Picture: The latest cover of Riding South magazine
Yesterday was one of those rare Kansas days..... no wind. I could hardly believe it but by the time I got back from running a few errands (in the truck) my coat was off and the temperature was pushing 50 degrees.
What to do, what to do? Oh yeah, the Dubya is sitting in the garage still filthy from last weeks early morning ride in the slop. First order of business is to clean the Dubya. Not clean, clean, mind you but riding clean, there is a difference. As it turned out the ride was OK but still a little cool so I just did a 20 mile lap of the city and called it a day. Today is calling for 55 degrees by mid-afternoon and it is the REB's turn to be ridden. If things work out I'll get it warmed up good and change the oil when I get home.
My Riding South magazine was in the mail yesterday and it was a particularly interesting issue. One column I liked was written by a 79 year old motorcyclist that lives in Arkansas. It is reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.
Riding South is a neat little newspaper magazine that focuses on The South but has general interest articles as well. It is distributed free of charge through motorcycle shops in it's area or is only $12 a year by mail. The publisher/editor/paperboy, Robert Shearon, is a real biker in that he hardly ever drives but relies on two wheels.
Contact Robert at: 1220 Jameson Ave
Benton, AR 72015
Ph: 501-860-8884
Why I Ride By Ralph Landon
My friends often ask why I ride a motorcycle at my age. some are genuinely curious but most are somehow offended at what I am doing.
The say things like do you want flowers or should we just contribute to your favorite charity?
In dark moments I could smell the flowers and cars would suddenly appear in my path.
But life is not to explain after all, at least the important parts. You enter it alone, leave it alone, and people just make foggy guesses about your purpose.
Yet after years of riding I know some of its purposes - for me.
The first purpose is to have something waiting for me, one of those things men need in some other part of the house, yard or town that they can escape to. I have tried many things! Cars, guns, cameras, and even airplanes, but none have been so satisfying as my motorcycle.
Cars tend to bore me with their commonness, and the problem with cameras is that they depend on the whims of the spirits - you have to need to take a picture to want to take it. Guns have a nasty side to them, and once you lose the urge or even the capacity to kill things they sit in cabinets emasculated of their essential purpose.
Airplanes are fine for certain times in life but you buy imperatives with airplanes - you have to stay sharp and remain current to maintain your license. Airplanes remind me of my limitations.
The nice thing about having a motorcycle waiting for you is that it does not require you to do anything with it. Sometimes it is enough just to check the battery or ponder the likelihood that you could overhaul the engine if you really applied yourself. A motorcycle represents endless possibilities, among them just sitting with a can of chrome polish in your hands looking for rust. Sometimes my wife would say, I thought you were going for a ride, is something wrong? and I would say, No, I'm looking for rust. A person can always depend on rust.
The second purpose relates to that intangible thing we call freedom. When I first learned that motorcycles are called freedom machines I thought that had something to do with speed, far places and raunchy company - beer, broads, and a cloud of smoke.
That is not what freedom means to me! What happens with age is that you are expected to grow predictable, and once you do, more and more people step forth to manage your life. It becomes known that you are around weekends, so you get invited to places you don't want to go. And you're around to fix faucets, faucets that you would just as soon let drip. The freedom my machine gives me is very easy to describe: It is the license to be accountable to no one.
The third purpose concerns place. For me there is a dramatic difference between being away and being gone. I love to be away, but am gone only when I have to be. The motorcycle better than anything else has taught me to understand where my psychological borders are - the Greenbriar River in West Virginia, a little country store, a diner in a small town.
For me the beauty of a motorcycle is not in the going, but in the stopping. The most important device on my bike is the kick stand and I use it with abandon. There is no sound like the silence of a killed engine when geese are flying overhead. The roar of the engine is music to the ears of some riders - I prefer the cooling tick of a resting bike. I have gotten somewhere - away, not gone, and for the first time I have truly been there. I have discovered a few new places on my motorcycle but they are of small significance compared to what I have discovered about familiar places. It's not that you uncover a lot of surprises in the hills of West Virginia, it's just that you meet yourself going back and back again.
Motorcycling has given me a new respect for inconclusiveness, cameras end up in photographs, guns in trophies and airplanes in personal achievements. I don't know where I'll be going with my machine when I next decide to ride. Maybe I'll go somewhere tomorrow and maybe I'll wait til next week. It will be there waiting for me whatever I decide, picking up rust along the way and I will be free to decide when I want to get unpredictable again. Then the word will be out that I'm gone again, but I'll know I'm merely away, visiting places I have been before and thinking it's not all that bad being a senior citizen.
Editor's Note: Landon, of Hot Springs Village, is 80.
afternoon on a clear day.
