Time Passages

 



Last month, my father did the unthinkable-he sold his motorcycle. It was a 2003 100-Year Anniversary Edition Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail Classic. Beautiful bike, and he took immaculate care of it. Best of all, he rode the heck out of it, often with my mother riding pillion. So to see it go was hard, to say the least. But it was time. He’d been struggling with ill health in recent years, especially 2018, and turned 79 years old over the summer. He quipped, “The older I’m getting, the heavier this bike is getting.” He asked me to help him sell it, and it went to a good home- a former H-D mechanic, getting back into riding, who has a great affection for Heritages. Very appropriate.
I was saddened myself, because not only was this the passing of an era for Mom and Dad, it was a sort of “time passage” for me as well. We had pounded out many roads and road trips together over the past 13 years or so, logged many miles, made many memories. Precious few, even in motorcycling, can say they’ve ridden much with their fathers (or mothers), but I can, and I’m thankful.

 Dad grew up riding motorcycles, back in the 1950s. He owned a stripped/bobbed 1954 Triumph Tiger 500, and was the hooligan of West Roxbury, Massachusetts on it. He street raced, blasted through town with the baffles out, rode with a pack of rascals, preened on it for the gawking pretty girls, but kept his heart for one- My mom.
When Pop left for the Air Force, he sold the Triumph to a friend, who apparently wrapped it around a tree outside town, barely living to tell the tale. No pictures remain of the bike. Pop rode Cushmans while spending a year on Okinawa, then returned home to marry my mom, settle into a career in the airline industry, and raise three crazy, “wild at heart” boys down in “God’s Country” here in the South. He left motorcycles behind for many years, even while supplying us kids with trail and dirt bikes.
I took up street riding in 1996, and by 2005 Pop caught the bug again too. We fixed up a 1982 Yamaha 550 together, and after test riding it some, Dad decided to jump back in, this time on a Harley. First buying a 2006 Super Glide, then swapping for the Heritage (more comfortable for Mom), they both went all-in, decking out in all the best H-D gear, adding a bike trailer and toy hauler to the collection also.

 We rode all over the southeast together, and many of the famous routes down here- the Tail of the Dragon, Cherohala Skyway, and Blue Ridge Parkway, to name a few. I’ve cherished every mile, every hour, riding with him across these years. He’s already experiencing “seller’s regret” understandably, grieving the steady passing of time, cursing the relentless marching of age. But it was time, they both acknowledge.
I guess I’m grieving too, selfishly, knowing our days of riding together are over. But I’m grateful to have ridden with them these years, and grateful my girls have inherited a love for riding, by the times they've shared with me on my bikes.
The guy who bought Dad's Harley? He told me how excited he is to take his wife riding with him, and hopes his daughters will fall in love with riding as well, on the back of that Heritage. As the saying goes- “One man’s sunset is another man’s dawn.”
Oh, Mom and Dad are talking about buying a golf cart now. A gas-powered one. With the big, knobby tires. Maybe raised white lettering. And an engine he can tinker with- maybe squeeze a few more horses out of? This could get interesting....