One of the reasons we moved from New Jersey, where my wife was born and raised and had always lived, to South Carolina was to get away from the brutal and harsh Northern winters. The last 5 years we lived there we lived in Wantage, a small town in Sussex County which is right on the foothills of the Pocono Mountains, so when the weather called for 3 inches of snow in the flatlands (the Paramus area), we could count on getting 3 times that much up in the hills. And trust me, we did. One of the first things we did when we moved up there was trade in my wife's Pontiac Grand Am for a Dodge truck with four wheel drive, and that truck saved our bacon many a winter!
But after living in the cold country all her life, my wife was ready to move to warmer climates. She wanted to move to Florida but I didn't want to go quite that far south; actually, I wanted to be closer to my folks so I could visit them more often. So we settled on South Carolina, a place where we both thought we could ride at least ten months out of the year.
And so it was...for the first two winters we were here. We've been here for almost 5 years now, and for the past three winters it has been unseasonably cold here, and it has snowed - that's right, friends and neighbors, snowed - for the past two winters, having snowed twice this winter alone. So needless to say, the chances to ride for ten months out of the year have been few and far between for the past two years.
As things would have it, my wife had to sell her bike last spring so I've been a Lone Wolf for the past nine months or so. I ride every chance I get, and today I had the chance. The weather has been cold as shit for the past three months, so "Junior" - my 2008 H-D Nightster - has been sitting in the garage hooked up to a trickle charger for most of the winter. The weather forcast for this weekend was calling for it to be "unseasonably warm," with the highs for Saturday projected into the low 60s and the highs for today being in the high 60s.
When the temperature outside hit 65, that was it - I'm on the bike and gone!
It's nearly impossible to describe the feeling of riding to a non-rider, especially if you're trying to explain how it feels to get "knees in the breeze" after being stuck in a car for the past three months. For some it can almost be a religious experience; for me it wasn't quite that thrillling, but I gotta tell ya that I was riding around for the better part of an hour with a stupid smile plastered on my face. Just the feeling of the bike rumbling beneath me, the wind going past my face shield, and feeling the road beneath the tires as I zipped along the back roads is just...well, those of you who ride know; those of you who don't will just never understand.
That's what it is about bikers and their love for riding. It's a sense of freedom, a sense of blending in and becoming one with the scenery instead of just driving through it, the sense of motion and movement that you can only get when leaning your scoot into a fairly sharp turn on a back road, your eyes scanning ahead around the curve for what's up ahead, the feeling of being zoned in to the bike, the scenery, what's happening...it's a feeling of being alive that you just can't get by driving a car.
Like I said, if you ride then you understand; if you don't ride, then you need to start. Then you'll understand.
So now "Junior" is parked in the garage again, although I haven't hooked the battery charger back up quite yet. I'm waiting to see what the rest of the week's weather looks like; maybe I'll get a chance to go grin some more, who knows?
IHC
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