Travel, inspiring adventure and a shooting star

8/2 - Think back to a recent time when your heart exploded with pleasure, when you burst out in maniacal laughter and sported a giant, goofy smirk.

That's how my weekend went. I spent two straight days on my Ducati, using the GoPro to shoot some truly excellent video on curvy roads in the foothills around Tulare County. While the road southeast of Ducor was a blast on Sunday (at one point I reached a new personal-record for speed), the adventure into Yokohl Valley on Monday resulted in pure, childlike joy and ecstasy, and the kind of laughter inside my helmet that would get me arrested if I did that in public.

The day could not have gone better. The weather was warm and the sky a deep blue. I rode through green hills broken up by fields of yellow flowers; it felt like a Spring day. The road I tore up was devoid of traffic, straight in parts and curvy in others. Today, I was alone in nature, with the extreme pleasure of leaning into corners on a high-performance motorcycle and feeling all thoughts, stresses and real-world responsibilities vanish into oblivion.

While riding the Ducati is an extreme thrill by itself, the GoPro mounted firmly to the side-view mirror makes the ride so much more exciting because I can go back and see the ride from a different angle later. Hopefully I'll be able to edit all of this footage together into a second video like the one from Wales.

But besides lunch and dinner with good friends in Visalia, the final cherry on top was during my night ride back to Porterville. While roaring along in the blackness, I looked up and caught a legitimate shooting star streaking in the same direction as me. It lasted for about two seconds and was much brighter and faster than a flying craft. It sounds incredibly corny, but I think that shooting star was a sign of bigger things to come.

This weekend was another example of why going on an adventure doesn't need to be far from home. If you manage to uplift your mood to the extent I did, that's a successful day. These past two days show how a simple ride on a motorcycle out in nature is cleansing to the spirit, like kayaking on Loch Lomond on completely still water amid silence. That was the feeling of happiness, yes, but it was also the most free I will ever feel.

Needless to say, I was emotionally drained after that ride.

In other news, I'm set for Mexico, maybe Chicago next month, and a new trip: England. Kaichi High School invited me back to Brunel University in London to help a group of students get comfortable speaking English for a week. I got the time off from work, so barring something serious, I'll be in London again come June.

I'm slowly but surely gathering materials for the Coast Guard application and studying for the ASVAB. It's kind of enjoyable to take math notes again and learn about formulas regarding electricity.

My mother sent me an article the other day about how travel helps you reach your full potential. You gain so many new perspectives and meet many different people, but it's first and foremost good for the soul. It's probably, in my opinion, the most important person in my age group can do for themselves.

Today during lunch I told a friend of mine that taking out that student loan so I could travel and go to school ended up being worth much more than $50,000. All of those memories I have from that year are priceless. Taking out that loan is something I will never regret, which is something I did not think possible just a few years ago.

If you really have that itch to travel, there's always a way. It doesn't need to be expensive. During lunch today, I hope I inspired my friend to look more seriously into accomplishing her travel fantasies. If I accomplished mine (for now) then she, and other people, can too. But to do what I did, you have to be able to uproot yourself and go to a completely unfamiliar place, something not everyone can handle...