If I’d had a list of what I was looking for in a man (and girls, don’t we all have “the list”?), owning a motorcycle wouldn’t have been down at the bottom, it wouldn’t have made the list at all.  Truth be told, it would even have tipped the balance the other way.  I don’t like loud engines.  I have no sense of balance.  I get dizzy on a step ladder if I’m a foot off the floor.  I’m a control freak. And on and on.

But there I was, at the tail end of what I call “the year of turbo-dating,” metaphorically ready to take a step back and enter a convent for a while.  And then there he was.  Intelligent, intriguing, good looking and unconventional, the proud owner of both a longbow and a Harley.   And so I threw caution to the wind and said “yes” to a first date.

The motorcycle was a non-issue at the time.  I live in Wisconsin, and it was the middle of January.  I can’t remember if I wore long underwear on our first date, but I most certainly wore it on our second.  Along with shearling-lined lug-soled boots, ear muffs, and an Eddie Bauer goose down parka trimmed with coyote fur.  The wind chill was twenty-five below zero that night as I drove to meet him for dinner and a movie, far removed from biking weather up here.  We have potholes and boilerplate ice up here that can take out a car.  I also remember taking stock of the ridiculously, dangerously cold weather and thinking “girl, you’re in trouble here!”  But still…most of my dating for the past year had been “catch and release” after the first encounter, and the “curse of the third date” still lurked out there.  No need to worry about riding on the motorcycle months from now when we might be calling it quits over dessert.

By the time the warm days of spring finally rolled around, I’d been caught, hook, line and sinker.  His enthusiasm for biking had always been palpable, but now it was edging into my future as well.  I couldn’t hang out on the tailgate of his pickup truck forever.  I kept ducking the issue.  But the day of reckoning finally arrived.

I’d offered to take him out to dinner to celebrate a life-altering, monumental gardening project we’d recently finished around my house.  The gardening was his idea.  The “before” looked like a wasteland.  The “after” had me walking in beauty every time I stepped out the front door.  In between, we’d shoveled about two and a half tons of gravel by hand together and replaced it with perennials and rose bushes and bark and sandstone.  My life was forever changed.

And so, reluctantly, fearfully, holding tightly for dear life, I acquiesced and positioned myself to ride pillion, taking pains to not nick the gas tank with the heel of my boot as I swung my leg over.  I wore a borrowed leather jacket, and a borrowed helmet, and couldn’t bring myself to even look over his left shoulder at oncoming traffic.  We made it to the restaurant and back alive.  And as some old friends entered the restaurant and got acquainted with my guy before dinner arrived, I confess to a certain thrill at nodding at the motorcycle gleaming in the sunlight through the window, and saying “yeah, that’s my ride!”

Both we and the bike are now a couple of years older, and quite a few more miles have passed beneath the tires of the Harley with me on board.  I’ve gone out and bought my own black leather jacket, after finally coming to grips with the fact that my chest is bigger than his.  I’ve become accustomed to looking over at what’s on the left side of the road now, as well as just looking up at the clouds and the trees and the birds above me as the wind slides over my face.  The smell of damp evergreens on a winding two-lane road is as intoxicating as any glass of champagne.  Last summer I watched a flaming sunset sky unfold behind me in the rearview mirror as we drove east into twilight. It was magic.