I just finished the Basic Course taught by the local Motorcycle Safety Foundation. I'm sitting in the Taco Bell down the street from the Fremont riding range, recovering. I look like hell. I stuck my head in the rest room sink and tried to fluff my helmet-flattened hair under the electric hand dryer, but I look like a drowned rat with bad hair. I have wolfed down two Santa Fe chicken sandwiches, and I've burned my tongue on the hot tea. Did I say I was happy? I got the second best score on the range test, and aced the written exam, something I haven't done in a long time. I'm actually happy, but I'm too tired to feel happy. The last two and a half days have been the most intense learning experience in recent memory. I can feel new synaptic connections forming in my brain.

Leslie was the instructor for the first half-day of classroom work. Her enthusiasm was so infectious, it kept a class of twenty awake after work on a Monday night until 9:30pm. My range class started the next morning at 7:15am. Half the class was in the Mon-Tue-Wed section. Half of the section was female. We were all rank beginners - none of us had ever ridden in the driver's seat before. Of the females, the reasons for wanting to learn to ride were pretty much the same, they wanted their own bikes, they were tired of being a passenger. One was in her late teens, three were in their early-mid twenties, and I'm "middle aged".

Bikes were provided for the class. I rode one of the red Honda "Rainbow" 125cc bikes. They are indestructible. I know, I'm the only one who dropped her bike during the class. Trying to coordinate the clutch, the shift level, the brakes, the throttle, and balance on this recalcitrant beast while steering it through a simple turn was too much. The bike and I went down. The asphalt ground through my jeans into one knee, and left a colossal bruise on the other. How I jammed my right thumb I don't know. It is hard to write without a functioning opposable thumb.

On the second day, which also started at 7:15am, during the final range exam, the teenager pulled her front brake too hard and flew over the handle bars. The bike went down without her. She will have to take the class again. I'm sure she'll try to get the same teachers, Bill and John. They were outstanding. If/when the time comes to take the Experienced Riders Course, I'll ask for a class that Bill is teaching.

My sister Blithe called me from Atlanta Georgia and told me to open the front door. She had been tracking a FedEx delivery online, and saw that the package had been dropped off. She was really excited about something. Holding the phone to my ear, I opened the package. My god - it is a black leather jacket. It is gorgeous. It fits me perfectly. It is heavy, too - motorcycle-quality leather, armored at the shoulders and elbows. The smell of the leather rises up and fills my nose. I'm purring but the cats are unimpressed. I'm speechless.

Now I need a bike!

My friend Bart went with me to look at the Suzuki GZ250 in Sunnyvale. He showed up at my house sick as a dog. He could have called and told me he was sick, but he didn't. He knew that today was "buy" day, either I would buy the Suzuki from its owner, or, we would stop by the Honda Ducati dealer on the way home and I'd buy the Honda Rebel, also a 250cc bike. I didn't want to drop a new bike, and I know I'm going to drop whatever bike I buy, so I was hoping the Suzuki would be in good shape. It was. In spite of the flame decals all over it.

After I passed the training course and started looking for a bike in earnest, Bart had suggested a cruiser. I had said something like, "Over my dead body." I had negative associations with cruisers. I didn't want to learn to ride on a sport bike, I thought I wanted a standard bike. What I really wanted was one that I could ride with my back nice and straight, and have both feet flat on the ground when at a full stop.

Bart, taciturn fellow that he is, didn't comment on my outright rejection of a cruiser. He just took me to the Honda Ducati dealer, and put me in the hands of Murph, telling him I was looking for my first bike. Murph looked me over and had me sit on the Rebel. A cruiser. I was horrified.

It fit perfectly. I mean perfectly. The seat shape and my butt were compatible. My back was ballet straight. The handlebar grips were comfortably in reach. And it had adjustable brake and clutch levers - I have small hands. Damn. So much for my cruiser rider stereotype; I was going to be one. When the universe kicks me in the head, it does so with a steel-toed boot.

My sister Blithe and Bart had been looking through the motorcycle "for sale" ads. I didn't ask them for help finding a bike, they just did it. Blithe found a used Rebel in Merced about 100 miles away. Bart found the Suzuki in Sunnyvale, fifteen minutes away.

I bought the Suzuki. Bart had to ride it back to Mountain View for me. Yes, I had passed the training class, but I didn't have the confidence to ride the bike on the street where there were moving objects. The idea of being on the road with cars made me sick to my stomach. I also didn't have a learner's permit yet.

Bart went home with a belly full of hot and sour soup from Chef Chu's - best cold medicine I know. Good guy, good friend.

I bought a white Shoei TZ-1 helmet. It is DOT-approved, but not top of the line. As with any new hobby, starting out is just like opening a vein and bleeding money. I did look around for a helmet that would match the teal green of my bike but I was too impatient to create a special order.

Sure that a cop was hanging around the neighborhood to catch me riding without a permit, I rode the three streets to the parking lot of the Hewlett Packard campus. I practiced the basic maneuvers from the course on my new bike. If anyone had a video camera, they would have shot footage good enough for America's Funniest Home Videos. I was such a dork. My turns are jerky, I stalled the bike in half of my stops, my 90 degree turns weren't.

I must get past the point of huge intellectual processing for every shift and turn - enough repetitions of basics enables muscle memory to take over. I put 10 miles on the bike in the parking lot. I was tired. Approaching my own driveway for the first time, I realized that I didn't have the skill to accelerate up over the rise, and then brake in time not to hit Peter's car. I stalled out in the driveway, and tipped the bike over on myself. No new scratches, just one more bruise on my ego.

I went to work on those flame decals. They were gone by dinner time, and the whole bike was polished. What a pretty beast!

Parking it in the garage was another challenge. Yesterday I watched Bart maneuver the five-foot, 302 pounds of steel close to the wall, facing the front, in two smooth motions. It took me seven.

Today is my 45th birthday. Thirty years ago I watched someone whiz by on a motorcycle, and my heart raced. That was in 1971. I was just learning to drive a car. I knew better than to ask my parents about a motorcycle. I didn't know anyone who rode. I tucked that thought away for "later". In my twenties when I was in college, one of my boyfriends had a bike. The way he rode terrified me. The thought of riding my own bike stayed in the back of my mind. In my thirties, I would watch bikes as they passed by, but I wasn't ready. When I turned 40, the sound of a motorcycle engine would make my head swivel like an owl's, and that old feeling that had been quiet for so long began to rise from the background of my mind. Two years later I worked briefly on a project for Eilish. An attractive, intelligent woman of remarkable entrepreneurial energy, she rode a pearl white Honda 1100 touring bike. She and her bike made my heart stop. In the Spring of 2001, I was 44, silver grey showing in my hair, aware that 50 was six years away, and mulling over a passage in a book on perimenopause about the correlation between breast cancer and unfulfilled dreams.

I've pretty much done what I wanted to do during my life. But like most people, I've put off some things for various reasons. Riding a motorcycle. Climbing Mt. Whitney. Following the Silk Route. Resuming my study of Chinese. Learning how to build wood cabinets. There's more, but that is a good sample. I suspect the motorcycle challenge has ripened because of my awareness of increasing limitations in my ability to distinguish between right and left, and to coordinate movements in my hands and feet. I can feel my brain ossifying; the ability to learn new movements is slipping away. If I'm going to enjoy my life as I get older I have to continue to build new synaptic connections in my brain. Most important, I have to learn to see and not just look.

I knew that this was the year I would learn to ride. I promised myself that I would complete a class by the end of the year. How I was going to do this, I hadn't a clue.

Late in Spring 2001, I met Bart at a client company. He was the project manager, I was the account manager for that client. The project my company had worked on for the client had not gone well, and I was spending time on site trying to redo the work to make things right, and save the customer relationship. I invited Bart to lunch, both because I was trying to establish a good professional relationship with him, and, because I found him interesting. We got sandwiches and sat in the courtyard. There was an awkward silence. I was looking at his shoes. Those aren't shoes, they're boots. There's something odd about those boots. Oh my god, those are motorcycle boots.

To make a short story shorter, I begged for a ride on his Triumph Sprint ST995. He had an extra helmet and leather jacket. He also had me put on a vest that plugged into the electrical system of the bike - it was a heater vest. I found out later that he only had one vest. He rode as if he and the bike were one. I could feel his zanshin (complete awareness). The sound of the engine, the acceleration, the sensation of full focus on one's existence in the universe, I was in heaven.

I asked a lot of questions. He told me the place to start was the MSF class. Six months later I took the class.

I passed my learner's permit test at the DMV and went right back to the Hewlett-Packard parking lot. Daily practice is important. Still, having studied ballet for twenty years, and Aikido for thirteen, I know that some days just aren't your best.

It was raining. Bart has me scared of riding on wet leaves. I didn't ride today.

Back to the DMV to exchange the paper from the MSF course for a real license. I love being able to make an appointment on the web. The DMV sure has changed in twenty years. The staff were competent and polite.

Go to January 2002 entries