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.