March 13

December 14, I gave up on the idea that I'd be able to physical therapy my left hip back to functional. It took me all of the 3 months of the period between when I met my surgeon and my scheduled surgery date to decide I was going to risk getting cut. A couple of months ago, It was hard for me to see this decisions made a lick of sense. Today, it all came together. Today, Tuesday, March 13, an insignificant day in an insignificant year for most everyone but a day I expect to remember for years, for the rest of my life.

Today it was 52F just before I needed to leave for work. The weather man guess-timated the day's high would be 65F. My leg is stronger than it has been in a couple of years. So, I moved the cage to the driveway, to get it out of the bike's way, and I rode the WRX to work this morning.

If you weren't a motorcyclist, you'd be amazed at the difference 20 minutes on a motorcycle makes in a day. If you are, I'm probably wasting your time here. Today, I handed back about 75 midterm exams, a few of which were pretty damn miserable. I usually put int a fairly long, intense day on Tuesdays. In good times, it's not my favorite day of the week. I won't get to leave before 9PM. For the last 2 months, I've been getting more and more bored with life in the frozen north on four wheels. Overall, I have a pretty good life, a pretty good job, and any half-intelligent guy would be satisfied to plug along just being able to walk at 64. I'm ashamed to admit I'm not that guy. It turns out, a lot (I mean A LOT) of my declining attitude has to do with not being able to ride a motorcycle.

I get bored with the predictable nature of a predictable life. My wife says I was born to be a sailor. My cousin says most of our line, on my father's side, were drowned sea captains. The closest I've been to either was when I was on the road 100,000 miles a year back in the 70's when my kids were little and we were living from check-to-paycheck and for short segments of my engineering and musical career. But the closest I've been to being a sailor is on my motorcycles. Even the lousy commute to work is like a quick fishing trip. A summer road trip is my version of going to sea for a month. It's all I have and it's all of that I have had for almost 50 years. The only other thing I've done for that long is music and eating and sleeping. Not just that, though, I need it. I need the thing I get from being on two wheels. Imagining the rest of my life without a motorcycle is like asking a sailor to give up his boat.

I'm writing this in my basement surrounded by other bits of my life; the exercise equipment that helped me get my leg back, my Dobro (the instrument I most naturally reach for when I'm pissed off or bummed out), and a pretty decent AV system. Between mid-December and today, I've probably watched Faster and Dust to Glory a dozen times. I've grown tired of Faster's sound track, so I watch the movie playing along on my Dobro. I watch those guys ride half-expecting that could be the extend of my motorcycling from here out. Not today. Maybe next week, next month, next year, or most likely in the next decade, but right now I'm wallowing in the feeling of having two-wheeled myself around the city for the day and that's all it takes to get my sailor on. And I'm going to do it again tomorrow.