Gradations of Mobility

Last Saturday after going to a movie I attempted to start my motorcycle and the battery died. This spawned a four day trial trying to get it replaced. First I couldn't get the seat off to get at the battery because the bolt required a specific hexagonal wrench bit. Since I couldn't take the bolt with me I had to eyeball the size of the wrench head that I would need. It took three trips to Autozone. On my first trip I got a replacement battery and lugged that back and forth on each trip. On Sunday evening when I finally got the seat off the battery was so corroded I couldn't get it out. Andy, who's on Schwa and also rides motorcycles, graciously helped me out and we got it out after an hour of effort. Turns out the battery I got wasn't the right kind. Yesterday I went back to Autozone to get the correct battery which had to be externally charged for half a day before use. Of course I don't have a charger so I asked another motorcycle friend Charley who very kindly agreed to charge it for me. Today I went to Charley's to pick up the fully charged battery then back to install it. Finally its running again. It was quite the lil odyssey.

A dead battery on a motorcycle isn't like one in a car, it's not as if anyone with a pair of jumper cables can help you out. Another motorcyclist won't most likely be carrying equipment for a jump and even if they were that kind of thing is pretty fickle given the size of the batteries the motorcycles use, they're so small! Point being there's not much else you can do other than change the battery and unless you want to drop a couple hundred bucks on a tow you have to change it wherever it happened to die, for me that was about a 40 minute train ride from my house, about 50 minutes from Autozone.

I'm not complaining, being able to ride motorcycles is a privilege and having one even more so. It's one of the greatest, most freeing feelings, riding a motorcycle, the roar of the gas the dance of the clutch and the shifter. There's a reason motorcycle riding is such a thing in popular culture and there are so many books written about it, on both ends of the lifestyle spectrum- rebellious to therapeutic. And the thing motorcyclists know is you'll have one snafu per season on average, either a dead battery or an electrical problem or a flat or you run out of gas on the highway. It goes with the territory, it's the cost of the wind whipping by your face and the roar of power between your legs and that exquisite feeling infinity you get when you tear up an empty street as if time stands still and all roads lead home.

Although tiring it wasn't the amount of time and travel I had to put in to get the bike running again that bothered me it was my loss of mobility. Having to take long circuitous public transit in order to do the things I needed to do. How I would imagine an avid runner feels who gets an injury that sidelines them for a month. It was like part of me was out of commission. I felt incomplete, grounded. In the penalty box, prevented from participating. For me I use my motorcycle just as much for function as leisure, more so. It's how I get around and not having it unexpectedly left me feeling flat footed and a little down. Like Icarus but instead of hubris my fault was simple happenstance and instead of hurtling toward the unforgiving ocean after my wings were melted by the sun I had to take the red line.