A Widow's Ride

Last Sunday, I had to go for a ride on the bike to get away from all of the stress and unwind.  The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind frenzy with dealing the house being in escrow and trying to sell everything on the property such as 27 motorcycles, 4 cars, 5 trailers and 2 acres of junk or as my brother-in-law would call it “merchandise”.

It’s hard to be parting with all of the stuff we had.  Each little piece brings back memories of the good times and the bad that we once shared.  A part of me doesn’t want to let them go but the other part of me know that I need to move on.  As the more I pack of what I’m going to keep, the more I realize that the door is closing on this chapter of my life, the more it scares me.  I don’t want to say that I have been in denial of his death but this process of moving on without him makes it a reality that I don’t truly want to happen.  Sometime I wish that I can turn back the clock but I can’t.  I can only move forward from here on out with memories of the past to carry with me.

So whenever I go for a ride, I always bring a camera with me just in case I see something that I want to remember or to share with others.  However, in my rush to get out and ride, I forgot the camera.  As usual, I didn’t have a destination in mind and just headed out on Highway 138.  I ended up taking the same journey that I took about a month ago on the other bike.  Instead of taking the side street, I actually jumped onto Highway 14 to get to Tehachapi, CA.  This highway takes you to the west of Edwards Air Force Base which it is known as the backup runway for the Space Shuttle landing in case the weather is bad in Florida.  While heading north, two of the B-52 like planes flew overhead and it was so low that it felt like that I could reach up and touch it with my hands.  I felt so small and insignificant like an ant on the ground compared to these magnificent and enormous steel birds in the sky.  At that point, I wished that I had Go Pro camera mounted onto the helmet to capture the image.

Also in my need for a ride on Sunday took me  on a longer ride than I anticipated which cause me not to plan for the thunder store that was brewing with a warning of a flash flood in the area.  So on my way home on heading south on Highway 395, I could see the wall of the storm up ahead which mean that I knew that I would be riding through a down pour.  Mind you, I have ridden in the rain on the dual sport bike but not on the street bike so I was a little apprehensive about it.  Surprisingly, the bike and I handled it very well.  I just took my time riding through it at a safe pace.  However, it was the lightning that had me more jumpy than the rain itself.  A couple of time the lightning struck in the desert landscape to the left of me.  It was frightening and mesmerizing at the same time.  The image was like a “Kodak” moment and once again I wished that I had the camera with me to capture it.

It just dawned on me after re-reading what I have written here the irony of my ride on Sunday.  Seeing the beauty of the two huge military airplanes that were created by us that glide through the air gracefully and then seeing Mother Nature bringing on her fury with the lightning and the rain which make life seem treacherous to waddle through at times.  However, with rain, it brings new growth to nourish one’s life.

Maybe I wasn’t meant to bring a camera to capture the moments but to rely on the memory to see the metaphor of what’s around me as it is in life as well.