The world is a curve

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The world is a curve

The world is a curve
Four hours ahead

There are few reasons to voluntarily torture yourself out of bed early in the morning. MOTORRAD editor Werner “Mini” Koch discovered one. The grandiose ride through the curve area that is still empty.

Werner Koch

01/15/2002

I admit it. The whole idea arose out of necessity many years ago. As a motorcycle mechanic quite stressful over the summer months, there was only one thing left for me: Get out when the cock crows, up on the box and turn the whisk. When the rest of the world staggered into the bathroom hours later, my grinder was already at the gas station for the second time. Torn down a few hundred kilometers, without traffic jams, without speed cameras, without nothing. Then came the “better” times, and every morning I staggered into the bathroom with the rest of the world, poked through caustic sheet metal avalanches on my bike, had breakfast when everyone was having breakfast – and rode a motorcycle when everyone was riding a motorcycle. It was dreadful. But last summer suddenly was another day like that. I don’t know why. In any case, I was wide awake at the first beep. Click – coffee machine started, water on face, shutters up – Kuhnacht. But it can’t be long, the birds are already rampaging in the branches. The first bird catches the fattest worm, as the saying goes. So just time for a small bite, a sip of coffee, the rest goes into the pot and the rucksack. Keys, where are the keys? Always the same theater. There! Lucky! But now in the clothes and stalked on tiptoe through the stairwell. The garage door groans and creaks, embarrassingly, a drop of oil must have jammed. Anyway, key around, light it up and get out of here. Traffic lights without lights, streets without cars, no soul on the move. In no time at all, Stuttgart is left behind in the steamy boiler below me. Actually nice, such a city early in the morning. In a few hours she will tighten your neck again, strangle you, with her incessant busyness. The BMW swings through the sleepy summer morning with a bang. Circumnavigating Tubingen on the smallest of paths, the steep flanks of the Swabian Alb build up in the pale light of dusk. A couple of early risers ?? or a late returnee? ?? cross the path, but before the hectic hustle and bustle takes its course, the single cylinder climbs the Alb over the dizzying curve carousel, dives into cool valleys, wafts of mist still waft over gurgling streams and rivers. The red ball moves inexorably into position behind dark curtains of clouds. So back there is the Orient. And why do we live in the West, even though it is tomorrow? The highly philosophical question remains unanswered for the time being, now the coffee is steaming in the cup. How long haven’t I done this? Crouching on the pile of wood in the early sun, not yet warm, but no longer cold either, blinking rays on your face and enjoying a strong coffee. The last motorcycle tour with wild camping? Mmmhhh, moons behind. It’s a shame, actually. Then the thought that always comes when life is great and that everyone probably knows: You should do it a lot more often. Yes, yes, everything was better in the past, right? In order to forestall a bout of depressive nostalgia, there is only one thing to do: drive what you can. With coffee and a second breakfast in the stomach, things are going well. The turns become more peppy, the slopes more inclined, the pleasure more pleasurable, and suddenly everything runs like clockwork. Nothing left in your head that presses you. World politics and day conferences, appointments and texts, visits to the dentist, tax returns – all gone. Now it’s about the real things in life. A single dance from curve to curve, play of light and shadow like in a dream, the last remnants of fog just rising, ridges in the glistening light of the sun’s rays, which meanwhile sneak comfortably under the leather. This is life. That sharpens the senses. Wet spots that you smell beforehand, gravelly rockfall, trickled down from the rock overnight that you suspected beforehand, a devious curve that you can recognize from afar by the aisle in the forest. Once the head is clear, the instinct works again, which the daily flickering of the screens and the mega information reduces beyond recognition. And where instinct is not enough, experience matters. Deer at the edge of the forest, whose shadows appear at the last moment, milk trucks that are trying on the ideal line to finally pulverize the Sigmaringen-Tubingen time today. Or this spinning camper van that suddenly calls up all coordination skills in the brain, otherwise the BMW would break right through its furniture. Squeaky, neatly placed behind the bumper. It has to be like that. Between the decals of the great travel adventures “Grobglockner” and “Insel Sylt” stuck the question “Have you lived today?” Thank you, yes, I did.

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