The smell of fear, excitement, fuel, and smoke fills your nostrils and clouds your fevered mind, like a drug you can’t get enough of, even though you know it will cripple or kill you if given the opportunity.
Your breath comes in short, hurried gasps. Your heart hammers relentlessly on your ribs, like an enraged gorilla trying to smash out of a bamboo cage. The sweat has already started to run down your forehead and into your eyes, and you haven’t even begun yet. Not one inch of progress.
You look back to see if the others are as ready to race full-tilt into mayhem and danger as you are. A nod. A thumbs up. Or just that look. They’re ready.
Full steam ahead!
The demon bolted together beneath you screams like it’s being skinned alive as you fly ever faster towards your certain demise. Twisting, turning, rolling, sliding; constantly on the razor’s edge between control and chaos; winding through an infinite number of immovable obstacles that never seem to diminish in number or show any mercy or give when you collide.
The top of the mountain is always the goal, but the reward, by far, is getting there.
You fly like the wind, as though the angry serpents left in your wake are chasing you out of hell. The physical punishment you suffer along the way doesn’t change the fact that the journey never seems to last long enough and there are never enough mountains to climb.
Reach the top, catch your breath for a moment, and set off once again, like you’re on fire, and the only way to put it out is by going faster.
You soar through the air and slide sideways around every bend and turn, hanging on with every ounce of strength you possess as the possessed monster you never truly master tries to throw you off, from the second you climb on to the moment it’s over. It makes no difference to it whether you lie in a broken heap at the end of the day or retire with a smile on your face, in one sore, tortured piece.
This is a battle between man and a beast that will never be tamed. Neither of you would have it any other way. You share an understanding and a respect that nobody else could ever comprehend through explanation alone, but one of you will break first.
Though you would love to live forever on the back of this dragon, and fly as far into the unknown as you can go, all good things must end. After what seems like only minutes, it's time to turn back.
The return trip is a little slower than the one towards freedom. It’s kind of like taking your dog for a walk. It knows the instant you start to wander back instead of away, and now it’s your turn to pull instead of being pulled.
You notice things you'd missed while in the adrenaline-infused trance of sound, speed, and danger only a short while earlier, and it just adds to the many reasons you have to return. As if you would have needed much convincing.
All too soon, you’re back at the staging ground, half regretting and half celebrating the end of another successful mission.
Load up the demon steeds. Strap them down tight, and remove your armour. The day is won.
You and your comrades recount your best highlights for a while before eventually climbing in behind the wheels of vehicles that contact the ground in four places.
As much as you'd all like it to, this day can't last forever. Wishing that it wasn't over, but looking forward to a hot meal and a warm bed, you navigate the smooth, paved path home.
There's nothing to match the adrenaline-fueled dance with death in a ballroom of trees, rocks, sand, and soil. Riding these two-wheeled beasts is beauty, terror, and mayhem. It’s dreaming, flying, fighting, and falling all at once, and there is no equal. I'll do it until I die, even if it kills me.
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