Faraway
Faraway
TDC
Kevin Cameron
WHY SHOULD A DISTANT VIEW MEAN anything to us? There is a certain road near here from which I can see three faraway ridges, each a deeper blue-gray than the one before it. I look forward to seeing this, even though it disappears behind trees in about three seconds. I think that a view lights up more within us than the simple idea of faraway geology. Some part of me that has to do with leaving the ordinary for the mysterious is switched on, and with that come powerful associations of lakes and trails stretching away to who knows where.
Today I heard the syncopated rumble of a far-off radial aircraft engine and won dered at how it awakens many parts of me. As physical objects, radials are inter esting enough-for their master-and-links rod system, their ring cams and their in tricate cooling solutions. But the power of their sound has nothing to do with any of that. t
The sound-really quite similar to that of a motorcycle V-Twin-tells of adven ture, even escape to faraway places, of the desperation of war, of people sustained miles from the earth by their own clever ness. Why doesn't the sound ofjet engines jab me the same way? Because jets are from this over-scheduled, too-perfectlysurveyed world of GPS, overhead surveil lance and the certainty that the rescue he licopter will be overhead in 15 minutes.
The summer of my 10th year I listened all one afternoon to a humming sound that none of the adults could hear. I could per suade myself it was nothing, and then my certainty that it was real would return. To ward dinnertime a red Folboat appeared up the Colville River, droning slowly to ward our camp. The sound was that of a 5-horse Johnson outboard motor. In that boat were a bearded field archaeologist and his Inuit assistant.
I now think that the edges of 20th-cen tury technology may be mapped worldwide by the presence of those two-stroke out boards and their parts, a combination of fading green paint and the unnatural bright ness of scuffed aluminum. Their sound evokes all my yearnings for the faraway. I am suddenly thinking of Help-Me-Jack Creek and Nilikpuk Lake, places so far from my everyday that surely there I could find and separate my actual self from all the roar of daily existence.
I have never toured on a motorcycle but I wonder if touring finds some of its impulse in feelings like these, a need for the unrolling horizon and for a kind of separation. I don’t want to get too carried away here-they say that chimpanzees enjoy a colorful sunset and a distant view, too-but who knows?
How can something be both cozy and lonely at the same time? Yet those are the words that pop into my head when I think of the sound of a machine upshifting along Bonneville’s long black stripe. Cozy, to be surrounded by your own mechanical contrivance that carries you forward so dramatically. Lonely, despite all the people and equipment congregated nearby, you do this alone.
When I was a boy, walking outdoors in the dark, I liked to imagine being in space, with pinpoint stars out the pilot’s screen and the reassuring glow of instruments on the panel. The motorcyclist’s situation is an affordable emotional substitute for this imagined expansion of self into the great vacuum. A car is a living room, with sofas, windows, a roof, heating and cooling. In a car, you haven’t even left home. To rub off the familiar clinging fuzz of daily life, there has to be at least some degree of palpable hardshipexposure to the elements, vibration, noise.
At Daytona this past spring I watched the controversial 1340cc Buells being brought to life with their external electric starters. As a piston comes onto compression, torque reaction kicks hard at the mechanic holding the starter. What is usually concealed and even unsuspected inside smooth metal castings becomes solidly real and obvious.
Steam locomotives excited me in the same way-my 5-year-old eyes traced from the massive black cylinder to the shining piston rod affixed to the cross-head and then the long drive rod that so directly turned the wheels. Who can resist such clear truths? “Hear that lonesome whistle blow” used to be compelling stuff for farmboys who lived their whole lives on the endless flat of the Great Plains. For me, today, the spell is a bit dented when I see a 4000-ton freight train halted behind the donut shop. The engineer has stopped his massive load for a cup of coffee!
On summer Saturday nights I used to hear distant Kawasaki - Triples-then the most bang you Æj could get for the buck-getting their exercise. Earlier, it was Sportsters. Now those warm nights belong to sportbjkes. My mind’s eye sees the headlight cone splashed ahead, everything rushes past as the engine and trans sing their sixmotes. Time to close the throttle-men in blue have their own ideas of exercise. 2
Up close, I am drawn by the complex “swish” made by their valve mechanisms and the distinctive muted whine of primary gears. That sound brings to mind the smooth, geometric gleam of oily gear teeth, which I imagine rushing endlessly into and out of mesh, transmitting, through a vanishingly thin film of oil and additives, more or less a hundred horsepower. Gears no different in concept and execution-but hugely larger-propelled the great ocean liners, spinning their 35-ton propellers. Turboprop commuter airliners have them, too, protected by chip detectors, stepping down 20,000 turbine rpm to the 1200 of the props.
Machinery can be a grand adventure in itself. The beautifully made parts and their relationships attract some of us very strongly, and making it all work gives a special sense of power and ability. But more powerful yet are all the surprising branches of our imaginations that are awakened by a simple exhaust note or machine sound, by an accidental whiff of buttery essence from castor-based oil, by the clouds ahead on the horizon. Or are they mountains? We’ll have to go find out. □
