The Christian Salesman

It'd been a marker of sorts, part of my identity for the last four years and change.  My bright yellow motorcycle, a 2008 Suzuki VStrom 650, had gotten me to and from church.  It'd picked kids up from school, and taken them to events, and generally been a trusty companion as I negotiated the steel and asphalt blender of Beltway traffic.  It's carried me twenty six thousand miles over the last four years, three times around the diameter of our little planet.

At my church, I've been the "pastor with the motorcycle," which both carries coolness cache and helps introvert-me open conversations.

Last night, I sold it.

I'd been thinking of selling it for a while, but events conspired to make this the right time to let the ol' girl go, and so up onto Craigslist I went.

And there, as I approached that sale, I encountered a conundrum.  A moral dilemma in miniature, one that played against my understanding of ethics, free-will, human agency, and the nature of our place in creation and the interconnectedness of all things.

All this, in a simple transaction.  We Presbyterians do overthinking better than anyone else on the planet.  Seriously.

Anyhoo, the dilemma was this:  I wanted to sell my motorcycle.  And I wished, from the income of that sale, to purchase another.  That process could have countless variant outcomes, which would be shaped by the ethic I bring into the exchange.

I know, for example, that my bike presented well.  It was bright, gave the appearance of being well maintained, and was desirable.  It started up immediately, and ran like a top.  VStroms have an excellent reputation.  It would not be a hard sell.

But I also know that the bike had developed an electrical gremlin, one that only surfaces after it has been run for an hour.  It's stranded me repeatedly over the last month, which was my primary motivation for the sale.

The issue is possibly a slowly fading alternator, but could be something else.  It'd been gone over by mechanics I trust, and hundreds and hundreds of dollars spent, but remained unreliable. There would be no way for a buyer to determine this during a test-ride, or without running the bike for more than thirty minutes.

And so the question became: how to proceed?  There were so many ways to move forward.  If profit maximization was my goal, I would simply choose not to disclose.  When asked how it runs, I would equivocate carefully, using language to dance around any questions.  "Why are you selling it?"  "Oh, I want a new bike," I would say.  "Any problems?"  "It starts and runs great," I would say.   At no point would I lie.  I would just limit the truths I chose to share.

I could craft an ad that is designed to entice an eager and unwise buyer.  Speed!  Power!  Adventure!  Fun!  Once the title was signed over, and a bill of sale indemnifying me from any liability or responsibility was co-signed, I would be legally free and clear.  Caveat emptor, as they say.

This is the outcome from which I would profit most maximally, the Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman outcome.  I have no relationship with the buyer to jeopardize, and there is little they could do to impact my broader reputation.  I could create that reality with no difficulty.

But I know what it's like to be stranded by the side of the road, and the feeling when others have taken advantage. From my Teacher,  I have an ethical framework that recognizes my essential connectedness to all things, and that assumes that I am radically culpable for my intentionality and actions towards others.  And so, even here in this mundane situation, my theology is at play.  If faith does not inform every last part of one's being, after all, it is not faith.

I want to sell, but at a price that is fair.  I do not wish to inflict, in the process of that sale, any harm, or in any way take advantage.

Further, I want to avoid doing collateral harm to an eager fool, some young idiot like I used to be, ready to rush in and buy, all filled with passion and without a lick of sense.  Oh, they're sure it'll not be a problem for them, because wow, OMG, a motorcycle!  And how hard can learning about all those wires and [stuff] be?

That results in the world becoming a little more cynical, and in my well-loved bike sitting out in the rain at someone's parent's house, slowly rusting and unused.  It would be a waste of a good thing, and the world would be made slightly worse by that choosing.

I did not wish that reality to be made manifest.

So I set the price in recognition of the issues and factoring in the likely cost for repair.  That, by my conservative calculations, was around half the value of the bike had it had no hidden issues.   Then I wrote the ad carefully.  It was written with intent, filled with keywords that indicated that I was both aware of the value of the bike and fully disclosing all issues.  I explained pricing, which I set firmly because I hate haggling.  I structured the phrasing to bring in a serious, aware buyer who both appreciated the potential but saw what would be required.

And so, when my buyer arrived, he was a lifelong motorcyclist and tinkerer, who works in an Army electronics research lab.  He asked all the right questions.  Then he checked it, doing the sort of thorough walk around that indicates seriousness.  There was no haggling, or negotiation.  He knew it was an excellent price, more than fair, and a great bargain and opportunity for someone with his skillset.

As I rode off, I wished him well, and gave thanks that what I had hoped for had come to pass.

Bottom Rocker

I've been riding motorcycles now for most of my life, and as long as my carcass can handle it, I intend to keep doing so.

There are many reasons for it, but primary among them is this:  I like the freedom of it.

I'm not in a cage of steel and systems, not wrapped up in fifteen speaker surround and telematics.  I cannot be reached by text or by email or by phone or by Facebook.  The endless demand of social obligation is on hold, and I am at liberty.

What I know instead is the road and the world around me.  I know the heat or the cold.  If it's raining, I get wet.  I know to be cautious, how to move so that I cause no harm to myself or others.

I am going where I am going.  I am doing my own thing in my own time, as Peter Fonda once said.

Which is why I have never understood pack riding.  I know, I know, it's probably kind of awesome, you and your tribe rumbling across the landscape like a vast herd of iron bison.

But the more human beings there are, the more rules there are.  They begin simply, as all rules do.  You think about lane position and formation.  You think about pace, not your own, but the pace of the group.  There is planning, and more planning, and conversations and negotiation and the next thing you know, there's a committee.

And then the rules and regs pile on, one after another, until suddenly that libertarian vision of open-road freedom looks a heck of a lot like just another bunch of laws.

That was cast into light by the recent deadly explosion of violence between rival gangs in Texas, after an effort to negotiate a truce between the Cossacks and the Bandidos descended into gunplay.

It was such a strange thing.  Outlaw bikers, one would think, would be fighting over something nefarious and dangerous.  A turf war over meth distribution, perhaps.  But knives and guns came out and blood was spilled and hundreds arrested because of...patches.  Patches.

Grown up men died over who could wear a Texas "bottom rocker" on their vest, which seems no less bizarre than had Brownies and Campfire Girls gotten into a brawl over their bicycle merit badges.

The irony is mind bending.  Here, fiercely freedom-talking "outlaws," and yet they shed blood over the minutia of their own rules, the laws of their tribes, the peculiar pride human beings show in the systems and structures of the social dances we create.

We humans are so weird.

Motorcycle Evangelism

Motorcycle evangelism is easy.

On Sunday, as spring pushed its way into the world, I fulfilled an easy fundraising obligation.   As part of a church auction back in February, I'd offered up motorcycle rides through the Agricultural Reserve around Poolesville.

It's almost 90,000 acres of low density farmland and gorgeous winding country roads, just a stone's throw away from the sprawling DC Megalopolis.  On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in spring, there's not a nicer place to ride for a hundred miles.

My little 'Zook is perfect for two-up riding.  The DL650 is light, tall, and nimble.  Passenger accommodations are excellent, with a nice flat passenger seat, decent sight lines, copious grab rails, and a Givi topbox that acts as a backrest.   You're not sitting on a hard flat four inch by five inch "pad" that is only intended to evoke the concept of "seat."  You're not crunched into that butt-out sport bike-passenger crouch like a female baboon on the prowl for a mate.  It's designed for two human beings who want to enjoy motorcycling.

And power?  It's a 650, but power is adequate, providing two up acceleration that matches a Mustang GT.

Given the hoots and laughter as I opened 'er up on Sunday, I'd say more than adequate.  As one of my sons put it, it's like having a roller coaster you can ride any time you want.

So for 20 minutes, we rode.

After the ride, the reaction was familiar.   My passenger wanted a bike.  Any sane person would.  It's  just too excellent.  When you experience it, you realize that it is inherently and self-evidently awesome. It is joyous, exuberant, and well worth doing.  Not without risk, of course, and something you need to approach mindfully.  But on a Spring day, motorcycling requires only to be experienced.  It is a Good Thing.

Which got me to thinking.  Good things, inherently joyful experiences, they speak for themselves.  Why is it that we have such trouble expressing Jesus that way?  Here's this way of encountering our world that calls us to radical compassion, to heartfelt service, and to joyous celebration.  It makes life better.   I enjoy living and sharing the Gospel just as much as I enjoy bucketing down a beautiful country road on a perfect spring day.  More, even.

It's just good, plain and simple.

Why we complicate and obscure that is simply beyond me.

A Loner and a Rebel

I rolled into class yesterday morning, my Roadcrafter riding gear was damp from the hard solid rain of a dank and cold January morning.

As I unzipped and unsnapped and unbuckled the various and sundry layers of protection between myself and the elements, my fellow pastor classmates commented on my having ridden in.

In this rain?  On this sort of  day?  Through the steel and asphalt blender of Washington rush hour traffic?

Yup, I say.

Similarly, my sealing myself back up into my armored riding gear at the far end of the day seems to stir response.  You're riding in this?  Wow.  Our prayers go with you.  You're nuts.

Which, of course, I am.

But as my motorcycle thrums away from campus, the loner and the rebel, leaving my colleagues behind to socialize and interact, I find myself enjoying the peculiar irony of my Brando-esque departure.   Yeah, I'm getting my motor running, and I'm heading out on the highway.  But am I looking for adventure or whatever comes my way?  

Nah.  I'm just going home to take my son to drums, or to pick my other son up from swimming, or to go see a school play, or to get back early so that I can do the laundry.

Such a rebel.

My Own Private Highway

Last night, following a most excellent presentation of her new book by the former pastor of my church, I prepared to motor homeward.  As I geared up for the long ride from Poolesville to Annandale, it was cold but manageable.  The sky was clear, the air bright and tart with the cold of a December night.

It was nothing my gear couldn't handle.  My little yellow VStrom is all farkled up for winter riding, and pumps sweet warm lightning through the handgrips, sending more coursing up a cable to feed my heated suit.  Warm torso and warm hands make for a warm and happy me.   And so, the bike murmuring contentedly to itself, I motored deer-cautious over the dark country roads of Western Upper Montgomery.   It was after nine-ish, and most of the first part of my night-commute is all high-beam riding, that sweet little blue "yer-in-the-country" light glowing in the instrument cluster, the twin-beam blaze banishing the night before me.  There were few souls on the road.

But the latter part of my commute has changed in the last year.   That part that is Beltway suddenly includes the option of using the High Occupancy Toll lanes, four lanes of pay road that have been added on to the asphalt circlet that crowns and bounds our national capital.

These are the dreaded Lexus lanes, so named because their cost varies depending on traffic conditions.  Want to drive them during rush hour?  It'll cost you a Decaf Grande Mocha Caramel Latte and a banana nut muffin, or the cash equivalent thereof.  That adds up, in ways that are likely to dissuade the hoi polloi from regularly using all that new asphalt.

At night, though, the lanes are utterly empty, because they're still charging a nominal fee.  Why pay eighty-five cents for a toll lane, when the regular lanes are clear and flowing smoothly?

There's no reason.  Paying for what you can get for free?  Who wants to do that?  So the lanes sit empty, as uselessly devoid of traffic as a Louis Vuitton boutique in the slums of Bangalore.

I, however, was riding a motorcycle.  And motorcycles use the HOT express lanes for free, 24/7, with no Smartpass transponder required.

So for the last stretch of my commute, across one of the busiest sections of road in the United States of America, I was the only person using an entire highway.

There was traffic on the other side of the divider, sure.  But the HOT lanes were mine alone.  For miles and miles, there no-one else using them.   They were emptier than the country roads on the front end of my commute.

Such a peculiarly profligate culture we live in.

Living To Ride

Today was a bustling errand day, and it felt it.

Beyond the various and sundry folks we had come into our home to repair and maintain, there were checks to deposit at the bank.  There were socks to be purchased for a youngling who burns through them like Bogey going through a pack of unfiltered Camels.   There was swim gear to be purchased, and books to be returned to the library, all scattered across the sprawling suburban wasteland that is Northern Virginia.

It was also a lovely Fall day, and so rather than trundle about in our utilitarian but inefficient minivan, I ran the Dad-errands on the 'Strom.  It's got a nice big lockable top-box, perfect for fat bags of factory-extruded socks from K-Mart, and for stowing library books.

The swim flippers and for my increasingly immense 13 year-old were another thing altogether, too odd shaped for the onboard storage.  But being a nicely designed piece of kit, the top box pops off neatly, leaving a nice big flat space for bungeeing things. 

The day's errands concluded with the pick up of the big guy from his rehearsal.   He loped from the entrance of the middle school, past the lines of idling soccer mom minivans and SUVs to the bright yellow motorcycle, tossed his backpack into the top-box, and got on the helmet without assistance.

As he hopped up into the pillion, I flashed back to those first few rides I gave him on the old bike, oh so many summers ago, back when his little feet first hit the pegs.   He was so small, barely a presence on the bike at all, nestled in tight and clinging to Daddy's back.

A man after my own heart.

Now?   It feels more like those times I would ride two-up to Skyline Drive with a fraternity brother riding pillion.   There's a man sitting back there.  As he leans back easy against that ever useful topbox, he fills the back of the bike.  His mass and size are palpable, shifting the dynamics and the balance.  But he sits calm and relaxed, an old hand at this, and we shout out our father son chatter as we burble down Columbia Pike. 

And so, for most of my dayful of suburban parental-unit schlepping, I make do with two wheels, racking up three times as many miles per gallon of go-juice, and taking pleasure in the tasks and the day.

It's good to be the Dad.  But it's better to be the Dad on the bike.

Centerstands

Yesterday, as my family chilled our way through a Monday off, I found that it was time for a bit of routine motorcycle maintenance.   The shiny yellow 'Strom was slightly less shiny following a few sustained jaunts through driving forty-degree rain, and while spatter and road grit add character to a bike, they really don't do much for your drive chain.

So out onto the driveway I went, and for about 45 minutes, I performed the necessary ablutions and applications of solvents and lubricant.  For the first time in almost twenty years, I found myself hiking a bike up onto a centerstand.  Not since my first ride, a '72 Honda CB750 purchased way back in my late teen years, have I had a centerstand.

I've missed it.  My last two rides were a bitty little cruiserlet and a sportbike, and both cruisers and sportbikes don't have centerstands.   The reason varies, depending on the type of bike.  A centerstand is a great big dangly thing, a mass of steel that snugs up under the chassis.  It ain't purty.

And cruisers are purty bikes.  Purty is their raison d'etre.   They're all rumble and chrome and glossy shine, with elemental lines that catch the eye as you style on by in your do-rag and chaps.  Centerstands work for that aesthetic about as well as a life vest on a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model.  

Sportbikes are bellisima bikes too, but they're also shrouded in many thousands of dollars worth of plastic for the purposes of aerodynamics and attitude, and that leaves no room for a stand.  A centerstand cuts deep into lean angles on a low bike, so that's strike two.  Sportbike designers are also as obsessed with weight as a high-school wrestler, which is strike three, and means that big hunk of steel has to go.

But on the 'Strom, tall and lean and rangey as a Masai warrior, it works perfectly.  It means that I don't have to stash a paddock stand somewhere in my cluttered home.  It means I can maintain my chain and work on the bike anywhere I can find a bit of flat ground.   It's just so deliciously practical.

Almost no bikes in the United States have them any more, of course.  Bikes aren't meant to be practical things here.  America has become a binary land of sportbikes and cruisers, and gas is still cheap, and our bikes aren't transportation.  They're lifestyle statements that spend most of their lives pampered and polished and gleaming.

Nothing wrong with that, of course.  But for four season, rain or shine, day in day out riding, you just can't beat a bike with a centerstand.

I'm glad to have it back.

Rendering Unto Caesar

As the future of my ministry firmed up this last week, it clicked through a series of permissions that I'd set for myself more than a year ago.  I'm funny that way, in that desire for transitions to connect events in my life to one another.

When I got my last motorcycle, for instance, I'd tied bike ownership to getting ordained as a pastor.  Once the Good Lord's providence prevailed, and it happened...boom...there was my black YZF600R.

It was a sweet ride.  Has been for six years.  Still is, although it's getting a bit long in the tooth.  As, frankly, am I.  The sporting semi-crouch that was a tolerable riding position back when I was 35 was starting to cause pain after anything more than half-an-hour in the saddle.  Blemish has piled upon scratch, and though it still runs strong, the 41,000 miles on the odometer have been hard won trolling on the Beltway.

It was time for a new bike.  Or, rather, a new used bike.  I knew exactly what I wanted.  Something right-sized, meaning no giant honking 150 horsepower egocycle.  Something sane.  Something with ergonomics that reflect the actual character of the human body, and a design that reflects the way I ride.  I knew what I wanted.

Just the right Suzuki VStrom 650 popped up onto Craigslist a couple of weeks ago.  It's an adventure-tourer, or so they call tall standard bikes these days.  Light, balanced, but also capable of taking you transcontinental without batting an eye.  It's comfortable on the superslab, and can acquit itself well on fire-roads and hard-packed dirt, too.  The bike's hornet yellow, which doesn't present quite as moody and truculent a vibe as motorcyclists generally want to give off.  But then again, if it's good enough for the G-Class star around which we orbit, I suppose it's good enough for me.

So on Saturday morning, me and the missus hopped into our eco-pod and went south on 95.  We arrived at a giant anonymous strip mall, where the seller had agreed to meet us.  He arrived on the bike, his twenty-something daughter and large laconic son riding support in a big Toyota pickup.

From moment one of our exchange, I knew he was a good egg.  He had the buttery genial warmth of a Southern gentleman, and his care for the bike and his concern that I know every last detail about it was the sign of a good seller.  The bike itself gleamed like it was just out of the showroom, only modded out exactly the way I would have done it myself.  As I examined it, we shared a bit of our lives.

He was a preacher's kid, as it happened.  The son and daughter were two of his ten kids, all adopted.   Though he was in his late fifties, he and his wife had just adopted two more, brother and sister, eight and five.  Time for riding suddenly wasn't there like he'd thought it might be.  And though he'd ridden his whole life, arthritis was claiming his legs, and it just hurt too much to be fun.  He radiated good karma and kindness.

When it came time to haggle, I did so reluctantly, and ended up going a hundred bucks over budget.  The bike was perfect, better than new, and I wasn't about to lie and claim it wasn't.  The price was fair, and I won't bargain a good man down from a fair price.

Or a bad man, frankly, but they're harder to get down to a fair price in the first place.

When I rolled back from the bank with the cashier's check in hand, we got to the signing over of the title.

He signed it over, but paused at the line that denoted the purchase price.  He asked if I wanted him to leave it blank.  You know.  So I could fill in the price myself.  Maybe save a few bucks in taxes.   I thanked him for the offer, but demurred, being a pastor and all.   It wasn't just that I'd rather not misrepresent a sale price, though that was certainly the case.

I honestly don't mind paying that $153 extra that went into the coffers of the great state of Virginia.  It'll pay to patch the pothole that might throw a noob rider off his bike.  It'll pay for the state trooper standing there writing me a ticket, too, but that same trooper would protect me from assault and watch out for my kids and call in a chopper to rescue my family in a flood, so it's a net gain.

Rendering unto Caesar just doesn't bother me, if the price is fair for what you get in return.  

Journey's End

I'd wanted to ride motorcycles since back when I was sitting around with an old friend in GT Bio, and we'd both sit there ignoring the teacher and kicking back chopper style behind our desks, making a quiet variant on the Mouse and the Motorcycle noise.

As soon as I left for college, much to the lament of my mom, I procured myself one. It was a big loud sloppy CB750 with a snarling shot exhaust. It got me to school. It got me home to cast my first vote in a presidential election. I used to ride it in circles around my fraternity, go tearing around the countryside in the middle of the night, and give occasional rides to some of the women who hung around the house. It was fun.

In the summer of 1989, it got me to my second date with my wife. We blatted into town to hit the museums, and when it rained and we wound up under a bridge with four other bikers, she wasn't just not complainy. She was laughing and having fun. It was a good day.

My CX500 came next, and took me back and forth from Charlottesville to Williamsburg dozens of times to see her. It was a torquey little pig of a bike, as trusty as a stone. Then a careworn 750 Sabre, which failed me again and again, it's electrics giving out in the most inopportune moments.

Then a Shadow VLX, which was slow and short of breath, but utterly reliable. It got me to and from work for years, shaving an hour a day off my commute and giving me precious time with my then-baby boys. It sliced and diced through the city to get me to the ministry that reignited my calling. It got me to the church where I interned. It got me to seminary. Four seasons a year, in everything but ice and snow...and sometimes that, too.

From there, a bikeless lull, as I looked for a church. I'd whine and make sad puppy noises whenever a motorcycle rode by, much to the exasperation of the wife.

Then, with my ordination, a used YZF600R. A fine bike, trusty and fast, with remarkable range and more speed than I need. For six years, it got me where I need to go. It mixed getting places with moments of adventure. It was both practical and exuberant and a great conversation starter. I have been "the pastor with the bike." It has been part of my identity.

But somewhere in the last year, that part died. I'm not sure exactly when. But I found I cared less and less. It just no longer mattered. Rides for pleasure had long since stopped happening. Kids needed to be picked up. Things needed to be ported from one place to another. I'd look at the bike, and think, is riding on that same godforsaken quarter-loop of Beltway...again...really worth it? Do I want to throw a leg over the thing? And the answer, which had for more than two decades been yes even if it was 20 degrees out or storming, kept coming back "No."

Things started to fail on the YZF, and rather than fixing them, I just rode less. When the battery died in late summer, I did nothing. It has not started since then. A thick layer of dust covers it. I can't even remember the last time I rode it.

Over a month ago, I determined to sell the thing...and while the missus was convinced that this was just an elaborate ruse to get a newer scoot, it isn't. I'm just ready to have it gone. Not now, of course. With blizzards pounding us, ain't no selling a bike. But come Spring, when the air is sweet and warm, and the trees are speckled with new green life, someone will be more than happy to buy it once it's fixed up a bit. I know I would have been, years ago.

For everything there is a season, I guess.