Harley and Me (4 page)

• • •

What happens when we step out of what's predictable? Can our lives be enlarged just as our careers are finally on a set path or the kids go off to college, when it feels as if there are no more surprises to come? I have to ask myself: What is happening in my brain, in my psyche, in my personality that compels me to seek out scary, risky experiences?

Certainly I'm learning a few things: First, that the motorcycling is not an end in itself, a risk for risk's sake, but rather a pathway to a more authentic life, an unearthing of my own power and fortitude. Second, when I try something new, my capacity to learn and grow leaps geometrically; I feel empowered and alive. No material possessions, no amount of money, can buy that; I have to create it. Third, it's important to let others see me when I'm learning and failing and struggling and scrambling. No one on this planet has it all together. Yet we spend so much time thinking others are somehow better off, understand deeper, have mastered life in a way we never will. When I let others see me try and fail and try and fail better, we all grow. I expand in that I more fully accept myself, and those who witness me are perhaps challenged to do the same. Together we recognize a prickly truth about the human condition.

Today, the risk I undertake is riding a motorcycle. For someone else, it might be exploring a museum for the first time, or reading outside the familiar realm, or sharing honestly with a friend on a deeper level. Learning to cook a new dish presents its own set of risks, as does signing up for a class at the local university, or taking singing lessons.

I toggle the engine kill-switch to its “on” position, waiting for the lights to tell me Izzy's ready. When I thumb the ignition button, she rumbles deep and throaty. Five hundred and fifty pounds of metal come alive, all but begging me to rev the engine and let her run.
Lifting the kickstand with my right foot, I press down on the shifting peg with the ball of my left foot and feel the satisfying
clunk
of first gear. I twist the throttle gently while letting out the clutch and roll at low revs away from the house, a courtesy to my family and neighbors who probably don't want to be awakened this early on a weekend morning. I nearly asked the dealership to trade out the loud custom pipes on this bike when I bought her, thinking I was more suited to something quieter, more ladylike. But then I was reminded that the exhaust noise is actually a safety feature that would make other motorists aware of me. And besides: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”

Within minutes of leaving the hillside subdivision, Izzy and I are carving along La Tuna Canyon Road, paralleling the rise and fall of the San Gabriel foothills. I am en route to Little T (Little Tujunga Canyon), described on Pashnit, a website of California biking routes, as the place God would ride if he had a motorcycle. Its oscillating “twisties” wind through canyons and over summits, presenting one stunning vista after another.

I pass a few other bikers who obviously share the same idea. They gesture to me with a low-down peace sign. Signaling our kinship, I sign back. Were my bike to break down, one of these folks would undoubtedly stop and help. Were I to pass a biker on the side of the road, I would be compelled to do the same by the bond that unites us.

Riding this morning, I feel genderless and ageless, more a point of consciousness than a person. Identity and all the ways it separates me from others flees in the face of swift movement, immense power, and the conviction I am somehow defying the bear-hug of gravity.

People who don't ride often seem to have trouble getting their head around the idea of a female biker. No, I say, this is not my son's bike. It's not my husband's or my boyfriend's, either.

They also seem mystified that I don't fit any ready stereotype. Motorcycling women in pop culture fall into two general categories: There's the sexy biker chick in skin-tight leather with lots of cleavage. If she isn't on the back of some guy's bike as a kind of accessory, she
is nonetheless linked by sexual appeal to male bikers and the sensual aura she brings them. Then there are the Dykes on Bikes–type of women riders, those who subvert mainstream gender roles and who often approach motorcycling with a strong, machisma persona. I like to think I fit neither stereotype. Like most of my sister riders, I am less concerned with the shiny veneer of how I appear than with the twang of experience. Just to get on a bike is to break prescribed gender roles even in this postfeminist age. By taking it one step further, refusing to be constricted by the typecast of the sexy biker mama or the hard-ass butch rider, is to accept one's true sense of self.

I like my motorcycle simply because I like to ride. I like the feel of the wind in my face and the air slamming my chest. As the air temperature fluctuates, I feel more alive, more aware of my surroundings, shivering when I make my way through extended cloud cover, then marveling in the sudden delight of warmth when I hit a patch of sun. I lift my face shield so I can smell the chaparral and notice when it turns to eucalyptus and then to more urban odors. The shifting olfactory experience makes me feel as though I've never really smelled before now: grilled onions near In-N-Out Burger and then roasted peppers by El Pollo Loco. A split lemon in the road fills me with its tangy, pulpy scent. The noxious perfume of burned diesel emanates off to the left. And my favorite, petrichor, that pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather. I like how my helmet squeezes my face so that when I smile, my cheeks jam against the sides of my helmet, making me keenly aware that I am experiencing bliss. I like to shift gears and feel a sense of competence on this machine that so outweighs me. And more than anything, I love the feeling of fear that thrums in my rib cage, coupled with the sense of satisfaction when that fear finally curls up and retracts its claws.

Too much of my life has been eaten up by fear. Too many opportunities missed, worried about how it might look or whose feelings I might hurt or how difficult something might be. I am at that place in my life when a standoff looms: me or the fear. One of us is going to
win out and the other will be vanquished, if only for an hour or a day, until the next standoff. But to bow to fear in this moment, I know, is to shrink my life, to contract its borders, to cry uncle.

I want to feel all too alive, to chance encountering the divine. To feel fast and vulnerable, powerful and exposed all at once. I want to truly live while I still have breath within me.

But I'm not always sure I'm able.

Winding through the canyon, I think about the fact that so many of the crises we face in life occur without our approval or consent—illness, death of a spouse, problems with children, divorce, job loss, foreclosure. We have little choice but to endure these hardships. There is scant satisfaction in making it through because we know we never would opt for those challenges had we been given a choice. There is relief at the end of the ordeal and lessons learned, though often little else.

When I voluntarily do things that scare me, though, when I choose to wrestle with the specter of fear, I gain the skills and self-knowledge that will steel me for the next obstacle, the next soul-numbing, bone-crushing time I must face. At least, that's what I hope.

As I ride, I ponder my two-decade marriage and the shell of a relationship it has become. Will I have the strength I need to stand up for the full life I desire? I don't know yet. But I do know this: Nothing so strengthens my resolve as having a regular, intimate encounter with the fear that tries to stifle me, that tells me I am not smart enough, or young enough, or pretty enough, or strong enough.

When I make peace with my fears and take risks of my own volition, I learn the most powerful bit of knowledge possible. Maybe I
do
have what it takes. Joy often hides in the very things I am afraid of. If I can move past my fears, I might see how much more joy there is.

We all wake up in different ways. For me, it's in staring down this fear. In his own case, Lejuez, the addiction specialist, tells me about the tattoo that helped him wake up. “I was thirty-five, which I think for something like this is rather old, when I got a fairly large tattoo on my back. I remember that same kind of feeling: It felt exciting
and almost as if I'd lulled myself into some kind of sleep with my life, and that doing something like this tattoo unlocked something else.”

Middle age is a good time to consider adding some risk to a life, he says. Many people at middle age feel badly about the part of their inner selves that's calling them to engage risk. What usually happens is that they ignore and suppress it. But the drive is like a steam cooker that doesn't have a release. “And then, all of a sudden, one day, some crazy shit comes out and they do something that puts their family in danger or that's totally reckless because they didn't heed that need early enough.”

People often think of adventurers as the ones taking the biggest risks, but Lejuez doesn't think that's so. “Talk to a lot of adventure people and they're like, ‘We're not risky at all. We like the adrenaline, but we check everything first. It's that lunatic who comes out here and who doesn't have a plan, who doesn't do it right—he's the one to be concerned with.'”

So the question comes down to this: How do I feed at an early stage the need for risk that's growing inside of me, and do so in a way that is safe and healthy and can bring all the benefits of facing my fears? How can I stop suppressing what's inside me and asking to be nurtured?

• • •

Riding my motorcycle this morning is a way of containing all the contradictions that make for a textured life. It is like the neighborhood where I live. Rugged mountain foothill and part of a big city, a place harboring both wild beasts and domesticated backyard pets. As a female biker, I get to embody numerous incongruities. Doing something that scares me in order to tap into my ever-present well of courage. Being a mother and wife who needs, every so often, to escape the responsibilities that threaten to overwhelm her. And finally, as a female biker who fits no stereotype, I get to be more fully, more completely myself than at any other time.

•
    
CHAPTER THREE
    
•

DEATH IS CERTAIN, THE HOUR IS NOT

The trouble is, you think you have time.

—MISATTRIBUTED TO BUDDHA, actual source unknown

Gaining a sense of command and comfort on Izzy was a slow process. She's like an exuberant Great Dane puppy, unaware of her own strength and size. Our partnership took training for us both.

This gradual courtship unfolded over the course of several months and was tempered by more than a few mishaps, during which I questioned my commitment.
Life would be so much easier if I simply quit now
. But then a flash of enjoyment would happen along to keep me trying. Still, the pleasures were vastly outnumbered by the frustrations. I often thought about selling her and putting the crazy-ass motorcycle scheme to bed. Just getting gas for the first time was an unexpected challenge. I had to call Rebecca and have her walk me through, step by step: Always buy premium. Retract the rubber sleeve on the nozzle so it doesn't shut off the gas when the tank is only half full. Carefully monitor the flow to avoid overfilling the tank and drenching the bike in a gasoline bath, something I did more than a few times.

For reasons I didn't fully understand, I wanted, I needed, to gain competence on the motorcycle. Some unconscious part of me must have understood the mess my personal life would soon become. I was going to need these boosts of self-confidence that kept blossoming each time I mastered a new skill. Gaining proficiency operating this formidable machine was shoring up my emotional strength.

At the close of the training class earlier this year, each of us had been asked to write a few motorcycling goals. “1. Learn to ride on the freeway.” I wrote. “2. Take an overnight trip somewhere. 3. Ride at night.” Then I threw in a fourth, one I was certain I wouldn't fulfill for at least a year. “4. Do the Love Ride.”

The Love Ride is an annual fundraising ride sponsored for the past three decades by Glendale Harley-Davidson. The longest-running charity ride of its kind, it attracted fifteen thousand riders each year during its peak as well as a celebrity following. Performers included Lynyrd Skynyrd, Mick Fleetwood, ZZ Top, Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash. I remember seeing the bikers riding in formation, filling the freeways of Los Angeles in a seemingly never-ending stretch, roaring in the morning air. Bikers pay an entry fee to ride en masse to a venue, listen to concerts, drink beer, and eat, with all proceeds going to support charities like the Muscular Dystrophy Association. And though rider participation has declined in recent years, it's still an impressive event.

A month after I'm licensed, Rebecca asks if I'd like to help at the Love Ride, working the morning registration table.

“Absolutely.”

“And maybe we could ride together,” she suggests. Although, as the daughter of a dealership founder who has grown up around the motorcycle culture and been licensed since she was in her twenties, Rebecca admits she's as intimidated as I am by the scale and machismo of the Love Ride.

“I'm not sure I can be ready in time,” I stall.

“We can go after the main group leaves,” she suggests. “We'll ride at an easy pace. We won't feel pressure to keep up with any of the crazy testosterone guys.”

“Maybe,” I hazard, realizing I'm starting to get comfortable with the idea.

I practice my freeway skills on the less traveled 210 in the foothills above Los Angeles. At first, I can only summon the nerve to ride one freeway exit to the next. As my confidence expands, I venture two consecutive exits. It's weird to be on a freeway and not inside a car. Having grown up in L.A., I'm accustomed to freeway travel, and yet I've never experienced it like this. I'm amazed and terrified. I can actually look down at my feet and see the little grooves scored into the concrete to disperse the rain.

Eventually I'm able to stay on the freeway for five miles at a time. The wind pounds against my upper body at sixty-five miles per hour and feels like a rogue ocean wave rising to swat me from my precarious platform. I'm certain my hands will be ripped from the handlebars. I hang on with sweating palms as if my life depends on it—because, actually, it does.

Since buying this motorcycle, I've thought about death more than any other time in my life.

In our culture, it's not something we spend a lot of time thinking about: our own eventual death, according to psychologist Robert Firestone, PhD. “All people maintain a belief that they will not die despite conscious awareness to the contrary.” Most people spend their lifetimes without a great deal of self-awareness, rarely reflecting on their circumstances, addicted to a lifestyle of form and routine.

“Humans are a meaning-seeking species,” he says. When the experience of death is limited or excluded from our thoughts, we deprive ourselves of our human heritage.

This perspective was furthered in a 2012 study by researchers at the University of Missouri. “When Death Is Good for Life: Considering the Positive Trajectories of Terror Management” asserts that “awareness of
mortality can motivate people to enhance their physical health and prioritize growth-oriented goals.” In other words, when we ponder our own eventual death, good things happen: We're more likely to live up to the positive standards and beliefs we have for own lives. We strive to build supportive relationships. We work toward creating peaceful, charitable communities. And we tend to foster what the researchers term “open-minded, growth-oriented behaviors.” Awareness of death, it turns out, is a critical force motivating human behavior.

In this study, American test subjects were reminded of death or a control topic and then either imagined a local catastrophe or were reminded of the global threat of climate change. When the threat was local, people aggressively defended their homegrown groups, and when the threat was globalized, “subjects associated themselves with humanity as a whole and become more peaceful and cooperative,” said Ken Vail, lead author of the study.

With real catastrophes, such as the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing, he explains, the awareness of death brought some remarkable outcomes. “Both the news media and researchers tended to focus on the negative reaction to these acts of terrorism, such as violence and discrimination against Muslims. But studies also found that people expressed higher degrees of gratitude, hope, kindness, and leadership after 9/11,” said Vail.

In another example, after the Oklahoma City bombing, divorce rates declined in surrounding counties. “After some stimuli escalates one's awareness of death, the positive reaction is to try and reaffirm that the world has positive effects as well.”

Thinking about death on a daily basis is changing me. I am more aware of time ticking past, of the things I want to accomplish and the limited time frame in which to do so. It's not a morbid fascination or a squeezing of my days, but the opposite. An awareness that adds a kind of breathing room; I'm becoming clearer about my priorities.

That said, fear continues to dog me, but if I don't get too ambitious on any one day, I make incremental progress toward refining my motorcycling skills.

The Love Ride departs from Glendale early one Sunday morning in October. The wall-to-wall thundering column almost a mile long moves up the 5 freeway to Castaic Lake. A party will ensue with bands, booths selling motorcycle gear, exhibits of synchronized motorcycling, contests for the best tricked-out bikes, food, and a big biker soiree
.
I'm not interested in the party element; I simply want to say I did the ride. Jay Leno is the grand marshal and will lead the pack. Though Leno and other celebrities ride their bikes to the venue, word has it that a trailer transports the celeb's bikes back so the guys can relax and not worry about the return trip after a long day in the sun and probably more than a few beers. But like the ordinary Joe (and Jane) participants, if I decide to ride to the lake, I'll have to get myself back home. Rebecca suggests a plan. We'll both ride our bikes to registration in Glendale. If we feel up to it, we'll ride together to Castaic. If not, we'll take the shop truck to the lake.

The day before the event I set two goals: (1) To ride Izzy the eight miles from my house down to Glendale Harley, negotiating a freeway overpass that terrifies me. I will be following the same route tomorrow morning at 4:00
AM
with only my headlamp to light the way. I need to be sure I can make it to the starting point. (2) To pre-ride the route to Castaic Lake to see if I have the stamina for the nearly seventy miles of freeway travel required.

When I tell my husband and daughter my plans, they both give me that eye roll I'm getting used to. I ignore them, pull on my riding leathers, and start Izzy. As I crest over that anticipated overpass where the 134 freeway arches wide and sweeping to meet up with the 5, I back off the throttle. Behind me, impatient drivers honk and swerve around. But I take the high, curving bridge at a pace I can handle and I'm ecstatic when I arrive at the shop. The mechanics there check my tire pressure and assure me I'm set for the ride.

Next, I head up the freeway toward Castaic Lake. I hold tight when cars whip past, the wind thumps my chest, gravel stings my shins, when my breath grows loud inside my helmet as fear spikes and then eases, spikes and eases. My hands freeze in the death clench. I
concentrate with laser focus, trying to anticipate drivers that might make sudden lane changes, scanning the road surface for potholes or seams. I keep glancing down at the speedometer to make sure I am going fast enough but not too fast. My foot poised over the clutch, ready to shift into getaway mode. My right hand covers the brake, ready to apply pressure the entire ride. When I pull off the freeway at the exit for the lake, I stop to catch my breath. My ears are ringing. The ride took less than an hour, but the thirty-six miles have exhausted me.

The ride home is less fraught; I begin to settle in. I continue to squeeze the handlebar grips, but my breathing is more regular and my shoulders relax. I pull into a gas station by my house to fuel Izzy before tomorrow's big ride. The tank full, I turn toward home, and that's when it happens. I was warned about this. No biker escapes it. In slow motion, barely moving, the bike's weight gets away from me. I don't know if I'm angled too far to the left, or if I've hit an oil slick on the pavement. Whatever the reason, I panic as Izzy and I lean precariously, ungainly to the left. I try to grab her, to force my will onto her, to make my muscles stronger than her heft. But I fail. Right near the gas station, we're going down and there's nothing I can do to stop it. We slam together into the concrete.

My heart thumps as I jump off the bike, trying to figure out what to do. I try to lift her, but the helmet obstructs my vision. I rip it off and then the gloves. Behind me, a woman chides her husband. “For goodness sakes, help her.” A man comes over from where he was pumping gas and helps me right the bike. I'm about to get on and ride away before my damaged ego can get further mangled.

“Maybe you should rest a minute,” he suggests. “Have some water.”

I sit on the curb in front of the gas station's convenience store. My hands shake. My mouth is dry. It feels as if all my blood has been exchanged for electricity. I am awash in shame. I don't look like the badass biker chick I'm trying to become, but some kind of poseur who can't control this machine, a pathetic girl trying to do something beyond her ability.

This happens to everyone, I remind myself. It's to be expected. It has nothing to do with being female. When my breathing slows, I examine Izzy. Her side-view mirror is bent. The handlebar scratched. Otherwise, she's in better shape than me. Eventually, I wash my face in the bathroom, slurp water from the faucet, and put my helmet back on to ride Izzy home.

• • •

The alarm rings at 3:30
AM
. I dress in the dark and ease Izzy out the driveway so as not to wake my husband or daughter. I ride down the freeway, over that daunting overpass. At this hour, no one is around to honk at me. A light rain starts falling, another first. I'm surprised by how little light my headlamp provides. I'm reminded of E. L. Doctorow's quote about writing a novel. “It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

When I pull up to the Love Ride staging area, I show my parking pass and am waved into the secured perimeter. An older biker dude with a long gray beard helps me back my bike into the tight parking space. He can tell I'm a newbie. I join the other volunteers as we set up registration tables, drink strong coffee, and prepare the VIP area for Jay Leno and the other celebs. The fancy riders will be corralled in a separate parking lot, away from the rank-and-file bikers who will fill the entire four lanes of San Fernando Road for blocks. The VIPs will lead the ride, leaving in advance of the ordinary riders by five or ten minutes to make sure they're not caught up with all the rowdies. Rebecca and I, along with the shop employees, will ride up after everyone else has gone. As the cool damp morning breaks, the day becomes a bucking bronco ride, registering riders, herding VIPs, directing news reporters, working credit card machines that malfunction, trying to keep a smile on my face as the crowds swell and people want T-shirts in different sizes. Jay Leno walks through, escorted by Rebecca's father and an entourage. Cast members from
Sons of
Anarchy
and
Breaking Bad
wander, drawing admirers wherever they go. I feel the bass beat from the bandstand through the soles of my motorcycle boots and watch news reporters interviewing attendees.