Journal Entry #11

Chad was a man who had nothing left to lose. You were more likely to hear chad then you were to see him. The roar of his twin cylinder 1,600cc engine chopper was enough to turn heads just fast enough to watch a slouching, middle aged man vanish into the glare of the setting sun. Chad had been chasing the setting sun for days. It wasn’t enough that Chad was going through a divorce, but on top of that he lost his job and the bank foreclosed on his home. If Chad had to be cast out onto the streets, he was going to do it his way.

Chad’s dad was a mechanic, and he had been around bikes since he was young. When he was four he knocked his dad’s bike over just trying to climb on. When Chad got older and joined the rank and file of the middle class, he stopped riding altogether and tried to distance himself from anything that in the eyes of society would associate him with his working class roots. But this was different. Determined that the hawkish debt collectors would never be able to pick him dry, after losing his job Chad gathered up all his savings, stuffed some provisions into the behemoth of a motorcycle he had inherited from his father and had been sitting in his garage, and simply took off one day heading west. In defiance of the hand he had been dealt, this was his way of turning back the clock.

As he rode tirelessly, day in and day out, he tried not to let himself think too much. He simply let his thoughts get mixed up in the blender of the whirring machine which he was using to hurl himself through time and space. It amused him to image what might happen when he reached the coast. He planned on getting onto a ship heading west by any means necessary, either as a crew, stowaway, or paying passenger. He would sell or trade his bike without a second thought, if need be. In a sense, by moving as fast as possible towards the setting sun and against the earth’s rotation, he was running directly into the past, but this isn’t how he saw it. He was perpetually buying himself time. The journey gave him something to think about, and to occupy himself, and he just wanted to keep moving. With his Spartan lifestyle and the cash he had stowed away under the gas tank, he could keep this up for a long while. Maybe he could find his place somewhere out there to settle, and start afresh. Who knows? All he wanted to do was run, and in his half helmet and dark sunglasses he kept his eyes trained on the setting sun.

As hard as he tried to forget he just couldn’t get the thought of her out of his mind. It was like the bugs that kept splattering on his sunglasses, blurring his vision. If Chad had documented his journey with the book of world records, it very well might have been the fastest land crossing of North America ever made on a motorcycle. He hadn’t so much as glanced at a map since he took off, and all he knew when he reached the coast was that he could smell the ocean and there was no more road left in front of him. He took his bike so close to the cliff’s edge that onlookers who happened to be passing by cringed at the site of it. Then something came over Chad. He dismounted the bike and took a stuttering step towards the ledge. He quickly took off his leather jacket, because the cloudless sky offered him no cover from the warm rays of the sun. Adjusting from the din of the engine, Chad’s ears were hearing a different tune; the sound of rolling waves crashing against the shore as seagulls called lazily to each other. The beach was blissfully empty except for one couple. They were young and full of life, beaming at each other with broad smiles and laughing and playing as he taught her how to boogie board. After all of that running, suddenly Chad went completely still. The scene struck a chord in his memory. It was exactly like Chad’s honeymoon. Chad had hoped that he could put all that behind him by reaching perpetually westward. Chad heard the sound of their laughter amidst the crashing waves and the calling gulls, and for that one moment the world stopped spinning.