Let’s face it.  The ubiquitous image of a motorcycle rider is a large, multi-tattooed, leather clad bad ass.  Even if you take away the size and body ink aspects, you’ve got the leather-jacketed image of James Dean on a motorcycle in Rebel Without a Cause as the epitome of both coolness and juvenile delinquent, and the motorcycle is a huge part of that image.  And as of Saturday, I have joined the ranks of MC BAs!

            I didn’t plan to become a BA.  We got up on a pleasantly cool Saturday—again the week had been in the 90s, but we were blessed with a Saturday that would be in the low 80s, so our morning ride was a pleasant 75 degrees.  I spotted the monarch butterfly even before I took off on the bike, again a seeming good omen for a great day of riding.

            I did my warm up laps around the parking lot, working a little on swerves and on my U-turns.  I was struggling on my right side today, a little frustrating after last week, but I know I’m a rank beginner and will have negative progress periods as well as leaps forward.  Bill set up cones for the off-set slalom, and I ran through it twice then came to a stop.  A white truck had pulled into the parking lot.  I have a rule for myself to pull over and stop when another vehicle is in motion anywhere in my practice lot.  I was stopped over near the school dumpsters.  Bill was across the lot sitting in his chair in the shade.  The white truck did not turn off and park but drove straight up to Bill.  I saw a public schools sign on the side of the truck and had a sinking feeling.  The gentleman got out of the truck, a clear VBPS badge swinging from his neck.

            I was too far away to hear any of the conversation, but I knew what it was.  He was there to tell us we could not use the parking lot for practice.  Someone had made a complaint.

            Let me take this moment to remind you that I ride a BMW G310 GS, a 313 cc motorcycle.  Bill even asked the gentleman if, standing there conversing, he could hear my bike idling as I waited in limbo across the lot.  And the gentleman answered honestly, “No.”  But he was just the messenger.  So I rode one more time through the off-set slalom, and we relocated to the dead end street in front of Bill’s house.  Not before a general bitch session first about obnoxious neighbor busybodies, and then a switch to petty bureaucratic brown nosers in the school district trying to earn brownie points by telling the administrator they saw hooligans riding motorcycles in the school parking lot on Saturday. 

            Whoever made the complaint, we were compliant and relocated.  As we were leaving the parking lot, Bill on the bike, me in the car, I saw the swallowtail at the edge of the parking lot, as though saying farewell which was a little bittersweet for me as I don’t know if I will be back in the parking lot practicing.

            Some background on this parking lot.  This school is the neighborhood elementary school.  I was enrolled in Catholic school, so I did not attend this school, but both my little brother and sister attended several years later.  I did use this parking lot to practice driving skills before getting my license, including the painful shifting with the clutch (my poor parents!).  Adjacent to the school is a huge field with a baseball diamond, basketball courts, and playground equipment.  At the back is a small woodland, all of which I played on for years as I child and which my boyfriend still uses when riding his bicycle and running (the field and woodland).  Every Sunday a group of men play cricket in the field.  Any given day of the week you can see kids playing on the playground and teens and young adults shooting hoops.  And I am not the only neighborhood child who learned basic driving skills in that parking lot.

            All of this background is just so you know how absolutely absurd the complaint is.  This is also bad press Virginia Beach Public Schools.  Part of what makes a neighborhood school is the sense of ownership the residents of the neighborhood feel toward that school.  Now some might say I no longer live in the neighborhood—which I don’t—but my parents and two of my brothers own houses in the neighborhood, and my boyfriend’s house is right there next to the school.  And we have never seen anyone else trying to come into the parking lot to use it for driving practice during our riding time.

            Anyway, I am trying to make lemonade out of this gigantic lemon, so I’m using the complaint against as my official entry into motorcycle badassery.  It’s a stretch I know, but I LOVE riding my motorcycle, and I don’t want a negative experience to impact that.  So I am turning it into a positive.  Sorry Mom, but your greatest fear about the motorcycle has come true—I am a delinquent (I left juvenile behind decades ago).

            Back to what I love, the riding.  On the little dead-end street, I worked on stopping; I’m trying to find my braking threshold and I am in the beginning stages of that.  Because it is a short dead-end street, I had to make U-turns at both ends to run my stopping drills.  I was amazed to discover how nervous I was making U-turns with the curbs on either side of the street!  I was also nervous because I felt Bill had set the stopping cone a little too close to the parked cars at the end of the street.  Plus, there were cars parked on both sides of the street, adding more obstacles.  And there was a road that intersected the street I was on with people turning right to get out of the neighborhood, so I had to up my awareness.  All of this provided me excellent training, so the day was not a total wash.

            But the excitement wasn’t over.  We thought we lost one of the keys to the R NineT, and it created some stressful moments.  I eventually found the key, after riding twice through the neighborhood to see if it had fallen out on the road, when I went to search the trunk of the car.  It was wedged between the back end of the car and the hatch!             I’m not sure where we will be riding on Saturday, but wherever we are, the weather gods are smiling on us again and giving us a beautiful morning—the high for the day is forecast to be 79!

 “Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass: it’s about learning how to ride in the rain!”- Anonymous

https://motoringjunction.com/featured/top-32-motorcycle-riding-quotes/