In Da Club

January 23, 2013

Oh, today was a banner day! Is that a cliche? It is, so I'll work with it. Today, this is what my banner reads:

I got my first wave!

I bet that doesn't mean much to anyone who drives a car. Waving is what bikers do when they see each other on the road. It's comaderie. It means: You're in the club. I've observed this club and tangentially been a part of it on the back of my husband's Hawg. But today, I was in the thick of it. Some guy rode in the opposite lane and passed me on his metric bike, and he waved. And, tooling along Glendale Ave. at five miles below the speed limit, I saw his wave, and I waved back. It was that simple. And that meaningful. I was inducted.

Riding on the back of Virgil's Road King for three years has allowed me to witness what comprises this club. Essentially, it includes everyone on a motorcycle, which makes it the most inclusive club ever. I marveled at that inclusivity from the back of the seat, and now I'm a full-fledged member. In this club, you can wear a helmet or not. You can ride a Harley or a Honda. You can ride a touring bike or whizz by on a crotch rocket. You can wear body armor or a halter top. It doesn't matter. That members prize individuality is clear, and it may be the only club wherein judgment is suspended. For a moment, two motorcycle drivers see each other, and each one casually moves his hand, sometimes barely lifting three fingers from the throttle. Sometimes, acknowledgement comes with the nod of a head or a helmet. With either motion, membership is acknowledged. I admit that I haven't yet seen a Hell's Angel greet anyone with a gregarious wave, but I haven't yet seen a Hell's Angel pass me when I'm driving my Hawg. It might just happen.

What startles me most about this club is that for twenty-five plus years, I have driven around in a car through more than half of our United States, and I never once noticed motorcyclists exchanging greeting with each other. This club exists in the same sphere as cars and trucks do, and yet it's in entirely separate space. This club has no president or vice president, and the club house is defined by moving space and wheels. But once you get the first wave, you belong. And today, I accepted my membership.

The Difference of Twenty

January 16th, 2013

One week ago, the thermometer read 52 degrees.  Today was twenty degrees warmer.  T-shirt weather arrived so quickly.  The difference twenty degrees made in the smell of the neighborhood astounded me.  It's the like jasmine is already creeping into the air. 

Two weeks has also granted me more confidence.  Today, Virgil and I rode to the QT, and I made a U curve leaving the parking lot.  I no longer dread stopping.  Shifting comes more naturually.

Here is a list of changes I've noticed in myself and the neighborhood since Phoenix went back into the 70's:

Uno) The rooster is back.  I don't know where he was in the cold, or if his voice doesn't carry across the street when it drops below 60 degrees, but he's back somewhere between Rovey and Bethany Home, crowing his head off.

Dos) I'm tougher.  Recently, this week in fact, I had to face the very thing I'd been dreading facing for the last six years: my ex-husband in a custody case.  It seems silly, but somehow riding the tide of my victory over the motorcycle school carried me through a tough week.

Tres) I feel different.  Turn another year older, and everyone asks, "Feel any different?"  No?  No.  Usually not.  Try getting a motorcycle endoresment.  I look at the tough old geezers sitting on the benches outside the Arrowhead Harley store in Peoria, with their tats and missing teeth, and I realize the most startling thing:  I can do what they do.  I can ride a Hawg.

Whizzing into Nothing

Since passing motorcycle riding school, I've spent a little bit of every day except one practicing riding my bike.  So far, I've only stayed in the quiet neighborhood where I live, and, before today, I'd yet to exceed thirty miles per hour.  I'm highly conscientious of the fact that my neighbors have precious lives, and that I'm not cordoned off in a parking lot.  I know that my practice area is the area in which they (and their children and their pets and so on) live, and so I move about on my sparkling new Harley about as quickly as a sloth goes through the upper part of the rainforest.
 
I'm most comfortable turning right, so we turn right out of the driveway and toddle on down the street.  There's one speed hump between our driveway and the corner, and I love easing over it; for a moment, it's kind of like being on a loud seesaw.   When we reach the end of the block, we always turn right, and this time it's because turning left would take us to a major thoroughfare, and before today I'd not yet reached a major thoroughfare skill level.  So, daily, we wind right and tootle up the subdivision block by block.

When I say "we," I mean my husband and me.  I ride my 2013 Heritage Softail Classic, and he motors behind me on his 2009 Road King Classic.  He has been riding dirt bikes since 1973 or so, and he's ridden his Road King for over three years, so he knows what he's doing on a motorcycle. He must be bored out of his mind.  But, unlike me, he is patient.  He follows me at a safe distance, like some kind of guardian angel with a furry mustache and a half helmet.  When I stop at an empty intersection, he'll pull alongside of me and offer encouraging words.  Most importantly, he never complains or rushes me.

Our neighborhood is a quiet, working-class neighborhood.  My husband grew up here, left when he went to college, and now, more then two dozen years later, finds himself living with his family in the house that he grew up in.  It's not a fancy neighborhood; it's filled with brick ranch-style homes.  What I love most is that the people who live here truly represent American diversity.  Right next door live an elderly Anglo couple who've been living here for over four decades, but across the street, the kids outside playing holler to each other in a mixture of Spanish and English, and a few blocks over a Muslim family often can be seen walking back from soccer practice with the older boy wearing his shorts and cleats and the mom dressed and covered according to hijab.

All kinds of other creatures and points of interest exist here, too.  On the corner of 41st and Rose sits a house that sports custom-painted low riders in brilliant colors that match the Arizona sunsets.  Every morning at this house, an old Boxer stands on the front lawn and raises his back leg and whizzes as if he's standing next to the giant palm tree that graces the front yard.  But he's probably blind because he's a good six or seven feet away, and, really, he's whizzing into nothing.

Three or four houses down from us lives a sparky German Shepherd who barks every time we walk or ride by.  And over on 39th and Rose is a house that is so overly decorated for each holiday that it looks like something out of Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation.  The house, the roof, and the front yard are literally covered inch by inch in lights of varying colors.  This past Halloween, we went up to this house with our youngest son for trick or treating, and he was practically shaking in anticipation of what goodies such a gauche residence could dispense.  I said, "They probably spend so much money on their electric bills that you shouldn't expect too much in booty."  Sure enough, the kindly old man buried beneath the wires and bulbs slid a single Dum Dum lollipop into Andrew's outstretched pillowcase.  I contend that the thrill lay in the momentary wonder of wandering the small electric forest, but Andrew was a little disappointed at the spoils.

We've only lived here six months, and I admit that already one of the benefits I see of practicing my motorcycle riding skills in my 'hood that I actually get to see where I live and thus dwell here in an entirely new way.  

Mostly, we ride in rectangles, up and down the streets north and east of our house.  Our middle son, Cody, says that every time we drive by, our two dogs, an Airedale and a miniature Schnauzer, go a little crazy, barking and wagging their tails behind the solid front door until they realize that, yet again, we are not stopping.

Scooting around the blocks in my Softail, I'm practicing braking smoothly and stopping where I intend to stop instead of ten feet too soon.  When I stop too soon, I have to skooch to the corner to ascertain if there's any oncoming traffic, but it's not so easy to skooch a vehicle that weighs as much as a smallish elk.  I'm also working on up-shifting and down-shifting and feel a little heady when the Harley gains enough speed to warrant third gear.  

But today, today!, Virgil's Hawg needed gas, and we needed to do something about it.  So we rode north all the way to the end of the subdivision, and we intended to turn right onto Glendale Avenue, which is definitely a major road.  As I sat at the corner of 39th at Glendale, the place where our subdivision spills out into the whole wide world, waiting for the light to turn green, the side mirror revealed the short line of cars forming behind Virgil on 39th.  After a few cars whisked by on Glendale, it was perfectly safe to turn right on red, but I couldn't do it. I just didn't have the confidence. So I waited, and when the light turned green, my Harley and I lurched forward, hesitating just a little and wobbling slightly like a toddler, and then we headed about three blocks down toward the QT gasoline station on the right.  I slowed down, down-shifted, and pulled into the parking lot like I had been riding a motorcycle for years.

Heading home, we again turned right onto Glendale and went right at 35th, skirting the eastern edge of the subdivision, and, driving down 35th Avenue, I managed to blaze such a trail that the fourth gear (of six) was required. I'm pretty sure that for a least a few startling seconds I broke forty miles per hour.  When I reached Maryland, I down-shifted all the wayy to second and bore right. 

By this time, my heart felt as wide as the Grand Canyon, and I felt the need to head directly home lest something spoil my success.  I'm glad to tell you, dear reader, since this is a blog and not a Victorian novel, that the ride during the remaining ten blocks home was, in fact, eventless.  I even managed to pull into the driveway in first gear in one fluid motion. 

In total, we were probably on the road for ten minutes today, but it was a victorious ten minutes.  Being on the Hawg is similar to practicing yoga; the discomfort of the unfamiliar takes all of my attention.  I don't have time to attend to my usual preoccupations.  Right now, I simply must be in the moment, concentrate, and drive.

Day 2

Day 2

Day two of motorcycle school started out much like day one: my confidence was on the lam, even though the instructors, major Paul (who was in charge), small Paul (who was the other instructor named Paul), and Gene, kept exhorting us to have fun.  I dreaded each new exercise that we practiced and the inevitable sense of incompetency that came with trying each new maneuver.  Many of my classmates had already been driving their motorcycles on public roads and were taking the course to avoid the $600+ penalty that comes from riding in Arizona without an endorsement.  In other words, they knew what they were doing.  I did not, and I realized with sudden surety that I had arrived at the age where most people stick with doing only what they're good at.  I was good at scanning poetry and encouraging novice writers to use their imaginations.  I was not good at this.  I kept wondering how it was that the instructors weren't sending me home.

Four women, including me, and seven men comprised our class.  One woman was there to learn to ride a scooter.  She wasn't having any of the clutching and shifting.  She zoomed around in her silver scooter and big, matching helmet looking like something out of the Jetsons.

By the end of the first day, one female student had been asked to leave, and another female student left on her own volition because she'd received a phone call during a break that had upset her.  Her concentration fell apart, and she could no longer steer; she could no longer brake.  She departed.  That left the scooter woman and me.  I was the only female left going for a motorcycle endorsement.  I admit that I suddenly felt more determined to finish.

At our 2:30 break on the second day, I had a talk with myself in the bathroom.  We had been doing figure eights in these boxes that were painted into the pavement in blue.  Fear was ruling my ability to inscribe an 8, and my eights looked like preschooler's scrawling of clouds.  My eight was wider and wavier than Lake Michigan. I trembled through the curves.  I was not having fun, and my anxiety at the thought of ever conducting a motorcycle safely and correctly on a public thoroughfare was accelerating.  For two afternoons, I had been waiting for that moment when everything would click, and I would be able to pull the clutch, toe the shift, work the throttle, and balance and steer all at the same time.  But that moment eluded me.  In the restroom, I told myself that enough was enough, and it was time to stop thinking and to simply become one with the machine.

I returned to the course determined.

Luckily, we were done with practicing curves and were instead going to practice swerving.  Unlike making curves, which takes incredibly complicated geometrical calculations, swerving only involves the hips.  Small Paul said, "It's like dancing!" I smiled.  Dancing? I could do this.

And I did.  I instantly became an adroit weaver.  Suddenly, my ability to simultaneously release the clutch and turn the throttle appeared, and I drove between cones with enthusiasm.  My moment to shine had arrived.  An instructor stood at the end of each exercise waiting to coach us before we toddled to the back of the line. I finished my machine-guided version of the samba and pulled up to major Paul, peering through my helmet at him waiting for the praise.  He said, "Kimmy, that was terrible.  You're thinking too much.  When you stop thinking is when you start having fun."  I sighed and turned the bike toward the end of the practice line.  Still, I knew something that major Paul didn't know:  I was finally improving. 

Toward late afternoon, the lessons were winding up, and we were rocketing towards the final test.  When my husband, Virgil  took his motorcycle endorsement class three years prior, we were living in New Mexico.  The instructors of his course were motorcycle cops for the city we lived in, and as the students prepared for the final test, they were given a practice run. Virgil told me that the instructors really encouraged their students through this practice and kept saying, "Come on, so-and-so, we need to see that you can do this right, so you'll do well on the test."  In the end, the instructors had duped their students, and the practice run was the test.  Everybody passed without the pressure of having to perform in the moment.  I figured if two cops could trick their students this way, then maybe three regular men could, too.

Of course, I was wrong.  The sun began to set, and rain began to patter down on our helmets, making the weather in Phoenix a paltry 52 degrees, and Paul, Paul, and Gene insisted we show them what we had learned. We had four major skills we had to demonstrate:  getting up to fifteen miles an hour and then stopping safely in a short distance, swerving, curving in a wide 185 degree turn, and, Lord have mercy, the figure 8 curve box.  Much like with various Olympic sports, we would be assigned points for mistakes:  putting a foot down was three points, guiding both tires out of the blue box was five, and so on.  We were allowed an undisclosed amount of points before failing the test, although "lying the bike down" and doing anything "unsafe" would count as instant failure.  My fellow student, Mike, who had apparently been riding for years and who was attending the Motorcycle Maintenance Institute to get his mechanics certificate, led us off.  I was eighth in line and grateful not to be first.  Mike eased through his figure eight like a professional ice skater.  The students following him followed suit with varying degrees of success.  My turn was drawing nigh.

Rather than fretting, however, suddenly I felt very peaceful; I was narrating myself: "Look at me, I'm next. I'm about to perform a figure eight with a motorcycle while everybody watches."  I was relieved to get the figure eight requirement out of the way first. I drove into the box in second gear and immediately felt like I was wrestling a bear.  I turned and twisted, and the machine between my legs resisted and growled.  It bested me quickly, and I put my foot down on the first U. Then, the bike died right under me.  Somehow, I started it right back up, and after that, the worst that could happen already had, and I completed the second U with grace and even aplomb and went zooming across the parking lot to perform the swerve.  With steely nerves, I waited until the last minute to yank the Honda to the right, and I was sure I hit a cone, which, of course, would add points to my score.  I stopped on command and even remembered to shift back into first before ceasing completely.  One of the Pauls waved me on, and I filed back into line fretting over the cone I'd hit.

We performed the last two points of testing, stopping and curving, and I felt I'd done a passing job.  In fact, I felt confident in my sudden stop.  I had used all four limbs simultaneously and made them do what they were supposed to do to bring the Honda safely to a halt. At this point, the sun had dropped completely, and we put away our helmets and gloves in darkness.  Major Paul called us over to him one at a time to give us our scores.

When I heard my name called, I walked over to major Paul.  He said, "You put your foot down in the box and stalled the bike in the first U, so you lost three points there.  But you did the perfect swerve.  Not a good stop, though.  You stopped four feet too far.  You need to practice stopping more before getting out on the streets."  I nodded in agreement.  "And you decelerated on the curve.  You got a 17, and you needed 20 to fail.  You passed."

I walked away elated but I wondered if he had seen me at all.  Didn't he see that I made the perfect stop but hit the cone on the swerve? Clearly, my experience did not match theirs.  While confused, I decided I could live with it.

That evening I felt like I'd been hit by a car.  Muscles that I never even felt a minor twinge in before screamed out their existence.  I was cold from the inside out, and my neck ached where it met my head.  And, at some point in the afternoon, someone had shoved a switchblade in between my shoulder blades. Still, I had done it.  Not well and not with aplomb.  I didn't look great doing it, and after it was done, I felt like a wreck. But I had succeeded where just hours prior I was certain I'd fail. For me, it was the ultimate success, which was funny because I'd barely passed.

The Beginning...

Day One:

Being in academia teaches a person to analyze, to ask again and again, “What does this mean?”  And if academia doesn’t teach a person to ask this, then certainly studies in English literature do.  I have spent my entire adult life being “an English major” – immersing myself in the language that I love, reading novels and poems, writing critical essays about these novels and poems, and creating my own creative writing as well.  I also teach English, and I’ve spent my entire teaching career asking my students to ask themselves the same question:  what does this mean?

Generally, this approach proves useful, even outside the classroom.  I’ve become a critical thinker, and I like to think that over the years I've encouraged a few other people down the path of critical thinking.  Using my brain in this way not only increases the trough-sized wrinkle on my forehead annually, it also helps me understand advertising; it helps me understanding movies and appreciate art.  It’s improved my understanding of other cultures and taught me to see the complexity of a global community.  It’s helped me in so many ways--until this past weekend.  When I learned most critically, and more than once, how thinking sometimes just gets in the way.

This past weekend, I took a motorcycle course to earn my endorsement so that I could become a proficient and legal motorcycle driver.  I knew it wouldn’t be an easy endeavor.  I’ve  spent many years of my adult life driving cars with manual engines, so I knew how to think about timing and shifting, and I knew how to use a tachometer.  I’d also spent the last three years as the passenger on the back of a 2009 Harley Davidson Road King, so the back of a Hawg was familiar.  And I’ve always been strong and fairly athletic, so though I didn’t expect the course to be easy, I also didn’t expect taking lessons to be incredibly difficult.  Yet it was.

In the end, I was completely unprepared for what awaited me. 

I must begin with a confession: the day after Christmas, my husband and I went out and put down a healthy down payment on a 2013 metallic blue Harley Davidson Heritage Softail Classic. This was not a impulsive decision.  We talked about this for well over a year; we planned.  When we left the house on Wednesday, we told the boys, "Don't be surprised if we come home with a new Harley."  We came home with this:

But I couldn't even drive my new Harley home from the dealership.  My husband had to.

And when I found myself exhausted at the end of a nine-hour day after trying to conduct and manage a small, nimble Honda cruiser, I found myself overwhelmed and angry that I would have purchased such an expensive item without even knowing how to use it, and, more specifically, without even knowing if I liked driving a motorcycle.  I liked riding on the back of one, sure.  Conducting an engine between your legs and making it go where you want is a whole other ball of wax.

On that first day of motorcycle school, I was the errant driver.  I was the one in a class of eleven students who after one hour on the range went careening toward the colorful strip of flags that marked the training part of the parking lot from the rest of it.  The weekend class was being held at the local community college using its facilities.  Coincidentally, this is also the community college where I teach.  While ribbons of flags cordoned off the motorcycle training space, outside of the flimsy barrier that the ribbon made, unsuspecting bystanders parked their cars for other reasons on the same campus.  Towards these cars, I bolted.  

This is what I remember thinking:  Don't panic. Oh my God. Don't panic.  As a line of parked headlights drew nearer, I thought to hit the kill switch.  Immediately the little Honda quit, as if finished with a mighty sneeze.  One of the range instructors came running up and complimented me on thinking to hit the kill switch.  "Do you know what went wrong?" he asked.  I shook my head no.  He explained that I had squeezed and turned the throttle mistaking it for the hand brake.  I was sure that I would be evicted from the class, but he told me to get back in line with the other students who were sitting on their bikes.  As I gingerly found my way to the center of the parking lot and got in back of the line, Paul, the primary instructor who was in charge of the entire weekend, found me.  "Do you know what happened?" he asked.  I nodded confidently and explained that I confused the brake and the throttle.  "Wrong!" he exclaimed. Paul explained how I'd used only three fingers instead of four on the brake.  He held up his pinky:  "This is your finger of strength," he observed.  Then he held up his middle and ring fingers: "These are your stupid fingers."  I felt the stupidity coursing through my entire body, and, at that moment, I vowed one day to ascertain what he meant.