A Story for Meghan

The first time I rode a motorcycle. . . .

Growing up in Bismarck I had a very tight knit group of friends during the K through 6 days. We were all very active in sports. Mainly we were linked through Hockey as year over year we were on the same hockey team. We also had some fringe sport activities. I golfed which was a sport not shared by the others in our circle of friends. Karl was a skate boarder and though we had all dabbled Karl was an "expert". Ryan however was something else entirely. Ryan was motorcross.

Ryan lived just down the street from me and was blessed / cursed with boundless energy. He, like I, was involved in every sport that could be crammed into a kids schedule up to and including the point where a parent might revolt. It started with BMX bikes. We all had BMX bikes. We would put countless miles on those bikes before the days when bikes were to be fitted with computers. We could not know exactly how far we had gone and we didn't care. Estimations would suffice. We would ultimately have one of our mothers drive the distance in a car to know how far Wachter, Kirkwood, or Fox Island was from our neighborhood.

Ryan even had a small little track in his backyard for riding his BMX bike around. Eventually this track incorporated small jumps. Jumps led to small electronic cars being ramped into the statosphere with the tinny whine of an electic motor with no load. Motorcross bikes soon followed and Ryan would fly around his very small backyard and share the experience through sonic bombardment of countless neighbors.

As Ryan grew his need for faster and larger machines also grew. One summer during 7th grade my parents were holding one of many garage sales to rid our basement of items no longer of use. Among the "California Raisin" glasses and childrens books Ryan proposed we display his obsolete motorcycle for sale. Having no problem with this my parents promptly propped the bike up and the operation was in business.

Being a multi day event the evening of day one ended without much fanfair. Day two of having access to a motorbike proved to be too much temptation and with the approval of my mother and my sister and a friend looking on I proposed a harmless little loop around the backyard. Not being familiar with the controls of such a machine I took some time to familiarize myself and to visualize some scenarios. "Pull this if I need to slow down." "Turn this to speed up."

Having completed some mental test laps I was ready. The bike being too big for me I pushed off with one foot and turned the handle to give the bike gas enough to have a rolling start. I immediatly felt a rush as the bike bolted down the hill in my backyard. I hadn't expected to have to turn so soon but I was ready. I had planned for this. Turning would be a breeze. I reached for the brake to slow myself for the manuever and inadvertantly turned the handle revving the motor and launching the bike forward.

The front tire made contact with the fence dividing our yard from the neighbors. The back wheel came off the ground just a little with the abrupt stop and left me off balance. Having been a little too short for the bike (One of the last times I'd be able to make that claim) I could not reach the ground quick enough to balance the bike and it tipped over gently onto my leg.

My leg having cradled the bike during the fall I was certain that nothing was wrong. My mother helped lift the bike off of my and besides a scraped thumb I was in the clear. We pushed the bike back to display it for sale and I turned to head into the house to clean up a little mud and repair my ego. Nearly to the back door of the house my mother called for me to stop. "What is wrong with your leg?" It hadn't occured to me that I might be in pain but as I saw the beverage coaster sized splotch on the back of my knee it came rushing in. "Oh, that hurts." I stated calmly enough to declared "in shock".

Apparently the muffler of the bike being exposed and resting on my leg for a few seconds had left a nice sized burn and as the garden hose brought some relief it soon began to feel like a form of torture. For the next few weeks the burn turned to mushy flesh turned to bleeding scab turned to scar. Soccer and other activities provided a new level of "ouch" as the burn being on the back of my knee was continually forced to flex.

I didn't ride another motorized two wheeled vehicle for another decade.