Dearly Beloved...

DDT (12)

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Posts: 4116

Sometimes ya just gotta go...

Winter Springs, FL - Occasionally...

Dearly Beloved...

« on: August 16, 2013, 08:25:26 AM »

DEARLY BELOVED
I’ve often been asked, as I’m sure most of you have as well, “Why did you choose that bike?” A simple, easy, question that became rather difficult for me to answer succinctly the longer ALI and I stayed together. I suppose for me it became one of those, “If I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand anyway…” things.

Right before I retired, I bought a new Gold Wing, my third. Following my liberation day, I proceeded to tick off all the places in North America that remained on my bucket list… which was basically any place I hadn’t already been… and I rode there. Along the way it became painfully obvious I was racking up a bunch of miles, and it wouldn’t be too far off before I’d be needing another bike. Hmmm, what’s a body to do?

Somewhere ‘out yonder’ I hit upon a novel idea… What if I bought a second bike…? Hmmmm… Maybe I could get a cruiser for a little different ride… but which one. I looked at all the various models out at the time… I really liked the look of a Road King at the local Harley dealer… Then I asked myself, “What if I really liked the bike and wanted to ride cross country on it?” That’s when it occurred to me that I’d better take a more serious look at Hondas…

I’d liked the look of Valkyries all along, but they were a bit too much like the 1500 Wings I’d been riding, so I hadn’t placed them in serious contention at that point. Then came that fateful day I took one for a test ride… After ten miles or so, I dismounted, stood back several feet, and took a gander at what I’d just had between my legs… The first thought that popped into my noggin’ was, “Now that’s a proper motorcycle!” The rest, as they say, is history…

Most folks ‘own machinery’. I, on the other hand, have ‘affairs’ with mechanical beings… especially so with ALI. They are like us in a remote sort of way… instead of tissue and blood, they have metal and petro chemicals, but they live, and I seem to bond with those I adopt… Yes, I talk to them sometimes, and it was uncommon to see me riding down some rumpled ribbon of asphalt patting the gas tank of ALI or another of my ‘partners’.

ALI was special, though. We were together longer than any other, and we travelled much farther together than any others… Even the journey itself was special, because much of it occurred when I was in a different emotional and spiritual place than I’d ever been before… The day the gavel was banged and the marriage declared ‘irretrievably broken’, I returned from the court house and loaded ALI. The next morning at first light, I rode off into an uncharted and very uncertain future…

My faithful companion, however, took me to new, distant, exciting places, and facilitated my transition into a different life. This new vantage point on life, people and places, has made all the difference… and I owe her so much. She never shied away from any challenge, never whimpered or complained… she just took a lickin’ and kept on tickin’…

Like a much loved pet, however, she had a limited lifespan… limitations of the flesh, so to speak. Intellectually I knew this day of parting would probably come; although, I was starting to believe my end might very well precede hers… I’d even seriously thought about who I’d leave her to when I left the stage… Could have been simple rationalization on my part to avoid unpleasant thoughts, but there it is…

Crunch time came, as it always seems to, at an unexpected time, in an unplanned place, and it left me with many difficult choices to make under the pressure of time and expense… of balancing emotional needs with financial realities and the responsibilities of traveling with another rider.

Jim and I had trailered our bikes to Wilsey, KS, where we left his truck and trailer at some friends of his place. We then road back roads mostly to Yellowstone NP, and then up to Glacier NP. We crossed into Canada and proceeded to ride through Lake Louise to Jasper and Hinton, Alberta. We made the turn in Hinton, then retraced our route back to Lake Louise… and then…

It came suddenly… as if something had let go or jumped a track or something… I pulled in the clutch immediately and coasted down the exit ramp and into a parking space at a restaurant just off the freeway at Lake Louise. No Honda dealer within 200 miles… save for the one 150 miles away in Calgary. This occurred on a national holiday, Heritage Day it’s called around there, so nobody to call except for a tow truck. He arrived a couple of hours later, and took my wounded partner to a motel in Calgary near the Honda dealer there… and we waited.

The next morning before the dealer opened, Jim and I were sitting outside our rooms chatting and sipping coffee, when a local guy walked up and started asking questions about the Valk… He’s a Valk owner himself, it turned out, and a VRCC member to boot – Terry Nickel. The dealer came for ALI, took her away, and I got their prognosis the following morning… the transmission was shot.

I was also told that they couldn’t get to it to break her down and see what repairs might could be made, if any, until sometime the following week. Dang! Now I had some decisions to make with limited options! I finally decided to let Terry adopt her… he’d asked about that already. A seemingly good guy, and I was confident she would be in good hands… Her final noble act will be as an organ donor, it appears, and that’s fitting, to my way of thinking… at least this way she can live on. I received a photo in a text from him yesterday… she was resting comfortably in a garage next to his ’98 Std.

Jim is a couple of years older than I, and he is in less able physical condition… I could have flown home and begun the process of finding a replacement for ALI… or I could buy a bike there and ride back with Jim… and so I did the later. No Valks available, so I considered a new F6B, looked at some Wings, new and used… and took a look at a couple of used VTX 1800s on the floor at the dealer’s place… I’d gone there to pay my final respects to my dear friend and to retrieve my tag and a few personal effects…

I learned many things while ALI and I were together… and one that has been emphatically reinforced is that all things eventually wear out, no matter how we might wish otherwise. For the past couple of years, I truly haven’t known which of us might go first, but I was starting to believe it just might be this humble rider… Not to be… But in all of this, I’ve learned again that my time will indeed come… I have much more sand in the bottom chamber of my hourglass now than I do in the top, and this thought has become less an abstract notion and more a very real prospect. That said, my future riding and its requirements will not be the same as they were fourteen and a half years ago…

I ended up buying a ‘06 black & gold VTX 1800S with 7143 miles on the clock (it had an American speedometer). I haven’t owned anything with less than four cylinders since 1977, so getting used to a V-Twin is taking some time. Other than that, however, I like the bike… she handles well, has plenty of pep, corners fine when the tires are properly inflated, and she is quite comfortable to be aboard while cruising down the highway on long rides. She is not ALI, and she is different enough that we’ll easily have a different but quite good relationship, I think…

I’ve named my new ride CALI… for Continued Absolutely Loving It. This also has the added benefits of using my girlfriend’s initials (CA), keeping ALI’s name in play, and the first three letters of the city where I adopted her (Calgary). So now a new chapter begins… or has already begun! We shared a great ride back to Kansas (never saw Dorothy or Toto though), and she travelled well on the trailer back to Alabama… I miss my dear friend… I like my new friend… Life goes on…

DDT


« Last Edit: December 23, 2013, 11:18:07 AM by DDT »	Logged

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old2soon

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Willow Springs mo