Why I ride a motorcycle

This is sort of a prologue to my post about the crash on the last mile of my ride today. I was writing this in my head the entire trip. I guess the crash is the epilogue

Why I ride a motorcycle

I figure it's not a real motorcycle ride unless you pray at least once.

This Tuesday morning, at about 6:30 AM, I checked out of my motel in Buffalo, NY, bungee corded my waterproof duffel bag to my Triumph Bonneville motorcycle, and headed out. Destination: my home in Detroit.

In hindsight, lots of things were going against me. It was dark; I was not familiar with the roads; It was foggy; It was also raining steadily, though not heavily. My bike doesn't have a windshield. Nonetheless, I was anxious to get home, and I had rain resistant gear on. So I headed out west on I-90 towards Niagara Falls, where I would cross into Canada to take the short-cut through Ontario to Windsor (also known as south Detroit!). The rain got worse and there was some flooding on the roads. And I couldn't see the puddles on the roadway, nor could I see the white lane markers, the fog lines, or the road itself. I could only see, and even this wasn't clear, the tail lights on the big truck in front of me. Almost forgot, I did see a couple of a dead Bambi relatives along side the road. I'm sure they'll put up "Warning Deer" signs in the area next year.

So I followed those truck lights as I tried to clear the mist from my face shield. Nearly blind (remember, motorcycles don't have windshield wipers), I raised my face shield to try to get rid of the fogging. Sure enough, a tiny bug committed suicide by prescription lens. Naturally, I used my glove to try and wipe away the bug's remains. A semi-opaque bug residue paste resulted! I figure I was down to one and a half eyes. At that moment a van pulled up on my left, too close for comfort, and started honking. At 65 miles per hour. Thinking there might be something wrong with my bike, the luggage, or whatever, I looked over as the van driver honked again. With a big smile he pointed at the bike, and gave me a big thumbs up! Nice compliment, pal. Wrong time for it. Particularly when I can't see. At this point I said a few prayers. They always go pretty much the same way: an admission of my stupidity, a plea to let me live through this; followed by a promise that I'll never be so stupid again!

Although correlation certainly isn't causation, the weather did finally start to clear up as I approached the toll both at the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls. The toll taker demonstrated that he has an excellent grasp of the obvious when he said to me, "Little wet out there, eh?" I replied, "It's a British bike. It's s'posed to be wet." He laughed and asked, "Are you English?" "Nah, but I speak the language." He laughed again, waved me on, and said "Nice Bike."

I crossed the Rainbow Bridge and approached the Canadian Customs booth. Two vehicles were ahead of me, one a bicycle! (Now that really made me mad! The folks in Niagara have figured out how to let bikes ride across an international bridge. Why not us?) The two vehicles went through and I rode ahead. The Canadian customs officer asked the usual assortment of questions: Citizenship? Where are you going? Where do you live? Where are you coming from? Is this your bike? Do you know the license number? Do you have any firearms with you? Same old stuff. "Just riding through Ontario trying to get home, sir." Satisfied that I didn't need any further scrutiny, the customs officer then said, "Nice Triumph. I used to ride. But got married, had kids, and the wife said no more motorcycle." I gave him the "I feel for you" grin and head nod as he waved me on. Never heard that story before (sarcasm alert!).

And up until my incident one mile from home, the rest of the journey was uneventful. And as I rode I thought that these are the reasons I ride. The challenge of weather, of road conditions, and the chit-chat that motorcyclists are regularly engaged in. There's a reason many motorcyclists refer to cars as "cages." The only thing that would have made the journey better was if a certain "bird" (slang, Great Britain) was sitting behind me with her arms around my waist.

HERE'S THE EPILOGUE TO THIS. I'll write "lessons learned" later!

Well, I had just crossed the Ambassador Bridge into Detroit and was thinking about writing a short summary about my love of motorcycling. I was taking the ramp onto southbound 10 (Lodge) when I encountered
loose gravel then uneven pavement. My bike went out from underneath me and I went down skidding next to and then into the guardrail. At least a 100 foot drop over the guardrail. I thought for a moment that I was going over the guardrail. Yes, scary indeed. The bike stopped on top of my left ankle. Gas was leaking. A hard hat stopped and helped pull the bike off of me. We were able to lift the bike up. Shift lever broken off. I was wearing the right gear! Which saved my knees. The boots helped, but I've wrapped my sore ankle. I was able to get the bike home by staying in 3rd gear! I'm shaken up, but will be OK. My first "going down" at speed. 750 mile trip, and this was the very last mile. Lesson there for sure.