One Puerto Rican, Two Wheels

It's a surprise, an adventure, a would-be-hike turned in to an all day ride. It is a friend planning a day around a beach and a motorcycle, golden fields and an early sunset.

It is feeling full--that you're living a well-written story--except better. so. much. better. It's more spontaneous, alive, hilarious. It's Salsa dancing on the boardwalk, a local farmers' market, a phone call from a friend in London. It's spotting a guy and a guitar walking barefoot on the asphalt Jack Johnson style (the guy, not the guitar) and staring into sunbeams on a warm January day. It's loving everything granola and vegan about California because it reminds you to smile. You can't help it.

It is fresh strawberries and wind-blown hair, a small town, a distant lighthouse. It's finally being able to see the sun dip into the water in the West, like it should, like it was meant to, like it did when you were little. And when it's gone, you smell the fields, the coolness, the salt. You breathe deeply, looking at the moon, trying to remember if it has always been this big.

It is all of these things...

Although it's mainly one: the fact that someone showed you all of this from the back seat of a motorcycle on a normal Sunday afternoon and you did not die. And because you're still alive, even more so than you were this morning, you can cross if off the bucket list.