The Dog Head

Jim Roche, The Dog Head, 2004, graphite and color pencil on paper, 30.25 x 44 inches.

JR: Do not drive faster than your guardian angel can fly. We all — motorcyclists — use that because we have to think of ourselves as being invisible. We could add that you need to get up every morning, and when you get on your motorcycle, remember one thing: the only reason that the person in the car also got up that morning was to run over you. You have to drive with that in mind. When I started these maps, in an earlier drawing, you will notice that I put my best recent time of sixty-four minutes flat, running on my R11S BMW and I gave a date. On many of these, I gave the date. So you can do the figuring. This is ninety-nine point seven miles and my E.T. was sixty-four minutes even stopping at everything, and only averaging approximately, in this case, eighty-eight miles an hour average speed. You can very quickly figure out what you are running at some points.

Museum: To average eighty-eight mph, math is very useful. Scary useful.

JR: You’ve got to be rolling to do that!

Museum: But coasting through those church zones.