I can and I do

It's not the motorcycles that need to use caution. They are highly engineered mechanical tools designed to carry a person from A to B in an agreeable manner, with neither mind nor soul. They read no road signs. It is the rider that must use caution.

I prepared for this solo road trip. I studied maps, virtual and physical. I made sure that my bike was working. It had not been working, because I had killed the battery stone cold dead. My Triumph has many design wonders. It offers a sleek combination of chrome and burgundy paint, a capacious heart-shaped tank, a reassuring lack of complicated electronics, and an ergonomic miracle of a saddle, as comfortable at the end of a five hour ride as it is at the beginning. It is easy to wield, light on its feet in spite of its heft, and purrs throatily, like a mighty shiny lion. Nevertheless, it has flaws, as do we all. The dipstick is buried in a valley of plastic, a repository for road dust, dead leaves and insects. In order to check the oil without contaminating it with stuff that would stop it doing its job, you need a cylinder of compressed air and several paper towels. The other major fault, for somebody as absent-minded as me, is that the ignition is at knee level on the right side of the bike - the side you don't get off, or look at.

For those who don't ride a bike, you need to know that to turn the engine off, you don't need to turn the key. You put the kickstand down and voilà. Engine off. Then you turn the key to off and take it out. Or, in my case, you don't. Twice now I have left the bike with the key in the ignition, not in the Off position, with the lights on, the electronics all humming, ready to help me on my way, and walked away. For too long. You can get away with it for half an hour or so, but not for a couple of days. Twice a man has come with a tow-truck to take my poor dead Triumph away. I watched the last ten minutes of the semi-finals of the Euros 2020 with Pierre, my son, and Isaac, the man who came to take the Triumph away. He is a Liverpool supporter. Twice I have had to buy a new battery because the battery is so very dead that it cannot be resuscitated. Believe me, I tried, and there is neither time nor space here to tell you about the other design flaw, which is how exactly you access the battery. Let's just say it's not as hard as it is on the Indian Springfield Steve owns.

Why Steve had to access the battery.

For this trip, however, the bike was fine. The battery was new, I had put a magnet on the tank and written "the keys?" on it in French, to make it look less idiotic, I checked the tyre pressure, the minor oil leak was fixed by the same man who put the new battery in. Everything I could control, I controlled. I packed enough gear for two nights in a fancy hotel including a celebratory birthday party where a certain standard of respectability would have to be met. I had water, energy bars and granola, a charged-up bluetooth earpiece, a charged-up battery pack for my iPhone which I knew would otherwise die at a critical moment in which case the bluetooth earpiece would start picking up random music and conversations from passing cars, and a folding map. Remember maps? They tell you not only where you are but where you've been and where you're going. The journey becomes a process with a map, not an ever-changing point in time.

The one thing I couldn't control was the weather. I'd been eyeing the weather forecast anxiously for a week. It looked as Tuesday was going to be the bright spot in a series of un-bright days. It was not, so I watched YouTube videos on how to ride a motorcycle in the rain. A lot of them are British, and some are not. The most important thing, apart from don't if you don't have to, is to have the gear. I had the gear. The second most important thing is don't be an idiot, but that's generally true for riding a motorcycle. I put on the gear, and went to meet Steve for breakfast to give me strength for the hundred and fifty miles to go. One Mexican omelette and a kiss later, and I was ready to roll.

 

 

This was not driving rain. If it had been, I would have just sucked it up and gone by car, which would have taken far less time and been far less fun. It was on-and-off rain. The gear kept it out, the full face helmet stopped it hurting, and it had been coming down long enough for the roads not to be slick but not so long that aquaplaning was on the cards. One of the cool things about riding in the rain is that you feel like you're a badass. You meet very few other bikers, and the ones that you do meet, they show respect, just as you show respect. The other cool thing is that it's cool. Tis better to ride in the rain than melt in the sun. 

 Riding a motorcycle means you meet people. By people, I mean, interesting people. People who want to share their motorcycling experiences. As a far-from-young woman myself, I tend to attract the far-from-young women. The ones who had a Harley back in the 70's, or rode to work every day on a Honda Shadow. The ones who rode pillion behind their husbands until the years, the aches and the anxiety got the better of them. These are women like me who have lived, not necessarily well, but much. There is a world of unspoken sadness and joy behind their smiles and their "Ride carefully out there! Enjoy it!". So I ride carefully, and I enjoy it.

Steve had told me that Maine was full of straight roads with lots of trees, and so it proved to be, once I had shaken off the seductive curves of New Hampshire. On the frontier between the two I found the ideal stopping place to shake out my legs and drink some water. 

 

Not the name I would have chosen for my store

 In the parking lot I met one of the wistful older ladies. Her husband used to ride, and she rode behind him, and she wished she'd learned to ride, but she didn't, and now he doesn't ride any longer. "Ride carefully", she said. "Enjoy". Along the straight roads lined with trees, around the confusing intersections, through small towns with closed, fly-blown hardware stores and shuttered bars I rode, thinking of women on and off motorcycles. At one point I found myself behind one of these, and wanted to be friends with her, even though she was wearing a short skirt, Roman centurion legwear, and no helmet. She peeled off, and I rode on. As I approached the Maine coast and the resort I was heading for, the air became salty, the houses larger, the horses behind white railings more common, and I knew that I was unlikely to run into any more older ladies to tell me about their exploits of forty years ago. I pulled into the parking lot of the Black Point Inn where I understood that the polite young man making sure there were no intruders blagging their way in was unused to seeing 63 year old English women riding large Triumphs, and cut the engine between a Lexus and a Mercedes. Then I pulled the key out.

The next day was one where I was quite happy to not be riding a motorcycle. I am told that the Maine coast is beautiful but I wouldn't know, because I couldn't see it.

Visions of the Maine coast

I was due to leave the next morning. It was still foggy, but less so, and I was fairly sure that once I was a mile or so from the sea, it would not be an issue, and so it proved to be. Before I left the hotel, there was one last thing that had to be done, and that was to let my friend Patrick take a spin on the Triumph, and spin he did. In a former life, Patrick was a policeman, so of course he knows how to ride bikes, and he knows a good one when he rides one.

A happy former policeman

 

 

Then it was my turn, and off I rode. I had chosen a more circuitous route home because once you're on a bike, and St Colombanus smiles on you, there is little point in not riding a bit more. I rode to Wolfeboro New Hampshire, because it was on a lake and looked like a destination. Once I arrived there, after a lot of swooping and curving, it became clear that while it was a destination for many, it was not one for me, so I grabbed a sandwich and left and got lost.

 

There are some road junctions that must look very good on paper in a draughtsman's office, with elegant curves bringing together four directions in an aesthetic pattern, but once conveyed in asphalt and concrete on the terrain are incomprehensible to both motorcycle rider and the man in my bluetooth earbud. I knew I was heading the wrong way as soon as I accelerated east rather than south-west, and so did the man, and his voice in my head told me to take the next right. I did, and the right after that, which made directional sense. What the man didn't know, and neither did I, was that the backtracking involved a dirt road. The trouble with dirt roads when you're on a motorcycle is not only the dirt, which is nasty stuff to ride on, especially after rain, but that you have no idea how long it will last. Dirt roads have a bad habit of stopping being dirt, becoming paved, with a squishy bit between the dirt and the tarmac, for just long enough that you heave a sigh of relief until you hit another squishy bit, and it goes back to being dirt. But I have experience! I rode Vermont's only gravel state highway last year, back and forth and up and down. I have a 700 yard gravel driveway. I know dirt. So I said to myself that I could do it, and it turned out I could, and did.

And that is why I ride a motorcycle. I can and I do. I know the statistics, I have seen a wild turkey fly out at Steve, just miss him, then circle back to see if it can't get me instead. I have seen a deer explode out of the woods just far enough ahead for me to avoid it, and I'm not an idiot. I know that what would be an inconvenience in a car would be far worse on a motorcycle. But the sheer pleasure of rumbling through the scented woods and talking to ladies who once rode, I would have missed all that if I didn't ride a motorcycle, wouldn't I? So that's why I can and I do.