Throttles, Tremors, and Bintang Beers

The fishing village of Amed is a 1.5 hour boat ride from the Gili Islands and a 2 hour bus ride from Ubud. While the beaches are graphite black from volcanic ash kicked out from the nearby Mt. Agung the waters are still as warm and welcoming as any in the Java sea. When wandering around the narrow strip of maritime activities that populate the town of Amed, the dark mountain towers ominously in the periphery. It is so large and yet close that it feels with a decent pair of go-go-gadget arms, you just might be able to reach out and touch it.

You can’t.

According to legend, Agung was formed as a fragment when a Hindu god split Mount Meru. If Ubud is the religious center of Bali, Mt. Agung is the high priestess. Wikipedia says the 3,300 meter beast towering over the sleepy village erupted most recently, * rereads entry * last week! While helpful information, this is not something that will be shared with mom in the next dispatch home. In 2017 the volcano was also center stage to an eruption that shut down global air traffic and caused 100,00 Balinese to evacuate the region. Amed is in the ‘safe zone’, give or take a kilometer, and everyone assures me we are safe. Planes crash, earthquakes clatter and volcanoes spew, but I am always told by the locals I am safe. It is reassuring, even though I have yet to actually make an inquiry on the subject.

I did however, inquire about motorbikes. Ningjha, the sweetest little proprietor of the three room guesthouse I was staying, was helpful in every way except obtaining a motorbike. “Ningjha no good at motorbikes,” she said when I asked. Nor did she have recommendations. So I rented a scooter on the secondary market in the normal way somebody undertakes such transactions in the developing world. Find a guy who knows a guy. I asked a young gentleman, whose polo shirt seemed to signal some passing formal connection to the guesthouse about a motorbike as he walked down the alley next to the stairwell I was sitting on. He stopped, nodded recognition, and yelled down the beach, “MOTO” accompanied with a throttling gesture with his balled fist. 5 minutes later I was the proud owner of a snappy red little honda. 

For $3.50 a day + gas I spent the afternoons cruising through the lush jungles of tangled curtains and terraced rice paddies that escalated up and down the islands countryside. Nothing feels like living quite like crushing it on one of those things. No destination. Nowhere to be. The thick air smelling like damp earth and the pavement rushing by mere inches beneath your feet. Just blasting through the heat and creating your own breeze as the bike hums along under you. The slow commerce seemed to get even slower while weaving up hills through little hamlets filled with open air markets and fresh fruit stands. 

I went up to the “Mother Temple” of Besakih on the southern slope of the mountain passing torn fronds of banana trees and green mangos rising from the bottom of hillocks like islands of the sea. A big shit eating grin on my face as I throttle along. Sometimes putting in my earbuds and singing along at the top of my lungs to favored tracks. Sometimes letting the music be life. Thinking how strange it is to be anything at all. And how wonderful. How utterly wonderful that fact is sometimes.

Then, just when I started thinking it wasn’t implausible to consider a future handling an F-16 fighter jet, I get passed like a pace car by a 12 year old girl in her school uniform. Which is followed by me checking my speedometer to see how effing fast she was going only to realize my speedometer is broken, I’m out of gas and I’ve had my left blinker on for half an hour.

Feeling not quite so cool anymore, my head shrinks back down and fits into my helmet. This could have been what caused my broken visor to unexpectedly snap loudly shut due to the huge crack down its side, momentarily blinding me, which scares me airborne out of my seat and onto my hand brake, the force of which causes me to accidentally squeeze, throwing on the front wheel brake and bouncing me back up in the air like a bull rider as I fishtail onto the landing strip of the highways shoulder narrowly missing a coconut stand.

The owners of the adjoining market smile knowingly as I park on the wrong side of the street and attempt to gain some of that Top Gun call sign composure back so I can order a few Bin Tang beers. Admittedly, after seeing my approach in the motorbike, the proprietors were probably questioning my need for.

While ordering, all eyes turned skyward simultaneously as we caught a fresh shock of smoke from Mt. Agung. The clerk pointed up at the smoke rising from the volcano signaling another seismic event and smiled. I pantomimed a face of dramatic fear and he opened one hand and waved it while he handed me my Bin Tangs in a plastic bag and laughed, “No, no….. very safe”. He said.

Unlike my driving.