April 4, 2015 7:42 AM PDT
in the topic
my first ride in the forum
Ride Stories
My memory is vague, it comes in short visuals, like flashbacks from a movie, with feelings from a time when that’s all I had. My diaper was soggy, the rumble was loud, and the black gas tank hot! When I was older my aunt told me it was a Matchless, but what I remember was the way I felt. lt, the words were not in my vocabulary in fact at the time I didn’t have much of a vocabulary. I don’t know how old I was, I just remember feeling happy, feeling free and even though I didn’t know the word or the meaning , empowered. My Uncle Tom sat me on the gas tank of that two wheeled machine and let me ride. He said things like “hold on baby girl”, which was needless, my heart was racing and I couldn’t have ripped my fat baby fingers from those bars if I tried. I never wanted to let go! I held onto those handlebars and tried to move them in exactly the direction I wanted to go. My uncle Tom loved me so much he indulged me this pleasure whenever I begged, which is a sure sign of his love because at the time, like I said, my words were mostly gibberish; baby talk that later turned into the voice of a woman who still and forever cannot get enough of that excitement of the thrill of the wind. Thanks to my Uncle Tom.
That first ride was before helmet laws before child safety seats, before seatbelt laws even before the Women’s rights movement. Thank god for the BEFORE days. If it had been for those laws, I may have missed the best days of my life. Not just the day of riding on the gas tank with my Unck but the days and years to follow. Now I ride my own
