What a Fucking Ride

Oy. What a fucking ride.

And by "what a fucking ride," I mean, "Holy fucking hell that sucked."

Yeah, I know. I don't usually talk about a ride sucking. Rain happens. Hail happens. Hell, sometimes even snow happens. Idiot people doing idiot people things happens. All the fucking time. But it never destroys the ride.

This time was different. And it was different by design.

Nyx, my Road Glide, is down waiting on parts. Yeah, she runs, but there's a bad pin in the electrical connector that goes into the throttle body, so every once in a while the bike's throttle just... quits. No warning. No limp mode. Just, "Congratulations, you're coasting now."

It's left me on the side of the road twice. One of those times I had to have it towed all the way from work in Los Alamos back to Santa Fe. My mechanic finally diagnosed it, and Harley knows all about the problem. It's a known issue. Of course, because I put in an aftermarket ECM and upgraded the cam, the warranty is effectively gone. Never mind that neither of those modifications has a goddamned thing to do with a faulty electrical connector Harley already knows is defective. But whatever. I still love their bikes.

So, of course, I had to take Aurora.

Now don't get me wrong. Aurora is an absolute animal. My Harley Breakout 117 is unbelievably fast. I've ridden her up to Colorado plenty of times to see my amazing wife. Usually I'm headed up around La Junta or Rocky Ford, and that's only about a four-hour ride. Long enough to be sore, but short enough that I don't spend the next day questioning my life choices.

This weekend wasn't La Junta.

This weekend was a poker run in Byers.

That's six hours.

And to make things even better, I managed to fuck up the passenger seat.

Now I know what you're thinking. "Why does the passenger seat matter if you're riding solo?"

Because this bike wasn't built for someone my height. On long rides I slide back onto the passenger seat every now and then just to stretch my legs. It makes a world of difference.

Except now I couldn't.

I'd ordered a beautiful new Corbin seat, and it was supposed to arrive Friday. I actually delayed leaving because I wanted to install it before the trip. Then I got the email saying delivery had been delayed.

Fuck.

So I threw my backpack over my shoulders, climbed onto the uncomfortable-but-unbelievably-fast demon beast sitting in my garage, and pointed her north.

The weather greeted me exactly the way you'd expect.

I hit rain.

Then more rain.

Then more fucking rain.

Rain hurts at highway speeds.

Only...

I wasn't exactly riding highway speeds.

Look, Aurora has enough horsepower to make poor decisions seem perfectly reasonable. There were stretches where I had the throttle pinned and the speedometer was somewhere between 120 and 140.

Why?

Because she can.

It doesn't make it comfortable, though. The backpack weighed a fucking ton. By hour four my shoulders were screaming. By hour five my lower back had filed an official complaint. By hour six my legs had cramped into shapes previously unknown to modern medicine.

Then Google Maps decided it wanted to get involved.

Can we please get a motorcycle mode, Google?

Seriously.

Apparently there was traffic or an accident somewhere along my planned route because it politely informed me it had found something faster.

Like an idiot, I trusted it.

That's on me.

This asshole app proceeded to drag me into the middle of fucking nowhere before repeatedly insisting I turn down gravel roads.

Gravel.

On a Harley Breakout.

No.

I'm not taking a twenty-five-thousand-dollar motorcycle with another ten grand in performance upgrades down some county gravel road because an algorithm thinks it's saving me three minutes.

So I ignored every turn and just kept following pavement.

Eventually I found my own way back.

Forty goddamned miles farther east than I ever needed to be.

Over an hour added to my ride.

So to the fine folks at Google: Fuck your mothers.

By the time I rolled into the hotel parking lot, I was absolutely beat to shit. My shoulders and back were dead from carrying that backpack all day. My legs were cramping from riding a bike that clearly wasn't designed for someone my height. My face felt windburned and sandblasted from hours on the road. And to top it all off, I was irritated beyond words.

Mostly at Google Maps.

Which is admittedly ridiculous because it's an application, not a person. There's probably a setting somewhere that says, "Stop rerouting me through Bumfuck, Egypt," and I just haven't found it yet.

Didn't stop me from screaming creative obscenities into the wind for the last hundred miles, though.

Then I saw my wife.

She wasn't just walking toward me.

She was skipping.

Big smile. Bright eyes. Pure excitement. Like seeing me was the best part of her entire week.

And just like that, every miserable mile disappeared.

The aching shoulders didn't matter.

The cramped legs didn't matter.

The windburn didn't matter.

The backpack didn't matter.

Six hours of discomfort evaporated because the only thing I could think about was wrapping my arms around the woman I'd spent the entire week missing.

Funny how love does that.

I don't know what today brings. We might have to run over to the Harley dealership in Aurora and see if they have a seat in stock so my wife actually has somewhere to sit. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't.

We'll figure it out.

We always do.

One thing's for certain, though.

The ride home tomorrow is probably going to suck just as much as the ride up here.

Maybe more.

And honestly?

That's okay.

Because when I finally walk through my front door, there should be a brand-new Corbin seat waiting for me.

And if there isn't...

Well...

I guess I'll have something else to bitch about next week.