The Best Laid Plans

Robert Burns once wrote, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.” Now, I don't exactly know what that Scottish prick was trying to say, but Steinbeck translated it for the rest of us in Of Mice and Men. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

That pretty much sums up my weekend.

I started it with a bright, shiny plan for the future. By the time it was over, every single one of those plans had gone completely to shit.

And yet...

It turned out to be one of the more powerful weekends I've had in a long time.

I don't want to bore you with every little detail. I did that fucking yesterday, and if I'm being honest, probably the day before that too.

The plan was simple enough.

Wait for my new Corbin seat to arrive, bolt it onto Aurora, then ride up to Bennett, Colorado, where I had a room booked for two nights. Saturday was going to be a veteran's benefit ride, a poker run, and a charity motorcycle giveaway. A weekend of riding, hanging out with Dawna, and supporting a good cause.

Friday started perfectly.

A good breakfast.

A few errands.

Beautiful weather.

Everything was lining up exactly the way I'd hoped.

Then I checked the tracking on my seat.

Shipment delayed.

New delivery date: Saturday.

Well... fuck.

I couldn't exactly sit around waiting for it. I already had a hotel room waiting for me. So I threw a backpack over my shoulders, climbed onto my uncomfortable Breakout with its broken passenger seat, and headed north.

First plan: awry.

By the time I got there, my back felt like it had been introduced to medieval torture techniques. My shoulders were absolutely screaming, but not just because of the backpack.

See, I have this little character flaw.

Just because I'm riding an uncomfortable motorcycle with a backpack strapped to my shoulders doesn't mean I'm about to start riding like somebody's grandmother.

Aurora spent most of that trip pinned somewhere between 120 and 140 miles per hour. Between the wind trying to peel me off the bike, the backpack trying to drag me backward, and the lack of anything behind me to keep me planted on the seat, I spent hours hanging onto the handlebars for dear life.

By the time I rolled into Bennett, I wasn't just sore. I was fucking exhausted.

And because Google Maps apparently employs drunken meth addicts to write its routing algorithms, what should have been a straightforward ride turned into an extra hour of wandering around eastern Colorado. It rerouted me to save time, then kept insisting I get off the highway and head down gravel county roads. I ignored every one of those suggestions and stayed on the pavement, but Maps still managed to turn a long ride into an even longer one.

So by the time I finally got to the hotel, I was completely cooked.

Dawna and I were supposed to spend the evening together. Instead, I promptly fell asleep. Probably snoring.

Second plan: awry.

Saturday wasn't much kinder.

Dawna had been looking forward to the poker run and the bike giveaway. She's involved with the shop that builds trike conversions for wounded veterans, and this event meant something to her.

Hell, it meant something to me too.

But there was one rather significant problem: I couldn't take her.

The friend she was planning to ride with was running really late, so I figured I'd make a quick run into Denver and see if I could find a replacement seat for Aurora.

Nope. Not in stock.

Not at that dealership.

Not anywhere in Colorado, according to Harley.

I even offered to buy an upgraded seat for the dealership if they'd let me have the one off the showroom bike.

They weren't having it.

And there was absolutely no way I was putting Dawna on the back of Aurora without a proper passenger seat. Even with one, she's riding on a motorcycle with more horsepower than anything I've ever owned. Without something secure behind her...

No.

Not happening.

I don't ever want to be responsible for launching my wife off the back of my motorcycle.

Third plan: spectacularly awry.

Looking back, though, maybe the weekend wasn't wasted after all.

Later that night, a bunch of us dragged chairs out from the hotel lobby and made a circle just outside the front entrance. Riders from the event, Bobby Henline and the folks traveling with him, and a handful of complete strangers all sitting together swapping stories under the Colorado sky.

There wasn't a schedule. There wasn't an agenda. Nobody cared who you were or what you rode. We just... talked.

Sometimes those end up being the moments you remember most. Not the organized event you planned your weekend around, but the unexpected conversations that only happen because life shoved your plans off the rails.

Eventually, the chairs got moved back into the lobby, people drifted off to their rooms, and the weekend came to an end. The next morning, I pointed Aurora south and headed home. It was another long, hot ride with a backpack digging into my shoulders.

Six hours later, exhausted, sunburned, and more than a little frustrated, I finally rolled back into my driveway.

And there it was. My Corbin seat. Leaning against the front door.

Of course.

I barely made it inside before tearing open the box.

A sensible person would have installed it, called it a night, and gone to bed.

Apparently, I'm not a sensible person.

I bolted it onto Aurora, grabbed my helmet, and headed back out.

Yes, I'd just finished a long, miserable ride.

Yes, my body hurt.

Yes, I had absolutely no business getting back on another motorcycle.

But I had to know.

And holy fucking hell...

That seat is an absolute game changer.

The riding position is mostly the same, but the support is incredible. For the first time, I was able to relax a little while riding her. The bike was finally carrying me instead of me hanging on.

Now, let's be honest. It still sucks to be the passenger on that bike. Frankly, Aurora wasn't built for passengers, and from this point forward she'll only carry one in an absolute emergency.

But for the rider? It's phenomenal.

Looking back on the weekend, none of the plans I'd made actually happened. The comfortable ride never happened. The relaxing evening with Dawna never happened. The poker run didn't happen. The charity giveaway didn't happen.

The weekend I'd imagined existed only in my head.

Instead, I spent hundreds of miles getting beaten up by a motorcycle that reminded me exactly what it wasn't built to do.

And maybe that's the lesson.

Sometimes life has a funny way of dragging you kicking and screaming toward the answer you were trying to avoid.

I spent the entire weekend trying to make Aurora do a job she was never built to do.

Don't get me wrong. Aurora is exactly the motorcycle I want her to be. She's loud, she's fast, she's obnoxious, and once I finish building her, she's going to embarrass a whole lot of people who think a Harley can't move.

But she's not a touring bike.

She was never supposed to be. That's Nyx's job.

The problem is Nyx is sitting in the shop waiting on repairs.

A year ago, that wouldn't have mattered. I lived alone in Santa Fe. If my touring bike was down for a while, life went on.

But life isn't the same anymore.

Now there's a woman waiting for me in southeast Colorado.

Now there are weekends I don't want to miss.

Now there are rides that aren't optional because they're not about motorcycles anymore. They're about us.

Somewhere over the course of this weekend, I realized I wasn't missing a seat. I was missing a motorcycle.

Not another hot rod. Another touring bike.

When I gave Dawna my pickup after our trip to Amarillo to pick up her bike, I didn't think twice about it. Hell, the truck mostly sat in the driveway feeling neglected anyway. She's already fixed things on it, made it hers, and I absolutely love that.

The truck found the person who needed it.

Me? I only ride motorcycles now.

So maybe this weekend wasn't about a delayed shipment after all. Maybe it was about being reminded that the best parts of life are rarely the ones we plan.

A delayed shipment led to me sitting in a circle of folding chairs outside a hotel with a group of bikers and a badly burned combat veteran, talking for hours like we'd all known each other forever.

A broken seat reminded me how much my life has changed in the last year.

The garage that made perfect sense for a single woman in Santa Fe doesn't make as much sense for a woman building a life with someone two hundred miles away.

Every plan I made for the weekend went completely to hell.

But somewhere between Santa Fe and Bennett...

Between Denver and home...

I figured out what comes next.

Apparently, I'm in the market for a third motorcycle.