Did you think the “blog of some significance” that I referred to a week ago was the one about screwing up a friendship? Actually, no. This is the blog of significance. Which is somewhat sad, because in the intervening time I’ve lost some of the intensity of feeling that I had that day and that I wish I could still express. But I’m still going to write about it, because it’s important to me. So imagine this blog, but much more powerful. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Dyskinesia and I were lying in bed early one morning about a week ago when, out of the blue, she started talking to me about her dad riding his motorcycle. I really didn’t understand at first, until finally she cut to the chase. Our son is going out to visit her parents next week, and my father-in-law wants to take him for a ride on his Harley.
This took me aback. Quite a bit.
When I crashed my motorcycle, my son was five years old. Barely riding his own bike with training wheels. He wasn’t ready to ride with me, even though ever since I was in my early twenties and LONG before I owned my own bike or even had a son, I’ve been captivated by Robert Pirsig’s images of a long motorcycle trip with his own son in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I eagerly awaited my own chance to share a beautiful spring morning motorcycle ride with my son, only to lose that chance along with my motorcycle.
Now, my son has the chance to take his first motorcycle ride, and I’m overjoyed. But it will happen without me. That creates serious pangs.
I missed my son’s first fishing trip, because he went with my mother-in-law on a visit. I missed his first camping trip a few weeks ago, because he went with my parents. Those are things that mean something to me, but not a ton. Motorcycling, on the other hand, is part of my identity. (Hence the name I took for this blog.) Not being there for his first motorcycle ride – even if I wasn’t on the bike, just being there alongside them on another bike – is going to suck.
At the same time, my father-in-law is about to turn 60 and isn’t always the picture of health. Not in an old-man way, but in a really-big-man-with-a-stressful-job way. I don’t want to deny my father-in-law the opportunity to do so until I could get a motorcycle of my own, whenever the hell that would be, any more than I want my son to have to wait it out.
So I told Dys to give her dad the go-ahead, and said I’d talk to our son about it. And then I laid there and felt like absolute and utter hammered shit for a while.
And then I started to talk. About how I felt without a motorcycle, how robbed I felt of the feeling I used to get, and how depressed I sometimes get when I see dipshit squids riding around endangering themselves and others when I tried to always be responsible in my riding only to have cruel fate bitch-slap me anyway. How sometimes when I feel that way, I turn it around and beat myself up with the inner voice that says “Well, stupid, you had what you wanted and YOU fucked it up by crashing, so YOU have no room for complaint. You had your chance and blew it. STFU.”
This is where a week ago I could have written with much more force about the emotions going through my head at the time. It’s been a while, though, so there’s not the immediacy or the force now that there was then. But I spent a half-hour or so talking about the recurrent depression that I fall into related to my lack of ability to ride.
Dyskinesia listened patiently and sympathetically to me for a long time before I finished talking, and then said her piece. It included mentioning that we live apart from our families, that me and my son were her world and a motorcycle accident could quickly take us both from her, that even without that, our son was still very young…too young to grow up without a father. All of these things were and are true. I could talk to her and attempt to reassure her that the risks are minimal, but given my previous accident it would have rang hollow for both of us. I know there are risks, but I still want my fix. I compared it, in a way, to a drug addiction. From my point of view, the risks are worth the reward; from hers, she’s attempting to save me from my own self-destructive impulses.
Be that as it may, after some while of talking, she made a statement that stopped me cold. For the better part of a day. “You’ve never made the decision to ride, or not to ride, for yourself,” she said. (Well, or something like it. We all know I always fail to get Dys’s quotes right.) I was quiet. She then said, “We’ve got enough money in the savings account right now for you to buy a beater bike out of the classifieds. If I’m all that’s stopping you, go do it. But make a decision yourself and own it. Don’t blame it on me. That’s not fair.”
She was right. For almost three years I’ve blamed my lack of a motorcycle on my wife. Not always overtly or consciously, and not fully. We have monetary problems as well – problems that were, to be honest, not helped by my owning and then crashing the bike the first time. That bike and insurance payment would have gone a fair ways against our bills. But beneath it all was a she-doesn’t-like-it-so-until-she-does kind of thing. I put myself in limbo and blamed her. Not fair at all.
So that day I made a decision. I won’t buy another motorcycle for another three years. In July of ‘11, then it’s fair game. That doesn’t mean on that day I’ll be strapping my helmet back on (hell, by then I’ll probably need a new helmet) but after that I’m on my own. I told her that that decision was not irrevocably etched in stone, and I reserved my right to keep bitching about wanting to ride, but it was my decision. And I’m going to live with it on my terms.
Surprisingly it feels a bit better. Not a lot better, mind you. I’d still rather be in a perfect world in which my wife wasn’t afraid, justifiably or no, of me riding, in which I was flush with cash, and could tour the countryside with my boy. But this world I’m in right now, though imperfect, beats the limbo into which I’d placed us both.
That doesn’t solve the whole my-son’s-first-ride problem. That one is still going to sting, and there’s nothing much I can do about it. I sat him down this weekend and talked to him about riding with Grandpa. I answered all of his questions…”Yes, you’ll borrow a helmet from [family friends' kids - dirt bike gear]. No, you won’t fall off. I used to ride behind my friend when I was a kid, and I never fell off.” But mostly I told him that I wished I could take him for a ride, and explained that I wanted to before but he was just too small. I’m not sure he really absorbed that part, but hopefully he’ll remember later on in life that his dad didn’t give him his first motorcycle ride not because he didn’t want to.
I hope he comes home safe and happy and as excited as I was when I took that first ride on a 50cc Honda minibike behind my friend’s father.
And I hope someday we can still live out my fantasy of riding together.
Filed under: Life and other states of existence, Motorcycling, TB - The Guy (About the Author), motorcycles
It sucks getting old, until you realize how much smarter you actually get.
It would be cool sometimes to just be able to do the impulse things that we did when we were younger without thinking of the consequences.
I wish I’d done more riding when I was younger! I was mo’ broke-r then than I am now. Well, maybe not. I have a mortgage now, so in theory I’m 100k or so in the hole.
Wow… I really don’t know what to say because I understand what Dys feels when she speaks of losing you. But, I also know the pain of giving up something that is more than important; it is a piece of you.
As a blogging friend, I am just sending out a virtual hug to you and Dys, because I know it weighs heavy on her to be holding you back.
Part of the point now is that she’s not holding me back. Never has, really, although in my mind I made it out to be so. She has made it clear how she feels about it, but the decision is up to me. So I made a decision, with a time frame and not “for now,” to press “pause” on my riding career.
Gotcha. My hubby is talking about getting a bike. I loved riding with him when he had a bike, but am terrified of losing him on a Houston highway.
Dys only rode with me around the block once. Of course, my bike was pretty small and not exactly made for passengers. I’d love to have her with me, and used to encourage her to come along or even take it up on her own bike, but the thought of leaving our son without BOTH parents rightfully terrifies the shit out of her. Maybe when he’s older, and I’m over 45 and can therefore legally buy a Gold Wing…
Ooohh no! A Gold Wing! A “comfortable” bike?!?!? Noooooo!
My heart was going out to you when you were talking about missing the firsts with your son because I know how it killed my Mom to miss so many of my own firsts because she had to work so much when I was a young thing.
I really miss my bike. I was just starting to get good on it when I had to let it go. I feel I’m forgetting how to ride. But losing a job puts a hurtin’ on the payments. Damned priorities.
Damned priorities is exactly right!
Well you’re taking the safe road for right now (in a manner of speaking) but you’re also recognizing and acknowledging what you want, and that’s a good thing, hence the “feeling better”…and don’t worry, times flies, your son will be riding with you before you know it
In retrospect I’m sure it’ll seem that way. 3 years looks like a long time on this side, but as the father of an elementary school kid, lemme tell you that 3 years looks like a flash in the rear view mirror.
You’ve got a great little family there, TB. I, as always, have more to say, but that sentence sums it up quite nicely.
Thank you very much. I take that as a great compliment, and not just because I happen to agree.
I imagine that one of the hardest parts of being a Dad is that he will have some of his firsts without you. *hug*
Don’t focus on that he won’t have his first ride with you, but he’ll have a first ride and he’ll come home and tell you all about it.
That’s good advice, and where I’m trying to put my head.
I was at The Overlook restaurant yesterday…motorcycles everywhere.
I wonder if we’ll all be driving motorcycles and/or scooters in 3 yrs out of fuel cost concerns.
There’s certainly a lot more of them on the road – scooters especially. I’ve heard that scooter dealers in urban areas all over the country are having trouble keeping them in stock.
Urban areas are bad, but I really feel for folks in rural places like where I grew up. My daily commute to my summer job in high school was about 20 miles each way, mostly highway. And that wasn’t commuting from Suburb to Big City, that was from Country to Small Town. Those folks don’t have the option of public transportation, there aren’t jobs close to where they live, and the smaller scooters really aren’t too viable either. They’re getting hit pretty hard.
My husband has decided he is getting a motorcycle to save money on gas. We fit into the category you described in Allison’s comment above.
Do I need to mention again that I hate motorcycles? He knows my feelings on the subject. My empty threats are not working. He has some valid points, but they are combined with ego and desire for a new toy.
I’m just trying not to waste time worrying about it. Last time I was on a bike (10 years ago or so) we were sitting at a stoplight and were rear-ended by a guy who was about 90. He didnt see us and the sun was in his eyes. Fortunately he did see the red light and had slowed considerably. It still hurt enough that I dont want to find out how much more it can hurt, ya know?
I’m not going to lie, there will always be greater risks in riding motorcycles than riding in cars. I think that the risks can be minimized by education (take the Motorcycle Safety Foundation class and try reading David Hough’s Proficient Motorcycling), wearing your protective gear (a full-face helmet, and abrasion-resistant jacket, boots, gloves, and pants) and vigilance — and the rewards are very, very difficult to describe.
But I’ve come to realize more and more that, as I say in my FAQ, there are motorcycle lovers and motorcycle haters and relatively few people fall in between. My opinion on “Should my husband get a motorcycle?” is clearly predictable, and probably as clearly unconvincing to anyone who would really need convincing in the first place.