The Trip Home, Getting on a bike again, Buying a Truck

Well, I got my bike out of the impound lot. There were a bunch of guys standing around helping. Or not helping depending upon what you thought they were doing. We had the Grand Am, it was riding low, the bike trailer that we wanted to rent wasn't going to work and Grandma was unhappy.

I have a tendency to spit nails when things don't go my way and it seemed like there had been at least a week of those kinds of days. I look like a wimp as I can't pull on my jeans, so I am wearing these old lady fru, fru clothes. They were about all I could find. For the past week my luggage and the jeans that I could wear were on my bike. In impound. I pick up my leather jacket and look at the shredded mess it had become. I have two, it was my favorite.

My clothes were there, my tent was there, my sleeping bag was there, my hard luggage didn't have any major holes in it--pretty scraped up but no holes, my mess kit was pretty dented, but hey. The key locks in the hard luggage still worked. My reading glasses were still there.

So I am standing there trying to figure out what to do. I already knew that plan A--the one where the Grand Am pulls my bike back to Michigan on a trailer--was down the drain. I decide to get a storage room and put my stuff in it. But we have to get the bike on the trailer.

I still don't feel like moving at all. But the guys that were tying down my bike to the trailer so I could put it into storage were doing it all wrong. And they didn't like to listen to this old fru fru lady. So this guy walks up. And he said, no--don't put the tie down straps there, put them here, on the engine guards. And don't put the tie downs there, put them on the luggage racks that attach to the frame. We're going to tie this bike down like it was a Harley, even though it's not a Harley.

If it was a Harley, it wouldn't have gone down with locked up brakes. I think, "Cute, very cute", but decide to take the cut because, frankly, i don't know if I could climb up on the trailer to retie down the bike even though I knew the tie downs weren't on right.

We get the bike back to the storage room; my daughter and Matt manage to muscle it into the storage room after I take most of the food out of the bags. The kids are happy, i have granola bars, chips and munchies for the ride home. I leave the clothes and the rest of the stuff on the bike, not sure just how I want to do what. There's a bike shop just down the road, do I want to try that one?

We pile in the car, a crowded mass of wall to wall people and we all settle in for a long ride home. Grandma buys the food since everyone is crowded because I am hitching a ride.

My daughter doesn't stop for the night. She just keeps driving. And driving. I take more pain medicine and try to block out the remaining pain by sleeping. It was way more than I could handle--riding home that way. Did I mention that I would have been happy to pay for a hotel room as well? Hell, I would have payed for a couple of them.

We get home and I try to figure out how to sleep. It takes a week or so before I want to think about lying down to sleep.

The Saturday after I got home, I got out the Vulcan to ride. It did hurt like hell. At the same time I have found that if I don't get back on, fear rules. I don't mind being afraid, but I absolutely refuse to stop going for my dreams because I am afraid. If at some point in the future I decide to not ride because there is too much of a chance of my dying, that is one thing. If I decide to change my dreams because I have thought things through. What isn't OK, at least for me is for me to stop riding because I am afraid to get back on.

So, I got on and rode up the road for about twenty miles to the roadside park up north of Lexington. At the roadside park I didn't really feel like talking to anyone, just chose a rock to sit on and looked out at the water.

After I got back, I thought about how I was going to get my Honda back to Michigan from Florida. One week down, three to go before the storage room rent was going to be due. I wanted my bike back by then.

I start thinking about buying a truck. I envision a Green Dodge Dakota, falling into my lap at a price I can afford, in a couple of weeks. At least it gives me something to think about besides worrying about what my Honda will look like. LOL

Marty