wind – Jeff Maddox

The sun is right there. The angle from which it comes, the glare from the faceshield and the squint in my eyes tell me the next couple of miles I will fight with what I so long to have when I ride. Sunshine. In this case, I’m not careful in what I wish for.

When I roll through the highways and byways on my motorcycle it’s easy to pick apart the experience. Temperature, wind and road conditions come to mind, but all of this makes up the texture of the ride. If it was all smooth as glass we would grow tired of riding and the lack of fluctuation would keep us wishing for something to cause a ripple.

If it was all smooth as glass we would grow tired of riding and the lack of fluctuation would keep us wishing for something to cause a ripple.

It’s easy to complain about our ride as it’s happening – but the miles, and everything that happens along the way become memories. Just as the man selling snake oil will tell you, “results are guaranteed!” And I’ve never had to return a ride of mine for a refund. Even the rides I would rather do over, I have decided the stories I tell depicting them are far more entertaining than when they happened. Let’s just say there were plenty of ripples.

A few miles down the road my direction changes and now I see the sun staring at me through the corner of my eye, watching my every move. With my shadow flickering along side of me, I have to laugh at myself. So that’s what I look like on my motorcycle. And the wave; why did I just wave at myself? Well at least I waved back. Whatever it takes to keep myself amused along the way.

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.