Nate and I were just reorganizing the furniture in his new apartment to make it look a little more like someone lives there. The finished product still looked sort of... manly, but it was much improved. So we sat in the recliners and ate corn chips. And I don't remember how it came up, but somehow we started talking about the bike. (Meaning the Enfield 350 that we co-owned in India.) I guess we've both thought of it here and there because we've been telling the story of the wreck to people here at home. (Of course! Kait: it feels like someone strapped a pancake to my shin and they're poking it with a fork) And I said something about how crazy it was that we used to drive it up and down those hills like we did, and then I remembered the hill by St. George's School, remembered driving up that hill, and that thought just made me stop. That was crazy! We, I, used to drive that 500lb piece of crap up and down crazy angles on poorly-paved mountains without even really thinking about it. And then I fell into a sort of reverie about how I felt about the bike. I guess I got used to it little by little and didn't realize just how much I loved it, and then one day we sold it and it was gone. It's going to sound ridiculous for me to try to spell it out, but I want to anyway.
It got to be something that I had an understanding with that I knew exactly what to expect from it and it knew what to expect from me. Sometimes it felt like an extension of my own body that I could just fly through the mountains on and look down into the valleys without being afraid of anything. It was such a freeing thing, an empowering feeling and I miss it so much. Of course there were also times that I hated it, when I would drop it and have to pick it back up, or it would burn me or spill over at a downward angle so that I couldn't get enough leverage to hoist it back up, while the gas leaked out of the top of the tank and I swore streaks of bright blue to nobody. Not even to MENTION trying to kick-start it, especially in front of people. Sometimes the curves on the way down to Dehradun would make me nervous, you have to LEAN so far on the curves that it feels like there's no way it won't fall down, but then when I actually did it it felt like magic. Like the sensation of flying in dreams. How each bit of progress I made with it made me feel more human and less human at the same time, like the first time I stopped on Mulingar Hill and was able to get started again or the first time I got through Dehradun by myself. Or just swerving through the bazaar, dodging people and animals and cars and holes like a video game.
I thought about buying a motorcycle here, an older Honda twin or something, but I'm afraid it wouldn't be at all the same. There's no skill involved in puttering around town, I think it would just butcher the idea for me. I should just let it go. I drove home from Nate's and parked my safe little airbag-saturated mom-car on the curb and pushed the lock button on the remote and sighed to think about it. I feel like a piece of real life is missing and I'll never be completely free again. And there's really no way to change it.