Motorcycling is a Pain

I’ve been talking a good game lately.  I’ve been talking about how great it is to ride a motorcycle.  I keep it all flowery and fun.  Even an accident, I gloss over.  And the people who’ve been injured in the accident.  The thing to know is that motorcycling isn’t always roses and rainbows and smiley faces and candy canes.  Motorcycling is sometimes frightening, sometimes frustrating.  It takes commitment.  It takes money.  How many rides have been cancelled due to inclement weather?  How many times have I had to work all day in wet clothes because I got caught in the rain without my rain gear?  How much money have I put into motorcycling gear when I should be saving for the new roof on the house?  I rent someone else’s car during the Winter but I really want to buy the dual sport bike Mike is selling so I can do some trail riding next year.  Where are my priorities?

If you're having trouble believing in this rant I started on, that's ok- I am, too.  The thing is, I am glad I took the trip, I am glad I have the gear to keep me safe and extend my riding season.  I'm glad I don’t check the weather channel before getting on the bike.  I like that I’m living the life I want to instead of the one I should.  I don’t want my house to be in perfect order, don’t want every bush out front to be perfectly pruned.  I want to live life just as I have been. 

When I was a kid, a certain poem grabbed my attention.  I had it tacked to my bedroom wall, even.  It spoke to the perfectionist in me.  The poem was called “I’d pick more daisies”- here are a few lines:

"If I had my life to live over, I'd dare to make more mistakes next time. I'd relax, I would limber up. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would have more actual troubles, and fewer imaginary ones."

The way I’ve lived my life in the last few years has been a tribute to that poem.  I’m not contributing to my retirement fund,  I’ve got piles of laundry waiting to be folded,  I don’t know what I want to do with the rest of my life.  But I take lots of motorcycle rides, I make time to write, I spend lots of time in the company of people I enjoy, rather than feel obligated to.  

There I go again finding a positive spin on motorcycling.   I guess it can’t be helped.  I’m trying to recount the negative things about it but it doesn’t last.  That’s the thing about the motorcycle, or maybe just the writing about it.  It keeps me trying to find the best way through this life of mine.  It keeps me finding another truth besides the problems I make for myself.

I feel like I’ve done a disservice in talking about how great motorcycling is.  Ok, not a disservice exactly, but rather I’ve not presented the complete picture of motorcycling.  I have not narrated the horrific crashes I’m aware of.  I have not detailed a story from my own family, of an uncle who was injured in a motorcycle accident that left him comatose at the age of 32 for 8 long years before he died of pneumonia.  I think I stay away from these stories because I need a break from them.  Perhaps it is a 15-year career as a nurse that has me staring death and disease in the face, that makes me turn away from them and look to another reality.  Perhaps I just need to step away from those painful places life takes me for a few hours each week and remember there’s another way to get through life, another way to look at things.

The stories I tell about motorcycling spring up when I’m on a ride.  They narrate themselves to me when I’m on the bike.  I’m not trying to invent a positive spin on a ride after it’s already ended.  Somehow this alternate view rises to the surface and I see a rhythm to life that I couldn’t see when I was stuck in the middle of it; when I was struggling to pull up the bush up in the backyard, or when I was lost in the woods, stuck among a bile of bramble bushes- the only way out, through them, the only way out to get poked and scratched and stuck.  The thing about getting oneself out of a hairy situation is that by the time I get to telling it, I’m already through it.  There’s already a better ending laid out for me.  I’m through the pickers, tending the scratches, and doing as we humans do, trying to make the best of it.  So there’s automatically this perspective of “I made it through and now I’m gonna tell you how I did it.”  The thing I need to say here, is sometimes I don’t know how I got through it.  One dear friend spoke to me after my father’s death, which happened on the heels of my divorce, and she said “I don’t know how you are still standing.”  The truth is, I don’t either.  I can’t point to an unfailing faith- there was no faith strong enough to sustain me, there were no arms big enough to carry the weight of that grief.  I just woke up each morning, got out of bed and walked into the day.  There is no primer, no map, no one poem that can carry us through some of these difficult times. 

One friend I have says he won’t talk about this serious stuff in a group because that “would be a real downer.”  I think otherwise.  It is in sharing my difficulties with others that I have come to see their difficulties as well.  I see the people behind the motorcycle they ride- I see them on their own ride through this sometimes painful life.   One friend of mine has buried her father and sister, put her mother in a nursing home, sorted through and sold the family home.  In less than one year,  her family has been dismantled.  I don’t know how she is still walking.  She doesn’t either.  There is nothing I can say except “I too, know this pain.”  And somehow there is some comfort there.  I don’t know how this happens, but others who’ve gone through similar things become a beacon to those who endure it now.  In the weeks following my Father’s death, I reached out to every friend who lost a parent.   I knew I could talk about the loss without explaining it.  One barrier was removed. 

I don’t want to keep talking about how great motorcycles are.  In fact, sometimes they are a pain in the ass.  My bonnie sits in the garage now, only a few more rides in her before the snow falls and I’ve spotted an oil leak around her head.  I am frustrated and scared and I can’t see my way through this- I don't know how it can end well.  I don’t know how I will pay for repairs.  She’s only a few years old- the warranty’s out and I’m still paying on her.  My mind is making this a big problem, my worry compounded by my financial situation.  I know it’s just a motorcycle, it’s a thing.  I shouldn’t freak out about it.  My health is good, I’m employed, my house isn’t falling down around me.  

But the thing is, she isn’t just a bike.  She is how I get where I’m going.  She is how I find my way.  She’s what makes it all worthwhile.

I don’t want to wrap this up all pretty but after worrying for about it for 4 days, I finally picked up the phone and called Lifecycle to see what the problem might be.  Pat thinks it’s a bad gasket.  I'm breathing a little easier but my mind is still swirling around a bit, trying to figure out all the details- how do I get the bike down there, how much will it cost, what isn't going to get done so I can pay for the repairs.  A bad gasket, eh? I hope that’s all it is.  I’m crossing my fingers until I know for sure.