Motorcycles, The Professor, And Life: Part 4

After cleaning out the motorcycle’s bedonkadonk and stashing the manual and some tools, I grabbed the last thing I planned to carry. Nick Adams’ “Adventures on Borrowed Time”. It’s the second Nick Adams book I’ve bought. I was initially using his literature to test my “books on dead tree are better than e-books” theory but now it feeds my dream of a fun road trip. His books are simple, just road trips in Canada. Specifically, solo, remote, motorcycle rides… that’s precisely what I want to do! I’ll take encouragement whenever I find it.

I’ve spent many years wanting to “drive to the end of the road”, which is an unspecified but physical location you can find in literal existence in Ontario. The dream was derailed by other things, raising children, normal life, etc… It’s not like I’m filled with regret. I didn’t sit on my ass doing nothing! It’s just that the “end of the road” plan got pushed back multiple times. Most recently Canada’s shitstorm over Covid was (remarkably!) even worse than America’s spastic flailing. (Isn’t it weird that some places sucked even more than the land of arresting lone surfers and little arrows on the floor at the grocery store? I wouldn’t have thought anyone could get dumber than America but I was wrong. Canada went full gestapo, Australia built actual concentration camps, and New Zealand became an island prison. The Professor struggles in a society of Gilligan.) Even after things returned to normal (actually they never returned to normal and they never will) came the soaring cost of fuel. The Bidenverse tripled the cost of fuel and, even though that bothers me less than the political prisoners, it partially grounded my Dodge. And then came a personal loss.

But that’s the past and I’m thinking of the future. By now I was suited up and the PC800 was warmed up. This was only a springtime shakeout ride, nothing more than a sunny afternoon and a little over a hundred miles. The odds were in my favor.

I was thinking about Nick Adams’ introduction in his book. He talks about the biblical time allotted to us all (if we’re lucky); three score and ten. That’s the source of his title. His life can be considered to be on borrowed time; having lived beyond 70.

He implores his reader; “do it now, don’t put it off”. I can almost hear him crying out to his keyboard; “Don’t let your doubts scare you away from living while you’re still alive!” I agree.

As I wheeled the bike out of the crowded garage I noticed the plastic bag of mouse detritus. I’d tossed it on the ATV (itself a vehicle currently ignored). On a whim, I put down the kickstand. I’d tie up the bag and toss it in the Dodge’s cargo bed. Might as well facilitate the first step toward the landfill right?

As I tied the bag I saw it. A little piece of paper, thoroughly mouse chewed, a relic from just about a year ago. Hand scrawled notes; just words really. One word stood out; “biopsy”. I’d stashed that paper in the saddlebags sometime early last summer. Less than a year has passed since I wrote that note, yet it has been a very very very long time indeed. Even back then I knew a process had already begun. It was too long and too short and it invariably ended as it will for us all.

I found myself crumpled up on the ATV. I try to avoid mentioning sad things on my blog but I won’t ignore the truth of life. My burdens aren’t particularly heavy in the overall scheme of things. I handle them neither better nor worse than anyone else. For now, and perhaps for a long while to come, sometimes I wind up crumpled against a dusty ATV while my motorcycle cheerfully idles on its kickstand.

Three score and ten.

Eventually I took a deep breath and continued living.

I grieve, sometimes in the slow bittersweet growth of human existence and sometimes viciously; as when an unexpected gut punch hits comes out of nowhere. But, that too is ok. It’s part of living. I might as well, as Nick Adams so pleasantly suggests, ride.

And so I did.