On Becoming a Motorcycle Fairy

The next time you get separated from the group you are riding with, have a little fun! Curtis, my husband, and I were left behind at a light on the 2nd annual Hawgs for Hounds run given by the Teller County Animal Rescue. The leader of our group was going at or about the speed limit, so we knew we could catch back up with them fairly quickly. We caught the group and waved as we went by them in Woodland Park and headed down Ute pass in front of them. At the next light, my husband suggested we pull off and hide and then catch up with them again. So, we pulled off at the Manitou exit and did a u-turn back onto the on ramp for Highway 24. I laughed so hard while we waited for them to go by us on the over pass. It was even more fun passing them the second time. They laughed too and called us Motorcycle Fairies. They changed Curtis’ nickname from Blinky to Tinkerbelle. I told some other friends about his new nickname at a recent meeting of Women on Wheels and suggested they shorten it to The Tinks, but they seemed to like Blinky better…and how did he get the nickname Blinky? Well, that is another story.

Sportsters and Wings

Looking back on my first ride after more than twenty years, I am surprised I kept trying to learn to ride. My first solo ride wasn’t quite what I had expected. A few months earlier I won a Harley Davidson Sportster 883. It was a pretty little pearl white bike with chrome spokes, and it was loud, or it seemed at the time that it was loud. It had all of four miles on it when I sold it a few weeks later on E-Bay. I never rode it; although, a woman co-worker had tried to get me to learn. I used the money from the sale of the Sportster to buy my husband a used Wineberry GL 1500 and, for a few months, I was content to ride on the back of the Wing. You can’t beat the Wing for co-riders, it is a very comfortable touring bike. My husband was so proud of that bike. It had more chrome on it than P Diddy has bling-bling.

We rode as often as we could that spring and summer, and while we were touring I noticed there were more than a few women on their own bikes. I started thinking about riding my own bike. I’d learned in the Army I could do any thing I put my mind to, and I went out and bought a brand new Honda Shadow VLX. I still laugh when I think how fast I thought that 650cc bike was going on the little trip across my neighbor’s yards…

And so the ride begins!

It looked like a scene from a melodrama: a man rides up on a shiny new red motorcycle that is obviously too small for him, parks, and gets off of the bike. His wife throws a leg over the bike and sits astride it with a grin seemingly larger than her face.

The bike is in neutral and the husband starts it up. With exaggerated movements, he shows his wife the controls. He keeps a hold of the handlebars and revs the bike a time or two. Nodding their heads the man and woman come to some sort of agreement, and the man lets go of the forward controls. His wife shifts the bike into first gear and several things happen simultaneously: the woman lets go of the clutch too quickly and as she is thrown back, she inadvertently revs the bike’s throttle. Her head swings back and she looks at her husband with that same look of panic the damsel in distress who is roped to railroad tracks had in an old silent movie.

The husband starts jumping up and down yelling, “Hit the brakes! Hit the brakes!” The wife is headed right for the garage wall of the house two doors down. A car is parked in its drive just a few feet away.

The neighbor girl, who hears the commotion outside of her home, throws open an upstairs window and looks down upon the scene beneath her. Realizing the woman on the red motorcycle is headed straight for her house she turns and vanishes from the window shouting the news about the run-away motorcycle to her mom.

Meanwhile, the woman on the motorcycle somehow manages to steer the bike between the garage and the car parked in the driveway. She runs right through the entry garden of her neighbor’s house. The planter she takes out on her unplanned route through the prim foliage helps slow the bike, it loses impetus, and the woman drops it on the lawn. Her husband catches up to her in time to pick the motorcycle up and turn to face his angry neighbor who is yelling at him and demanding to know who destroyed her garden.

Yep, that was my first ride. It took me some time to overcome the fear from the near miss I had with the brick wall, but I kept at it and eventually passed the second Motorcycle Safety Course I took. That was five and a half years ago. I’ve ridden between forty and fifty thousand miles in that time and hope to ride many more.