himself. Never would have seen me coming and I was up the road before he knew what was happening. I didn't see my life flash before my eyes at that moment but I knew I was as close to death as I had ever been. It had an impact and effect I can't explain but I wouldn't say I reflected on my life in anyway right after the event. I was still going 130 mph and the world closes in fast at that speed. I kept the throttle open and got back onto the road proper because it's what had to be done. Sometimes late at night I'll startle awake and feel that same feeling and think of the event. Sometimes I can even put my hands over my eyes and cry. So many times, so close. I don't want to do these things anymore. Other side