(ignition.)

Hello, and welcome. Thank you for being a part of our excellent adventure.

Why is this adventure excellent, you say? Because every adventure is excellent. With the right attitude, one plucks life's ripest fruits along the journey's road.

We are traveling coast to coast - from Wareham, MA to San Francisco, CA and back - by motorcycle. Why travel cross-country by motorcycle? The answers to this question are perhaps as diverse as the folks who endeavor the journey. There comes to mind immediately two undeniable commonalities - a sense of adventure, and a love of the journey.

I have numerous reasons relative to my own journey, the excellent adventure. If you would be so kind as to allow me a moment of three of your time, I would love to share them with you.

I have, in my 28 years, entertained quite a few ideas on how to make a living. With every orientation in a particular direction, the long-term goal has been a simple one: take up meaningful work in harmony with my own values, and "unite vocation and avocation," as my fellow New Englander Robert Frost so eloquently worded it. This has been too-often subverted by the short-term goal of staying afloat - finding something just to pay the bills. This sucks. The 95% of us not dropped by the stork into the safety net of perpetual wealth have to find some way to make a buck. We can exhaust our energy flipping the institutions that mechanically demand this of us the proverbial bird, or we can face, and come to terms with, the unavoidable reality of our collective situation and redirect that energy toward something constructive. After years of tossing curses at the impersonal establishment, I am now opting for the latter use of energy. Some would call this growing up.

One element - and I do mean element in the most literal sense - of my life I have refused to compromise has been allowing ample room for a creative outlet. This has been absolutely indispensable to a foundational sense of well-being. I shudder at the thought of how many various locking mechanisms would bar the door of the white padded room were I deprived or neglectful of this. Maybe that's an exaggeration. Then again, maybe not. Point being, I never sufficed for the alternative, and am all the better as a result.

As far back as my memory reaches, music has been this creative outlet - the unconditional love, the safe retreat, the means of expressing the restlessness of desire. It has been, is, and will continue to be the language of every recess of my heart resounding in concert.

Several years back, I had the opportunity to satisfy my outstanding undergraduate credits with a month in the jungle of northwest Belize. It was an experience. Being somewhere new inevitably alters one's perspective, if for no other reason (though there are myriad reasons) than the novelty of stimuli one encounters. To boot, it was the first time since I was three years old that I found myself in a situation without a musical instrument for longer than a few days. My muse had soared away, and my heart had fallen dumb.

I had been keeping a journal, given to me by my parents at the start of college, which I brought along with me. Up to that point, it was a turgid reflection of my failed attempts at poetry and prose, and my frustration with the ineptitude of the written word to convey and communicate. The pen couldn't sing. Suddenly, my desperation scrambling for an outlet in the sweltering humidity of the rainforest, I began to write. Not a day passed unrecorded. Subsequently I came to the same realization that my quarrels with the system had brought me to: one can waste energy in bitterness toward what is, or one can channel the same energy in a constructive way. Voila! Desperation had an inherent alternative latent within; I chose that alternative, and writing blossomed virtually overnight into an outlet commensurate with my beloved muse.

As we bid the jungle farewell en route to the airport, the Belizean countryside silently whizzing by, a peer tapped me on the shoulder and, aware that I was a musician, politely stated "I bet you could use this," her iPod shuffle in hand. I gratefully accepted. The first song that shuffled its way on was U2's "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." I had no significant connection to the song or the band prior, but at that moment, it symbolized a culmination; a coherence of all the disjointed and contradictory sentiments I had experienced. The sun's resplendence on the rolling hills of the countryside mirrored the clarity of the moment. For the first time in my life, I stood resolute in the winds of indecision. I was going to write.

The years following, I flirted with numerous false-starts. Grad school papers. Freelancing. Dabbling in poetry (again). None proved an outlet to the degree of magnitude I had envisioned. The most meaningful writing exercises and/or experiments was the journal, where I began making a practice of distilling experience to the tersest aphorisms possible. But a majority of it, I became increasingly aware, was esoteric to the point of public meaningless. Something was missing. Nevertheless, I pushed on.

Inspiration ebbed and flowed, but I mustered up enough of it during low points to continue entertaining the idea of taking myself seriously as a writer. However, constantly looming was the dark cloud of the system. How could I ever make a living doing this?

If one is open to inspiration, possibility pokes its head out at unexpected times and in unexpected places. It has been said many times, in many ways, that you can't force inspiration - the best bet is to keep the door unlocked and be ready to answer when there is a knock. Or, if you're especially open, you can remove the door altogether.

I have drawn inspiration from innumerable sources. As far as writers go, it is most often in wrestling with their ideas that I find peace of mind. But every once in a long while, someone comes by my eyes or ears and articulates their experience in a way as exciting as it is haunting - because I can hear myself speaking or writing those very words. Among these more recently has been Mary Oliver. We are primed for similar prosody - a mutual love of Emerson and the outskirts of Cape Cod, among other reasons. While engrossed in one of her writings one day, inspiration knocked in a familiar form - a pithy four-word maxim concluding the piece: "All narrative is metaphor." I couldn't resist exclaiming out loud (by myself) "RIGHT ON GIRL!" That was it! Up to then, my most meaningful writing attempts had tried to hold as their subject Life (with a capital L). The scope was so broad that it lost focus - all clouds, no ground. My grandiose efforts were nearly devoid of the temperament of simply relating experience, and by doing so, letting Life emerge of its own accord.

Wow, I have gone on quite a tangent. But, as a mentor wiser than myself once said, "when you're circle is wide enough, nothing's a tangent. Everything's in the circle!" If you are still reading, bless your patience and attention span. If you would be so kind as to let me indulge for a wee bit longer, I will close this circle (albeit only to draw a larger one later).

At present, I have found myself in the ideal circumstances to give this writing thing an honest go. My gratitude to those whose assistance I have received is bottomless. But the question remains: why the motorcycle trip?

From antiquity through modernity, rites of passage have been a cornerstone in human experience. Some are explicit, - the indigenous American youth's first hunt - some are overtly ceremonial, - a Bar Mitzvah - others are more subtle - the first job one supports oneself with. All are symbolic. Rites of passage signify a transition from one shore to another; a new perspective with which one views Life and one's place in it. One may very well remain steadfast to one's initial trajectory - the rite of passage is not of necessity a new direction. Rather, it is a re-orientation, a mile-marker gauging the departure of one's previous stasis and a revision - or, at times, a re-writing - for another. Relative to my own life, as I prepare to give my attempt at writing the due respect and attentiveness it has been long overdue for, the excellent adventure is, to employ a vivid metaphor from one of my kindred spirits, "sharpening the knife before making the cut." It is the seminal work for public eyes, carrying with it the spirit that my most earnest undertakings strive to convey - a simultaneous expression and invitation. By inviting the engagement and participation of others (you!), I am in my own way "giving back to the grid"; blowing a kiss to that which is infinitely greater than my idea of self - the great cosmic dance of which we are all a part.

The shore in view is the undertone of every current effort: autonomy. Not the flavor of autonomy that entails a severance from the world, or a standing undaunted in the face of it. Such a notion of autonomy is, in my humble opinion, a derivative offspring of a myopic paradigm; one that demands self-mastery be a sort of militant conquering. My understanding of autonomy is something quite distinct, even opposite. It is no conquering, but an awakening - a realization of the Suchness of all that is. If this reeks of idealistic rhapsodizing to you, pause a moment and consider the following: all that we know of the world, the universe, and each other, can be physiologically explained by a shared set of elemental "particles." The most recent convictions maintained in quantum mechanics posit that, from micro to macro, the (all-too-human) search for the immutable particle, the fundamental building block which comprises all that is, cannot be pinpointed. Rather, all that can be verified with the most sophisticated and encompassing paradigms is interactions. Energetic exchanges. What is depicted as fixed and immutable is only appears so within a certain framework.

From another vantage point, consider this: what idea, what behavior, what accomplishment in your own life can you isolate as being utterly and completely your own? Think as openly as possible. Did you create a particular opportunity exclusively by yourself, or were there prior conditions creating the possibility of that opportunity? Did you think a thought independent of all other thoughts, uninfluenced by them, without a language that is in some form common to others? If, after careful consideration, you believe it to be the case that you have thought, done, earned, or achieved something wholly independently of anything or anyone else... I am humbly calling your bluff.

My conception - by no means a unique one - of autonomy is, psychologically speaking, a dissolving of self into world. A realization of the arbitrariness of boundaries when taken objectively and, by virtue of this, my proper place amongst the grand scheme of it all.

So... WHY THE MOTORCYCLE TRIP?!?

All too rare are moments in the theoretical average life that present themselves as an opportunity to channel focus (although one could rightly argue that any moment can be this opportunity... I would say so). Motorcycles lend - even force- this opportunity. There is an undeniable zen to finding balance and experiencing peace amidst chaos. One could say that this very act is zen itself (and also isn't, might the koan say). The imminence of danger is one's co-pilot - unpredictable topography of the road, uncertain weather vicissitudes, reckless drivers (especially in Boston), and, most notably, oneself. Lose focus for one unfortunate instant, and no amount of leather will save your hide. Yet master all this, with the engine roaring and the wind howling as you chase the horizon, and, as the Irish blessing goes, the road rises to meet you. The demand to focus brings with it an emptying of mental din and pristine perspective. Metaphors abound, even before the narrative commences.

If all of my ramblings are insufficient to explain the excellent adventure, let it remain unsaid. The best things in life often are. Fortunately, the wild tangents will be honed in on the excellent adventure by way of the affirmation of solidarity. Enter Snake. Snake is my boy. He is the ideal companion in many ways, and this would likely be impossible without him. More to come on that - and him - I'm sure. Suffice to say at present that the two of us ask similar questions of Life, and Life casts into the winds answers that are riddles begging the questions to come.

Snake's trusty steed is a Honda Shadow 600. It is his first, and only, bike - the one that, in conjunction with a leather jacket and a love of 80's metal and 90's punk, earned him the present moniker. I'll leave the rest for him to tell. I sit atop my father's 1977 BMW R75/7, a 750cc. Although the driver's seat is relatively new - I say "relatively" because, although I have only been driving legally for a few months (a bit of hours in without an M on my license.... shhhhh), I have banked more miles in those few months than most Sunday drivers ride in a lifetime - although this seat is new, the bike is as familiar to me as a C major on the piano. Pictures from infancy have me poised on the gas tank. Childhood through adolescence was the back seat (and with it the familiar view of the back of my dad's head). Now it's on to the cockpit. The feeling of riding is simultaneously thrillingly new and extra-temporally intimate. I have a self-imposed duty to keep the proverbial torch ablaze, and I will carry it out, come hell or high water. Or a flat.

Now that the excellent adventure is hopefully coming into focus for you, I vow to keep daily entries to a much briefer length; just some preliminary information to put things in perspective. Who knows, maybe I'll ramble longer - we do have almost 10,000 miles of time-with-mind. On the excellent adventure, as in life, we have to be prepared for uncertainty above all else. Hop on, and enjoy the ride.