In my last post, I talked about the new toy that I bought. As I rode it home, I experimented. I checked out this and I tried that. I looked at the oil, the brake fluid, listened to the roar of then engine, etc. I liked the riding position more than I thought that I would. I found out that the bike was/is a growler. That means that he seems to be happiest around 4,600 rpms.
Not knowing Honda Motorcycles at all, I decide to put the bike in my local Honda Shop (Grace Performance out in Wadhams). There are a couple of reasons that I chose to do this. The first is that, even though I am a decent mechanic, I don't have any manuals yet for this motorcycle (a Honda GL 500 Interstate). The second is that, I need to get down to Jacksonville, Florida.
So I walk into the Local Honda shop and they accept my motorcycle into the shop. I say, could you please check it over, change the fluids and check the brakes. It hasn't been ridden for over five years. (It has 5,500 actual miles, so I didn't doubt the truth of that statement.) In this model the calipers have o rings that can crack or rot out.
I call back and ask about the brakes. When I went in to pick it up, it wasn't ready but the man who takes the orders at the service desk said, “He checked out your brakes and they are OK.”
Trusting idiot that I am, I assume that he really checked out my brakes. That meant that I thought he literally took care of them. Hindsight being 20/20 or better, what I now know is that mean that he might have squeezed the handle, and maybe checked out or changed the fluid. Maybe.
Because the bike wasn't ready and I have a meeting on the what I remember to be the 12th or 13th of June, I end up leaving late which I really hate to do. I am a casual rider. I like to ride for a bit, go read in a bookstore for a bit, write a bit, ride some more, etc. Stop, look around. That's just the way I like to travel. Can I do 500 or 600 miles in a day? Sure, but why not take the time to enjoy the journey. I am past the point of having to hurry to get to some place else. I have already been in the lower 48 states. Most of them I have been in on a motorcycle. I have nothing to prove to anyone. I'm just out to enjoy my life.
I decide that even though I have left later than I wish I had due to a combination of things (bike broken, weather, etc) I still need/want to take a little time and ride across Ohio on I-80 and then drop down as I love to ride the mountains of West Virgina and North Carolina. It makes more sense to just ride down I-75. It's close and a really straight shot. It is also a totally boring road that I have learned to hate. I love the toll road in West Virginia, the tunnels, the atmosphere in South Carolina.
The Ride down towards the NAMI conference in Orlando was probably the most wonderful time I've had in a long time. As I was cruising along, I thought about why I liked to ride so very much. It wasn't just to escape the cares of the world, although that is one reason that I love to ride. It wasn't just to get away from the chaos (chaos seems to equal, Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) in my apartment, as I had previously thought.
What I realized as I was riding through North Carolina was that when I ride, I am well. It is probably the only time that I am totally well. Not a little well, a lot of well. The looking forwards to life, enjoying the sites, kind of well. In fact, I felt total excitement about what life has to offer me. I even felt happy. And I felt really, really satisfied with my life and where it was headed.
This day, for me was going to be a high mileage day. I don't like this bike and the rain. It is a pain in the assets, but as I thought about it, I don't really like any bike in the rain. But I do have full rain gear and have often ridden the Kawasaki Vulcan (2753 miles worth last year) in the rain. I don't like the windshield I have on this new bike when it rains. I've ordered another, but it didn't make it in.
Just about as soon as I hit Florida, it starts to rain. It was raining badly enough that I am drenched before I can even begin to think about grabbing my rain gear. Since I can 't see, I decide to pull off to the side of I-95 and wait the storm out. It stops quickly.
I wait a bit for the road to dry off (roads dry quickly in the Florida heat) and then hop back on to finish my ride. I am still on schedule to arrive at the meeting on time.
In Jacksonville, it starts to rain again, there is a ton of construction and no where to get off I-95 unless it is onto I-10 when it starts to rain again. I know that those cement dividers probably save the lives of people in cages, but most of the time, I hate them. I do now.
All I remember thinking is "I really don't want to be here." and bam, I was sliding, ripping tearing across the middle of the interstate. I was berating myself for being such a poor rider in rain as I was sliding across the lanes of I-95 and I-10. It was a hard fall. I lay there for a minute then started moving to see if I could. Car horns honking, people trying to drive by on either side of me, I sighed. Some people blocked the road off so people couldn't do that. As I tried to sit up there was a nurse who had stopped when she saw me fall, pushing me back down, telling me to lay back down. I have really bad knees. I don't lie on my back in a hotel bed, much less on a highway. She tells me to lay back and there are guys coming that will get the bike off of my leg. I kick the bike off of my left leg, yell an unprintable word, and get up.
People who don't ride, don't really think about the exhaust pipe factor or the bad knee factor when they are telling you to lay back and someone else will get the bike off of you. I'm not burned, but my boot is steaming. And we all know that I hate to give up the frickin control to anyone else. Thank goodness I don't ride in flip flops. The brakes on my bike are locked up due to the fall, no one has a wrench so we can't pop the calipers open (why I didn't remember mine were on the front of the bike, i can't tell you) and I can't move the bike off the interstate. The police come, but aren't on the interstate, there is no one behind my bike, there is no one to protect me. The police person stays on the nice, safe side of the divider which is a residential neighborhood and we wait for a tow truck; she in her police car because it's still raining ( she was nice enough to share that she had just gotten her hair done) and me on this side of the interstate with cars passing by closely.
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