My bike is a 2005 Honda Shadow Spirit with low miles.
Fifteen thousand eight hundred and seventeen miles to be exact to this date.
That’s 15817 on the odometer.
She’s not for sale.
I bought her from a U.S. Marine at the Van Nuys Airport in California. He ran an aircraft cleaning service. We worked in the same hanger. You’re never an ex-Marine. Semper Fi means Semper and Semper means Always. He worked with a full-size American Flag under the glass of his desk. He sold me the bike for cash and a handshake. He’d bought it new and essentially never used it. I think it had 800 miles on it.
It runs like a watch.
The joke is at eighty-five miles per hour you need to get off to make sure she’s running.
I ran up that speed one night in the Antelope Valley between Lancaster and Mojave at 2am because I wanted to see what she’d do out there on the flats under a limitless sky on a long long piece of straight flat concrete. After all, I worked at an airport.
I saw something.
Way off to the west on the left and slightly above the invisible horizon I saw a blaze of light accompanying me. You could have laid a ruler on it, a silver trail. I thought at first it must be one of those secret jobs they test out of Edwards Air Force Base, when all of a sudden it shattered into a dozen dazzling pieces of brilliant iridescent shimmering light against the black.
I couldn’t stare. After all, at a breath away from a hundred miles an hour and no windshield you’re not in a position to window shop. I took my gloved hand off the accelerator and came to a halt a long long way later without touching the brakes. The sky still held traces of the meteor.
I got off the bike. I took off my helmet and I stood there.
I stood there a long long time.
That’s why you ride a motorcycle.
What does it have to do with running for public office?
What has it got to do with walking door to door through neighborhoods you’ve never seen before and asking people you’ve never seen before to sign your nomination papers?
Well, if you’ve never ridden a motorcycle and you’ve never run for public office, it may take me a long long time to explain.