Friendship is an amazing thing. It can be fulfilling, enriching, challenging, maddening, incomprehensible, or nearly any other descriptive word you know. When you find a great friend, your life is more complete because of it.
TC and I are great friends like that. We have been through it all and are stronger for it. We are kindred spirits born about 10 years apart. We are like brothers from different mothers, yet we are dramatically different in some ways.
For example, I introduced TC to fine woodworking, bluegrass and celtic music, and white water kayaking. He has guided me into an appreciation of the complexities and qualities of hard rock, hair bands, and drum corps, he enhanced my love of classical music, and he tried to teach me to ride a motorcycle.
Things were going pretty well until that last bit involving the motorcycle. Maybe he was trying to pay me back for that first time I put him in a whitewater kayak, sealed the spray skirt around his waist, and said, “Follow me, it’ll be fun.”
Before I go any farther I have to explain that TC is in great shape and I am not. We are both well suited to our roles in life and are reasonably happy being and doing what we do. We are both professional emergency service workers: I do my work on the ground while he does his in the sky. He is aerodynamic and maintains a constant awareness of the weather, the winds, and his remaining fuel levels. I am hydrodynamic like the manatee. I maintain a constant awareness of current flow, time of day, and the ETTNM (estimated time to next meal). We are both safety nuts, as attested by the fact that we are still here AND we have awesome stories of what we have survived in spite of our best efforts not to. But back to the story.
TC has a beautiful BMW sport bike. It just looks fast even when it is parked in the garage. He climbs on it, starts it up somehow, and takes off like it is part of him. I wish I could look that cool riding something. It was my quiet verbalization of that desire one day while we were butchering some wood (woodworking for you uninitiated) in the garage that led to my first, and so far only, experience on a real motorcycle.
Prior to that moment… the moment when time stood still and I was forced to reevaluate many things all at once, my only experience on a motorized two wheeled craft was a single very unsatisfying ride on a moped in Colorado. Please allow me to explain.
While visiting Steamboat Springs, my wife and I decide it would be cool to rent mopeds and tour the town and countryside. Why not? We had the money and the time? What could go wrong? We found a shop and paid for the bikes, sight unseen. The operator took us out back and went through a few mopeds until he found two that would stay running and showed us the controls. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Just follow the regular rules of the road and you will be fine. You don’t need a helmet or special license.” Oh goodie!
We climbed onto our respective mopeds and fired them up. The wife promptly twisted the throttle all the way open and flew across the parking lot into some bushes. She had already wrecked and we had not left the parking lot! Not good. Fighting off a serious need to laugh hysterically, I jumped off, letting my stupid bike crash to the ground because I didn’t know it had a kick stand, and ran over to check on her. She was unharmed but embarrassed. With some kind words and encouragement she agreed not to quit while she was still somewhat ahead and got back on the bike.
This time, we both managed to leave the parking lot in a controlled manner and headed up the road. “Oh, let’s ride out to the Springs!” I said. Off we go. We quickly discovered that this was not at all like driving a car. There was wind. There were bugs that tasted bad and wedged themselves under your eyelids. There were other stupid drivers that didn’t like going 20 miles an hour behind us. We got the hang of it by the time we hit the edge of town so we headed for the mountain and eventually hit the gravel/dirt road that led to the springs.
Now, I am a pretty big guy and this moped was kinda small. I think I have held syringes in the ambulance with more cc’s than this motor. We were also something like a mile above sea level. Under those circumstances my bike performed radically different from my wife’s bike, even though they were the same. She was able to fly up the mountain at a respectable 20 mph while I managed what seemed like 2 mph in reverse. I really wanted to get to the springs. I really wanted to go fast. I really hated being left in my wife’s dust. All this testosterone and nothing to do with it.
She eventually came back to see what was wrong. I told her my bike probably had a bad tank of gas or something and that we were not going to make it to the Springs. She appeared to readily accept this, like any good wife would; knowing that what I really said was, “Waaaaaaa! I am too fat, this bike is too small, and you are better at this than I am and you are a girl!” So with my ego carefully bandaged, we headed back down the mountain and into town. The proprietor of the moped stand did not look surprised at all when we returned so soon.
So, now that my flashback is complete, I bring you back to the present. As we each reached the bottom of our respective beers, he brings up how cool it would be for us to go on a motorcycle trip with some friends. ‘There is just one problem,” I said. “I don’t know how to operate a motorcycle and I ain’t riding on the back of anybody’s bike.” He assured me that learning to ride is not that hard. “Sure, that is what most of the bikers I’ve scraped off trees, guardrails, and roadways thought at one time too,” I said. He agreed it is more dangerous than driving a car, but done properly it can be far more enjoyable and engaging. “Here, let me show you,” he says.
He gets me to climb onto his bike and tells me how it works. It feels pretty cool and I found myself making “vroom vroom” noises in my head while he explained how the throttle worked. I quickly discovered that you don’t just sit on a motorcycle. You sit in a car and turn the wheel and it goes where you want. To ride a motorcycle, you must “become” part of the bike in order to operate it. Not only that, but you have to lift up or push down on a shifter lever with your foot while coordinating a hand clutch and/or brake…and don’t forget you have to see everything, you have to balance, remember not to pull in front of a truck, and be sure to breathe. Maybe I should have paid closer attention to his instructions and not “vroom-vroomed” so much.
“I don’t think I am going to be any good at this,” I say. “Oh come on, give it a real try before you puss out,” he says. OK, since you put it that way.
“Now, start it up and slowly drive it up the street. I will be right next to you.” So off we go with TC trotting next to me like a nervous father as I take my first tentative steps to learn to ride. I made it to the top of the hill and the short street that formed a dead end near my house. I was able to safely proceed to the cul-de-sac but nearly dropped the bike when I screwed up the shift/brake/steer combination move necessary to turn the bike around. For something that seems to weigh nothing when it is upright between your legs at a stop, the bike suddenly weighed fourteen tons as it tilted to one side. TC saved the day by grabbing the handlebars and wrenching it upright- no doubt out of concern for my safety and coincidentally saving his carbon fiber wind cowling and special paint job.
Somewhat scared and feeling quite uncoordinated, I tried to quit but he would not hear of it. “Come on. You have to at least make the speedometer needle move off the 0 peg.” OK bud. I will try it. I restarted the bike and headed out to the main street with renewed false confidence. I promptly stalled it in a panic as a car came up the street but I managed to stop it and not wind up greasing the oil pan of the car with my skin and bodily fluids. I restarted it and carefully turned right and headed down the hill past my house.
“Look at me!” I am doing it! Wow this is fun….PARKED CAR!!!!!!!!! Again, I performed a panicked stall/stop while taking evasive action and did not break any bones. I did feel the air pressure drop around me, probably from the huge intake of air as TC prepared for the impact and loss of his beloved bike. Then I had my epiphany. It was all clear. God was telling me I didn’t need to ride on a stretcher in an ambulance or helicopter any time soon. Understood Sir! I hopped off the bike and tried to push it back into my driveway.
“I am just not cut out for this,” I said. “If y’all ever go on a long ride I will be your ground support crew,” I offered. I could tell he was disappointed that I was giving up, but I could also see a flash of relief that he was going to be able to ride his motorcycle home and not call a wrecker for it.
I have to admit that I do feel a slight pull to take to the road on a motorcycle. The experience of riding one seems to be much more than the sum of the individual parts necessary to make a ride possible. I desire the freedom, the camaraderie, and the shared adventure that I think a group ride would offer.
I know I am probably ruined by having run too many motorcycle wrecks at work and crippled by my greater sense of responsibility to remain alive for the sake of my family, but I still think it would be cool to just stomp on the kick starter, rev the engine, and tear off down the road in search of what ever is over the next hill.
Nah. I am not close enough to my midlife crisis yet.
Joe “BOLO”
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