I wanna ride!

Ok, so the shock and awe of the fall (and the re-telling of the story) has worn off. Now I want back on. Dammit! I kinda knew this would happen ... I always need to go through a period of time to sort of make peace with the incident — fights with friends, major illnesses, accidents — I just need my time and then before you know it, it's all better.

But now, I ain't got no bike and the insurance company is dragging their feet so I ain't be got no money either.

So for now, just the dream of the next bike exisits. I think I want an old Triumph Bonneville or Honda CB450. I plan on tricking it out with Lady Luck graphics, which will keep all of the gravity deamons away so I can safely tool down the road without any worries.

(Photos of 68 Triumph & 73 Honda)

My Vegas Vacation (Or... A Tale of Loss and Discovery on the Desert Highway)

Day One: Escaping the long arm of the law.
On the first day, we loaded up the bikes and headed west! As we rode up I-70 I felt so confidant and excited. The sky was that perfect Colorado blue and there wasn’t any wind. We made our first stop just shy of the turn-off to go to Winter Park to put on more clothes — brrrr! It’s cold. As we pulled back on to the road I imagined my alter-ego of La Femme Nakita on her motorcycle emerging! J But, that may have been due to the mix in my iPod at the time — you can hear everything from Ertha Kitt to Gary Glitter on that thing! (Ooooh! Don’t you hate it when writers make up a false range? Like there’s a distinct traceable line from Eartha Kitt to Gary Glitter? But, hey this is my blog, so get over it!) Anyhow the day wouldn’t have been complete for an outlaw biker like myself, without a visit from Johnny Law. Well, actually it was Paris who got pulled over just outside of Grand Junction. The copper said that he was riding in the passing lane for too long. The funny part was that when Paris was pulled over, I pulled over too. I came up behind the cop car and that FREAKED The Man out! He had one hand on his holster and was shouting, “Stop! Stop!” (Of course, I have no idea what he was actually saying because I was listening to AC/DC and fancying myself a renegade biker.) But the stance was unmistakable. Due to his charm and personality, as well as excellent ass-kissing skills, Paris convinced the cop that he wasn’t cruising in the passing lane, but merely trying to check-in with his wife to make sure she was OK, this being her first road trip and all. (What a sweetie!)

There are two kinds of riders.

We woke up and began our second day of riding with an egg sandwich and a fine cup of Joe from the Green Rive Coffee Co. And if you’re ever in Green River, I highly recommend stopping in for a cup. The weather was beautiful and the ride through Utah’s parks couldn’t be prettier.

But, as the saying goes, there are two kinds of riders: Those who have been down and those who are going down. On day two of our trip I made that fateful rite of passage into the first group. As I pulled off the road into a gas station driveway, I hit a large patch of gravel and the front end of my bike washed out from under me. I went down and skidded a bit across the gravel and dirt road. The bike landed on top of me, pinning me under it until Paris could lift it off. I was immediately surprised to discover that my head was OK and I felt like most of my body was working. (Repeat after me: all the gear, all the time.)

Almost instantly, a huddle of five to 10 people formed around me. Everyone was yelling different directives “Move her up to the gas station!” “No! Don’t touch her!” “Take off her boots!” “Get water!” I knew nothing was broken, but boy, did it hurt a lot. I asked Paris to help me get my boot off so we could see if my ankle was ok. Then a guy who was watching bald eagles just moments before, offered to put me in his van to take me to the top of the hill where the gas station was. Feeling faint, in a state of shock, I agreed. Looking back on it, it was a little Silence of the Lambs, but the door wasn’t shut, and hey, I really didn’t think I was going to be able to walk to the top of the hill. At he gas station, Paris took care of the road rash on my side and the gink in my knee. Amazingly, other than those two injuries, I was completely unscathed. (Again: all the gear, all the time.)

Mentally, I wasn’t so good. I did not want to get back on my bike. But, Boulder, Utah isn’t exactly what you’d call a thriving community. In fact, I think the only thing there is the gas station on the hill and they seemed pretty staffed up.... The bike however, suffered a bit more damage (more of that later) but it seemed to ride all right, so after about an hour or so, I finally mustered the courage to get back on.

The next part of our ride took us through The Staircase and Escalante, Utah. It’s probably some of the most awesome country you’ll ever see. Unfortunately, the ride is a bit scary with a two-lane winding road that has very steep, sheer drop-offs for much of the ride. Because of my state of mind (which could be accurately described as scared shitless), I wasn’t fully appreciating the beauty of the scene. We stopped in Panguitch (rhymes with sandwich) because they had a medical clinic and I wasn’t convinced that I wasn’t going to need one by the end of the night.

Being a bad-ass is harder than it looks.

On the third day we woke up early to finish the last leg of the ride. Neither one of us slept all that well, and I wanted to get the ride over with — the more time that passed since I was last on the bike, the less I wanted to climb back aboard.

I need to pause right here to let you know that if you haven’t ever ridden a bike for multiple days on end, it’s hard. Plain and simple. You get physically tired of the wind whipping you around, your butt hurts, you ache all over — hands, wrists, feet, they all ache. And because you’ve got to concentrate when you’re riding, you don’t have the luxury of zoning out like you do in a car, so you’re mentally tired, too.

But all that said, nothing could have prepared me for the last two hours into Vegas. The road from St. George winds through the northern tip of Arizona, then it becomes a windy long stretch to Vegas and when you finally get into Vegas, it becomes a busy three or four lane highway, packed with tourists who don’t know where they’re going and locals who want to get there faster.

So the next time you see some weathered biker dude, with a rolled sleeping bag on the back of his bike, give him the thumbs up, buy him a beer, or step aside and let his bad-ass pass by, because now you know takes more than just a Harley Davidson or Von Dutch T-shirt to make you tough.

Sometimes even the things that go to Vegas stay in Vegas.

So after days of trying to figure out how to get my bike back home — you see, I wasn’t that keen on riding it back, I finally decided to ask the dealership what the estimated cost to fix the bike was. Amazingly (really, I wish I had taken a photo of this) the bikes damage far exceeded it’s value. It’s really hard for me to believe because I didn’t think that much was wrong with the bike. Sure, the plastic farrings were cracked and I knocked off the turn signal, but I really thought maybe there might be something tweeked with the forks — maybe! But, as it turns out by Nevada law (and maybe this is the case in all states) when you wreck a bike, if you use the insurance company to fix it, they have to replace all parts with new replacement parts. That means they can’t use parts from another bike and that also means, the costs skyrocket to fix a bike. (I have a very strong suspicion Kawasaki knows these things when they build beginner bikes they know are going to get dumped.)

Anyhow, the long and the short of it is that my bike never made it back to Colorado. And I should be getting a check from my insurance company soon for the value of the bike. And it looks like my motorcycling career is over … at least for now.