Why I Ride a Motorcycle

Hello and welcome to the second edition of “Tomes and Topics.” Thank you for being a subscriber. If you know of anyone else who might enjoy this, please share and ask them to join us.

First, here is a portion of a poem I wrote when I was in college, most likely in 1989 or so. I’ve reworked it a lot, and I’m not sure if I’m yet satisfied with it, but I’m going to share it with you anyway.

Over the Land
 
The engine roars with that first solid kick,
Springs to life after months of hibernation.
Riding over the land, she and her machine
Are liberated, shining in black and chrome,
Leaving the winter’s dust on the road.
Pausing at a crossroads, she sits idling,
Savoring the solitude, yet deciding her course.
A sudden twist on the throttle peels a spot
Of black skin from the back tire, a rapid
Succession of shifting gears as they rush
Headlong down the empty highway.
Silence is dashed upon, bursts into pieces,
Left behind for others to shatter.
Together they ride over the land as one,
Free from the world for a few hours.

My father had a motorcycle for a few years when I was young. One evening, he gave me a ride around town, and while I don’t recall much about that ride, clearly it captivated me enough to make me want my own bike later on. I do, however, pretty clearly remember the culmination of the ride. After we pulled into the driveway, instead of placing my foot on the footrest and swinging my other leg over, I mistakenly slid off the seat to dismount while he was still seated in front of me. As you’ll read in the accompanying essay, I only ever wore shorts in the summertime when I was a kid, so my bare calf made sliding contact with the hot pipe of the bike.

Thus, a very joyful ride was immediately ruined by a badly burned leg, a lot of screaming and crying, and then hours of treating the long burn with cold washcloths. My mother was quite angry at my father for not preventing me from sliding off the way I did, but I shouldn’t have tried to hop off so quickly and so incorrectly. Lesson learned a very hard way.

That burn scar was visible down my left leg for many years. I added three more burn scars during my teenage years when I drove my own motorcycle while wearing shorts (clearly, the lesson was not learned as well as it should have been, I know), but those were all round ones and not long like my original burn mark was. Those four burn marks have all virtually faded over the years.

The scar that has not faded, though, is the one that runs from my knee straight up the length of my thigh on my left leg. It is the result of a motorcycle incident, too.

One afternoon in late July of 1985, my friend, Andi, and I went to the Broken Bridge area of the Elkhorn River by Norfolk to sunbathe. We took along my large ghetto blaster stereo, our towels, and some snacks. For a while, we had the beach to ourselves, but then we heard an approaching dirt bike.

It was our friend and classmate, Jim. He stopped to visit a bit and then asked if I’d like to go for a ride with him. He asked this of me because I owned and rode a street bike, and he knew I loved motorcycles. Naturally, I said “yes” and I hopped on the back of his bike and away we went.

You realize, I’m sure, that since Andi and I had been sunbathing, I was only wearing a swimsuit at this point. Jim and I roared around in the shallow river water and over the sand bars for a bit, and then he headed back to the beach — with more speed than was necessary.

When his bike hit a small dune, we went airborne momentarily, but it was long enough for my derriere to disengage from the seat. If you know dirt bikes, you know that any passenger has to hold onto the driver to keep from sliding off the back of the bike, so I had a firm grip on Jim’s midsection when my ass end came off that seat.

There are moments in our lives that only take a split-second to happen but that seem to happen in slow-motion while they are happening. This was one of those moments for me.

Picture the scene. For a mere second, Jim’s bike goes airborne, my rear end comes off the seat as the bike continues forward and my legs splay out behind me, yet I’m still tightly hugging Jim around the waist. I now find myself in a horrible dilemma with a nano-second of decision-making time.

Do I continue to hold onto Jim, knowing that my face and chest are going to take the brunt of the impact once the rear tire touches back down, or do I let go of Jim and hit the sand? The second choice seemed the most appealing, so I let go.

I immediately dropped to the sand and slid like a desperate batter trying to reach home plate before the ball got there. Sand flew, I ate a lot of it, and after a few painful and embarrassing moments, I came to a stop.

Jim quickly stopped his bike and ran back to me just as Andi came running as well. I stood, laughing shakily as I spit sand from my mouth and attempted to empty it from the chest part of my swimsuit. While I was doing this, Andi started to scream as she pointed at my leg.

I looked down and swore. My left leg was bleeding profusely from a long gash that ran from my knee cap to the edge of my swimsuit. Jim tossed me my towel, and I tried to wipe the wound clear, but that is an impossibility when your towel is also covered with sand.

Naturally, we decided it was time to cut our sunbathing excursion short and head home, so I could clean myself up. Enter a new dilemma. Technically, we had two vehicles — my car and Jim’s dirt bike. My car was a manual, so it had a stick shift that Andi was incapable of driving. Jim could have driven it for me, but then we would have had to leave his bike behind — in retrospect, we should have, but we were teenagers, and teenagers don’t always make the best decisions. Jim and I were both capable of riding a motorcycle, but Andi was not, nor was she willing to ride on the back of his bike after what she’d witnessed.

Thus, I ended up driving myself home with Andi as my passenger while Jim followed behind on his bike. Now, if you’ve ever driven a manual, you know that you have to push in the clutch with your left foot. What happens when your left thigh is bleeding badly and then you exert pressure with your foot against something? More blood comes out!

What happens when more blood comes out and your passenger is panicking? She screams bloody murder. Every single time! So, after a mile or so, I slammed on the brakes and gave Andi an ultimatum. Shut up or get out and ride on the back of Jim’s bike. She shut up.

Once I got home, I cleaned out the wound and thought I saw some tiny rocks embedded in it, so, even though I initially resisted going to the hospital, I did finally relent and let my mom take me to the ER to be stitched up. The attendant, though, didn’t do a very good job, because my scar is wide and still very visible all these years later. Additionally, for about twenty years after the accident, a tiny spot on my scar would puff up every now and then, feel hot to the touch and itch like mad, and then slowly subside after numerous treatments of aloe. I’m fairly certain that a small grain of sand remained in my leg for a long time. Might even still be there.

I’m not bothered by the scar or the accident. In fact, it has made for a great story over the years. The only things that really bothered me was that I couldn’t ride my own motorcycle for the rest of that summer, there were long-lasting bruises that looked worse than the actual cut, I had an idiotic boyfriend who was mad at Jim for “ruining” my leg, Jim felt horrible and guilty, and I had to tolerate a lot of people asking me what happened to my leg during the long healing process. Eventually, I got tired of answering them honestly and simply said, “I cut my leg while shaving.” That shut them up.

Some people may wonder why, after burning my leg badly as a child and then getting cut badly as a teenager, I still wanted to ride a motorcycle at all. Some of that is answered in the accompanying essay, but I think the main reason is the independence that you feel while riding a motorcycle. There really is nothing else like it.

Until next time. Thanks again for joining me here. Enjoy the essay, this edition’s “tome,” titled “Why I Ride a Motorcycle,” found below. If you know of anyone who would enjoy “Tomes and Topics,” consider giving them a gift subscription. I’ve included a button for that.

Tammy Marshall

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