The Bell
My grandma was superstitious as hell. If she dropped a fork, she’d study the direction it pointed and announce a visitor from that side of the house. If it was a spoon, that meant something else. Knife? Different prophecy. We knocked on wood like fate was hovering overhead waiting for a technicality.
And the strange thing is, superstition and reason coexisted just fine. We’d talk about real-world things at the dinner table: bills, weather patterns, politics, God. Facts and logic. But right next to that sat silverware omens and wood-knocking rituals. No one saw a contradiction. Superstition was just part of being human.
When I joined the submarine force at seventeen, operating a nuclear reactor plant for the United States Navy, I learned something important: sailors are just as superstitious. They call it tradition, but let’s not kid ourselves. Rename a boat and bad shit happens. Certain rituals before deployment. Certain phrases you just don’t say. It’s all there.
Bikers? Same deal.
Motorcycle culture is drenched in superstition. And one of the biggest is the bell. The gremlin bell. A tiny little bell you hang low on the bike to ward off evil road spirits. The idea is the bell traps gremlins and drives them insane with the ringing, keeping them from messing with your ride.
And here’s the rule: You’re not supposed to buy your own bell. It has to be gifted. Energy matters.
My first bike came with a bell. A friend of a friend made sure I had one. That bike was magic. I had close calls. Dumb moments. But no wipeouts. No collisions. No near-death spirals initiated by some distracted driver.
So yeah. I fucking believe in things. I believe in God. I believe in energy. I believe in things we don’t fully understand. All of those can exist at the same table.
Then came Lilith Prime.
Blacked out. Tall, pointed sissy bar like a spear. Shadows in motion. She wasn’t just a motorcycle. She was an extension of me. I paid a professional photographer to capture us together because she felt like part of my identity.
But here’s the thing: No bell.
No one gifted me one. And I wasn’t about to buy my own, because that’s not how this works.
And then the crash happened.
I still hate calling it an accident. That word feels passive. Like gravity just decided to show up unannounced. Like there’s no accountability in the story. But that’s another blog.
Lilith didn’t have a bell. The gremlins won that day. The evil spirits got their punch in. Lilith was gone.
When I returned to work, I bought her successor: Nyx. Nyx is still becoming. She isn’t finished. She’s evolving, like I am.
My boss is a longtime biker. We’ve bonded over stories from the road, over miles traveled and machines loved. He understands the culture. He understands the superstition.
He understands the bell.
One day at work, he handed me one. No speech. No theatrics. Just a quiet gesture.
Protection.
He believes in warding off the evil spirits that lie in wait for riders. And he wanted me under that protection. He wanted my bike protected. He wanted safe travels for me. That meant more than he probably realized. It wasn’t about metal and engraving. It was about someone saying: “I want you to come home.”
And now Nyx has a bell.
Maybe it’s superstition. Maybe it’s energy. Maybe it’s community. Maybe it’s love disguised as tradition. I don’t really care which category it falls into.
What I care about is this: There are forces on the road we can’t control. There are moments we can’t predict. There are drivers who don’t see us. There are variables physics doesn’t negotiate with.
But there are also people who want us safe. And sometimes that protection looks like a tiny bell hanging from a frame rail, ringing quietly into the wind.
Nyx has her bell. The gremlins can fuck off.
