Sunday Rides

Sunday afternoons are good for a long ride on the bike.

The bike is a Kawasaki KLR 650. No chromed-out Harley for me. I'm more interested in the ride than in being noticed on the ride. More utilitarian and functional than flashy, she is a hybrid. A Timex on a road filled with Rolexes. Kind of a cross between a motocross bike and a cruiser, equally comfortable on the asphalt ribbon or the dirt trails.

I call her "Esperanza", for she is hope.

I ride anonymously, full-faced helmet with tinted shield. I could be sixteen or sixty. I am acknowledged only by the other bikers. Each one I meet gives the fraternity wave, a simple extension of the left hand, fingers together as if waiting to be tagged in a wrestling match.

On this particular ride, my younger son rides behind on his Cruiser. He hangs back from the old man, a couple of hundred yards of asphalt between us. Out of safety or embarrassment, no one knows but him.

We have dreams, he and I, of riding south to unfamiliar lands. Lands of desert, high mountain passes, and broad planes of wild flowers dotted with horses. Lands inhabited by lovely senoritas and shoeless children, dirt streets and adobe walls. Lands where the citizens speak a lyrical language that I struggle to understand. Mas despacio, por favor. Habla englais? The Pacific is a right turn away, the Gulf a left. We will take off our heavy boots and stick our toes in both.

In the dream, we stop only to rest and record the journey. He with his fancy Nikon, me with my notebooks filled with white pages waiting for the words.

Or perhaps it is just my dream, and he is hanging on the edge of it, just as he lags behind on this Sunday afternoon ride.

With each passing day, the dream intensifies. The colors grow more vivid, the siren call rings louder. And yet, it also recedes into the horizon. Time is a petty thief. It steals a life unnoticed, until one day you awaken to find that you are an old man.

So for now we must find contentment on the back roads of Alabama.

Until that day, we ride on.