The road from Cool to Auburn...

...goes down three miles and back up three and has fifty billion curves, some 15mph, some 10, and so I see this log truck down at the bottom nudging his way up towards Auburn and he's totally full of huge, long logs, I count like 28, and he's in first gear because he can't go any faster than about one mile-per-hour all the way up the hill out of Auburn Ravine

...and in my CD rotation for about the last five years has been this CD, by lauryn hill, which I love (except that now it's starting to skip) and it's a double, and most of the songs reveal some kind of Christian transformation, just by her mention of God and so many Christian tag words and even some scriptures...

(by the way, instead of buying a new CD, I'll hold on to this one, like when my sister's record player batteries ran low and she wouldn't let anyone replace them, but instead, would hold on tightly and all you could hear was, "puuuuuufffff ttthhheeeeee maaaaggggiiiiccc Drrraaaaggggooooonnnnn..." in that slo-mo voice... that's how I am sometimes about things I should let go of.)

So I watch this truck, like he's huge, going one mile-an-hour with cars stacking up behind him, and start to think, "what are my logs? what am I hauling 28 of that I can let go and let roll down the hill because I'm going one mile-per-hour sometimes, but not to a logyard?" This is a stretch, but maybe it's Jesus' job to be a log truck and to haul our shit up the Ravine, three miles to Auburn, where dozens of banks competed with Placerville to store the most gold about 150 years ago, not that that's related, but a lot of gold must have been trudged up that same hill.

Maybe Jesus wants the job, which I often do myself, and just about the time the truck comes to the passing lane and lets all of us zippy, unburdened cars drive by, Lauryn says, "your will is a gift and everytime you submit your will to somebody else, a part of you dies." Which she's right when she puts it that way, and I think a lot of me had died many times.

***

Here's me and my FZ1, which I sold a month ago, but I long to ride her again, my baby, 135 mph up many curvy roads and long highways and pass many log trucks along the way. That's my riding buddy's Virago next to me. I'll try to scare up a picture of her, too...here's Debzers. I miss those days, especially Deb's homemade birthday card with "mathosaurus" stickers on it, 'cause she's a huge math genius/auditor for some outfit in Denver - props girl!