Jul 16, 2026
You most likely know this one. But just in case. You'll see bikers on heavy machines extend their arm at a 45deg downward angle as they pass each other in opposite directions on country roads.
You recognize the real long distance guys by that angle. Around cities, you get the wannabes that stick their arm out any which way when they see a heavy machine come their way.
Why the angle? Straight out is the sign for a left turn. Arm sort of up means a right turn. Arm down means you are about to stop. The 45deg was not taken.
As a kid in Europe it was always exciting to cross a border in my parents' car. There were barriers, and guards, and flags.
With the peacetime European Union, those all disappeared. What remained was the reality that the landscape had no national markers. Fields simply extended. Trees looked no different from the one foot taken between Germany and Switzerland. Even the language was the same at that scale.
Yet in wartime that single step could mean life or death. The one stride would cross from dictatorship to democracy. From being nothing, to being a human being.
The US/Canada border used to be a nothing experience. Not any more.
When you ride for miles through landscapes, you enter a trance. Which is how I more than once had my mind play tricks on me.
Every State, every few hundred miles seems to have a particularly named vacation spot, or campground hidden away behind plush vegetation, down a small track off the main country road.
Because these places are local, the signs don't stand out.
Except in this reproduction.
Only at the very last moment of passing the sign would it catch my attention, as my peripheral vision took the sight in.
The congnitive dissonance always hits almost instantly. Something was wrong with the sign back there!
Another fraction of a mile later, the transposition reveals itself in my mind.
But it's too late.
For miles on, I wonder:
What is it whispering?