black chevrolet

I'm blogging because it's half an hour before dinner and I have nothing to do.

I rode down to Howdy's this afternoon to pick up Suzi's shop manual. I like to get a repair manual for any substantial piece of machinery that I own as soon as possible so that, if it breaks, I won't be totally helpless.

I decided that today being nice and humid and warm, it would be a good day to tighten the girth, adjust the stirrups and rein and...ride onto the freeway. It was time. I'd been riding secondary roads in heavy traffic, curvy roads in light traffic, and now it is time to chip a few more off the eggshell. I rolled through town, reviewing in my mind all the things I'd heard and theorized about blind spots and high speed obstacle avoidance.

I sat at the red light across from the Chevron station, bouncing the forks, praying to the Blessed Virgin, and thinking to myself, 'ok tiger, this is it'. The next few minutes will determine whether or not a motorcycle is truly practical transportation for me, and in a more remote sense, whether or not I will spend the rest of my life as a hopeless cripple. Well, not thinking about that second part.

The light glowed green, I snapped on the blinker and handed out the clutch. The freeway ramp glistened satin in the late afternoon sun as I toed Suzi through all five gears. Hmmmming along the superslab at 60 mph, I thought to myself, hey this isn't all that bad. Here I am, with a massively broad, perfectly smooth road to ride on with no intersections, mailboxes, telephone poles or four-foot canals to slam into. And I'm sitting up high, I can see all around, and gosh, the wind smells good...

...and gosh (twisting the throttle slightly and pegging the needle at 70) hanging on is a lot of work...I wouldn't want to sit here holding these handlebars for dear life for hours on end....

...(twisting and pegging at 80) gosh this is a lot of work and not so much fun and (thunk) wait what's that slapping my backside slowing down, slowing down (detwist to 70, then 60) I can't turn and look damn those saddlebags I bet I look stupid, really stupid right now and a minivan passed me on the left. I looked sheepishly towards it, expecting someone to be gesturing toward my (apparently) loose and flapping bags. Thunk, slap thunk thunk. Okay, I'm not going to pull over in rush-hour traffic. I'll just ride another mile to the Main Street exit and deal with the mess then.

Off the freeway, jet across into the left turn lane and slow, all is calm 30 serene mph. I slow to a stop at the red light and kick into neutral. The bags had flapped up off the sides of the bike, twisted against the grab strap and twisted themselves into a truly ghetto-looking mess on the rear seat. Damn. I guess riding on the freeway with empty bags is not an option unless I keep the speeds below 70.

I cranked over to the bike shop, picked up the book, stopped by Target.