I didn’t see the mountain hit us, I would see it later, for two weeks, every time I closed my eyes. Impact, then the mountain disappeared in a blinding instant of swirling light and dark until I lay on the ground trying to force my lungs to pull air. Once, twice, on the fourth try it worked but the pain in my chest cut the breath short. I thought I felt Twilight near me, my bike, my companion, so I reached out, but there was nothing.
            Voices above, men and women, asked if I was okay.
            “I’m okay,” I said, “Do you see blood?” Silence. I couldn’t see them, my face shield covered with dirt. They might have been frightened, so I asked more firmly. “Do you see blood? Is there blood on my clothes?” I pointed at my right lung, “Here?”
            “No.”
            “Did I hurt anyone?”
            “No, everyone is fine.”
            “Is the bike leaking gas?” Silence. “Is the bike leaking gas? If it’s leaking you have to stand it up or there could be a fire.”
            A new voice was above, a man telling me he was in training to be an EMT. He pulled my fingers, moved my arms and legs, told me my spine was not broken, then helped me stand.
            Raising my dusty visor I saw why leaking gas was a confusing question. The fuel tank tore off the bike and lay by itself against the mountain. Twilight was scattered over a hundred feet of pavement. People piled parts in one of the smashed side-cases.
            Twilight, a 1973 BMW, found in the shadows of Brooklyn, worked and restored over years, life born from my devotion. My dream bike, and two men were dragging the main body of wreckage off the street.
            Took five minutes to convince everyone to leave. I was fine, I said, and could hitchhike down the mountain later, I just needed time to think. When the last one drove away I started putting Twilight back together. I didn’t need time to think, I needed to get the bike rolling and out of there before the cops brought me a fat ticket for riding eighty in a thirty mile an hour turn.
            Wasn’t long before an officer arrived. He smiled as I told the story, then said, “You were watching the scenery instead of the road.” That was true, but not watching the speedometer was the big problem. His smile told me we didn’t need to discuss broken laws. On a scrap of paper the cop wrote his phone number and address. If I could get Twilight a hundred miles back down into the valley I could use his tools and garage for repairs. The officer rode a BMW too.
            As I spliced my old wounded bike back together I heard the cop whispering to his satellite phone, “I’m serious, he’s putting it back together!” A fireman paramedic arrived and gave me a checkup. At least one rib was broken. Concussion was possible, if I got light headed in the next few hours I should find a hospital, otherwise I was okay.
            So they both watched me cobble a bike out of the parts I had left. Strip the spark-plug wire and wrap it around the plug terminal, stick on the gas tank. Weight would have to hold the tank down, the bolts were broken. Off with the front fender support so the bent front wheel wouldn’t rub anymore, turn over the right valve cover so the four inch hole pointed up instead of down, pull the wiring out of the crushed headlight shell and hot wire the thing.
            “You think it’ll start?” the cop and fireman kept asking.
            “I don’t see why not,” I said every time. “It was about like this when I bought it.”
            Both clapped when Twilight sputtered to life. They followed me to a safe clearing where I promised to leave the bike and come back with a tow truck. Soon as they were gone I started riding down the mountain.
            Night had come and Twilight’s only working light was the right, rear turn signal, so I left it on. The front brakes didn’t work anymore either so I couldn’t stop real fast. No matter, the mountain made an S out of Twilight’s front wheel, we couldn’t go more then twenty miles an hour. At least I think it was twenty, the speedometer didn’t work so I couldn’t tell for sure. Anyway, Mariposa was twenty miles away and it took an hour to get there.
            Mariposa’s a small town in the foothills between Yosemite National Park and California’s Central Valley. A town suffering for years from an avalanche that made highway 140 impassible for big busses and ended the tourism money that used to flow.
            Sitting on a little bench along the quiet main street I had hardly enough time to wonder where I would sleep when Pual Gillespie walked by. Paul was a tall, thin man with grey hair and a mixture of age and youth on a face that always smiled. He had a BMW too, the multisport GS Adventure that’s famous among people who ride around the world. Two miles outside town he had a little cottage behind his house I could sleep in.
            Laying in the cottage, filthy with dirt and blood, too exhausted to wash it off, I wondered if I might pass in the night from unseen internal injuries. No one other then my good host Paul knew where I was, what if he found me dead in the morning? Should I call someone? Hear the voices of loved ones before I close my eyes for a possible eternity?
            No, and the reason was entirely selfish. I loose interest quite quickly when people tell me what to do. Violent impacts with mountains tend to taint the view of family members against motorcycling in general. They can’t separate the journey from the event. I couldn’t understand what the crash had done to my feelings about riding, but Twilight’s place in my life must be my own choice, and right then I couldn’t handle the opinions of others.
            Before he went to work the next morning Paul gave me his phone, computer, and the keys to his truck. Standing in the driveway I watched Paul ride away on his BMW GS, wondering how good men like him remain pure in a wicked world.