Greetings Fellow Travelers...
I want to start off by saying I really like my bike. It's a 2009 Harley Davidson Super Glide Custom- Vivid Black and Pewter Pearl. This has been a dream of mine for so long, as evidenced by my poem "To Write and to Ride." I will tell all about my first ride, but first...
Have you seen that movie "Wild Hogs?" One of the lines, spoken by John Travolta playing "Woody," was " I wanna ride, man, I just wanna ride!" That line was spoken by myself at least a dozen times a week, just ask my wife! She is a sweetheart-- my sweetheart-- and , believe it or not, she pushed me to get the bike we named "Janine."
She would see the change in me when a Harley rolled by and knew how badly I wanted one, and that I would never buy one for myself. It was at her prodding that we ended up at the Harley dealership that day, and it was she that took "action" photos of me riding. Thank you Honey!
I never knew that there were so many different air pockets and swirling eddies of cold, then hot, then warm and around and around in a ballet of invisible forces- all trying to influence my direction.
Driving in my car I could never experience the scented beauty of a fence drenched in flowers, or maintain my balance at 70 mph after a service truck, carrying weary workers home after an obvious hard days work in the sun, wafts a boatload of BO out the window at an unsuspecting Harley rider like myself. But that's not all!
I had forgotten how comforting, to me anyway, the smell of hay is. A truck cruised past me loaded with about a dozen of those giant rolls of hay and the scent took me back to a fall celebration sometime around first grade. Amazing.
My helmet is where the skulls and flames comes from. On my first trip to work on my bike a co-worker saw the flames and skulls on my helmet and asked "is that what's in your head? Flames and skulls?"
It is a full helmet, but it does not block out all sound. I can still hear my V twin motor thundering me down the road. I can hear the sometimes "thud," sometimes "splat" of the bugs slamming into it. I can hear vehicles coming around me, but they all make a loud "whoosh" sound, whether Yugo or semi.
I am planning on doing some stories on my bike travels, including pictures. I hope you like them as much as I will enjoy writing them!
So long for now, that highway is a callin'.
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