Todd Kellett
"Just gonna hold the throttle till I see God or the checkered flag…"
There is a video I cannot watch without tearing up. A man named Todd Kellett, a motorcycle, a race, and a piece of music underneath it that does something to my chest every single time. I have watched a lot of things in my life. I have not seen anything quite like this.
It is the most fucking awesome thing I have ever seen.
I do not know Todd. We have never met. But I know that machine, and I know that grip on the throttle, and I know exactly what it is — because I spent a whole month and a whole press trying to give a name to it. I called him Jakobus. The boy who finally gets to open it all the way up. The full send. The four-on-the-floor stomp made flesh. Badger energy: the unbroken, unafraid charge forward that some of us only ever got to write down because we never got to live it.
And then a stranger on a motorcycle goes and lives it, out loud, at speed, with a soundtrack — and there it is. The thing itself. No metaphor needed.
"Just gonna hold the throttle till I see God or the checkered flag."
That is the whole creed in one line. There is no braver sentence. It is not recklessness — it is the decision to commit so completely that the only two outcomes left are arrival or transcendence, and you are at peace with both. Most people spend their lives feathering the throttle. Todd wrote the other way to do it on the side of a race.
The perfect note
For a few glorious moments all the years of banked experience and the combination of the engineering that went into his motorcycle came together like a crescendo of waves crashing — and for a few seconds the world disappeared for this man, who was not imagining future attention but only riding that sweet spot where revs and torque and ancient chemistry meet modern engineering. And for that glorious moment the universe sang a perfect note.
Watch it
<p class="cta" style="text-align:center;margin:32px 0"> <a class="btn" href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWXYRgYk1f5/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Watch the clip →</a> </p>
(It lives on Instagram. Sound on. You will know within ten seconds whether it gets you the way it gets me.)
Hat off, Brother
So this page is small and it is simple and it means every word: hat off, Brother. You do not know me, and you have already given me something — a picture of the thing I keep trying to put into books, done better than any sentence could do it. Spiritual brother is not a phrase I use lightly. I am using it on purpose.
And one standing offer, in writing, where you can hold me to it:
If you ever want to write a book — an autobiography, or anything at all — arjunabadger.press is free for you. Always. No catch, no clock. The whole house, the editors, the covers, the distribution — open to you the day you want it. You held the throttle. The least I can do is hold the door.
Ride safe. Or don't. Either way — I see you.
— Andries