Jay bought a motorcycle. Great! How much fun is that? Speeding along, the wind blowing through your hair, just you and the road, nothing separating you from the world around you. What's not to like about that? Of course, I've never been on a motorcycle in my life, so everything I know comes from watching TV and movies where people are flying through the streets at breakneck speeds and making it look so easy. Or a pretty girl romantically perched behind her beloved, head resting against his firm shoulders, arms wrapped lovingly around his waist. Ahhh, so perfect. So, again, Jay bought a motorcycle and I hopped on the back for a ride. Hmmm, first there was no laying of heads on anyone's shoulders. The helmets kind of nixed that and if squeezing him until he gasped for air is comparative to lovingly wrapping my arms around his waist, well, okay then. Not as easy as it looks. The passenger has to cooperate and lean appropriately. That took some practice. Then, me being the worst case scenario kind of person I am, thought, "what would happen if we were riding and something happened and Jay couldn't drive it? I would have to drive it and I don't really know how, I better learn." Besides, how cool is it to be a 52 year old grandmother of 10 and learn to ride a motorcycle. I would say that's one for the old bucket list. Jay taught me some. I could start (kind of ), stop (a little better), and drive in 2nd gear (not so great for driving around town.) I forged forward and went to the DMV and took the written test and secured my temporary motorcycle endorsement. It would be good for six months and then I would need to pass a skills test to get the permanent endorsement. This was all well and good, but how do I become skillful if I don't have skills enough to make me feel safe just driving it around Iona? Ahhh, a skills class, of course. Why, if I take this awesome motorcycle training class I will be brave, confident, and comfortable whizzing around on Jay's motorcycle. The initial classroom session left me even more apprehensive than before! Riding a motorcycle was hard. You had to balance, shift, brake, lean, countersteer, (that makes sense), look, scan, identify, predict, decide, and execute all in the space of 20 seconds. Crap! It takes me more than 20 seconds to remember what I'm supposed to do in those 20 seconds. Why it's terrifying all the stuff you have to remember and at the same time. Clutch, brake, throttle, signal on, signal off, lean. The next morning came the first day of riding. The program provided the bikes and all the gear. Let me just say, there is no way I'm sticking a snug little motorcycle helmet on my head that has been on who knows how many other heads, so I took my own thank you very much. As well as my own cool riding jacket complete with "retroreflective" markings (yes, that is essential to riding a motorcycle) and armor in all the right places. I had on my long sleeve shirt and over the ankle boots as well. I was ready. Never mind it was 90 degrees outside. So, here we go. We were assigned bikes that would "fit" us. I had a lovely little Suzuki number, cherry red, fuel injected, adorable. We were carefully walked through the start up procedure over and over and over. I should have appreciated the easy part. Now in this class there just happened to be two "Janes". And both of us were, what's the kind way to say this, elderly? In spite of our handicap, we both jumped right in, or on as it would be and off we went. The first exercise consisted of "walking" the bike without fully engaging the clutch to get a feel for a normal take off. Simple enough....you would think. I merely stalled the engine...repeadedly. The other Jane managed to dump the bike on the ground on the 2nd turn. Karma is a funny thing. It will get you. I sniggered just a little bit and thought to myself, "okay, so I'm not the worst student in the class." Uh, huh, just wait a minute. So, then we moved on to actually engaging the clutch and taking our feet off the ground. Now, as I'm gloating just a bit because I'm not the worst student, several others had stalled their rides over and over, the other Jane had already dumped hers as had another younger girl, so as I'm enjoying my station as "not the worst student in class" I somehow manage, while negotiating a turn of all things, to accelerate when I meant to brake. This is not a good thing to do as your body thinks you are stopping, but the motorcycle underneath your buttocks jumps forward. So, the result is as follows: bike jumps, Jane flies off the back, flips over, bike hits the ground, as does Jane, and flops and rolls across the range, Jane, not the bike. It was spectacular! The bike had the decency to just fall over on it's side and lay there. There are not enough Angry Birds bandaids in the world to bandage my poor, wounded pride. I immediately jumped up, in spite of the screaming pain in my leg, knee, shoulder, wrists.....well you get it, and proceeded to lift that bike. I had to call upon that thing that mothers' get to lift a car off their injured child to do it, but I was not about to let the instructor get to me and have to do it for me. No siree, I jumped right back on that mother and took off. Had I been shaking on the outside as bad as I was shaking on the inside, the front wheel would have been doing the Macarena. As the training proceeded, the other Jane managed to dump her bike three more times. This Jane did it one more time, but the second fall lacked all the splendor of the first one and only managed to snap the end off the clutch handle. (I told them I would pay for that.) As we broke for lunch and we removed our helmets I was mortified to discover that my lovely, curly hair was dripping wet and plastered to my head. Had we not been on dry land in the middle of the high school parking lot, you would have thought I was taking scuba diving lessons. Worse yet, why was I the only one that looked like a drowned rat? I am seriously starting to question why they don't make helmets with air conditioning in them. I would have to spend my lunch break washing my hair for Heaven's sake! Good thing home was only 5 minutes away. At home, I took off my sweaty, dirty clothes figuring that I didn't need to sit in an enclosed classroom grossing everyone out and was delighted to find some major evidence of the great motorcycle crash. A massive, angry bruise on the inside of my left knee, a big purple bump on my right knee. More purple bruises up and down both legs. If I'm gonna crash and then get back on that beast, I want some battle scars to prove it. So, in that respect, I was extremely successful. A quick shower, change of clothes, gobbled down an apple and a diet coke and then back to the school for a couple hours of class time. After listening to the instructor talk about all the dangers that face motorcyclists I'm asking myself, "why would anyone...in their right mind...ever get on one of these contraptions and leave their driveway?" Right now, if I thought this class was going to give me confidence and make me at ease with riding, I was grossly mistaken. I am more terrified to get on that thing than I ever was before the class. The instructor is threatening us that we will learn how to swerve tomorrow. Are you kidding? Can't I just carry some kind of laser gun that vaporizes anything that might get in my path? It seems a whole lot safer to me. Maybe if motorists realized they would be vaporized for violating a motorcyclist's safety cushion, they would be more careful. Oh well, tomorrow is another day, and I did live to ride another day, so hopefully it will be better.
