Red Motorcycles

I dreamt of a red motorcycle, and when I woke up I thought, “I should get myself a red motorcycle.”

This is not a thought that has ever occurred to me before, but before last summer I’d never thought of jumping out of an airplane, and then I did think of it, and so I did it. Twice.

I can’t always do what I dream of. One morning I woke up after dreaming I had a child, a girl, and my first thought was, “I need to get myself one of those!” But after further thought, a child isn’t 1) easy to obtain, and 2) not a hobby, so I’m not pursuing that particular train of thought. Of course, just because they’re not easy to obtain doesn’t mean lots of people don’t end up with them unexpectedly, but I’m not likely to become unexpectedly pregnant at my age. Nor do I want to. My body’s barely holding itself together as it is.

But a motorcycle! That I could do. Of course, I have no motorcycle experience, except for the following:

*******When I was first in the military I had a roommate, and said roommate had a boyfriend, and said boyfriend had a friend, and the two of them talked me into going out with the friend. Both boys had motorcycles, and since it was summer and we were all young and reckless (or maybe that was just me – the other three pretended to be responsible military members much better than I did), I managed to severely burn my leg on the motorcycle’s tailpipe, because who in Louisiana wears jeans in the summer? It’s just far too hot. My roommate, a southern belle from Texas, received a big diamond from her boyfriend, who then magically turned into a fiancé, and when I made the obligatory complimentary remarks she told me that the other boy would be happy to get me one too, and then we could all get married and live happily after, and that’s when I ran away (not physically, that’d be called AWOL and is a punishable offense) and broke the motorcycle boy’s heart. Or not.

2.       

*******My first husband had a motorcycle when I met him, but he sold it, though he never lost his love for motorcycles. But what he really wanted was a Harley, because, as we all know, those are true motorcycles. For years he talked about it, and then, finally, he got one, a big red thing that was his dream come true, and it supplanted his previous dream of being happily married to a beautiful intelligent woman (me, of course, who’d you think I meant?) and it became his obsession. It wasn’t why I left him though – that was because of the drinking. Later, when he was living in Arizona for a short time and I wasn’t (because I’d left him and we’d divorced), he called early one morning, heartbroken and mad, because someone had stolen his beautiful Harley. He’d heard it, outside, and he’d run out to find the Harley driving away, and there was nothing he could do. It was very sad. He got another one, later, but I’m not sure it lives up to the standard set by the first.

And then he called me again one day, last year maybe, and he’d been out riding with a friend, and then they’d gone back to the ex’s house, and then the friend had left, riding his bike back to his house, and on the way there he’d been flattened by a motorist, and he’d died, leaving his children fatherless.

I guess my experiences with motorcycles have not been altogether positive. Besides that, my sense of balance is not the sort that would guarantee me stability of any sort. And I don’t like bugs in my teeth, but apparently 

I’d have to wear a helmet anyway, so of course I’d have a full face mask.

I say “of course” as if it’s common knowledge that the slightest whiff of air brushing past my eyes causes massive watering. This could be a drawback if one’s on a motorcycle, I would think.

With skydiving the watering is not too much of an issue because if my eyes start watering on my way down, there’s not much I can do to mess it up – I’ll pretty much be headed down whether I can see or not, it’s not as if my inability to see will mean I’ll start heading in another direction, does it? Though I would like to be able to avoid things like trees and buildings. Still, on my last jump my eyes didn’t get out of control until after I’d landed, and then I stumbled around blindly to find my way off the field.

I’m quite entertaining to have around, let me tell you. No one knows what I’ll do next.

Perhaps I’m better off sticking with indoor activities, I don’t know.

On a different tangent, and to further illustrate my special skills, last week I took a train trip and ended up with patellar tendinitis, which means, basically, that when I ride a train I can end up with a sports injury, which is both embarrassing and difficult to explain.

“How’d you hurt yourself again?”

“I was on a train.”

“Did you fall? Did you have an injury? What happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

I am regarded askance, with no small amount of confusion.

I keep icing the knee, hoping for a quick recovery, and I try to limit my walking because if I walk too much it’s really hard on my knee and makes it hurt more, if you can imagine.

The red motorcycle may have to wait for a bit. It may have to wait forever. It depends on how I feel about it later, when I can walk again. I might have moved on by then. I do that, move on a lot. As long it doesn’t involve using my knee, I’m just fine.