These Are The Days

These-Are-The-DaysThe article “These Are The Days” by Bud Miller was originally published on the “RoadRUNNER Motorcycle Touring & Travel” magazine website on 11/11/2012.

Today is Election Day, or rather, I’m writing this on Election Day. It is actually most likely Sunday and the results are in by now. I vote in a one-room schoolhouse in Lower Saucon Township in Pennsylvania complete with smiling ladies with colorful scarves and three little voting booths (the old school kind with the curtain), gravel parking lot, creaking floorboards, and lots of bunting.

I’ve always enjoyed Election Day; it’s become a sort of ritual of mine to bundle up for the November weather and take the bike the few miles down the road to cast my vote. This year on the ride I listened to These Are The Days by Van Morrison. It’s one of my all time favorite songs and, for my money, possibly the prettiest song ever recorded. The strings in this song just pull emotion out through my skin. I can’t listen to it and not be moved. It’s the type of song that can make you feel cool on a hot day, or warm on a cold one. It bends to your needs like all great songs do.

The ride, the song, and the day always make me think about and appreciate what I have. I’ve made no mystery of the fact that I love the way motorcycling allows our minds to meander through the scrapbook of our lives while our bodies are busy with other things. On a cool, gorgeous November Tuesday my mind isn’t on the election outcome, it’s just on the glory of the ride, the world, and my place in it.

I’m no big fan of politics as usual. Personally I wish there were more choices and things weren’t so divisive and we didn’t feel the need to so aggressively defend our decisions. I’m a bit of a dreamer in that respect I guess; but for me on this day, it was enough to dress warmly, ride among the falling leaves and rolling hills, smile and thank the nice people at the polling station, then mount up and take the long way home with Van the Man in my ears reminding me that “there’s only here, there’s only now”.

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