An Insane Woman’s Thoughts - Part 3
“Am I crazy? I am the pee-wee football team mom, the little league baseball scorebook keeper, etc. I am the professional spectator! I won’t even play volleyball at a backyard cookout. What am I thinking? Learn to ride a motorcycle? I must be crazy – I don’t even know what a throttle is!”
“Therein is exactly the point! I need to know what a throttle is. I need to find out how you shift gears with your hands. Maybe I will never actually take the handlebars myself after the class, but I have got to find out how this machine works!” So off I went on a search for motorcycle riding lessons…
First I discovered that there was something called a Motorcycle Safety Basic Rider Course offered through the Motor Vehicle Administration. It only cost like a hundred bucks…I could do that. Except every class was booked up all the way through October! Maybe if I checked another location…nope, they were all booked up too! I guessed this motorcycle frenzy was bigger than I thought. Harley-Davidson stocks were up to $50 a share that year, and every time I turned around there was another motorcycle themed show popping up on TV.
Then I found that Harley dealers offered a Rider’s Edge class, but at $250 that was way out of my league! If I could somehow manage to swing it…no, they were all booked up too. “Why am I so upset about this? I’m just a psycho divorcee trying desperately to find myself. I probably won’t even be able to handle those big bikes anyway. This whole idea is just stupid.”
I pined away in disappointment for months until one day out of the blue Jay called and told me he had just signed up for a Basic Rider Class at Cecil Community College and there were still a few slots open if I was interested. Within 24-hours I was registered for the class, though it wouldn’t be until the end of August.
In the meantime it occurred to me that if I was going to learn to ride, no one in their right mind was going to let some crazy 36-year old chick practice riding on their prized Harley! (Not to mention the fact that I barely even knew anyone who had a bike anyway) I figured I’d have to pick up some old used piece of crap machine that was cheap and it didn’t matter if I dropped it a million times. Yet I didn’t know a Ninja from a Goldwing, so I’d better start doing some research into just how much this kind of thing might cost me.
“I’ve never been on eBay before…”
