My 6th Grade Vietnam Dirtbiking flashback
Today I was talking about my wanting to get a motorcycle this summer at a friend’s house. Her parents, who are I’m sure quite used to my lofty claims and generally clumsy follow through after well more than a decade of witnessing both first hand, were reasonably skeptical. Suddenly her father revealed that he had purchased a 500cc Yamaha Majesty recently and that I was welcome to ‘take her for a spin’.
I jumped at the opportunity as, by my own claims, i had plenty of experience riding motorcycles. I would of course leave out that most of this experience had been accrued on empty rural roads in India, and even then mostly as a passenger. There was also no need to explain that my last motorcycling endeavour stateside, during the summer between 5th and 6th grade, took place aboard a miniscule Kawasaki KX 60cc and ended abruptly with the bike tumbling through my mother’s rose garden. Controlled travel was about 5 feet. To my credit, I refused anaesthesia and got through all 8 of those stitches with narry a wimper (regardless of what my older sister may claim. Seriously, don’t ask her.)
So today,confident that I’d hit my low point as a cyclist years ago and that it was all uphill from there, I donned a helmet and hopped aboard. Revving the engine, I casually waived off her owner’s advice to take it slow. It was, after all, just an automatic. Whipping her about with a confident half wave at my spectating friends, I gunned the throttle and was on my way.
My head hit the pavement with an empty thud about 4.62 seconds later by my count. Sliding with the machine on top of me, I was trapped. I quickly gazed about to get my bearings and there, creeping up in the horizon just beyond the mangled form of flesh and metal into which I had become, my greatest fear materialized. A solitary rose plant, thorny spectre of a pre-teen era, awaited my crashlanding with monstrous leafy tendrils outstretched. But it is a different time now. The foe which that plant once defeated, the portly child that wielded Scifi Trivia and science fair ribbons like so many gleaming lightsabers, is gone. Here now was something more. Here was a STaC Major.
In the last moment before impact i threw out my one free leg. I struck true on the face of a neighboring lawn ornament, a small concrete cherub, and altered my course enough to glide past the spiky maw of the sweet smelling, pink-petalled beast by a hair and go careening into the soft comfort of a patch of thick ivy. Outside of a few scrapes and bumps and bruises, i rose victorious and relatively unscathed. (We’ll see how i feel about this tommorow). History will not repeat itself. Not on my watch.
Persistent as always, tomorrow i head for the Royal Enfield Dealership.
In short. Thanks for being so cool about me scratching up your bike Dr. Robbins. Sorry about the hedges Mrs. Robbins. Also, the brownies were delicious as always.
