As we move closer to the weekends, my mind turns more and more to my riding—as would be expected. This week, with all that has been going on in Afghanistan, my mind has been focused on the tragic bombing, our lost service members, and the Afghanis who were killed. Yet even as these events and the image of a crying United States President filled my mind, my motorcycle ride managed to filter into my thoughts.
One of the many wondrous aspects of motorcycle riding is its ability to completely absorb you. As you’ve been reading in this blog, much of my mind is engaged in observing my surroundings, looking out for potential obstacles, getting the feel of my bike, how it’s handling, how I’m performing. All of these thoughts allow for a beautiful escape from the world. Then add in the view of the marsh hawk soaring above me, the beautiful Lynnhaven River, the flowers and trees as we cruised the neighborhoods, the orange sulphur butterfly that flitted quickly past, and a simple morning motorcycle ride becomes an escape.
I think most people, if they think of escaping on a motorcycle, picture cruising down empty highways; before I began riding, I would have painted the same picture. But this week I happily recognized that my motorcycle training offers me an escape. I am especially happy to realize this as school starts next week, so my free and easy summer is at an end. And despite the promises of no masks if we vaccinated, we will all be masked up—again. Needless to say, I am not looking forward to this, but it will make me appreciate that much more the feel of the wind passing through my helmet on my weekend rides.
I am also looking forward to the autumn weather. Today the high hit 93 with a heat index of 104 and, even though we ride in the morning, the temperature was already at 88. I could feel my wet t-shirt under my jacket plastering itself to my skin as I worked on the slalom and my fast breaking. The trailer was still parked in front of the Armco, so I was having to make pretty tight U-turns again. I worked on entering the slalom in second gear at about 11 mph even though I had to quickly slow and shift down to execute the U-turn. Most of them went well, though I had a bobber where I had to put my left foot down, and one time, I didn’t turn quickly enough and almost ran into a crepe myrtle. On that goof, I rolled on the throttle, so Bill gave me a caution to check myself riding in this heat. When I got overly warm, I cruised half the neighborhood, getting a lovely, cooling breeze at 25 mph.
After 45 minutes, I told Bill I’d had enough slow practice drills, so we went and picked up the R NineT. For the second week in a row, I was able to take off without stalling, and I thought I was doing a really good job of keeping up with Bill. Fifteen minutes into our ride as we sat at a stop sign (the only place I stalled while out cruising the neighborhood) waiting to turn right, Bill started out onto the road, stalled, and laid his bike down right in front of me. He was fine and the bike landed on the crash bar as expected—yay—but it did surprise me. Later, he explained that he had been feathering the brake and trying for slower take offs so I could better keep up with him. So it wasn’t that my take off and acceleration skills had improved; it was Bill slowing down for me.
Naturally, I have a long way to go. What’s great about that is it means a lot more riding for me, and a lot more escaping on my motorcycle.
Flutterby Biker 