The Two Most Important Women in My Life

As I lie here in bed, the morning light is just starting to peek through the window. Dawna is asleep beside me, and the light catches the line of her chin and neck just right. I can see the artery in her neck pulsing, keeping perfect time with the heart beating somewhere beneath the blankets.

And I am filled with love.

She's been here since Thursday, and there's something about having her in my home that makes everything feel different. Quieter. Calmer. More complete. I find myself looking over at her for absolutely no fucking reason other than the fact that she's there.

She makes my heart smile.

Friday night, we decided to ride into Santa Fe to meet one of her friends for pool at a downtown bar and restaurant. Simple enough plan. Take Nyx into town, find somewhere to park, shoot some pool, have a good night.

Except Santa Fe was hosting its annual Indian Market.

And before you ask, no, you can't buy Indians there.

For fuck's sake, we fought a civil war over slavery, remember?

No, Indian Market is a massive celebration and market for Native American art and culture, and it brings approximately eight billion fucking people into downtown Santa Fe all at the same time.

Why is that important to this particular story?

Traffic.

Holy fucking traffic.

There was a steady stream of cars everywhere, bumper to fucking bumper, moving at approximately two car lengths per hour.

If you've been reading for a while, you might remember that a few months ago I had the cams upgraded on my bikes, along with the lifters, valve springs, cam plate, and, of course, the Trask power plate. And that came with beefier clutch springs because when you start making stupid amounts of power, eventually you have to make sure all that power actually gets transmitted from the engine to the drivetrain.

There's a consequence to those beefier clutch springs.

The clutch lever is a motherfucker.

I wrote an entire blog about my left hand hurting after the upgrades because pulling that clutch lever takes considerably more effort than it used to.

Well, guess what?

It's still fucking hard.

So there I was, sitting on Nyx with Dawna on the back, feet planted on the pavement, clutch pulled all the way in while traffic remained completely fucking motionless. Then we'd move forward one car length. Clutch back in. Wait several minutes. Move another car length. Clutch. Wait. Repeat until the heat death of the universe.

My left hand and wrist are fucking barking at me this morning.

For sure.

Now, if you're an avid reader, you might have stopped a few paragraphs ago and thought, Wait a fucking minute. When did Nyx come back online?

I'm glad you asked.

Nyx had been kind of down. Technically she ran, but she had developed a problem with a pin in an electrical connector going to the throttle body. It's apparently a known issue on these newer Road Glides. The problem would manifest itself by suddenly cutting the throttle under power, which is exactly as much fun as it sounds.

I'd be riding along, everything perfectly normal, and suddenly...

Nothing.

Then I'd have to coast somewhere safe, wiggle the fucking connector, get everything talking again, and continue on my way.

That's not exactly the kind of reliability I want from the motorcycle I use to cross states.

Eventually, that pin was going to stop making electrical contact altogether, and if there's one thing I've learned about Murphy, it's that the little bastard isn't going to let something like that happen conveniently in my garage. It would happen somewhere without cell service, probably during a thunderstorm, surrounded by rattlesnakes, thirty miles from the nearest fucking human being.

So I stopped riding Nyx.

The replacement harness was backordered for weeks.

My mechanic, however, being the mechanical God that he is, actually dug into the problem instead of just shrugging and waiting for Harley to ship a harness. He figured out that the issue came down to the pins themselves, and that Harley apparently hadn't used pins with the proper coating. So instead of waiting indefinitely for an entire wiring harness, he ordered the correct pins.

Then he called me and told me they were in.

And that's when I told him something I haven't exactly been broadcasting to the world yet.

I'm proposing to Dawna next week.

We're doing a photo shoot, and somewhere during that shoot, I'm going to ask this beautiful woman to spend the rest of her life with me. And I really, really wanted Nyx there.

So I asked him if there was any possible way he could squeeze me in before then.

This fucking awesome, amazing man didn't hesitate.

"Of course. Bring it in. I'll find the time."

And he did.

The same fucking day.

Nyx was running before Dawna even came back into town.

Have I ever mentioned how amazing the Fab Shop in Santa Fe is?

Because they're fucking amazing.

If you own a Harley and need somebody who actually understands the machine instead of simply knowing how to replace parts, call them. And if you want to lean into what they're really fucking good at and turn your perfectly reasonable Harley-Davidson into an unreasonable fucking monster, even better.

Just saying.

Anyway, that's how Dawna and I ended up on Nyx Friday night, crawling through downtown Santa Fe at approximately the same speed as continental drift, attempting to find parking near Boxcar.

Yeah.

That wasn't happening.

We made two passes through downtown that took so fucking long I'm reasonably certain we entered a different calendar year somewhere around the Plaza. Eventually, we gave up and decided we'd head over to The Alley and shoot pool there instead.

And somewhere in all of this, Dawna did something I've discovered she's remarkably good at: She made me listen to reason.

She pointed out how fucking awful the drivers around us were being. And they were. Santa Fe drivers mixed with a shitload of tourists trying to figure out where they're going is apparently some kind of recipe for vehicular anarchy. Cars were doing stupid shit everywhere, and neither of us particularly trusted them to remember that motorcycles existed.

Then she pointed toward the clouds.

Rain was moving in.

Normally, this is where my stubbornness takes over.

I've made a plan. Therefore, we're going to execute the fucking plan. Traffic sucks? Fuck it. Rain coming? Fuck it. Drivers are idiots? Fuck them too. We'll figure it out.

Then three hours later I'm wet, pissed off, exhausted, and writing a blog about why the entire human race can go fuck itself.

But Dawna looked at the traffic, looked at the sky, and basically said this was stupid.

And I agreed with her.

Without hesitation.

That's the part that still surprises me.

She doesn't tell me what to do. She doesn't try to control me. She doesn't ask me to become someone I'm not. Somehow, she just cuts through all the noise and stubbornness in my head and makes the sensible choice suddenly seem obvious.

So we rode home.

We parked Nyx in the garage, climbed into Dawna's truck, and went back out to shoot pool.

And we had a beautiful night.

No battle with traffic.

No getting soaked.

No stubbornly forcing a plan to work simply because it was the plan.

Just the woman I love, a pool table, some drinks, and an amazing night together.

Now I'm lying here this morning, watching the sunlight creep across her face while she sleeps beside me. Nyx is downstairs in the garage, finally healthy again. Dawna is here beside me. And for this particular moment, everything in my world feels exactly where it's supposed to be.

Have I mentioned how much I fucking love her?

And have I mentioned how sore my left hand is?

Because holy fucking shit.

But hey.

The two most important women in my life have returned.

Dawna and Nyx.

And my heart is pretty fucking full.