The air smelled like salt and green — that perfect mix of sea breeze and cut grass that makes you want to breathe deeper than usual. The engine beneath me trembled like a restless heartbeat, a soft growl waiting for permission. The horizon stretched wide open, the ocean glinting like someone had spilled a bucket of light across it.

There’s a quiet that comes with being on a motorcycle that cars will never know. You feel everything. The vibration through your knees, the smell of the dirt road, the way wind wraps itself around your chest and reminds you that you’re temporary — beautifully, wildly temporary.

I’d been at that house all morning — the one perched like a secret above the shoreline. Coffee in hand, thoughts in pieces. The kind of morning where you start to wonder what comes next. You can’t think your way out of those moods. You have to move through them. So I kicked the starter, felt the spark catch, and let the road (or what counted for one) decide what kind of day it would be.

As I rode down toward the edge of the bluff, the world turned into sound and rhythm — tires biting grass, gears clicking into harmony, wind roaring against my ears like applause. The taste of salt hung in the air. Every inhale felt like a reset button.

I remembered something a friend once said: “Speed doesn’t make you free. Trust does.” And it hit me — the throttle isn’t what gives you peace; it’s the surrender. The willingness to lean into motion, to stop bracing for balance, to let the world hold you up for a while.

When I stopped halfway down the hill and looked back, the house stood quiet — small now, almost shy against the vast sky. The engine ticked softly as it cooled, that metallic whisper that sounds like gratitude.

The wind picked up, carrying with it the faint scent of the ocean again — briny, raw, alive. I smiled, thinking how funny it is that sometimes you have to get moving just to remember how to be still.