Tag: motorcycle

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It Can Happen

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Never give up. Easy to say, but oh, so hard to do. The path of least resistance can become quite the habit for many, but for a few they will settle for nothing but the best. But what about an average guy like me? I can dream, can’t I? Sometimes it takes goals (lofty goals at that) for them to be reached. Why is that? Goals are the easy part, it’s the doing that takes the effort. And of course, never giving up.

It’s easy to say “maybe someday,” but to actually find yourself achieving a goal you put forth – goes to show you if you want it bad enough, you can make it happen. How bad did I want this? Not as bad as you think. It seemed so far-fetched that it was more of a dream than an actual goal. This isn’t something I’ve been thinking about since I was a child, but only recently did I have the urge to put my thoughts into words. I think from a deeper sense, it was all the years of reading motorcycle publications over and over that put me in this spot. If it’s true “you are what you eat,” then surely you are what you read. And as luck would have it, I’m always hungry.

I could go all philosophical here and say it’s destiny – or that all things happen for a reason; and although I do believe in destiny and the whole ” happen for a reason” thing, I also believe you can make your own opportunities as you plug away through life. Slow and steady might get your there, but it has a lot to do with timing. Just the idea this could happen to a small town guy twenty-five years ago seems improbable without the help of the internet. As for my location, it isn’t in the heart of the motorcycle industry. The world is a much smaller place to me as an adult, but seemingly too big for a teenager with other things on his mind, to make the most of it. I’m not sure Mrs. Lawrenz in freshman typing class or Mr. Sweeney in English were convinced I was capable of putting my thoughts into words in 1977, but they should see me now – spelling my words all good (more better?) and using most of my fingers. They believed in me I’m sure, but I knew me as a freshman and, well… But that is exactly the point I’m trying to make here. You aren’t limited by the invisible boundaries we place around ourselves; we’re only limited to the boundaries of our dreams. The last time I checked, my dreams can be way out there.

I still have bigger goals I want to achieve, but even those seem like dreams at this point. Will I achieve them? To say “no” would undermine my own success, so I will plug away as I always do to make them a reality. It’s still a matter of timing and making your own opportunities, and it always helps if you have a dream to chase – and the support of friends, family and of course teachers!

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Wait Just a Second

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You might say it can happen just about anywhere. Sitting on a hillside watching the sun lay its head down after a long day, the quiet surrounding you tighter and tighter as it grows dark, or sitting on a rock at water’s edge as the waves come in to greet you. Peace. Center. This is what it’s all about it, as you struggle through the days feeling pulled in all directions – and for what? To have a few moments like this, where we find what we’re looking for within ourselves. It takes the beginning or the end of something to put it all into perspective. The constant motion of water, the sun coming up in the morning to start the day or the sunset to put an exclamation point at the end of another day in our lives. We seek these few precious seconds out of a day that has only so many to choose from. But we find them – they’re just mixed in with all the rest.

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Even the clear sky, lit from a full moon, can give us pause. We often feel the need to see something bigger than ourselves to jar our senses and rattle our being. I find a lot of these necessary fragments of time from behind the handlebars of my motorcycle. It’s a combination of direction, smells, sights and sounds that put me in my place. Life is so much bigger than the road I’m on. I’ve seen the power of a storm as I’m heading right into it – and the rainbow that follows. It’s only water, right? I often talk of the sun coming up in my mirror as I head West, or the sun setting as I roll down the highway, but mere words can’t do it justice. It’s an attitude of humility that surfaces and suddenly it’s me who becomes those precious few seconds in time. I’ve been on this planet for fifty-plus years, but to this planet my life is the equivalent to the blink of an eye.

I need these “larger than my life” moments to set me straight, but it isn’t always nature that causes it. The faces of my grandchildren can bring even the most difficult day to its knees and it makes me realize that those few precious seconds we have are just that – few and precious. So whether it’s from the seat of your motorcycle, hands and knees dirty from the garden or standing perfectly still as the evening comes; take it all in as it’s only a blink of an eye.

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Anticipation

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I for one, ride a motorcycle to get away from it all. That’s the whole idea, isn’t it? Get on our motorcycle and ride, forgetting the emails, phone calls and whatever else is making all that noise in our ears and distracting us from our sanity. Too much really is too much. I can remember a time when I left my phone at home and lived to connect another day – that’s because the phone was mounted to the wall in the kitchen. If we missed a phone call they would call back – if it was really that important. Today we walk from room to room carrying our mobile device with us, (you know, just in case) when we used to stand or sit next to the phone in the kitchen while we talked to our neighbor. Most of our messages came in the mail box with a stamp on it, not instantly of course, but in 3-5 days. Now, in a world of instant communication, if our little black ball and chain we carry around with us isn’t vibrating or beeping every minute on the minute we immediately think no one cares anymore.

We have become so used to immediate information and constant connection, that we’ve forgotten about anticipation. As quick as instant stimulation comes along, we move on to the next without absorbing what just happened, almost to the point of losing it’s shock value. Good news or bad, as soon as we digest it, it’s gone and it’s on to the next tasty morsel of information. Whatever happened to waiting on a letter from a dear friend, or your next issue of Motorcyclist Magazine to come in the mail? Shouldn’t it be here already? Where is it? Don’t they care anymore? Of course they do. That’s called anticipation. I can’t remember the last time I had a phantom vibration from my mailbox out by the street.

Riding motorcycles gives us an opportunity to escape this high-tech jungle if only for a little while. I’ve seen it too many times though, as a rider pulls up to park his or her bike, the same routine will follow; pull up and stop, drop the kick stand, shut off the motor, pull the helmet off and then check their phone for any missed calls, texts or updated statuses. Really? I’m guilty and so are you. In my early years of motorcycling, we just left the house and if the phone rang off the wall we wouldn’t know it. There was actually a time when I didn’t have an answering machine! If the phone rings in the kitchen and nobody’s home, how would you know? You didn’t! Did time slow down and the world stop spinning because of it? Here is a simple test: How far will you ride back to your house if you forget your mobile device? 5 miles? 10 miles? The answer here is you won’t have to double back because not many would forget it in the first place. It’s that important to us and if by chance, and I mean a slight chance, you forget it you will ride 5 miles back home to retrieve in the kitchen where you left it. Hold on here, isn’t that where the phone was mounted to the wall when I was a kid?

I’m not beyond technology. I find the convenience of a mobile phone a great tool to have for any motorcyclist, and it gives a great sense of security while I’m out riding – but I also realize when I’m riding it can become a distraction from the whole reason I’m out here anyway. On my last trip to Sturgis, my phone went dead on day three and I was okay with that. Sure, I charged it up when I got the chance, but it didn’t seem that important by then. In fact, it was kind of nice not having to worry about missing anything of importance. Who am I kidding – I couldn’t take any pictures, send any humorous text messages or find out when everyone was meeting at the Knuckle Saloon. Time had slowed to a crawl and the world as I knew it was standing still, but I made it.

Given the world we live in now, it’s important to go with the flow, and it’s all about the balance of getting lost – but not too lost – on our motorcycles.

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Over-Meditation

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Once in a while my mood will change. My head gets foggy and I lose focus, and the usual daily routine doesn’t help the situation. Is it a full moon, or what? The ebb and flow of life in general can pull you into a funk that creeps in and takes over, but right now the tide must be in. I’m usually a happy-go-lucky guy and very little gets to me – but the last few days have been a struggle. Even the ride to work and home again isn’t enough to blow the frustrations off of me. Whenever I ride my motorcycle, it only takes a couple of minutes before the knot in my head is gone, but for the last week or so, even Houdini can’t seem to untie the rope behind my sunglasses.

 Maybe it’s not the miles ridden, but the attitude in which they are ridden. Either way, I won’t complain about the ride, just the results.

So what does a biker do when he gets in a mood like this? Most casual riders use the escape of hopping on their bike to clear their head. They take advantage of the solitude of riding to sort out their problems of the day and their motorcycle is the escape they need to outrun the madness. So when this cloudy frustration envelopes me, what do I do? I ride almost every day now, so when this mood comes over me it would seem the logical thing is to ride even more? You would think. When you get a headache, you medicate – but when that doesn’t work, you wouldn’t dare over-medicate.

Yesterday, after logging about 200 miles on a particulary beautiful fall day, I still couldn’t get the fog in my head to clear. I found my thoughts bouncing around to so many different things that it was hard to find any clarity, which is very unusual for me. I don’t over analyze, but when I need to sort some things out, it doesn’t take me very long. This time appears different and without any explanation as to why, I can only say a longer ride didn’t help. Did I just say that? Maybe it’s not the miles ridden, but the attitude in which they are ridden. Either way, I won’t complain about the ride, just the results.

This mood will pass just as the countless miles roll beneath the wheels of my bike. At some random mile marker the knot in my head will miraculously become undone and all will be right for the time being. In the meantime the fog remains and my thoughts aren’t as clear as I would like them – time is all it takes. Anyone got an aspirin?

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Motorcycle Crossing

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I love riding this time of year. Early fall, cool in the mornings, and perfect when you ride home. This morning’s ride to work was just that. I had my leather jacket on, knowing that at 49 degrees on the ride in, it would not be needed this afternoon on the way home. About six miles from home the road drops into a valley where the small community of Skiddy resides, and of course where the temperature drops what seems to be about 10 degrees. It’s also a known hangout for deer. You cross two bridges over the same creek with trees lining the banks, so I guess from a deer’s perspective it makes a great place to jump from the ditches and scare us folks on motorcycles.

Every day you swing a leg over the seat of a motorcycle, you take a chance. There isn’t a day goes by that a car doesn’t pull out in front of me without the driver looking my way – it’s going to happen, so I fully expect it. Deer on the other hand, have an element of surprise that humans posses but rarely use. Deer usually come to work semi-camouflaged to their surroundings, aren’t going to have a cell phone up to their head and they do their best work anywhere but in an intersection. Humans are usually confined to pavement and as long as your head is on a swivel, they are predictable.

This morning as the sun was coming up but yet to crest the horizon, I dropped into the valley crossing the first bridge. After the bridge there is a gradual curve to the left that can be taken without slowing down and this morning wasn’t going to be any different. Once I was committed into the curve, out of the corner of my good eye I realized a doe was ignoring the Motorcycle Crossing sign. She was stepping up onto the road from the ditch to my left wearing a stunning brown fur coat (like I said, the temperature feels about 10 degrees cooler when you drop down through Skiddy, so a coat was expected). Traveling at about 50 miles per hour and well into to the curve, I had only a split-second to react to the situation as it presented itself. My history with deer indicates an unpredictable jump out of the ditch onto the road or they are already standing there, statuesque, on the road staring directly into my headlight. This doe was just casually stepping onto the road as if waiting on a school bus, and as I rounded the curve our eyes met – hers big and brown, mine wide open. Her head moved, following me and watching to see what I was going to do next, mine doing the same thing, waiting for the inevitable to happen. Had I reached out with my left hand I felt like I could have touched her, but I’m sure she was a littler further away than that. Too close for me either way.

I accept the risk of riding motorcycles, and in a split-second this situation could have gone from a close call to call an ambulance. Remaining composed, I didn’t slow down or panic, but rather accepted whatever decision this deer was going to make. It’s amazing how fast you can think when faced with a situation involving many different factors, hoping for the best, and the only control you have is your own actions. I don’t know what the doe was thinking, but I’m sure she was just as surprised as I was.

Just like that it was over with. It all ended well and I made it to work without a scratch. As a daily occurrence, a car pulled off the exit ramp of I-70, didn’t stop at the stop sign or look my way – barely a close call but I knew it was going to happen so there were no surprises. At least the deer saw me.

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A Guiding Light

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The night has come. Too soon for me but it is what it is and I must keep going. It’s not often we ride into the night but the full moon is pulling me West beyond any control I have. It’s mesmerizing. I can’t look away. As if hypnotized by a cheap magician at the circus trying to get me to reveal some inner most secrets for all the world to see. It is big and beautiful but I must watch the road for any dangers that might present itself. But while I’m at it, I let the flood of memories hit me, and boy do they hit hard.

Moonlight can do funny things to you. It can bring light to even the darkest places and it can give you visions that are only reserved for dreams and angels. The daylight hours can’t reveal what only the night can bring, and the moon is the beacon of light to which they surface. Rolling down this back road I realize that as a kid chases fireflies after dark, I have been chasing something from my past. As the firefly lights up you know where to run, but as the light goes off you are once again running in circles trying to find your way. On, off, then on again, we are just two steps behind what it is we a trying to reach. Then, without warning, we see another and then another only adding to the frustration of which way we are heading.

But tonight the road is straight and the light ahead of me is not fleeting, but rather as constant as the hum of my motor. The darkness is split by the fence on either side and the only movement I see is the tops of trees as they sway with the wind – dark as shadows, moving as if they hear me coming. How far does this road go? When will I lose sight of the moon ahead of me? How could tonight be the night when the road I’m on is heading directly into something so beautiful? It is bright enough to cast tall shadows of objects to the left and right of me and for once it all seems to be in slow motion. My thoughts don’t match my speed and it seems I have all night to think about what things I would change given the chance and what things would stay the same no matter what. But I don’t have all night, much like a dream appears so real but only lasts minutes, this too will end.

So where is this road taking me? Just like all roads – it is my destiny. Whether a road is random or planned, it takes us where many have gone before. The unknown. Tomorrow will be another bright and sunny day but it is not guaranteed. With each sunrise and sunset we have just a few minutes – just like our dreams – to make those slight adjustments to the direction we are headed. With any luck at all we’ll have a little light to guide us.

 

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Roll On

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Did you ever notice how riding these motorcycles make you see things from a different perspective? Those folks that don’t ride can see things the way a normal person would and those that just ride occasionally see things slightly different, and those that ride and ride all the time see it completely different. Take for example, the convenience store hot dog machine. You know the one – it rolls your hot dog or the random sausage, back and forth in a constant state of turning to keep it warm, and I suppose appealing to eat. Maybe it’s the Ferris wheel type of unit that is fun for all ages to watch and is quite the novel way of getting your food. As a motorist, you wouldn’t dare eat one even though deep down they don’t smell that bad – or is that the nacho cheese? Thoughts of how long or are they done come to mind, let alone what might happen if you actually ate one. The occasional rider would look at them and probably move on to a bag of chips and a fountain drink and be happy. But somewhere during that epic ride you’re on, you will eat one. There is something about traveling on a motorcycle that will make you eat stuff like that, but it will also cause you to drink a hot bottle of water in your saddle bag, eat beef jerky just after the expiration date, (if there is one) and chew a stick of gum that you can barely get the paper off of. It’s delicious.

Is it the wind in your face that makes us do things like that? I know dogs stick their heads out of car windows, and quite frankly, they eat some things I would never eat, but I don’t think that’s the reason. Is it direct exposure to the sun? Maybe. We’ve watched movies where our hero is crawling through the desert when he sees an oasis in the distance, only to find when he gets there he is putting sand in his mouth instead of water. But I’m still not convinced that is it. I know I have walked past these contraptions many times thinking do they really sell that many hot dogs? Every time the shift changes, do the hot dogs get replaced? Are they forced into a life of constant motion until they finally get picked? So many questions and never enough buns.

So many questions and never enough buns.

After a long day in the saddle, you stop for gas and you think you might need something to tide you over until you can eat a meal. Chips, candy bars, beef sticks and jerky are tempting – I’m not sure about the chicken salad sandwich in the cooler that comes pre-cut and in a wedge shape, but it did catch my eye. How about a microwaved breaded chicken sandwich? I’m only sixty seconds away from enjoying that. But wait, Look over there! In the corner, right next to the coffee and cappuccino machine, in-between the nacho cheese, the tiny sink and the condiments, and in all its glory – the roller machine loaded with hot dogs. They’re already done (I hope), and there isn’t that horribly long wait of sixty seconds before I can eat!

So the real reason we bikers would ever take a chance on eating a meat product that has the first ingredient listed as “Mechanically Separated Chicken” is because at some point or another we have had a bug, big and small, make it into our mouth while traveling at highway speed. It’s as simple as that. There are times when the bug gets spit out, but there are times when there isn’t enough of the bug left to spit out. I refer to these bugs as “Motorcycling Separated Bugs.”

 

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Are Your Jeans Dry?

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Just like the wash hanging on the clothesline snapping and flapping in the breeze, a biker gets restless waiting to jump on the bike and go. Straining against those small wooden clothes pins just waiting for them to give way and set that pair of your favorite, faded old jeans free from what’s holding them back, dry or not, they’re gone. Whether it’s a weekend ride or a week-long trip, the closer it gets, the harder it is to contain the excitement. Who needs dry jeans anyway? Lets go! And “go” we do. Near and far – wherever the wind blows us. This time of year when the weather is a little more predictable, we gas up the old bike and load it down with whatever we think is necessary, just to feel that road through the seat of our pants.

Where do we go when that day comes to ride? I know we all have dreams of where we want to go, and for some of us those dreams will come true when we hit the road. For others, we settle for that ride to somewhere, or anywhere that gets us out of here. It doesn’t take much to make any biker happy, but just knowing there is a possibility of some road-time in my future starts the motor running inside of me. The closer I get to leaving, the higher that motor revs as anticipation is a powerful thing. That leads to the bigger question here – Is it the ride or the anticipation of the ride that cranks you up? I enjoy that anticipation as much as anyone but once I get on the road I realize that the ride is what it’s all about. When the day comes to leave there isn’t enough clothes pins to hold me back, even though the days leading up to my departure had me feeling like I was being held against my will; those jeans are finally dry!

We all have our reasons for when we leave and where we go, and in the end it doesn’t matter to the masses what those reasons are, as long as your laundry is done. Get excited this year and ride somewhere you’ve never been on your motorcycle. Go where you’ve always dreamed of going and don’t let anything hold you back. Those little things that hold you back are usually no bigger than a clothes pin anyway, so just go. You’ll be glad you did.

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Let the Ride Happen

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Well, it’s getting closer to the Sturgis Rally and plans are being made. There is always the buzz of first-timers and regulars who are planning to go, as well as talk of not making it this year. What to take, what not to take and what will be forgotten is always a subject of conversation but the reality is half of what you take you probably don’t need. Who’s to say that once you get there you’ll wish you had a particular item, but who cares, right? I forget something when walking from the living room to the kitchen and I do it quite frequently, so cut me a little slack when it’s a trip you make once a year. In the end, it is just a minor inconvenience, unless it’s the tent in which you are sleeping in.

I don’t know about you, but even as plans are made and the trip is shaping up, there is always the “CANCEL WITHOUT WARNING CLAUSE” written into the Sturgis trip. It can be for even the smallest reason, but it is there right at the bottom of the list of things to pack. I’ve seen bikers call it at the eleventh hour and that’s okay – it happens. There will always be next year, and the same plans will be made, the same stuff will be left on the garage bench and the option to pull the plug will be there. Let’s just hope we don’t have to pull the plug.

This year I plan on taking a couple of detours, maybe through Colorado for a change of scenery making the long way home a little longer. Again, plans change, but for the most part that is motorcycling. Who knows, maybe the trip to Sturgis will end up being a trip to Colorado and the Rally will have to wait until next year (not quite pulling the plug). The number one rule for riding your bike is there are no rules. Well, there are rules – just ask the State Police when they pull you over, but I think you know what I mean. Point the motorcycle in the general direction you want to go, and see what happens. The trip will make itself happen and you can sit back and enjoy the ride. We tend to complicate things more than they need to be and it’s those hard plans that make the trip, uh, harder. Nobody likes harder.

So when you find yourself packing and making plans on where you need to be by a certain time, or telling yourself “I better not forget that” and “we should have been there by now,” you are forgetting what it’s all about. Go where you want, change your mind if you want to and let the ride happen. Sturgis? Sure. But I’ve always said Sturgis is where I turn around, it’s the ride that’s the best part. And what about the forgotten stuff on the work bench at home? It didn’t affect the trip one bit. There should be a Cabela’s down the road, shouldn’t we be there by now?

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Ride Like the Wind

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Somewhere in a pasture deep in the Flint Hills of Kansas is a limestone rock standing upright placed there by early settlers. Upon that limestone rock are these words; “Man, the wind sure blows hard in Kansas, hang on to this here rock.” When you’re raised in Kansas it really doesn’t seem that noticeable, but I guess you could say that the wind can be a little stiff sometimes. I often think the barbed wire fences that crisscross Kansas were put there to keep your stuff from blowing more than a mile away. As a kid growing up I don’t remember the wind blowing like it does now, but of course then I was a little closer to the ground and usually preoccupied with kid stuff. At least now I don’t have to worry about the wind messing my hair up.

Riding into work this morning on my Road King it was obvious this was going to be one of those days the weatherman warns about, “wind from the South at 15-20 with gusts up to 30 today,” sounds like a warning to most, but here it’s just like any other day. Now if the weatherman said it was going to be dead-calm today, I would be alarmed as that is out of the ordinary.

As a motorcyclist we often hear the phrase “ride like the wind.” I will tell you that if I rode like the wind today, I would be arrested for assault as the ride in was brutal. Normally heading with the wind isn’t bad, but even that was a handful. Riding West was like my world had tilted to one side with the horizon angled sharply while my shirt collar was slapping my face faster than a hummingbird flaps it’s wings. Okay, so maybe that was an exaggeration, it was more like a meadowlark flapping it’s wings, after all that is our State Bird. But, what do you do? We ride motorcycles and that is just part of it. If it’s cold or hot, windy or raining, we ride – at least some of us do. I didn’t say it was fun all the time, and there can be those days when you just have to convince yourself that even if you would have driven the car, you would have hated yourself. I sure wouldn’t want to hate myself.

So next time you are driving through, or better yet, riding through Kansas, don’t let the wind bother you. It’s going to blow no matter what and there is usually a limestone fence post somewhere to hang on to, so just get used to it. As native Kansans are, we just lean into the wind when it blows; hence the earlier comment about being alarmed if the wind stops blowing. That’s how you determine a native Kansan like myself to someone just visiting – if the wind stops, us Kansas folks fall down.