Good Days/Bad Days
It’s Friday night in August and I’m going to sleep a little early with eager anticipation. I have plans in the morning involving a day trip on my motorcycle. There’s no such thing as a bad day on a motorcycle.
In the morning, I wake up leisurely and enjoy the gentle morning light. There’s no particular rush. Even if I get going a little bit late, it will be a good day. The jarring whir of a coffee grinder and the slow drip of my coffee maker start to refresh me. Although the day has technically begun, it hasn’t yet fully formed and I like to sit in the ambiguity for a while. I pull some overnight oats out of the fridge, chow down, and sip coffee while looking out my window. It’s not looking good. Dark clouds are looming in the liminal space between here and the horizon. They’re far enough away to make it impossible to know if they’re even raining, but close enough to know that I should be concerned about riding. Chicago is still dry for now. Difficult to say how long it will remain that way.
The weather in my immediate vicinity isn’t what worries me though. I have tickets to see Oppenheimer in Indianapolis that afternoon. My plan is to do the round trip in one day. In good weather, it’s about three hours each way. Each time the weather app on my phone refreshes it shows the same forecast: heavy rain all afternoon. It’s not great, but it’s not horrible either. The morning looks fine at least.
It’s a long way to go just for a movie. A few weeks ago I read that only about 30 theaters in the world are showing it in 70mm IMAX. The closest one happens to be in Indianapolis and the novelty of it tripped a wire in my brain. I didn’t so much decide on a day trip as much as the back of my brain made plans for me. There’s a vague notion of better picture quality kicking around back there, but that’s justification after the fact. The decision rests on nothing except the circular notion that I have plans.
After gulping down the last of my coffee, I suit up in an armored jacket and heavy boots. I’m on the road and it’s a good day.
The outskirts of a storm actually make for pretty nice riding. Anecdotally, the interstate is hotter than taking backroads. My guess is that the wide strips of concrete and tar conspire with near constant exhaust to create a little bubble of heat. Overcast skies and precipitation dissipate that heat. A drizzle of rain acts like an evaporative air conditioner, cooling my body as it evaporates. I skirt the bad weather on the whole ride out and arrive in Indianapolis a little bit faster than my phone navigation says I should. It’s a good day.
All IMAX screens are larger than a typical movie theater, but the one at the Indiana State Musuem goes beyond as an IMAX dome. The screen curves in a spheroid shape that envelops the audience. My seat is in the very top row and even there it covers my entire field of view.
Oppenheimer is stunning in this format. Actors’ faces are projected nearly 6 stories tall at times and get lost as mere splashes of color in the vista at others. Small, intimately emotional moments are depicted as monumental as they were to the characters. The broad strokes of history still manage to fit. It seems like I’ve made a good decision coming here.
A few minutes later it starts to seem like maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. I have to pee but don’t want to miss anything so I hold it. My attention starts to wander and I notice that I’ve checked my watch 5 times in the past 15 minutes. It might have been nice to watch this in the comfort of my own home.
The movie wrenches me back with a moment where Oppenheimer is sitting in his classroom waiting to give his first lecture as a professor at Berkeley. Only one student shows up and they almost leave right away, thinking there has been a mixup. It’s an unimpressive moment in the film, neither visually interesting nor really advancing the plot and lasting less than a minute in a three hour movie. It’s incredibly important though.
Oppenheimer starts by asking what the student knows about quantum mechanics. The student knows the basics apparently and Oppenheimer chides him for doing it wrong then. He follows it up with another question, this time asking if light is made up of particles or waves and answers his own question before the student can get a word in. “Quantum mechanics says it’s both, how can it be both?”
The student tries to interrupt. “It can’t…”
Oppenheimer doesn’t let him finish “It can’t… but it is.”
I can feel myself rising out of and sinking further into my seat. All the stunning cinematography, star-studded casting, sound, production and writing feel like scaffolding for that one line. I know that the atom bomb is going to explode in another two hours, but I knew the basics of the plot before even setting off this morning. Waiting for the explosion would be doing it wrong.
When the credits finally roll and the lights come up my head is swimming with thoughts about duality. J. Robert Oppenheimer is a brilliant scientist and a terrifying weaponsmaker. He is charming and repulsive. Self centered and sacrificial. The Soviet Union was a natural enemy in a manufactured villain. Nuclear deproliferation prevented nuclear war and spurred the thermonuclear warhead. The movie itself glorifies the horrors of dropping two nuclear bombs on Japan with little to no regard for the helpless who were incinerated and those whose lives were permanently altered. Sounds of death and destruction ring in Robert’s head but he was hardly the most affected that day. I want to sit with it for a little while longer and I want to escape as quickly as possible. Oppenheimer is wonderful and horrible.
I get back to my bike, suit up again and emerge from the underground parking lot to find there’s somehow both too much and too little sunlight. I’ve been sitting in darkness for hours. It feels like it should be nighttime. The sun is still noticeable and high in the sky, but clouds are blocking it out. The weather app says there’s rain ahead. A lot of rain. It’s another chance to make a choice, but I’m not really making a choice. Gotta finish the day trip or its not a day trip. I zip up my rain jacket a little tighter and head for the highway.
For the first few miles I’m still thinking about the movie, particularly the first half. The part before I knew what I was watching. It seems different now, but in a way I don’t understand. Like how If I were to watch it again, knowing what the entire movie is really about, I wouldn’t see the same story. I’ll have to watch it again.
Rain from the forecasted storm draws me back to the present. My bike has a windshield and fairing on the front that blocks so much that in light rain I might stay completely dry. Here and now, I’m already wet. Moisture starts to leak through the seams of my jacket and my jeans start sticking to my skin. I slow down a little bit and drop back further behind the car in front of me. Water on the roads doesn’t affect tires all that much, but it doesn’t hurt to have more space.
With little warning, a torrent of rain descends. It stings my cheeks and splashes behind my sunglasses into my eyes. They twitch reflexively. Something akin to muscle memory kicks in and I flick my helmet’s visor shut. That stops the water, but traps my hot breath, which fogs up my glasses and the visor immediately. In another muscle memory-like reaction, I open the visor again. It doesn’t help. Between rain, mist being kicked up by cars and trucks on the road, and fog rolling in, the air is too humid for the beads of water on my sunglasses to evaporate.
I have panicked only a few times on my motorcycle. Most of the time, everything happens too fast to have any emotional reaction. A car turns left suddenly and you either swerve to avoid or you crash. Panic takes time.
For a few seconds, I’m riding down the highway in northern Indiana, unable to see what’s in front of me. Even a few seconds is a long time. I start to panic, clawing at my sunglasses. Hampered by thick leather gloves, I can get them only just far enough down to see that my windshield is also fogged up and mist is obscuring all but the car immediately in front of me. The rain starts stinging my eyes again. I wince through the pain.
Lightning strikes in the fields on both sides of the highway, far enough to feel distant, but too close to be safe. There aren’t any good options when this happens. Staying on course and at speed risks running into an unseen danger. Slowing down on the highway risks being the unseen danger. Stopping on the shoulder risks getting struck by lighting. It occurs to me that maybe the right choice was to stay in Indianapolis, but it’s a choice I could never have made.
I pull over on the shoulder and huddle between two cars, putting as much attention as possible towards any sign of static electricity. I don’t feel my hair sticking on end, but maybe water is just keeping it down. Nothing is tingling. The time between lighting strikes and thunder claps doesn’t seem to be changing. Maybe the charged clouds aren’t headed this way.
Putting my focus back on the immediate surroundings, it’s clear that from this new stationary perspective, the rain isn’t that bad. As the fog slowly lifts, it's almost peaceful. The cars and trucks still driving have slowed down significantly and the water dampens their sound. Thunder stops but occasional flashes of lightning add highlights to the soft, dispersed glow of sunlight filtering through the clouds. With my jacket and pants thoroughly soaked, more water doesn’t change anything. I could close my eyes and not even know the rain was still there were it not for the gentle patter on my helmet. Still crouched by my bike, I start to wonder if this is a good or bad day until the urge to get a move on overwhelms me and I set back off down the road.
For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, the rain is light enough for me to get home safely. It just takes a little longer. I strip off my wet clothes in the bathtub and hang them up to dry before cuddling up in bed in warm pajamas. Even a bad day on a motorcycle is a good day on a motorcycle.
Respite from the rain at an interstate rest stop
