Harley and Me (2 page)

SECTION I

LOOK

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CHAPTER 1
    
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STARING INTO THE EYES OF THE BEAST

In life, it's rarely about getting a chance, but about taking one.

—ANONYMOUS

For some, it starts with a smile from a gorgeous stranger across a room, eyes hooded and enticing, an attraction that cannot be denied. Think Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary. For others, a website for a mountain-climbing expedition keeps calling you back, baiting, tempting you, a thrum underneath daily life that won't go away.
This is crazy!
you think, but continue returning to the web page or the stranger's eyes, staring, daydreaming.

The desire for excitement is sometimes little more than a whisper. You can't explain it, but you've always wanted to swim with dolphins, or learn to speak Mandarin. Thelma and Louise started out on a simple road trip, a weekend getaway. Maybe you'll begin to awaken when you finally sign up for that oil painting class. Or take those singing lessons. Or buy those ballet slippers.

Or maybe, you just get so damn tired of being scared by life that you decide to stare down the beast and challenge it.

For me, the beast is a motorcycle.

• • •

“So, there's an opening for the Rider's Edge class that starts tomorrow night,” my close friend and running partner Rebecca says one hot Wednesday in August.

I have only mentioned in passing my very slight interest in taking the motorcycle safety class Rebecca's dealership offers. It's a complete fluke she even remembers. Rebecca has recently taken over ownership of the Harley dealership her father founded thirty-five years earlier. On our regular runs, we discuss everything: our kids, stubborn issues involving parents or siblings, our troubled marriages, our careers, our dreams and desires. We have bonded by a need to experience life more fully, to step out of our roles as mothers, wives, and women to pursue a future for ourselves unburdened by stereotypes and preconceptions.

During one of our runs, I mention I'm doing research for a novel. Wouldn't it be fun to write a female character who rides a motorcycle? I can pump Rebecca for information about bikes. But if I also take the class, I'll be able to describe the experience with more authority.

I have no idea that saying yes to this course will completely upend my life.

The next evening, I find myself in the Harley-Davidson Rider's Edge class: three nights in the classroom and two full days in the saddle of an actual motorcycle. I figure I'll learn how to do this one quirky thing, have a funny little anecdote to share at cocktail parties, and have enough information to write my character. For one weekend, I will live a tiny bit on the edge. After that, I can pull back into my safe zone.

In the midst of the second Rider's Edge class, my cell phone vibrates. I ignore it. The group of eleven students and I are standing around a large sheet of paper taped to the wall with a stick-figure sketch of a motorcycle. We draw slips of paper from a helmet with words like
throttle
,
rear brake
,
speedometer
, and
clutch
on them, taking turns identifying where those components are located. I correctly
identify the turn signal cancel switch and feel a little jolt of excitement—I'm starting to get it—when the phone vibrates again. I pull it from my back pocket to check who's calling so insistently.

It's my brother, Brendan. I excuse myself to step into the hallway and take the call.

“What's up?” I ask.

“Dad's worse,” Brendan says, “and I can't take this much longer. I was here last night and I'll be here again tonight, but I'm at the end of my rope. We'll need someone to stay with him Saturday night and Sunday, too. Can you set up something?”

We've all been taking turns visiting and staying with Dad, who's in home hospice care. He's ninety, has bile duct cancer, and lives an hour away from any of us. My stepmother, Jean, eighty-two, has been getting no sleep. Since Dad needs to be physically lifted during the night to use the bathroom, the men from the family have been staying over with him, while my sister and I are out there regularly, helping however we can.

I make calls for the next ten minutes, standing in the hallway, missing class, arranging for family members to take turns staying the night with Dad.

I return to the class and try to pick up the lesson. I force myself to concentrate, but one question repeats: What the hell am I doing in a class to learn how to ride a motorcycle while my father is dying?

After class, I call my friend Kitty.

“This is insane, isn't it? I should just drop everything and get out to Dad's house.”

“You've been out there every chance you can,” she says. Maybe you need a distraction.”

“Maybe . . .”

“There's no knowing how this will unfold,” she continues. “When you get quiet inside, what do you feel you need to do?” “I don't know. I haven't felt quiet inside lately.”

“That's your first job, then. Let everything settle inside and see how you feel.”

• • •

It won't be until later, when I immerse myself into the brain chemistry of risk taking and examine the changes that happen at midlife—in our brains, in our bodies, in our psyches—that any of this will start to make sense. At first, I will think I'm crazy. Because on the face of it, I have been making some pretty harebrained choices lately, acting as if I'm someone other than whom I know myself to be. Which is, simply put, a chickenshit.

I grew up in a household where chaos could erupt at any minute, turning all my plans head over heels before breakfast time. As an adult, I developed a serious obsession for routine and order. Everything had to be planned out in advance. Before any trip, my suitcase was ready at least a day ahead of time; I packed a house a week before the movers arrived. I had contingency plans for contingency plans. I hated to do things if I don't know I'd be good at them. I'm totally averse to meeting new people or venturing outside of what is comfortable. Heights, especially, freak me out. I am the woman who, as a young mother, became so terrified of exposed elevations that I crawled on hands and knees backward down the four hundred steps of Moro Rock in Sequoia National Park; I kept imagining my children, who had dashed ahead with their father, plunging down that one-thousand-foot rock face. I avoid any situation where I cannot be in complete control.

So what explains my forays into backpacking and mountain-climbing in the High Sierra that began few years ago? Though I still may be found cowering at the top of a twelve-thousand-foot pass, feeling the vertigo of all that distance between me and the ground, the desire to climb those heights somehow supersedes the stomach lurching that comes when I reach their summit. Somewhere along the line, the draw of adventure became stronger than my fear.

The same was true with running. I am asthmatic and spent most of my childhood incapacitated by bronchitis and pneumonia, restricted from PE and any activity that would make me breathe hard. But after I
got in mountain-climbing shape a few years ago, I wanted to maintain my gains over the winter months, so I started slowly trotting around the local high school track. Run half a lap. Walk half a lap. Rebecca often ran with me. And I was the one who always said I hated running! After months of early-morning workouts, we entered our first 5K, a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving, before we headed back home to prepare the family feast. Then we signed up for a 10K. A year later, we'd signed up for half marathons. Within two years, we had trained and completed the full 26.2 miles.

And now: a motorcycle class.

I am not a physically imposing person, slender with bird bones and Olive Oyl arms. And yet I find myself drawn to these challenges, all of which raise serious doubts about my abilities. Each requires a kind of risk: to move out of my comfort zone and experiment with activities that scare me.

Yet, as I master each step along the way—running my first mile without stopping, or carrying a forty-pound backpack for four days over elevation gains of several thousand feet—I feel a rush. Is it endorphins? Adrenaline? Self-esteem? Whatever it is, I am hooked.

This physical realm seems to be the only one where I can exert some control these days. After years of trying to manage my children, my spouse, my household, and my work, the old control-freak ways no longer work. When I give up trying to control the people and circumstances around me, though, I'm left facing myself, alone.

I sit quietly as Kitty suggests, and I see it: My life feels deadened. My children are nearly grown and need me less. My marriage has felt empty for years. I thought that when the kids got older, J and I might rekindle the closeness that had originally brought us together. I see now how unlikely that is. My skin feels bruised, chafed with the sadness of it all.

Oddly, these physical pursuits with their elements of risk seem to ease this discomfort. When I feel unsure of my ability to master a new scenario and yet persevere, new vigor and energy flow, a sense that my life might not be as predictable as I thought. I am still
capable of surprising myself, of learning something new about my life. Because, let's face it: My life is not working out the way I had planned. But maybe there's a chapter about to open that I didn't know to anticipate. Maybe there's a different life to discover, making its way toward me.

I also feel a little foolish because, at my age, taking these risks makes absolutely no sense. It's utterly illogical. There is no reason for me to learn to ride a motorcycle, no reason to topple the entire structure of my adult life. Perhaps the fact my father is dying has something to do with it. That, on top of the need to escape the pain of a sad marriage. It's just a distraction; that's what it is.

Why do seemingly normal people like me do risky, difficult, sometimes impulsive things when there's no real payoff, no financial reward? Nothing tangible is at stake. No reason to put one's life on the line. No prize, not even a cookie.

According to evolutionary scientists, risk taking is part of everyone's DNA—some of us more than others. We take risks because biologically we're programmed to, because it benefits our species. Sociologists find that risk taking is a common trait across all cultures. One theory focuses on the most evolutionarily ancient part of our brain, known in lay terms as the reptilian brain—that portion of our neural system that controls survival and reproductive instincts. This is the part of the brain that impels us toward risk. That impulse is aided and abetted by brain chemicals, particularly endorphins, those feel-good, naturally produced opiates the brain releases in response to imminent physical danger.

If we look into our ancient history, the pattern is present from the get-go. Early risk takers were probably the nonconformists. Those likely to explore new trails might have found fresh resources for the tribe, or those who tried to do things differently may have invented original tools or weapons or eaten something no one had ever tried before, thereby discovering a new food source. Because these activities would benefit the whole tribe, those who succeeded with their risks were both lauded as heroes and flooded with pleasant brain chemicals,
which produce a high often compared to sex. When we are in danger, certain biological changes occur. Whether that danger is produced by circumstances beyond our control or at own hand doesn't matter to our bodies; it's all risky business at the cellular level. The heart speeds up and breathing quickens as the threat looms. When danger passes, we experience deep feelings of release and relaxation. A sense of power, momentary invincibility, a catharsis of sorts.

It's a potent brew.

• • •

I follow Kitty's suggestion, sitting silently for twenty minutes. After, I feel revitalized. I've made a clear decision: Unless I feel a definite prompt to run out to Dad's house, or am asked to help, I am going to stick with the class.

By deciding to take the motorcycle class, I realize I'm after something more than an organic high. I want to remind myself that I am strong and capable. I've been taught that I should be afraid of big, muscular things like motorcycles. As a woman, I've been programmed to believe I'm too delicate emotionally and physically to handle a machine so demanding. Some part of me knows that's not true. I
can
do things that frighten me. In doing so, I hope to discover I am strong enough to survive the approaching loss of my father, the only real parent I've ever known.

• • •

I drive the fifteen minutes from my home in the suburban foothills into the city, looking for the Costco/Best Buy parking lot. Hidden behind these superstores is an even larger parking lot used by Glendale Harley as its training range. My fellow students gather near a large metal storage building with a rigged-up sunshade. Three lines of four motorcycles each are queued up and waiting. My heart hammers. I've spent the past two evenings doing the book-learning part
necessary, but somehow I didn't think about this next step—actually getting on a motorcycle. I've got to ride one of those damn things.