Safety precautions include sand filled crash zones immediately off track to break the fall of athletes and machines should they collide or lose control in the heat of competition..The sound of speed coupled with the smell of sweat lingers like stale cologne in the heavy summer air.
Young men in top physical and mental condition sport state of the art racing prototypes here...The ambience is acid.. Charged with a lethal mixture of testosterone and competition........
Envy eyed spectators and giggling frathouse groupies move their heads in unison left to right as the speedsters streak pass their immediate view..
The infield pits are crowded with mechanics making last minute fine tuning adjustments, as in racing, attention to detail is often the difference between winning and losing...
So are the goings on here, this fine first day of June...
Akin to all spectator style sport is a protocol of communal conscience..The link between those in the stands and those in the field...It is a moment in time when the dramatic occurs..All focus is gathered and placed upon a fixed point.....Life outside the experience is placed on hold....
However, this particular first day of June...Life chose, at it so often does, a protocol of its own design...
Charles River racing track's multiplying bubbles of communal conscience were mercilessly shredded and lay to waste by the sudden invasion of previously unknown, unimagined, alien sight and sound...
Like the confusion and chaos created aboard the 'Starship Enterprise' when a cloaked Klingon 'Bird-of-Prey' suddenly pierces the comm shrieking an uninvited message, "we have you in our sights"...
It was the same scenario playing out in a parallel universe known as June 1st 1896....The day Slyvester Howard Roper rode his steam powered motorcycle onto the wooden speedway surface of the Charles River Racing Track...
Previously cocky, over confident, Ivy League god-men, stood fixed in amazement. Their mouths, gaping canyons.
Spectators rose up in unison...Eyes glazed, brain activity flat lined like a freaked out Windows 'hour glass' icon stuck in computer hell...
The 'Free Wheeler' racing machines, only a moment ago, prized possessions, dropped in distraction.
Their sleek frameworks tumbling down the steep banked turns of the speedway, to the apron below...
Power pedals scraping and gouging at a wooden tarmac. Wheels spinning like crazed Big Ben clocks desperately trying to catch up to the apparent future that has materialized before the natural evolutionary order of things....
With the ferocity of a Mammoth Roper hit the boards...Thirty, then thirty five, then forty miles per hour the contraption burned up the speedway...Roper himself barely holding course against the constant semi- left turns of the straightaways and high end banks at the opposing corners..
The engine spat fire like a dragon and belched black menacing smoke mixed with erratic blast of back fire creating what may have been mistaken as a hiccup of God himself...
Not until the completion of several blistering laps did the exhibition end with Roper bringing the bike to a halt on the start/finish side straightway...
Initially there was only silence.
It was the spectators who began to recover first..Seeing the bike motionless from a distance perhaps made it easier to identify it for what it was...Soon there were chuckles, then a kind of relief filled murmur emanating from the stands..Even the periodic amused laugh could be heard.."Why, it's just a bicycle, with a miniature locomotive engine attached!"...
Roper stood by the silent motorcycle taking in the reaction..Listening to the process of the crowd, as he did from the beginning over twenty years ago...
Observing the human mind at work.. Watching the buffering process break down the unknown into simpler comprehendible components, there by protecting the sanity of the individual..
Soon the clapping of hands fills the silence..And as this wave of applause begins to build, Roper gives the crowd the final assurance it needs...Removing his cap and bowing to the stands in time honored showmanship style.
The athletes, having been closer to the action, are slower to respond...The sounds of approval from the crowd brings them around. Their reaction after the fact, is somewhat opposite the spectators. These are men unaccustomed to embarrassment or being 'up staged'..Especially by a showman, and an old codger to boot..Fledgling conspiracies begin to form in dark brooding minds..Gruffly taking to their mounts the Free Wheelers resume their rightful place on the track, however command of the crowd has been broken..And for that, the universe must some how be set back to its correct perspective.
Some are silent determination pushing their bodies and machines to the limit in an effort to emulate speeds displayed by Roper.
Others back build their shaken self esteem's by tactics such as sarcastic laughter, jeers, and profane comments directed at Roper as they speed by on their warm up laps.
Roper however is not a man of the moment..The exhibition is a means to an end, and not the end itself. It is simply a heads up to the world..A tangible representation of the future.
Like the motorcycle itself is a representation. An imperfect materialized reflection of what Plato speaks of..A place of perfection..Tapped into and conceptualized by a stellar mind.
Roper's response to the crowd is automatic..A result of years following circus acts for the occasional opportunity to promote his invention...
He is satisfied with the bike's performance today..There may be an opportunity to feature the bike as pace vehicle for the race starts of Free Wheeler competition here at the Charles River race track..
He could not help but notice though, the excitement was gone..He is admittedly, going through the motions..There was always too much to do and not enough time to do it..
And in the process of doing, the future dared creep in..
Even on the likes of Sylvester Howard Roper.... (It would be 11 yrs. ago now, 1885 two German inventors: Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach invented a motorcycle using petroleum fuel) .
..After twenty two years of inventing improving and re inventing, the Roper motorcycle was obsolete...Steam was not to be the future...The internal combustion engine would win the day.
Seemingly unaware of the young men's jeers, Roper's mind is elsewhere..Something happened out there..
On the course..Something that still held him as though hypnotized...During the third lap..
A doorway opened and he had peeked inside..His projects, all of them began rolling through his mind like a slide show..Ideas that originally had no names..Brought back from the infinite and forged into reality by Roper himself..Materialized through the process of written plans, raw materials, frameworks, connectors, fasteners, motors, until eventually they named themselves..
Hand stitch Sewing Machine....Hot-air engine....Steam-carriages (the precursor of the automobile)...
....Breech loading guns...Machine for manufacturing screws....Hot-air furnaces and ranges......An automatic fire escape....
"Mr. Roper"...........There was still so much to do, and the thought alone made him tired...."Mr. Roper?".....
"Mr.Roper!"......"Yes?"....It was the speedway's track supervisor..."Are you alright there, old boy?"
"Yes, yes of course"....
"That was some kind of show Roper! Your idea for using that contraption of yours may just work"
"Yes?...Oh, as starting pacer!....That would be fine..When would you like us to start?"
"I'll have to talk it over with the track manager of course..He has the final say...Meantime though, some of the regulars got their woodies all in a twist....They want to challenge you to a race!"
"To be honest I am feeling a bit under the weather, and this was to be a business visit."
"Look, Roper...The boys aren't the kind to take an embarrassment lightly...It puts a dent in
their manhood....Now if you was to beat them fair and square"....
"Yes, yes I understand....Of course I will be happy to oblige...I'll need to refill the water reservoir under the seat here...Can you point me to the nearest facility?"
The race itself was uneventful...Unchallengeable...Roper was over lapping the slower Free Wheelers by the third lap around the tiny course..
What was eventful was Roper feeling himself gravitate toward the mysterious door of perception again. By the third lap he had stepped through and was no longer aware of himself or his motorcycle..
All that remained was an awareness...An acute awareness of concepts...Infinitely beautiful...Undefinable, unimagined, untapped, and boundless...He sensed weeping....Not here, for both joy and sorrow were not of this realm....But somewhere, distant and yet near...A sense he was weeping,....in joy....
...The same sense of awareness knew, it had finally come home..All that remained back 'there' was a final gesture...
The newspaper article's account of the incident read as follows:
The Boston Daily Globe:
"The machine was cutting out a lively pace on the back stretch when the men seated near the training quarters noticed the bicycle was unsteady," the paper said. "The forward wheel wobbled, and then suddenly, the cycle was deflected from its course and plunged off the track into the sand, throwing the rider and overturning.
"All rushed to the assistance of the inventor, who lay motionless beneath his wheel, but as soon as they touched him they perceived that life was extinct," the paper added. "Dr. Welcott was summoned and after an examination gave the opinion that Mr. Roper was dead before the machine left the track."
It was later determined that a heart attack killed Roper, who left behind a legacy of steam motorcycles that dated back nearly three decades.
As with many inventors during the last part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries their work was not fully recognized or appreciated for it's true value...In many cases until long after their deaths..
This is of course a natural and logical condition, and one that will not change...
It is the unique gift of the inventor to bring forward from that place...The place Roper now calls home..
That which has not yet been idealized, forged, or fastened, into the present time...
.
"The machine was cutting out a lively pace on the back stretch when the men seated near the training quarters noticed the bicycle was unsteady," the paper said. "The forward wheel wobbled, and then suddenly, the cycle was deflected from its course and plunged off the track into the sand, throwing the rider and overturning.
"All rushed to the assistance of the inventor, who lay motionless beneath his wheel, but as soon as they touched him they perceived that life was extinct," the paper added. "Dr. Welcott was summoned and after an examination gave the opinion that Mr. Roper was dead before the machine left the track."
It was later determined that a heart attack killed Roper, who left behind a legacy of steam motorcycles that dated back nearly three decades.
As with many inventors during the last part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries their work was not fully recognized or appreciated for it's true value...In many cases until long after their deaths..
This is of course a natural and logical condition, and one that will not change...
It is the unique gift of the inventor to bring forward from that place...The place Roper now calls home..
That which has not yet been idealized, forged, or fastened, into the present time...
.
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