Ever since we started going to Bikes & Breakfast, a very popular and happy event, The Market’s been our new meet-up spot and I gotta say it’s a huge upgrade from our previous spot, which was a parking lot outside a Starbucks in Edgewater, NJ. No offense to Starbucks or to Edgewater, but this place is much more charming and friendly, insofar as it is actually charming and friendly. The Market used to be a filling station and it’s got a homey vibe, amazing food, and excellent coffee. The guy who owns The Market is a rider so it’s a biker-friendly joint, but it’s also located along 9W up in the Palisades so outside of the motorcycle crowd, the rest of the clientele appears to be either serious bicycle people or seriously rich people from the neighborhood (or, presumably, both).
The area in front of The Market is unofficially reserved for people running in to pick something up, bicycles, and motorcycles. The bicycle people fascinate me. They congregate to one side of the building, their bikes piled or propped up (apparently a kickstand adds weight) and they clop-clop around in their funny shoes yelling at each other. They’re very fit, in general, and there is a LOT of brightly-colored spandex going on. Every so often one of them gets stuck in their pedals and falls over, their thin little bikes as nervy as racehorses. The motorcycle crew tends to be a bit more diverse, at least in terms of body types, and we don’t wear a lot of color. We’re also dressed—long pants, jackets, boots—while the spandex people are not, plus they’re exercising while we’re…not, so it probably won’t be a surprise to hear that we each tend to keep to ourselves.
On a recent Sunday morning I rolled into the parking lot a few minutes after 9 and saw a couple of bikes I recognized. I parked by Gary’s Thruxton, not just because it’s a gorgeous bike but mainly because it’s a gorgeous bike. I ride a non-gorgeous bike and while I’m mostly resigned to that, there are a few bikes, the Thruxton in particular, which are always good for a wistful sigh.
I don’t know Gary well but I like him; in fact I like all the rest of the crew Joey has introduced me to. That day we were eight: me, Joey, Gary, Eddie, Dave, Hugh, my friend Nazgol, and, to my delight, an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while, a guy colloquially known as Tiger Mike XL. (Tiger Mike was already taken, and XL fits.) We assembled around a long table in the back, coffees and muffins, and Joey nominated me to lead the ride by asking me where I was planning to take the group.
“Okay,” I said, “How about…Millbrook?”
“Millbrook, that’s the place where the billionaires are discriminating against the millionaires, right?”
I nodded, and Joey, in his authoritative born-and-bred-in-Queens accent went on: “Okay, yes, Millbrook, but we’re not going to have breakfast at the diner, we’re going to that other place, the one up the street on the left.” In the air he drew me an exaggerated map of the diner and the other place, up the street on the left.
“Babette’s?” I said, trying to be helpful, but Joey neither knew nor cared what it was called, it was just the other place, not the diner, the one up the street on the left, and all he needed was to make sure I knew where he wanted to go so I could take him there. (It was Babette’s.)
I’ve learned a lot of roads—and anything I know about leading—from Mike, the OG Tiger Mike. He’s my main riding buddy and the two of us have been through a lot together. He always leads and so I’ve imprinted on him like a baby duck will on a panther as long as the panther stays up front and doesn’t, you know, kill the duckling. I don’t think the Michael-panther would actually kill the me-duckling, but I certainly give him reason to lose his mind on the regular so it is a testament to the mothering qualities buried somewhere within even the fiercest panthers that he continues to wait for me to waddle up behind him. This went off the rails somewhere but the main thing is that when Michael’s not there, I am sometimes a pale imitation of him as a replacement in that I am willing to be up front if no one else wants to be. (Leading a group is not for everyone, and I get that.) I made sure to check in with the other guys I figured would otherwise most likely take point and they shrugged: nope, sounds great, your ride.
Say what you will about Harley riders (did you know they all wear Harley-issued underwear?), those guys can ride a tight, compact, disciplined ride. The rest of us? Not so much. In all the years I’ve ridden with various groups I can count on one hand the times anyone has discussed hand signals or anything else that might remotely promise some kind of organization. Maybe we’re all supposed to know the hand signals already? If so, I’m screwed: I only know two hand signals. The first is two fingers down to acknowledge riders in passing and the second is to pat the top of your helmet to indicate to those same riders that cops are ahead. It’s an obligation to warn a fellow motorcyclist, but there have been times when I’ve felt enough camaraderie to bother to alert a car driver, and once in a while a car will flash its headlights at me in a similar manner and if us people can just keep finding common ground in terms of ways to look out for each other I have to believe that we can find a way to unite this country.
Anyhoodle, because I am low-level OCD (the non-medical diagnosis might be “control freak”), if I’m leading a ride I try to find a time when everyone is in earshot to offer some paltry “instructions”:
1. Ride your own ride.
2. I won’t make a turn until I can see every headlight.
Most of the time on group rides, everybody just follows the bike in front of them, unless they don’t, and every so often a guy will break ranks and zoom up next to the leader so he can yell something unintelligible and point down, which, I have learned, might mean he wants to communicate the need for gasoline, for a bathroom, or (and I’m sorry to tell you this) that he’s excited to share that he has an erection from the vibration of his bike. If you can’t zoom up next to the leader, you can instead just hope, often for many miles, that the group will end up stopped at a light so you can desperately try and of course fail to get the leader’s attention so you can share any of the above information and then go back to following the bike ahead and wondering how much longer you can go in terms of gas and/or bodily functions, or both. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’ve ended up in some depths of existential despair, convinced that Michael was just never going to stop again and I would die from the build up of coffee in my body.
That morning, as the crew had coffee and caught up—we spend hours together but the actual talking part is limited to coffee, lunch, and stops as gas stations—I thought about the route up to Millbrook. I was trying to decide whether to take the exit for Route 9 from the Taconic, pros being it would make our stretch on the Taconic shorter, cons being I’d only done it once before and I was 85% sure I would get lost, I got to do one of my favorite things: under the pretense of being deep in thought, I sat a little back from the table and watched a bunch of people I like being around enjoy being around each other.
For the record, I am completely fine with social interaction and can even on occasion manage to assemble my human form and carry on conversations for fives of minutes at a time. However, given the choice, I will absolutely admit I prefer to skirt around the edges of a group, hanging back a little and just observing, being part of something without actually being part of something.
The motorcycle crowd in general has some…personalities, and I feel lucky to have found the sweet spot of interesting people with just the right amount of crazy. Joey was my entry to most of the guys at the table that day; he’s the expansive, talkative one, full of malapropisms and self-deprecating jokes. He rides a completely inexplicable motorcycle: it’s the only Moto Guzzi California I’ve ever seen and even to the untutored eye it might look like exactly what it is: a giant cruiser motorcycle in the grand Harley-Davidson tradition, somehow made into an elegant behemoth by its swooping Italian lines. It is, like Joey, a mash-up of several discordant things that somehow all work really well together. Eddie always comes with Joey, as far as I know, and Eddie looks every inch the former Marine in his wraparound mirrored shades, trim salt and pepper goatee, riding a big Goldwing with the classic rock blasting. His face may seem stern until he cracks his big beautiful smile, which he does often, and I can’t tell you how many guys I now know who would look absolutely terrifying in your rear-view mirror and yet the one most likely to pick a fight, by FAR, would be me. Tiger Mike XL (have I mentioned there are so many Mikes?) is another great example: he is an absolute slab of a man, tall and built like the proverbial brick shithouse, all shaved head and aviators and muscles. Try to start a fight with him and you’ll end up calmly reasoned out of it and then probably in a discussion of men’s fashion as Tiger Mike XL is a very carefully dressed man.
Nazgol—I joke that she should have a t-shirt that spells out her name, confirms the pronunciation, and explains its origin; her plan is simply to change her name to Topaz and I’m not sure which one of those is the better idea—and I met through motorcycles but spend more time hanging out than we do riding. We’re both theater nuts and she’s always game for an event and has volunteered with Behind the Book, cementing her place in my personal Valhalla forever. She rides a Ninja 650 and pretends to be anxious about keeping up with us but she’s a better rider than she lets on. Gary’s a cool guy in the Redford or Newman mode, stylish but understated with a bike that was dead sexy even before he added some (stylish but understated) mods. He’s one of those guys who always appears to be squinting thoughtfully into the distance and you’ve got to work a bit to get a story out of him but once you do it’ll be a good one. Dave’s sharp and funny, more outgoing than some but not as much as Joey. He’s got kind of a surfer vibe, or maybe he’s been in a band, and he’s good looking in a boyishly mussed-up, played-down way. He’s got a couple of bikes and they’re both the kind of bikes I understand zero about but real gearheads in parking lots beeline to him like he’s just pulled out a Fender Something Obscure and Exotic. His main ride is burnt orange in color and I don’t think I’ve seen one like it elsewhere; and yes, absolutely I think you can tell something about a rider by the bikes they ride.
My first bike was a cruiser, a little Yamaha V-Star 650. I bought it because I’d learned on a similar bike during (all 2.5 days of) motorcycle safety school. Cruisers tend to sit lower so anyone with a short inseam can usually get both boots firmly on the ground and like the Honda Rebel and the Suzuki Boulevard it’s a very common first-time bike. It’s guaranteed reliable, it’s not over-powered, and the low seat and forward controls make it somehow feel not too motorcycle-y.
It was a fine little bike, but four months later, at the end of the season, I took it back to the dealership, told them I’d take whatever they’d give me (my negotiating skills are on POINT), and ran off to buy my dream motorcycle, a Triumph Bonneville. Trust me, you know what a Bonneville looks like, and they are gorgeous. I picked up a jaw-droppingly beautiful 2011 T100, the tank painted in ghost white and phantom black, Triumph’s iconic hand-painted pinstripes in gold. It was a bike designed for looks, for cruising around, and guaranteed to evoke nostalgia everywhere it went—you can’t put the kickstand down on a Bonnie with having to engage in conversation.
While I loved that thing fiercely—look at how handsome it was!—in the end, I eventually sold it to some hipster dude in Williamsburg who seriously did his test ride wearing blue loafers and a quite stylish but absurd trench coat. From there I finally accepted my true calling was a performance machine, completely stripped of any decoration, not a flourish to be seen, built solely and without apology for purpose. It’s not a pretty bike but it is a joy to ride.
I have a whole bunch of theories that relate to the psychology of riding, of being a rider, of riding in groups and riding alone and riding with pals—I have not wasted those thousands of miles alone in my helmet!—and they’re entirely too byzantine to get into here. However, I can say that one of the side benefits I enjoy about motorcycling is the opportunity to subvert expectations. This is NO SURPRISE to anyone who knows me in non-motorcycling life, too—please pardon me as I edge past you, carefully balancing this gigantic chip on my shoulder—and though I’ve mellowed a bit with age I still go from zero to sixty pretty quick when I think I’m being stereotyped or pigeon-holed or in any other way sized up for exactly what I am: a frumpy 43-year-old lady with theater tickets, a subscription to the New Yorker, a slavish devotion to NPR, mad crossword puzzle skills, and oh by the way, a smokin’ motorcycle I ride with confidence and authority.
The confidence/authority thing is another crossover from my regular life, she said bossily, but in the world of motorcycling it comes off a lot better than it does when I’m running through a meeting agenda or demanding to know why the F*CK these headers haven’t been changed, I made that note DAYS ago, guys, and they’re still in the wrong font. V-e-r-d-a-n-a PLEASE. Maybe it’s because on the bike I don’t do much talking, she said, frowning at a dawning realization.
Moving on.
It’s mostly fun for me to lead a ride. I used to be very nervous, especially when the riders behind me were older/faster/more experienced, but now I embrace my inner Michael and try to take care of them as best I can, safely and at speed. While much of the group that day was older/faster/more experienced, they’d also all agreed to have me up front, which is a compliment and a responsibility I take seriously.
We made the run up to Millbrook without incident, unless you count the myriad SLOW. CARS. we were stuck behind on what would otherwise be some really nice roads, but that’s kind of par for the course. Coming into town, I made sure to go past the diner and up the street to the other place, the one on the left. Parking wasn’t in abundance so I waved the bulk of the group to a big spot in front, then Dave and Nazgol found another space a little up the block. I ended up in a spot by myself, in front of the Stewart’s, which continues to advertise a need for manager trainees who will start off between $50,000 and $60,000 per year and I can never decide if that’s a good deal in Millbrook or not.
Babette’s is a narrowish upscale-deli kind of place. You place your order then they call your name as the various parts of your order are ready, and since there isn’t enough room for everyone in the order-waiting-area, we did a bunch of do-si-do-ing around, “Here, Dave, this is Joe’s coffee; Mike, take this out to Gary, or is this Eddie’s? Who got the BLT?” The guys are surprisingly solicitous in this setting, everybody checking on everybody else, wanting to make sure we all have our food and our coffees and bringing silverware and extra napkins to the table. I have no idea if they’re like this in real life but I do know that riding brings out the caretaker in each of us, each in our own way.
We had one of the two tables out front, plus some spots on benches. Gary had left his helmet on a chair but Mike saw an opportunity and made the helmet the table’s centerpiece so he could take the seat. When Gary came out, Mike looked up and said, “I took your seat,” and Gary shrugged and took a place on the bench because them’s the breaks.
There was some general milling around for a bit after lunch and finally I said all right, let’s go. Once I was confident jackets were being taken off chairs, I headed across the street to my bike. As I did, I noticed two couples sitting on benches outside the Stewart’s, just a few feet from my parking spot. They were maybe in their 20s, perhaps a little worse for the wear, and not exactly what you expect to see in Millbrook, where the billionaires are engaged in a bitter fight with the millionaires. That said, they seemed like they were having a nice afternoon, sitting outside, maybe a little high on something besides life.
I got to the bike and started getting organized: put the key in the ignition, my phone into the handlebar mount, took my gloves out of my helmet, etc., etc. I am, again, a frumpy 43-year-old white lady. I’m of average height and forgettable in face and figure. And I have no qualms at all about saying I was perfectly delighted when one of the gentlemen on the bench in from of the Stewart’s said, “Wow, that’s a kick-ass ride.”
I glanced up with a quick smile and said thanks, then went back to my business. The S3 is a kick-ass ride, of course, but I’m always leery of…well, any people who try to start a conversion.
“I expected to see some big dude walking up to that bike,” he went on, and the others with him laughed. I didn’t respond and didn’t need to—your expectations have been subverted, sir, and you have duly noted that; thank you for your candor.
“How fast can that bike go?” It was the same guy, of course, and then I was immediately aware of the tightrope. What’s the right answer? A specific speed, in which case he’d most likely ask if I’d gotten to that? Say I don’t know, which would have the benefit of being true, but also suggest I was interested in further conversation?
I settled on “Fast enough,” and that made them laugh again. As I put on my jacket, I heard the man say to his friends, “I bet she’s in charge, I bet she’s the one telling the whole group where to go.”
It was such a strange thing to say that I couldn’t help it. I looked back at him, making full eye contact for the first time, and said, “Indeed. I am.”
There was general laughter and I looked away, not wanting to extend the moment, but I heard a man’s voice clearly: “That’s so fucking awesome.”
Just at that moment, Joey pulled up in front of me, pointing at his tank. “Where’s the nearest gas station,” he shouted, and a pedestrian behind me answered helpfully, “Bottom of the hill!”
Joey nodded in thanks and then looked at me because have I mentioned how we all get imprinted on the ride leader? Though Joey is a fully functional adult, the ride leader decides.
I shook my head. “They don’t have 93.”
Joey shouted over the noise of his engine, “Is there somewhere close that does?”
I was again aware that leading a group means you’re somehow in charge of everything, and taking that responsibility isn’t about pride but about taking care, and of course I knew there was a station with 93 just a few miles away—because Michael had taken care and shown me, and now it was my turn to lead—so I nodded and Joey nodded back at me and pulled away, stopping along the curb ahead.
I finished pulling on my gloves and started up my "This American Life" podcast, looked around, saw the group was mostly ready which was as ready as we’d get. I turned the key, pulled in the clutch, hit the starter. I didn’t turn to see the reaction of the people on the bench behind me—I know how good the bike sounds. I dropped my visor, checked the crew once more. Kicked the stand up and dropped the shifter down, that thrilling clunk I never tire of hearing, and then I was off. Seven bikes behind me, nothing but good roads—and that Gulf station, or is it a Shell, who knows, you need gas, I learned from the best how to take of you—ahead.
The area in front of The Market is unofficially reserved for people running in to pick something up, bicycles, and motorcycles. The bicycle people fascinate me. They congregate to one side of the building, their bikes piled or propped up (apparently a kickstand adds weight) and they clop-clop around in their funny shoes yelling at each other. They’re very fit, in general, and there is a LOT of brightly-colored spandex going on. Every so often one of them gets stuck in their pedals and falls over, their thin little bikes as nervy as racehorses. The motorcycle crew tends to be a bit more diverse, at least in terms of body types, and we don’t wear a lot of color. We’re also dressed—long pants, jackets, boots—while the spandex people are not, plus they’re exercising while we’re…not, so it probably won’t be a surprise to hear that we each tend to keep to ourselves.
On a recent Sunday morning I rolled into the parking lot a few minutes after 9 and saw a couple of bikes I recognized. I parked by Gary’s Thruxton, not just because it’s a gorgeous bike but mainly because it’s a gorgeous bike. I ride a non-gorgeous bike and while I’m mostly resigned to that, there are a few bikes, the Thruxton in particular, which are always good for a wistful sigh.
I don’t know Gary well but I like him; in fact I like all the rest of the crew Joey has introduced me to. That day we were eight: me, Joey, Gary, Eddie, Dave, Hugh, my friend Nazgol, and, to my delight, an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while, a guy colloquially known as Tiger Mike XL. (Tiger Mike was already taken, and XL fits.) We assembled around a long table in the back, coffees and muffins, and Joey nominated me to lead the ride by asking me where I was planning to take the group.
“Okay,” I said, “How about…Millbrook?”
“Millbrook, that’s the place where the billionaires are discriminating against the millionaires, right?”
I nodded, and Joey, in his authoritative born-and-bred-in-Queens accent went on: “Okay, yes, Millbrook, but we’re not going to have breakfast at the diner, we’re going to that other place, the one up the street on the left.” In the air he drew me an exaggerated map of the diner and the other place, up the street on the left.
“Babette’s?” I said, trying to be helpful, but Joey neither knew nor cared what it was called, it was just the other place, not the diner, the one up the street on the left, and all he needed was to make sure I knew where he wanted to go so I could take him there. (It was Babette’s.)
I’ve learned a lot of roads—and anything I know about leading—from Mike, the OG Tiger Mike. He’s my main riding buddy and the two of us have been through a lot together. He always leads and so I’ve imprinted on him like a baby duck will on a panther as long as the panther stays up front and doesn’t, you know, kill the duckling. I don’t think the Michael-panther would actually kill the me-duckling, but I certainly give him reason to lose his mind on the regular so it is a testament to the mothering qualities buried somewhere within even the fiercest panthers that he continues to wait for me to waddle up behind him. This went off the rails somewhere but the main thing is that when Michael’s not there, I am sometimes a pale imitation of him as a replacement in that I am willing to be up front if no one else wants to be. (Leading a group is not for everyone, and I get that.) I made sure to check in with the other guys I figured would otherwise most likely take point and they shrugged: nope, sounds great, your ride.
Say what you will about Harley riders (did you know they all wear Harley-issued underwear?), those guys can ride a tight, compact, disciplined ride. The rest of us? Not so much. In all the years I’ve ridden with various groups I can count on one hand the times anyone has discussed hand signals or anything else that might remotely promise some kind of organization. Maybe we’re all supposed to know the hand signals already? If so, I’m screwed: I only know two hand signals. The first is two fingers down to acknowledge riders in passing and the second is to pat the top of your helmet to indicate to those same riders that cops are ahead. It’s an obligation to warn a fellow motorcyclist, but there have been times when I’ve felt enough camaraderie to bother to alert a car driver, and once in a while a car will flash its headlights at me in a similar manner and if us people can just keep finding common ground in terms of ways to look out for each other I have to believe that we can find a way to unite this country.
Anyhoodle, because I am low-level OCD (the non-medical diagnosis might be “control freak”), if I’m leading a ride I try to find a time when everyone is in earshot to offer some paltry “instructions”:
1. Ride your own ride.
2. I won’t make a turn until I can see every headlight.
Most of the time on group rides, everybody just follows the bike in front of them, unless they don’t, and every so often a guy will break ranks and zoom up next to the leader so he can yell something unintelligible and point down, which, I have learned, might mean he wants to communicate the need for gasoline, for a bathroom, or (and I’m sorry to tell you this) that he’s excited to share that he has an erection from the vibration of his bike. If you can’t zoom up next to the leader, you can instead just hope, often for many miles, that the group will end up stopped at a light so you can desperately try and of course fail to get the leader’s attention so you can share any of the above information and then go back to following the bike ahead and wondering how much longer you can go in terms of gas and/or bodily functions, or both. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’ve ended up in some depths of existential despair, convinced that Michael was just never going to stop again and I would die from the build up of coffee in my body.
That morning, as the crew had coffee and caught up—we spend hours together but the actual talking part is limited to coffee, lunch, and stops as gas stations—I thought about the route up to Millbrook. I was trying to decide whether to take the exit for Route 9 from the Taconic, pros being it would make our stretch on the Taconic shorter, cons being I’d only done it once before and I was 85% sure I would get lost, I got to do one of my favorite things: under the pretense of being deep in thought, I sat a little back from the table and watched a bunch of people I like being around enjoy being around each other.
For the record, I am completely fine with social interaction and can even on occasion manage to assemble my human form and carry on conversations for fives of minutes at a time. However, given the choice, I will absolutely admit I prefer to skirt around the edges of a group, hanging back a little and just observing, being part of something without actually being part of something.
The motorcycle crowd in general has some…personalities, and I feel lucky to have found the sweet spot of interesting people with just the right amount of crazy. Joey was my entry to most of the guys at the table that day; he’s the expansive, talkative one, full of malapropisms and self-deprecating jokes. He rides a completely inexplicable motorcycle: it’s the only Moto Guzzi California I’ve ever seen and even to the untutored eye it might look like exactly what it is: a giant cruiser motorcycle in the grand Harley-Davidson tradition, somehow made into an elegant behemoth by its swooping Italian lines. It is, like Joey, a mash-up of several discordant things that somehow all work really well together. Eddie always comes with Joey, as far as I know, and Eddie looks every inch the former Marine in his wraparound mirrored shades, trim salt and pepper goatee, riding a big Goldwing with the classic rock blasting. His face may seem stern until he cracks his big beautiful smile, which he does often, and I can’t tell you how many guys I now know who would look absolutely terrifying in your rear-view mirror and yet the one most likely to pick a fight, by FAR, would be me. Tiger Mike XL (have I mentioned there are so many Mikes?) is another great example: he is an absolute slab of a man, tall and built like the proverbial brick shithouse, all shaved head and aviators and muscles. Try to start a fight with him and you’ll end up calmly reasoned out of it and then probably in a discussion of men’s fashion as Tiger Mike XL is a very carefully dressed man.
Nazgol—I joke that she should have a t-shirt that spells out her name, confirms the pronunciation, and explains its origin; her plan is simply to change her name to Topaz and I’m not sure which one of those is the better idea—and I met through motorcycles but spend more time hanging out than we do riding. We’re both theater nuts and she’s always game for an event and has volunteered with Behind the Book, cementing her place in my personal Valhalla forever. She rides a Ninja 650 and pretends to be anxious about keeping up with us but she’s a better rider than she lets on. Gary’s a cool guy in the Redford or Newman mode, stylish but understated with a bike that was dead sexy even before he added some (stylish but understated) mods. He’s one of those guys who always appears to be squinting thoughtfully into the distance and you’ve got to work a bit to get a story out of him but once you do it’ll be a good one. Dave’s sharp and funny, more outgoing than some but not as much as Joey. He’s got kind of a surfer vibe, or maybe he’s been in a band, and he’s good looking in a boyishly mussed-up, played-down way. He’s got a couple of bikes and they’re both the kind of bikes I understand zero about but real gearheads in parking lots beeline to him like he’s just pulled out a Fender Something Obscure and Exotic. His main ride is burnt orange in color and I don’t think I’ve seen one like it elsewhere; and yes, absolutely I think you can tell something about a rider by the bikes they ride.
My first bike was a cruiser, a little Yamaha V-Star 650. I bought it because I’d learned on a similar bike during (all 2.5 days of) motorcycle safety school. Cruisers tend to sit lower so anyone with a short inseam can usually get both boots firmly on the ground and like the Honda Rebel and the Suzuki Boulevard it’s a very common first-time bike. It’s guaranteed reliable, it’s not over-powered, and the low seat and forward controls make it somehow feel not too motorcycle-y.
It was a fine little bike, but four months later, at the end of the season, I took it back to the dealership, told them I’d take whatever they’d give me (my negotiating skills are on POINT), and ran off to buy my dream motorcycle, a Triumph Bonneville. Trust me, you know what a Bonneville looks like, and they are gorgeous. I picked up a jaw-droppingly beautiful 2011 T100, the tank painted in ghost white and phantom black, Triumph’s iconic hand-painted pinstripes in gold. It was a bike designed for looks, for cruising around, and guaranteed to evoke nostalgia everywhere it went—you can’t put the kickstand down on a Bonnie with having to engage in conversation.
While I loved that thing fiercely—look at how handsome it was!—in the end, I eventually sold it to some hipster dude in Williamsburg who seriously did his test ride wearing blue loafers and a quite stylish but absurd trench coat. From there I finally accepted my true calling was a performance machine, completely stripped of any decoration, not a flourish to be seen, built solely and without apology for purpose. It’s not a pretty bike but it is a joy to ride.
The confidence/authority thing is another crossover from my regular life, she said bossily, but in the world of motorcycling it comes off a lot better than it does when I’m running through a meeting agenda or demanding to know why the F*CK these headers haven’t been changed, I made that note DAYS ago, guys, and they’re still in the wrong font. V-e-r-d-a-n-a PLEASE. Maybe it’s because on the bike I don’t do much talking, she said, frowning at a dawning realization.
Moving on.
It’s mostly fun for me to lead a ride. I used to be very nervous, especially when the riders behind me were older/faster/more experienced, but now I embrace my inner Michael and try to take care of them as best I can, safely and at speed. While much of the group that day was older/faster/more experienced, they’d also all agreed to have me up front, which is a compliment and a responsibility I take seriously.
We made the run up to Millbrook without incident, unless you count the myriad SLOW. CARS. we were stuck behind on what would otherwise be some really nice roads, but that’s kind of par for the course. Coming into town, I made sure to go past the diner and up the street to the other place, the one on the left. Parking wasn’t in abundance so I waved the bulk of the group to a big spot in front, then Dave and Nazgol found another space a little up the block. I ended up in a spot by myself, in front of the Stewart’s, which continues to advertise a need for manager trainees who will start off between $50,000 and $60,000 per year and I can never decide if that’s a good deal in Millbrook or not.
Babette’s is a narrowish upscale-deli kind of place. You place your order then they call your name as the various parts of your order are ready, and since there isn’t enough room for everyone in the order-waiting-area, we did a bunch of do-si-do-ing around, “Here, Dave, this is Joe’s coffee; Mike, take this out to Gary, or is this Eddie’s? Who got the BLT?” The guys are surprisingly solicitous in this setting, everybody checking on everybody else, wanting to make sure we all have our food and our coffees and bringing silverware and extra napkins to the table. I have no idea if they’re like this in real life but I do know that riding brings out the caretaker in each of us, each in our own way.
We had one of the two tables out front, plus some spots on benches. Gary had left his helmet on a chair but Mike saw an opportunity and made the helmet the table’s centerpiece so he could take the seat. When Gary came out, Mike looked up and said, “I took your seat,” and Gary shrugged and took a place on the bench because them’s the breaks.
There was some general milling around for a bit after lunch and finally I said all right, let’s go. Once I was confident jackets were being taken off chairs, I headed across the street to my bike. As I did, I noticed two couples sitting on benches outside the Stewart’s, just a few feet from my parking spot. They were maybe in their 20s, perhaps a little worse for the wear, and not exactly what you expect to see in Millbrook, where the billionaires are engaged in a bitter fight with the millionaires. That said, they seemed like they were having a nice afternoon, sitting outside, maybe a little high on something besides life.
I got to the bike and started getting organized: put the key in the ignition, my phone into the handlebar mount, took my gloves out of my helmet, etc., etc. I am, again, a frumpy 43-year-old white lady. I’m of average height and forgettable in face and figure. And I have no qualms at all about saying I was perfectly delighted when one of the gentlemen on the bench in from of the Stewart’s said, “Wow, that’s a kick-ass ride.”
I glanced up with a quick smile and said thanks, then went back to my business. The S3 is a kick-ass ride, of course, but I’m always leery of…well, any people who try to start a conversion.
“I expected to see some big dude walking up to that bike,” he went on, and the others with him laughed. I didn’t respond and didn’t need to—your expectations have been subverted, sir, and you have duly noted that; thank you for your candor.
“How fast can that bike go?” It was the same guy, of course, and then I was immediately aware of the tightrope. What’s the right answer? A specific speed, in which case he’d most likely ask if I’d gotten to that? Say I don’t know, which would have the benefit of being true, but also suggest I was interested in further conversation?
I settled on “Fast enough,” and that made them laugh again. As I put on my jacket, I heard the man say to his friends, “I bet she’s in charge, I bet she’s the one telling the whole group where to go.”
It was such a strange thing to say that I couldn’t help it. I looked back at him, making full eye contact for the first time, and said, “Indeed. I am.”
There was general laughter and I looked away, not wanting to extend the moment, but I heard a man’s voice clearly: “That’s so fucking awesome.”
Just at that moment, Joey pulled up in front of me, pointing at his tank. “Where’s the nearest gas station,” he shouted, and a pedestrian behind me answered helpfully, “Bottom of the hill!”
Joey nodded in thanks and then looked at me because have I mentioned how we all get imprinted on the ride leader? Though Joey is a fully functional adult, the ride leader decides.
I shook my head. “They don’t have 93.”
Joey shouted over the noise of his engine, “Is there somewhere close that does?”
I was again aware that leading a group means you’re somehow in charge of everything, and taking that responsibility isn’t about pride but about taking care, and of course I knew there was a station with 93 just a few miles away—because Michael had taken care and shown me, and now it was my turn to lead—so I nodded and Joey nodded back at me and pulled away, stopping along the curb ahead.
I finished pulling on my gloves and started up my "This American Life" podcast, looked around, saw the group was mostly ready which was as ready as we’d get. I turned the key, pulled in the clutch, hit the starter. I didn’t turn to see the reaction of the people on the bench behind me—I know how good the bike sounds. I dropped my visor, checked the crew once more. Kicked the stand up and dropped the shifter down, that thrilling clunk I never tire of hearing, and then I was off. Seven bikes behind me, nothing but good roads—and that Gulf station, or is it a Shell, who knows, you need gas, I learned from the best how to take of you—ahead.
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