Hollywood Doesn't Understand Bikers
Hollywood has spent decades telling Americans that cowboys and bikers are natural enemies. It's a great movie trope, but it's also complete fiction. My experience with the biker community has revealed something very different. Cowboys and bikers have far more in common than Hollywood would ever admit. They value freedom, self-reliance, hard work, and the simple desire to be left the hell alone.
Fair-Weather Riders
I used to think every motorcyclist felt the same pull I do: the need to ride every chance they get. Then I realized that not everyone finds the same thing in two wheels. For some it's a hobby. For me, it's home.
Independence
Some weekends change your life in quiet ways. This one is filled with firsts: our first real road trip together, my first morning writing while she sleeps peacefully nearby, and most importantly, the day she claims her own freedom by buying her first motorcycle. There couldn't be a more fitting day than Independence Day.
We Are the Same
Some people think becoming a rider starts the day you buy your first motorcycle. I don't. I think the motorcycle is just paperwork. The rider was already there. This weekend, the woman I love gets her first bike, and I already know exactly what's about to happen.
We Are Not the Same
Apparently someone got jealous after seeing my girlfriend on the back of my Harley. But they missed the point entirely. Motorcycles aren't about impressing people or collecting passengers. They're about freedom. And the best part isn't that she's riding behind me today... it's that she'll soon be riding beside me on her own bike.
Letting Off the Throttle
I found myself letting off the throttle this weekend. Not because I was tired. Not because the bike wasn't running right. Because for the first time in a very long time, I wasn't trying to get somewhere. I was exactly where I wanted to be: surrounded by veterans, raising money for kids, riding with good people, and sharing the road with a woman who makes my soul feel whole.
Heavenly Pursuits
I always assumed all bikers loved horsepower. Loved torque. Loved the feeling of a machine trying to rip their arms from their sockets and launch them toward the horizon. Turns out that's not true. Some ride for peace. Some ride for scenery. Some ride for community. And some of us are engaged in an ongoing theological dispute with the laws of physics.
The Weave
Every motorcycle rider knows the feeling: getting trapped behind a painfully slow driver while traffic stacks up behind both of you. What starts as mild annoyance quickly evolves into a full psychological investigation of the driver's intelligence, ancestry, and questionable life choices. A profanity-laced exploration of why riders weave, why drivers misunderstand it, and why some people should never be entrusted with the accelerator.
Keep Your Chin Up
A transgender motorcycle rider reflects on humiliation, resilience, rage, and the strange discipline of keeping your composure while life repeatedly tests your patience. Sometimes survival looks less like peace and more like holding your chin up while internally plotting arson.
What Harley Is Actually Selling
Harley-Davidson doesn’t sell motorcycles. If they did, Honda would win every time. What they sell is muscle, grit, and the permission to make a machine your own. And sometimes, they forget that.
The Bell
Motorcycles and superstition go hand in hand. From sailors to submariners to bikers, we all carry rituals into the unknown. I never bought my own gremlin bell, that’s not how it works. It has to be gifted. Lilith didn’t have one. Nyx does. And whether you believe in energy, God, tradition, or simple human love disguised as metal, sometimes protection sounds like a tiny bell ringing against the wind.
Distractions
We are fucking distracted, all the time. Phones, social media, twenty-four-hour outrage, and convenience engineered to keep us numb. We’ve built entire industries to compensate for our inattention, and then act surprised when manipulation becomes effortless. This isn’t accidental. It’s the system working exactly as designed.
Uninformed Egos and Other Road Hazards
A casual comment turned into a familiar irritation: the unearned confidence of someone asserting authority without knowing a damn thing about the rider they were talking to or the road they were judging.
When Empathy Has An Asterisk
People will feel sorry for you after an accident, right up until they find out you were on a motorcycle. Then something shifts. The empathy softens. The judgment creeps in. As if choosing to ride means you consented to being hit. As if freedom comes with a moral penalty.
Reentry Isn’t Quiet
Lilith is gone. That part still hurts.
But the garage isn’t empty, and the urge to ride didn’t die with her.
Reentry was never going to be polite or quiet. It was always going to be loud, mechanical, and a little bit defiant. This is what leaning forward looks like when the system says “wait.”