Cool air and cloudy skies met us on the road. A cold front came through giving us a break from the usual July heat, and we were heading out on our motorcycles on a day of 72 degrees.
Before we left, however, I learned a new trick from Bill. The new trick built on a trick I had learned from watching motorcycle videos. How does a woman straighten up a 500+ pound motorcycle? While I do work out with weights, muscling the motorcycle up can wear the rider out before the ride even starts. So the original trick was to take the front wheel out of the lock position and straighten it up before pushing the motorcycle off its kickstand. And this does lighten the weight to make it easy for me to pull the R Nine T off the kickstand.
The new trick Bill discovered while preparing to move the motorcycle out of the garage was to turn the front wheel all the way to the right. By doing this, he could easily pop the bike up off the stand with a bump from his left inner thigh. He then asked me to try it, and I found it super easy to lift the bike.
I then confidently tried this new trick on the street as we prepared to head out. As far as lifting the R Nine T went, it worked brilliantly. But I encountered an entirely unexpected issue that gave me a moment’s worry that I might drop my bike. Once the motorcycle was up, I went to lift the kickstand, but for some reason my boot decided to do something it’s never done before. My boot heel seemed to hook against the kickstand in such a way that I could not kick the stand up. After a few attempts to move the stand up, I reset the motorcycle down on the kickstand and tried again. This attempt was successful, and I learned that the new wheel to the full right trick does make lifting the motorcycle off the stand even easier, but I was spooked by the weird hookup.
Setting out, however, I soon left the weirdness behind. I knew the day would not bring out the butterflies with looming clouds promising rain at any moment. I enjoyed the soft sheen the cloud cover placed over everything. The greens of the leaves and grasses are peaking and provide a deep peace as I gaze out at them. The flowers gave a soft glow of color to the green landscape with deep yellows from the brown-eyed Susans, bright white from the gardenias and magnolias, and glowing fuchsia from the crape myrtles. Lovely pine sap scented the air alongside the crispness of the crape myrtles. The day was cool enough, however, that I kept my visor down for most of the ride.
I did spot some large gaggles of geese as the goslings are now adult sized. Some ducks were out, of course, on such a day. And I did spot the great blue heron hunkered down on a dock piling while he waited for the tide to go out. I checked; the roar of our motorcycles didn’t startle him into flight.
And we did ride by some future motorcyclists. One was a little girl in a toy motor powered Barbie jeep wishing her little car could zoom around like our motorcycles did. The other was a toddler boy on his tricycle maybe two years old. His mother heard our motorcycles approaching, and she pointed them out to him. I gave him a toot on the horn as well as a wave and wondered what was the mom teaching her child? The red and yellow colors on the motorcycles? The word “bike”? Or was she hoping he would watch us zoom by and start zooming along on his trike? I do appreciate her teaching him at such a young age to be on the lookout for motorcycles. It might help make future rides and riders safer.
Flutterby Biker 