Kelly’s Korner: Why Do You Ride?
Last Updated: November 29th, 2020
I hope I’ll always remember the moment I knew I had to try riding.
It was evening in late May 2007. I sat on the back of my husband’s ZRX 1200 as we sped down State Route 347. I looked at the desert around me, at the outlines of the Estrella Mountains against the setting sun, and I realized I was bored – not with the scenery, but the vantage point from which I was observing it. We were headed to Joe’s Farm Grill, and as we rode, I couldn’t shake the thought of how much more alive I would feel if in fact I were the one piloting myself about – not sitting passively, waiting to arrive at a destination.
When I announced to my husband and our friends that night that I wanted to ride, everyone was shocked. For years I had resisted suggestions that I give motorcycling a shot; I just didn’t consider that it could be for me, a person at the time with little history of athletic or adrenaline-inducing pursuits. But in May 2007, something told me that riding would turn my life into something more amazing than I could imagine. One day later, I owned my first bike and was signed up for the Basic Rider Course. If I had not listened to instinct that one, early summer evening, I don’t know where – or who – I would be now.
Some people are lucky enough to have been introduced to riding in childhood. I sometimes wonder how different my life would be if I’d had that experience. Understanding, however, the futility of focusing on a “what if,” I choose instead to believe that opportunities to take part in experiences materialize when the time is right for each of us. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear, as it were. No matter when riding found or finds us, then, deciding to live a motorcycling life reflects deep, personal choices.
That is true for me. Every time I get on a bike, I am defying years of ingrained and backwards family messages about women’s roles and capabilities. I am allowing myself to explore freedom – freedom from my self-imposed perfectionism, freedom to play, freedom from other peoples’ expectations about who I am and what I do, freedom to relax, freedom to indulge the thrill-seeker in me. Every time I get on a bike, I am opening myself to the possibility of meeting yet another new friend, discovering another new place, tapping into another new facet of myself, creating another new memory – whether one that makes for a good story or one that quietly reinforces why I ride.
With that, I ask you, why do you ride? And what do you want to accomplish with your riding in this new year we have before us? For my part, I plan to expand my riding repertoire by taking my new-to-me CRF 230 onto the trails and the track as often as possible. I’d love to hear from you about your motorcycling goals for 2014.
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