Smokin'

 I was gonna bitch and moan about readership being down to near-zero again, but (a) the difference between high levels of readership and zero on this blog is about > < that much at the best of times and (b) I’ve been out and about with Bettina for a couple of thousand miles this month, and my head’s in much too good a place to start whining about an apparently permanent situation.

Frankly, I wouldn’t have noticed at all if I hadn’t realized the other day that “comment” emails had dried up. A quick check of the standard Blogger stats page resolved THAT mystery. Since I don’t bother to track anything but raw numbers (no IP addresses, locations, frequency, and all that noise) and even that only when it occurs to me to look (rarely), I can’t tell who’s wandered off. Looking at the email folder where comment stuff goes, it also occurs to me that I haven’t gotten around to commenting anywhere else for quite a while either which I strongly suspect is related.

But of course, unlike most of you slackers who are just being mean by not covering my blog and its little tidbits in slavish adulation I had a Perfectly Good Reason.

OK, not a “PERFECTLY” good reason, but pretty good.

Well, actually less of a “GOOD” reason than a reason.

Really a state of affairs more than a “REASON” to be honest. No, more like — aw, fuck it, I haven’t been online in quite awhile because I got distracted doing other stuff and just didn’t get around to it.

Unlike the current generation, I wasn’t born with a wired-in VR headset nor the standard issue PlayStation in one hand and iPhone X417 Master Blaster Star-Trek Super Communicator And Life Controller in the other. It takes awhile for me to notice that I’ve completely disconnected except for work emails, which I generally ignore in any case. It’s not deliberate, mind you. As a non-addict it just doesn’t occur to me to log in to anything sometimes for days at a time.

Now on the other hand, if I took e-connections away from, say, my granddaughter, I’d anticipate her needing prompt medical attention to get the seizures under control before committing her to 6 months of a lock-down rehab and perhaps micro-surgery to remove the direct-brain-feed implants.

Where was I…lessee, grandaughters, implants, excuses, stats — ah, yeah, got it.

Been out and about on Bettina. And — and here’s the important bit— I got The Beneficiary to come along.

She used to ride with me back in the day, but got tired of hanging off the rear of a custom bike with a “barely there” passenger seat, or clinging to me as we layed down nearly horizontal on a hairy curve with a heavy-weight, high-torque sports cruzer, or riding in a pack with about 2’ of clearance between us and a dozen or so other bikes at high speeds on I-20 headed to a “thing”, or hanging out in biker bars or clubhouses.

One day she just stopped and, as I explained a number of times to people who asked whether she rode with me, I couldn’t talk her into getting onto a bike at gunpoint. It’s been well over a decade.

And since then I’ve gotten a lot older, and a lot less inclined to put up with road weirdness, and a lot MORE inclined to ride alone just because I like riding and don’t much like people. 

Then I went to bring Bettina home. The Beneficiary took me to Colorado to pick her up, and followed me home, two days on the road, in and out and across four states. She said it looked like I was having the time of my life. Maybe, she said, she’d like to try a ride on her sometime.

And then nothing.

Until last week.

“You get all the kinks worked out of Bettina?” she asked. She knows that breaking in a new bike is not a one-day process.

“Yup, absolutely the best bike I’ve ever owned.”

“I saw you out in the parking lot last weekend doing slow-speed turns and maneuvering.”

“Yeah, I can make a u-turn in 18’ and drop her from 70 to 0 faster than you can think of it and sit at a near-dead stop without ever putting a foot down. I’ve got a couple of hundred city miles and a couple of thousand highway miles on. I know every twitch in her.”

“So, you’ve got a handle on her?”

I laughed. “Yeah. Come on out for a ride if you want to see.”

“OK,” she said. I was freakin’ thunderstruck.

The next day she leathered up — her old gear still fits, if you can credit it — and said “Let’s go.”

She loves the passenger seat — it’s like sitting on a throne, she says. And the air shocks and the stability — she says it’s the most fun she’s had in awhile. We’ve been all over the place since — we’re now that couple who will on a whim go jump on the bike to ride three counties away for a particular batch of BBQ ribs.

And, did I mention? Even after all these years she is fuckin’ SMOKIN’ in leather.

The Beneficiary, Bettina, and Me (In Oklahoma)

What can I tell you. I got distracted. But, then, I’ve always had the attention span of a goldfish anyhow…