My favorite things are memories that wait for me to come to them, instead of chasing me through the night to whisper terrible truths when I tire and can’t outrun them.
This has been a summer of quality memory building. The Triumph ride in California was a grand jaunt, even if I did come home slightly broken, and the trike we were loaned to gimp around Washington on made it possible to mourn one friend in the company of others.
We’ve seen, and made, good friends these past weeks.
Discovering Vancouver Island with my sweetie while we raised glasses and very restrained forms of Hell with friends along the way made me feel rich, while a week over the roads of B.C. and Alberta with Smalldaughter and her ma on a borrowed Ducati and a utility player BMW made it feel like being rich didn’t matter.
Back at home, we had a reading at Elliott Bay Books — followed by a gathering of wonderful folks at The Garage — then not-so-small Daughtergirl and I tore apart her ’54 Chevy and I watched her dive in with a will, patiently determined to make it run again. I felt pretty guilty about not having replaced its fan yet (requires pulling the radiator, which is a pain) or re-wooding the bed, but Daughtergirl grinned and shushed me.
“I don’t want it to be too good,” she reminded me. “There should be some things left for me to do.”
She’ll drive it to Portland soon, and, like the Skin Horse, the old yellow beast will start another chapter of getting its hair loved off.
Tomorrow, we’ll drop the dogs with my sister. Auggie is getting old; he and I both gimp when it’s chilly out, but we warm up after a lap or two and the Auggs has a few left in him yet. He’ll be waggling a greeting and disciplining the nine-stone puppy when we fetch him back after riding through central Oregon on the lovely bikes of Moto Fantasy.
Might work in one last multi-pass ride if Indian summer holds, maybe the “How I froze my Gas on the Pass” Ride that VME throws in mid-October.
Very shortly, it’ll be time for dropping a wood maul through the steam of my breath, roasting root vegetables and chickens, for walking the puppy faster than my leg appreciates just to keep my blood moving, which my feet appreciate. It will be time to swirl a glass of Scotch by the fire with a dog on my feet, considering all this, enjoying the memories…
…and planning the next adventure.
"Jack Lewis takes the overall literary crown with his new book...there’s a lot more to Lewis’s work than what it feels like to ride motorcycles.” — Ultimate Motorcycling
"Insightful and from the heart ... a driven and much recommended look into the mind and conflict of the next generation of war veterans. " — Midwest Book Review (Reviewer's Choice)
made it feel like being rich didn’t matter.
Jack, you *are* rich, in the ways that *do* matter… you are the Warren Buffett of wives, daughters, friends, and damn good stories. I don’t get to go gallavanting off through gorgeous countryside with people I love not once, not twice, but three times this summer… best I managed was to get to that memorial. I don’t think you’d know what to do if you had Uncle Warren’s stack. (Neither would I!) And that’s a good thing, to me.
And that pic on the trike? Cute beyond words. Kudos to those on both sides of the camera.
Enjoy the adventures, although it looks like riding season is about done up there. HERE, however, we ride all year long, and I have many roads yet to show you.
Come play this winter.