It’s almost like a ritual response, like saying ‘how are you?’ in passing to a stranger. A motorcycle hits the pavement and the burning question apparently forms in every mind:
“Are you going to ride again?”
(i.e. Have you learned your lesson, yet?)
“I don’t see why not,” I say.
(You mean the lesson about looking out for crazy cage drivers with no insurance? Yeah, I have.)
After a car accident, do they ask, “Will you ever drive again?”
Honestly . . .
I didn’t let the EMTs put me in the ambulance. I was walking and the deductible loomed larger than the pain in my ankles. M came out to get me, drag me home, and patch me up. By morning I had second thoughts.
I wasn’t walking anymore.
Within days, Big D called to hear the story and offered to loan me his Nighthawk 700, the beefier big brother of my old friend. He brought it up on the weekend, rumbling into the drive with wife and baby in tow, to take him home in their car. I crutched out to meet him and we stood there looking it over, talking about oil changes and the scrapes he got dropping it at low speed in a parking lot. I hobbled back inside.
Not today.
The doc at the free clinic said I fared much better than the Nighthawk — two bad sprains and maybe a chipped ankle bone, road rash where my jeans gave out and my jacket rode up. Prescription: rest and heat and ice and lots of antibacterial goo on bandages. Maybe a little Vicodin.
They seemed surprised at how clean we got the rash — thanks to M and The Roommate. A week or so and most of it had healed over, pink and sensitive but whole. A couple weeks after that I took the braces off and moved to one crutch, then one crutch sometimes.
Then one day I found myself standing next to Big D’s Nighthawk 700.
Just standing there, leaning on my crutch and looking.
A moment later I was back with my gear on. The crutch clanked to the floor, the kickstand came up, and the 700 gave its familiar booming rumble.
Don’t know what I expected. Maybe the gut-tight wobble of riding a bicycle after years off. Some kind of hesitation or trepidation.
Not so.
The 700 fit like a broken-in boot, solid and supple and ready to eat up some miles. I had to grin a little. After years of hundred-mile days and thousand-mile rides, my body’s silent reaction to its convalescence was roughly, “Whut?”
This is what we do, right? This is how we get there.
I took it easy. Just down to the store and back. But all the way I could feel the blacktop under my wheels, flowing round the next bend, a hot, black ribbon of possibilities. I could feel the tug of it in the middle of my chest promising millions more bends beyond that one. Thousands of hills and canyons and mountains, smooth fast corners and long, lonely straightaways with sunsets over distant mountains. All that tarmac stretching off to uncountable adventures, lined with lives and livelihoods. I heard the whisper of it calling and every fiber of me answered.
Before I reached the end of the block, any lingering doubt had gone.
There will be more hundred-mile days. Oh, yes. There will be plenty more thousand-mile rides. My ankles may still be complaining and my (first) Nighthawk just may be down for the count.
But Yes.
I will ride again!
Dedicated to Big D and to my parents, who did not ask ‘the question.’
