Sorry, No Photo of the Incident…
A good day’s ride on a motorcycle should include at least one breath-taking moment or heart stopping view. (Note to reader: According to my doctor, I’m ‘spozed to be consistently wearing a heart monitor for thirty days, but I knew I’d be off the grid for a spell.)
The road from State Route 20 to Leesville and Lodoga is rarely taken by civilized man. Civilized ranchers, yes, but few others. The route traces the eastern edge of the Coast Range in Colusa County, winding through expansive pastures and past elegant aging barns from a century or so back. (Jerry Brown, I’m told, now lives out this way.) I’d last taken this crusty road in a nearly new 1991 Jeep Wrangler so how many years ago might that have been?
Straddling the Moto Guzzi, I motored and bounced up a steep section of roadway – more pothole than pavement – twisting up the north end of a lovely rangeland valley. Around each turn the view became more magnificent in either direction. To the south, that springtime green valley on the cusp of turning golden. To the north and west, the still white-encrusted peaks of the Snow Mountain wilderness area. Narrow, with blind turn after blind turn, there was no place to stop for a “Shot of the Day.”
I reached the summit where the road turned from what they called pavement to a graded dirt and gravel affair that was much easier to negotiate on the motorcycle. I relaxed my grip on the grips just a bit. Just as the prior miles were upward twisting, these corkscrewed downward. To my right, the hillside was steep, covered with tight thickets of chamise and scrub oak. To the left, the hill was equally precipitous. I’m sure there was a seasonal creek at the bottom, but it was too far down to see, if I’d hazarded to take a glance off the road.
Rounding a bend, something stirred to my right. Something big. I gently touched the brakes when that something burst out of the underbrush. A buzzard. A turkey vulture. Perhaps the grandpappy of all turkey vultures, undoubtedly annoyed about my interruption of his lunch. Liftoff for this winged behemoth would prove to be a struggle. The massive scavenger slipped below the level of my windshield. Wings pumping, it couldn’t seem to rise above the brush on either side. His route was the same as mine. Dirt road conditions as they were, my speed was cautious. The buzzard’s? Slower.
I was gaining on him. From about three feet behind I could see the gray undersides of his wings, count the feathers that looked like disjointed fingers at the end of those wings and I could even make out the needle-like talons on his red-stockinged feet. I may have followed him for fifty yards on that pebbly route at one point thinking, if I just goose the throttle a bit, I bet I can probably grab that fella and… But ‘goosing the throttle’ would likely send me off the edge, plummeting into the abyss to come a cropper where my cell phone wouldn’t connect. And there I would lie, squashed beneath the Guzzi, waiting to become the big guy’s next meal.
Of this, I think the vulture was aware.
In perhaps fifteen seconds, the big bird rose out of reach, tipped his wings slightly to catch the updraft out over the canyon and drifted away.
I’m not sure what that heart monitor might have recorded, but it woulda been something interesting to explain to the doc.
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Church of the Open Road Press
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