Riders

She's a wind of a different sort, my wife is.  I don't gear up and she's dragging me to the road, rubbing my face into the asphalt and selling my bike on Craigslist.  She's no blowhard, no flash of hot air, no; she's wind.  She calls Iowa a "natural selection state" meaning one doesn't wear gear, they're closer to the front of the line with those waiting for Grim Reaper's signature.  Gear spelled looks like this "r-i-d-e-r", from another point of view looks like, "f-r-e-e-d-o-m" and from her side looks like "l-o-v-e."

She settles in unavoidable, and carries through me like Spring storms; forever Spring.

Wind dashed against my helmet, blurred the world, roads like bent trees.  Relentless breath as unending as the motor beneath me, and the love behind me.

Four-hundred and two miles ridden yesterday.  Gear does not make a motorcyclist, but it does help maintain them.  Motorcyclists are lovers and fighters; the entire package.  The wind is their joy and the other's lives their freedom.  They're one giant cumulous cloud rising stratospherically, and only a friendly wave away. They've the power to yank another from their docker's and polo lives, turn the heavenly fan to "high" and send them out.

She's a different kind of wind, my wife is.  She pats my helmeted head and says, "let's ride baby."  My gloved hands pull the clutch, release the brake, and turn the throttle; the shifter receives a quick tap and we're off. The road rises up to meet us, the wide open envelopes us, and my loving wind, my graceful yet firm freedom, my blessed wife, pats me on the helmet and blows me down yonder.

Motorcyclist's Championship Bout

The wind sucked.  We rode our relatively heavy Triumph Adventurer 900 sideways.  Monique and I felt like rolling back-slashes.  I mean, begin with this "\", then mentally draw a motorcycle and two freaked people on the seats.  That's us.

We left on Saturday morning to Omaha; a little cool maybe, but we own the gear.  We rode well and besides my somewhat chilled and pickled fingers, the world turned and we rolled.

Sunday.  Went to church on a relatively calm morning, excited about God and the prospect of riding home on a perfect day.  Leaving church however felt more like the disciple's big day on the sea of Galilee.

"This could be interesting," I said.

"Uh-huh," replied Monique, obviously working her Zen.

Hunger.  The prospect of a big family meal held our aversions at bay.

We'd had eggs, biscuits and gravy and all kinds of good coffee for breakfast.  Dinner...King Tut might've enjoyed dinner.  Ham, potatoes, cheesy broccoli, soft baked bread and coleslaw filled our stomachs, and that was before a delicious birthday cake slid gracefully down.

Couldn't ignore it anymore.  Monique geared up looks a bit like the Michelin man.  But the bike goes down and she slides across the pavement like she's on a magic carpet ride and lives to tell the story.  I love my Michelin wife.  Her jacket is actually red and black and her helmet, gray.  The rest of her is back alley black and I find that totally hot.

"This could be interesting."

"Uh Huh".

I like the back roads but interstate 80 is really a lovely ride filled with rolling hills, beautiful flats and on the best days lots of sunshine.

Sunday though... back-slash bikers, "\", ...that's us.  The wind sucked.  The gusts were even more amazing.  War-like.  I'd say it was like the entire Senior High football team testing their metal on the pip squeak.  You ever been sucker punched by a prize fighter?  Me neither, but take a ride at thirty degrees ("\") and there ya go.  Except God was the prize fighter, Rocky freakin Balboa, and I was the librarian who thought nothing of peeing in his ever lovin' shorts.

Forty-five miles.  We rode toward an exit replete with Kum-N-Go and a BP or something like that.  Monique's hand pops into view and points toward the exit.

I get that.  I wanted off.

"Holy Moly," I said.

"My body is stiff from freaking out!" is what Monique said.  "Every time I felt like I was going to be ok another titanic gust hit the bike and I'd rush back to oblivion again."

"This is soooo not my favorite ride."

We stopped every 50 miles or so tell ya the truth.  Stops are good ways to get to know the area.  You look around, breath the air, kiss the road.

Frequent stops provided much needed relief.  Even the hardened need relief.  And still...only took ten minutes to stop the shaking before we were on the road again.

Mind numbing fear doesn't hold a candle to the spirit of the contumacious adventurer.  Believe that.  We were out there.  A lot of people wouldn't be.  Still, our bodies felt more like adventuresome noodles the first 90 miles.

Tell ya something else though...we got used to it.  Sort of tells you how numb our minds were doesn't it?  Besides the interstate 80's Sunday afternoon semi-fleet, and besides the nutty college kids trying to get back to college, and besides our angled ride and the championship bout with God's windy left hook, the ride home wasn't so bad.

The trees and prairie were bending over the rolling hills.  Flocks of geese flew overhead.  The road was straight enough and I can handle the college kids.  The earth turned and the our wheels rolled.

So we tacked another motorcycle adventure underneath our belts.  There were quite a few bikes out there actually and the lot of us waved our way through.  One dude passed us riding his Harley Fatboy.  His cheeks stretched and flapped in combination with strong winds and eighty miles per hour.  I'm sure it took some effort to keep his mouth closed.  He might've easily been in the gravity machine they use to test the resilience of your average astronaut.  He wasn't though.  He and his bike leaned into a steady road and a mighty gale.  Stretched cheeks were nothing compared to the biker's smile reaching both ears.

The adventurous giants we are...some would call us adventurous jack-asses and they might be right.

But we were out there, 'nuf said.

And we were really, really....really glad to be home.

The Wind

The words in the song say something like "Party like it's 1969". I can't even remember who wrote it. There's an old Blues tune by the same name. New Year's Eve I partied like it was 1939. I did. The average age of the party was somewhere well over 60.

Christmas celebrations define a time "when", right? At least Christians celebrate an event which doesn't move. It is the birth of Christ. The events within that story happened within that year. The birth of Christ didn't happen one year and then again ten years later. Even if you celebrate a winter soltice, or a fat guy in a fat suit riding in a fat sleigh with energetic reindeer, including one with a shiny nose, they all have something in common. They don't change. Soltice is, we know that. Santa never ages or grows any fatter (but who can really tell at 2 a.m. when he slides down your chimney right?). New Year's is different. In fact it's the only celebration that celebrates the passage of time, not the time "when". Even your own birthdays mark the day you were born, a day frozen in time. New Year's feels like wind. We're prompted to set resolutions, talk about the unknown, relish in all that was last year with friends, family and hoards of New Year's letters received and written. We don't just get cake and a favorite meal, we celebrate with feasts of great magnitude! There are a great many songs about the New Year and only one about my birthday.

And so it was the New Year's Eve. We partied like it was 1939. We'd invited some of our younger friends, but none could come for one reason or another. So I partied with Don, Herm, Jerry, Glen and others, most who've seen a much greater life span than I. Oh, I played games and messed with the tots that night of course. I had a busy and playful night. But I loved my time with the old guys.

They remembered a day back here or there. Days when Newton Iowa was this way or that way. They remembered days when simple illnesses were major events. I heard one story about life before World War II and I found out that people's attitudes or ways of being weren't much different than they are now. So these old guys--I suppose some of them only have a grunt of life left in their bodies. But we talked, smiled, laughed and groaned about the winds that blew on other days well beyond my memory and I'm glad for it. I studied history in school, but I experienced some of it on New Year's Eve. Don begins many of his sentences with "Well ya know" and Glen often starts with "Why..." and not in question form either..."Why, back when I was 13 we worked..." and so on. They pray in "thee's" and "thou's" and a person like myself learns a little about reverence that way...yearns for that kind of reverence even.

I learned about days before fast food, a time when everyone had a garden and no one minded weeding and everyone loved to sneak a strawberry off the plant as they worked. The stories were blissfully familiar to them. I nodded and laughed as if I understood the wisdom offered by time. I told a few of my last year's motorcycle stories and Yellowstone stories and others, and they nodded and laughed too; maybe I gained some street cred, like twelve year old Jesus at the Synagogue.  But then they remembered riding their own bikes, about how mechanics weren't around every corner, about how they had to figure it out themselves. I'm thankful for mechanics...but I can see how I might benefit without them.

These guys are somewhat trapped by yesteryear and overwhelmed by today and yet tonight they'll all watch the six-o'clock news in digital high definition without wondering much about "where it all went."

But I'm thankful for winds, for parties with old and wise guys who are my old and wise friends, and I'm thankful for the day after, simply because I was with them. But I'm most thankful for the stories. Maybe one day a young lad will sit by my side listening to me regale about my own days--about the winds I remember.

So it was a great night and an unexpected night. The clock struck twelve, we prayed together, I kissed my lovely bride, and drank my champagne.  Then I lay in bed and I thought of the old guys. I would've enjoyed the company our usual crowd, the "yunguns" the old timers call us.  But as it was we might not have spent much time isolated into our own young circle because the golden morsels leaving the lips of the old guys would've mesmerized them too. I hope I remember the things I learned this New Year's night. I hope to party with them again because that is a great, fun, funny, knowledgeable group of guys. And I hope that every time I go outside, that I can hear the wind blow.