By Alyn Adrain
Did you ever read the book “The Accidental Tourist?” It was also a 1988 movie starring William Hurt, Kathleen Turner and Geena Davis. It’s about a guy who writes travel books for people who don’t actually want to travel. Well, that’s kind of how I came to ride motorcycles: accidentally.
I was recently at an event and ran into one of my business partners… or I should say former partners as I have recently retired. He asked me what I planned to do in retirement and said that he had heard a rumor that I was going to ride my motorcycle across the country. That sounded like a fabulous idea to me, but I’m not quite at the planning stages for that at this point. Instead, we embarked on a discussion of how it is I came to ride motorcycles, how I came to start fixing up motorcycles, and me showing him the equivalent of motorcycle “baby pictures.”
Flash back to late 2019. A friend had a Piaggio scooter he wanted to sell. Having just moved to the East Side, this sounded perfect for tooling around. The only wrinkle was that I needed my motorcycle endorsement to ride it. So, I signed up for the earliest class I could. Spring of 2020. Well, we all know what happened instead in the spring of 2020, and it was not motorcycle school. Eventually I was able to finally take the class in early summer of 2020, got my endorsement and bought the scooter. It was fun! That fall my nephew, Ken, called and said, “Auntie! I have a motorcycle that would be perfect for you!” My answer was that I did not want a motorcycle. He suggested l at least ride it. I said, “it’s October and too cold out.” Ever persistent, he said he would keep it through the winter and I could test ride it in the spring. I sighed and hoped he would forget about it.
Spring came and Ken did not forget. He called and said, “Auntie! Want to come try that motorcycle now?!” So, feeling obligated at this point because he held it all that time, I did. I went down to give it a ride fully planning to ride around the block and again let him know that I did not want a motorcycle. So, I rode around the block, pulled up to his driveway and I’m pretty sure someone threw their voice because the words that came out of my mouth were not my own. I did not say “no thank you” as planned. Suddenly I said, “I’ll take it!” No one was more surprised by this turn of events than me. I’m 58 and suddenly riding a motorcycle? Well, I started riding and I was hooked. It was a Honda CTX700. Automatic transmission. Easy to ride, and a ton of fun.
I wondered what took me so long!! I drive a manual car so driving an automatic motorcycle seemed lame. I quickly moved on. I got my first BMW, then my second, then a couple antique Hondas. Seems like potato chips, you can’t have just one.
