On A Big Bike
*****
Cause I want some pussy, from a back bitch on a big bike... on a big bike, yeah!
-- From the song "Big Bikes" by Kyuss ©1991.
That quote, in very few words, was my Sarah. Allow me to elaborate...
*****
I was three months past my job transfer and had just about had enough of being alone all the time. I had work, which was plenty challenging and fulfilling, but no social life to speak of. You know me -- I'm not a casual hangout kind of girl. I don't socialize at the pool, my new neighbors were all either elderly retirees or established families, and I'm of the opinion that work is a good place to leave my coworkers. I was different and beginning to feel isolated.
I talked to Angel all the time and checked in with Ethan fairly frequently. I also emailed with Jessi-K often enough that I was in touch with what was going on in her life. I was connected, but all of it made me feel lonelier than not. Fabulous didn't help much either. She was still mopey about leaving Ethan. I swear she took the breakup harder than I did.
It was also mid-summer and I found myself driving past motorcycle dealerships... that weren't on the way home. That, I determined, was at least an opportunity for action, so I signed up for a Motorcycle Safety Foundation weekend basic rider course at the local community college.
*****
When the date for the MSF course finally rolled around, I showed up with my second-hand safety gear I used to wear to ride with Ethan and joined the other twenty-four people for the Friday night classroom session. There were two instructors: an older gentleman and a big blonde woman. It was clear right away that they were both very competent but had been deliberately paired as complementary forces. The gentleman, Rick, clearly provided the "serious", and the woman, Sarah, provided the "color and enthusiasm".
For example, they signed off on my gear with the following two comments --
Rick: "Replace this [face] shield sometime soon. It's about at the end of its life, and you should look into putting an anti-fog insert in your new shield when you get it."
Sarah: "That jacket really fit over your hooters?"
By lunchtime on Saturday, after our first session of real engine-on time on the practice range, Hooters had become my "honorary biker name" according to Sarah. She was BB (for Big Blonde) and Rick was IceMan. Although politically incorrect, Hooters was unmistakably me. The only other female in the class was a gorgeous Asian girl in her early twenties who quickly got named Foxy.
The guys didn't fare any better. There was BugSplat (caught a katydid across the faceshield), Plumber (his pants rode low), Tailpipe (burned himself), Blipper (lacked throttle control), Dodgy, etc. My personal favorite was a sixteen-year-old kid that got stuck with the name Dump after he dropped his training bike three times trying to walk beside it and learn to find the friction zone of the clutch. The whole reason for these goofy names was to add some fun into a stressful training program, create that sense of all-one-team, and because they were easy to hear shouted at you through a helmet over the engine noise.
I won't clutter this narrative any further with the details of the training except to relay one really funny thing that Foxy said at the end of the day on Saturday. We were both getting a lot of attention in the testosterone charged environment, which was coming out as a lot of swaggering and poor riding. Foxy described it as, "these poor boys all tripping over their dicks." I caught me totally off guard, and I laughed the whole way home.
I graduated from the program the next day by passing my written and my skills test with minimal difficulty, and there you have it. A trip to the DMV later that week and I was a licensed motorcyclist. After that it was time to start shopping around for my own bike.
*****
"You don't want that, Hooters."
That verdict drawled near my ear startled me out of my reverie. I had been mooning over a sexy black 600cc sport bike on the used side of the bike dealership. It looked deadly fast just sitting still. I turned to see BB standing behind me with her big blonde mane braided back and her helmet under her arm.
"You'd kill yourself leaving the damn parking lot," she continued.
"But it's so sexy! And it sits just right when I put a leg over it."
"Oh, I'm sure it does, but you need to wring out your panties and come to your senses. You need to be much more experienced than you are before you can safely handle a bike like that and not have to pay an ass-load of money to the insurance company. Maybe even take the Experienced Rider Course we teach."
"Maybe true, but I don't want a little 125 like we used in class. Besides, the way I did the swerve test and the slalom cones, IceMan said I'd be a natural on a sport bike."
"Could be," she acceded, "but even if you do go the sport bike route, there are lower power options to start on. A bike like this 600 is just too unforgiving for a novice rider. Be smart and try different kinds of bikes before you drop money on your own."
"How?"
"Well hell, I've got my honkin' Nomad cruiser, an old 250 Eliminator, and a couple of two-stroke dirt bikes myself. You should come over to the garage sometime, and we'll take some things out."
She gave me her phone number and directions to her house, and that was the start of a great friendship and a dangerous acceleration to the second half of summer. Nearly every weekend, I would head over to Sarah's garage, and we would go out for a ride.
Her garage was a neat setup too. It was a separate building from her house (which I didn't go inside until months later), but it was climate controlled and had a sofa, a fridge, and a full bathroom. It was like a guest house with a roll-up door and a bunch of rolling toolboxes and lifts. I'll spare you the details of all the rides we took, but in summary, I was gaining mileage and determining that what I really did want was a sport bike.
It was also pretty clear early on in our friendship that Sarah was hitting on me. She was not subtle at all, but she was fun about it. I can't count the number of times she got a leg over her Nomad and told me to "climb up behind me and grab my tits so you don't fall off", which I never actually did. Or she'd pat my butt through my leathers when we finished a ride and dismounted back at her garage. It was always playful and easily dismissed if you didn't know how to read the signals. I never reciprocated except in joking ways.
That changed once we started hitting the dirt bike course. Since the sex in this narrative is the interesting part, I'll skip ahead to three progressive incidents of that flavor, two of which are among the wildest I have ever experienced.
*****
Three things to know about my time spent riding dirt bikes: it's ridiculously fun, it's extraordinarily dirty, and it's extremely physically punishing. If I never see another kick start as long as I live, I will be happy. I have seen really good dirt riders just glide their machines over the berms and jumps, but I am certainly not one of them. Every session at the motorsports park left me feeling like someone had picked up the motorcycle and beat me with it. On the positive side, however, it was really good experience for me to learn to ride a machine under barely controllable circumstances. It taught me that I could take a fall, and also that I could avoid them with skillful riding. It instilled a lot of respect for the machines and the safety gear, but also eliminated a lot of the fear of actually being in the saddle and whacking the throttle open. That experience was invaluable.
Focus for the moment on the second thing I said to know: it's extraordinarily dirty. In dry weather you get dusty, but in wet weather (which is no deterrent for riding) you get positively painted in mud. You know that state of dirty where you actually wonder if it's possible to get any dirtier? That's dirt bike riding in the rain.
The first time we came back to the garage completely covered in mud, we actually hosed each other off in the driveway along with the rest of the gear. After that we took turns showering in the garage's bathroom. I went first and was lounging on the sofa in sweatpants and a tank top, waiting for Sarah to come out before I went home.
