Ann Hutton

As the gentle and compassionate teacher of Buddhism, Pema Chodron, has said: the path of cultivating human bravery and kindheartedness is to let the quality of what we’re feeling and the energy of the emotion pierce us to the heart. We should not indulge in the feeling, rather be it completely.

As I sat on my deck, I felt a weakness in my hands and lightness, a slightly nauseous sensation in my abdomen, also some disappointment, some gratitude, and some relief. I had mounted my motorcycle that morning for the first time since the previous fall, when my husband and I had gone all the way to Williams Harley Davidson—my longest distance away from home then. That had been a good practice outing until turning right at an intersection, I’d somehow missed first gear, lost acceleration, and dropped my bike into a sewage drain at the curb. I’d hopped off without getting hurt—just banged my shin a bit—but the right turn signal was broken, and the casing where the right foot peg attaches was cracked. With a damaged bike and my confidence down that drain, I’d barely made it home.

Everybody had told me then to get back on. Everyone drops their bike at least once, so they said. I should have. But the oncoming winter weather made it impractical for a total novice like me to go out, and anyway I had to replace those broken parts. For the next seven months, my immature riding skills went unexercised—but not my imagination. I fantasized about a road trip where I’d be confident and balanced in the saddle. I longed for some measure of mastery, a sense of knowing what to do and when to do it. At the same time, I recalled all the sensations of that accident—the bike falling, the weight of it tipping in a direction I couldn’t possibly catch, and the confusion in the instant when I didn’t know what to do.

So, on that May morning of sun and birds and peace, it was time for me to face my fears and hesitation. Bob planned a ride into Pennsylvania and back, out Route 46 across the Delaware River, down to Easton, and back across Route 22. Very likely we’d come through the intersection where my spill had taken place the previous autumn. We got up early, and I readied myself to go. Bob went over my bike checking the oil, adjusting the rear brake pedal. During the wait, my body moved into an anxious state of alert very much like when I’m waiting to board a jet for a flight across the country. Uncertainty began to set in. I wondered why I was doing this and what would happen this time. I wanted to get through the anxiousness and just get on with the ride. Finally, he was finished, and I was over-revved.    He pushed the bike out to the driveway. I straddled it and said, “I am really unsure of this.” He told me to ride up and down the street a few times to get the feel of it. He said I didn’t have to go on a long ride my first time out. Good, I thought.

Our house was in a hilly part of New Jersey with a driveway that headed uphill to the street. I wished for some flat, open ground like the parking lot where I had taken lessons the previous summer. With lots of jerking and jolting, I made it to the end of the cul-de-sac and back. Then down to the corner, right on Drakestown Road, and a few tenuous miles out. I was glad I hadn’t forgotten how to shift through the gears. My clutch hand was stronger since I’d used a hand exerciser over the winter.

It was the slow maneuvering that still scared me—doing a slow turnaround or a stop on an uphill grade where I’d need to brake and clutch, then accelerate simultaneously. It was clear to me that morning that I just didn’t know what I was doing. I got panicky and fumbled to a stop. Eventually, I made it back down the driveway where my infinitely patient husband coached me through jockeying my bike around so I was facing the road again. My enthusiasm for the open highway had stalled somewhere down the block.

“You go,” I told him. “I’ll cruise around the neighborhood—within walking distance of home.” He had never been the kind of father who would force a resistant child into a new situation against their will. He would never throw a kid into the deep end of the pool or even insist on getting into the water at all, if that child didn’t want to. With me, he was being equally patient.

“If you don’t want to do this, Annie, don’t do it. But if you want to learn to ride, you’ve just gotta get on and go. Over and over again.” He encouraged me and gave me a lot of space. I appreciated that. I trust him, and I ultimately trust the Universe, the very process of life. At least, intellectually I do. Physically and emotionally, however, my body was telling me to take a break. I put the kickstand down, listened for its grating sound on the asphalt, tested its position, and got off. Bob kissed me and roared away.

I sat alone on the deck with my back to the sun monitoring those queasy body sensations.  Birdsong filled the air, and crickets chirped in the middle of the day. A helicopter hovered, a jet zoomed west, a wood chipper buzzed in the distance. Life vibrated all around me, and I wondered how any of us ever have the courage to get up each day and put one foot forward. That is, given the uncertainty of what might happen next and the odds that whatever happens, it could be bad. Not to mention the inevitability of death. I was steeped in my own fear, suddenly overcome with compassion for the human predicament, for every frightened person on the planet. My heart was pierced.

And I wanted a drink. If I had been on that jet overhead, I’d have one in hand, but I didn’t really want to impair myself so early in the day in case my anxiety abated and the impulse to go back out on my bike arose. I wanted to eat, but the tension in my body would have made me vomit. I wanted to talk to somebody, turn on the T.V., divert myself somehow.

Instead, I followed Pema’s advice: Lean into the discomfort and the fear. Be with it and let it go. Watch the out breath. Notice thinking. Did I really want to ride a motorcycle? Yes. Was I being totally honest about this? The challenge was so great, it was making me sick. I searched for a reason greater than the anxiety.  Why would a woman over fifty with no transportation problems and no previous need for extra thrills in her life take this on? Wander as it will, my mind scrambled for a reasonable place to park.

In 1998, my husband fulfilled his midlife dream to own a Harley Davidson motorcycle. Our children were grown, and our finances were such that he could indulge himself a bit. He ordered a Harley and waited to take delivery of his dream bike. I was still not exactly enthused about motorcycling, but when his Dyna arrived, I occasionally rode with him on short jaunts, mainly to spend time together. I have to admit that what first appealed to me about riding was how other people reacted to us. Stopped at a traffic light, car drivers would glance over at the bike and then at me. Children would smash their faces up against the window to get a good look. It was very gratifying to be noticed. I liked that.

Gradually, I began to relax a little and get into the ride, the feel of the road and wind, the lean of the bike. I trusted Bob’s skills totally. Still, I wondered how it might feel to be in control. One day I casually asked him if he thought I could learn to ride solo.

“Sure, why not? You should take some lessons.” I didn’t expect him to be so enthusiastic.  I figured, given my notable lack of physical prowess and basic disinterest in speedy thrills, he would dismiss the idea entirely. But he was wide open. “Go for it,” he said calmly. Thus, the seed of desire was planted in my quirky menopausal mind.

It was late December of 1999 when I telephoned the Garden State Motorcycle Safety School to learn that their course was booked for months in advance. The earliest session I could get into would be in June of 2000. I registered and settled into a long wait. In anticipation of actually doing the deed, I began to talk it up with my friends and family, wanting to convince myself along with everyone else that I was capable of learning an arduous new skill at my age. It became a conversation topic, a novel idea. Some low-keyed excitement set in.

I happened to be in Southern California that February for my aunt’s ninetieth birthday party. As I sat next to Clint, a distant relative, I mentioned to him that I was going to learn how to ride a motorcycle in order to spend more fun time with my husband. I said that Bob had a Harley and that my son Brodie was at Motorcycle Mechanics Institute earning his certification as a Harley Davidson mechanic. So, with Bob’s enthusiasm spilling over, it looked like we were joining the Harley subculture—the contemporary one populated by lawyers and accountants and CEOs, and sometimes housewives.

Clint’s eyes lit up. “I have a bike sitting in my garage, haven’t ridden it for a while. I’ll sell it to you for four grand.” I’m not so sure about fate, but I do notice that serendipity abounds. Suddenly, my eyes lit up. I flew home to Jersey and told Bob about this bike—a ‘95 Sportster with about 6,000 miles on it. Sounded good to me, but the only thing I knew about motorcycles was where to put my feet on the pegs and how to lean into turns, braced solidly behind my husband’s body.  Serendipitously, Brodie was due to graduate from MMI in Phoenix and drive back to Northern California any day. We had him stop in Ojai to check out this motorcycle—and the next thing I knew was that I owned a Harley, sight unseen and without a clue how to ride it.

June arrived. I went into the weekend of motorcycle lessons with a positive attitude. Friday evening was spent in a classroom lecture, if you can call it that. It was three hours of cramming rules and admonitions into my head, all delivered by a lanky fellow who seemed to struggle against lapsing into foul epithets to emphasize his point, which boiled down to the cold fact that motorcycling is a dangerous sport, and the only way to hedge your bets—to keep yourself from going down hard at the hands of your own or someone else’s natural stupidity—is to religiously follow his advice: Memorize the safety rules and never deviate from them. Always assume that every other driver on the road cannot see you; and even if they can, assume that they see your motorcycle as a toy, not a real vehicle that commands normal rights to the road and the same considerations as every other vehicle out there. I got the message loud and clear. And then I passed the written test with a perfect score.

The next morning I reported to the practice parking lot Rutgers University at 6:30. It was an overcast, dreary day—but my spirits were gungho, anxious to be tested more, this time in a very physical way. I have never been an athlete, never perfected a swing, never pushed my own limits—that is, if I don’t count giving birth to five babies. Even as a novice at meditation, I have not been through the rigors of sitting for long hours at a time. Perhaps my naiveté precluded any worrisome doubts that a more physically adept woman might have foreseen.

The day was sheer torture. We started out easy. We each picked motorcycles from a line of choices and began from ground zero—learning how to turn the motor on, then straddle-walking the bike around in neutral, pushing each other to get the feel of our feet off the ground, letting go of the clutch in first gear to sense the point of engagement—all easy skill-building stuff. Then we began a series of exercises that got increasingly difficult, and we practiced them for the next six hours.

By 1:00 my thighs were screaming with pain and exhaustion. I’d become tense and clumsy, which only fueled my nervousness and impeded my ability to do the exercises. The instructors—four of them guiding twenty-four of us—were thorough and patient, even when yelling above the din of twenty-four motorcycle engines. They were great. But I was wracked with doubt that I would ever be able to complete the class. When we finally broke for lunch at 1:30, I hobbled back to the classroom and fell into a desk.

By then one of the seven women had quit, storming off the range with a few choice words of discouragement. I gave myself a little credit for not having done that, but still wasn’t sure I could make it to the end. After a few more hours of desk-sitting and cramming, I amazed myself by getting 100% on the written test again. Wow, I thought. Maybe I can return the next day and carry on.

Back up on Sunday at 4:45 so that I could be out on the range early to practice before 7:00. The morning was tough. I could not relax on the course or control my bike with any accuracy. Suddenly, making a very slow left turn, I dumped it. I wanted to cry right there on the pavement. It was obvious to me that, although I’d aced the written tests, I would never really be able to do this. The instructors rushed to pick up the bike and reassure me—so I got back on and fumbled my way through another hour of torture. I finally calmed down enough to actually do the exercises—sharp turns, rolling turns, stopping with each brake under various circumstances, swerving around plastic cones—all done without leaving second gear.

It was rather like meditation in motion—watching myself struggle to maintain control of my body as my mind ranted out of control with rationalizations about why I should just get the hell out of there. Self-doubt raged inside my head, but occasionally I managed to stop it. And notice that I wasn’t really suffering. I could just be there, even if I never managed to operate a motorcycle on the road. Every little escape plan that my mind came up with—I let it go and hung in, literally from second to second.

Then things got worse. It started to drizzle. We kept riding. It rained harder, so we stopped to put on our rain gear. It rained even harder, and we all huddled under a canopy for an hour.  I was convinced that I should leave because, not only was I going to fail miserably in the end, but also I was soaking wet. I took off my saturated gloves to find that my skin was also saturated. My wrinkled fingers didn’t even dry out while I sat in my car to eat lunch. We had been straddling wet seats, splashing through puddles—it was ludicrous. The only time the instructors had let us dive under the canopy was when the rain was coming down so hard that we couldn’t see to maneuver.

I was just waiting for someone else to be the first to say, “Screw this!” so I wouldn’t humiliate myself. No one did. So I stayed, went through the motions, and I watched my mind go crazy when we had to stand around under cover. All the while, I noticed how these twenty-two others were also hanging in. It was a diverse group of people, none of whom I would have granted the qualities of persistence and commitment to get through something like this. It was subtly inspiring to witness. Everyone was miserable and wanted to leave—and nobody did.

And then the rain stopped. We finished the exercises and faced the skills test, one by one. I passed the test with the lowest score possible! Stunned, amazed, elated—and in no way feeling competent—I had completed the course and passed! Out of twenty-three people who had finished the course, nineteen of us passed. Four of us were women. Almost dry at last, we all stood around congratulating ourselves as if we’d just graduated from boot camp.

I had no opportunity to hone those tenuous skills in the ensuing two-month wait for my bike to be shipped east. When it finally arrived in August, I was a bit overwhelmed with its size and sound and horsepower. This was nothing like the little sport bike I had ridden around a parking lot at Rutgers. Straddling my 883 Sportster, I could just touch the ground with my booted toes. Walking it around produced bruises on my shins where they banged into the foot pegs. I felt top-heavy and totally inadequate to handle this beast.

Bob coached me through short jaunts to the end of the cul-de-sac and back, where I would confront uphill acceleration and turning in a circle. I needed his support and wanted him to be there if I crashed—but at the same time, I wanted to be alone. My self-consciousness and hesitance were more than prohibitive. Still, I forced myself to just get on the thing and practice—carefully, nervously. I started to believe Bob when he said I’d get more comfortable with experience.

Then the day came when I was backing my bike into the garage after a successful solo run into town, feeling really proud of my growing mastery. And as Bob’s car pulled up, I put the kickstand down and swung my leg off—and promptly got slammed to the concrete floor by five hundred pounds of falling metal. The kickstand had not engaged and had popped itself back up. Hurt and embarrassed, I hobbled into the house while Bob picked up the bike, its clutch lever snapped off like the end of a pencil. I was more upset about the damaged I’d caused to my Sportster than I was with my own pain.

That, and the second spill at the intersection in Long Valley, had incapacitated my motorcycle. We garaged it for the winter. In addition to replacing broken parts, we ordered Hugger shocks and new handlebars to bring my center of gravity down and make it easier for me to manage. These improvements really worked. Testing it out by moving it around inside the garage, I could put my boots flat on the ground. Moving the bike in neutral was easier—no more banged up shins. I spent the next six months imagining myself on the open highway. I dreamed of road trips and satisfaction. My hopes and confidence began to emerge once again.

So it was a disappointment that fine day in May to find myself in such a state of high anxiety about riding. Examining my trepidation, I noticed that the prospect of getting physically hurt—or worse, the possibility of crashing and sustaining severe injury—all these worrisome thoughts were background noise to my real dread. And that was, simply my overriding fear of failure—that I might in fact be too old and uncoordinated to master riding a motorcycle, that I might be seen by others as a ridiculous middle-aged woman. These were more prominent concerns than my own physical safety.

With this revelation, I did get out on my own the next day on a six-mile run to a coffee bar in Chester. The following weekend Bob and I did that eighty-mile course along the Delaware and back. More short trips—to the hardware store, to the gynecologist’s office—and soon getting on the bike felt casual, almost normal. Gradually, my pre-ride anxiousness just dissipated, and in its place came the budding satisfaction that I was indeed out there riding a motorcycle.

That June, we joined a few hundred riders on a fundraiser for the Make a Wish Foundation. Bikers are notorious charity riders—any excuse to be on the road brings them out in numbers. Riding en masse with police escorts at intersections was an impressive sight. The run took us through fifty miles of rolling back roads. It was a bit tricky for me to keep up with the pack. Again, I felt self-conscious about doing well amidst all these seasoned bikers. I wondered if I would ever stop comparing myself to everyone else on the road.

By early August, my tendency to yearn for home in the middle of every ride had also dissipated. I think it was a matter of getting stronger and building physical stamina that allowed me to stay focused for longer stretches of highway. I was finally feeling competent enough to enjoy myself, even though my body might suddenly forget how to lean into a left curve, or sitting still on an incline, I’d need to mentally monitor where each foot and hand was positioned so as to coordinate a smooth take off. More than once I stalled at an intersection with a line of cars behind me. More than once I slowed down onto the shoulder to let drivers zoom past me, and I even waved one tailgater to back-the-hell off.

Most surprising was that I began to take command of the road. That’s key to being seen and respected by other drivers, so my instructors had told us. In addition to constantly anticipating what another might do—like pulling into your lane unannounced or turning in front of you—you have to choose your piece of the pavement and make yourself visible on it. You can’t be a wimp on a Harley. It doesn’t fit the image, and more importantly it doesn’t keep you safe.

With this growing sense of mastery, I registered myself into an all-women’s Ride-In that was to converge in the Hudson Valley. The hundred-twenty-five mile ride to Kingston would be my farthest distance from home yet. Bob and I headed out on a sunny Friday afternoon—his plan being to return the next day and leave me there, on my own with this group of women. I was excited to meet some other women riders who might share their expertise and further my training.

We traveled north on Route 206, slowing down for end-of-the-week traffic in all the little towns along the way. We had almost reached the state line when an unexpected thunderstorm rolled in and dumped on us. There was no place to take cover but an abandoned vegetable stand. We stopped, thinking that such a fast moving storm would quickly blow through. After forty-five minutes, it lightened up enough for us to get back on our bikes and make it a few miles farther to a lone diner where we caught the weather report on T.V. This front was stretched all across the state of New York and didn’t promise to end soon.

Anxious as I was to experience the Ride-In and hang with some new friends for the weekend, we decided to turn back. It was drizzling, we were already as wet as we could be, and in the south the sun was breaking through the clouds here and there. So, we took off for home. It occurred to me that I’d been fortunate to have ridden in wet weather before, on that practice range at Motorcycle Safety School. At least I knew that the bike would still function wet—if I could only keep it on the road. We pushed on.

Then things got worse. The storm suddenly changed direction, too, and the sky darkened ominously. We were riding right into the thunder and lightning, and the rain pounded us even harder than before. I might have been frightened if I wasn’t concentrating so hard to maintain a safe, steady speed amidst all this thrashing water and Friday evening traffic. It was slow going, and we missed one turn and got temporarily lost—a common occurrence in New Jersey even in good weather. My boots and gloves were soon soaked through, and I struggled to keep my face shield clear. What should have been an hour-long ride turned into two. I was getting cold and really wanted to pull over. I wanted to be rescued. I wanted to be dry and warm. I wanted my daddy.

Instead I had Bob behind me, encouraging me at every stoplight where he’d pull up beside me and tell me how great I was doing. I think he even used the word “awesome.” Amazingly, about three miles from home the rain disappeared. We rode into the sunshine on dry pavement, which in contrast to the last grueling forty miles seemed like easy street. I was saturated and exhausted. Though disappointed to have canceled the trip to Kingston, I felt as though I had passed a crucial test. My husband agreed. He said that if I could make it through that storm, I could ride through anything. I had graduated.

In September we set out once again to reach Upstate New York. This time the weather cooperated—in fact, it was perfect. We crisscrossed the Catskills, spending the nights with family and friends in Kingston and Cooperstown. The five hundred miles we covered took us through such remote natural beauty that, again, my heart was pierced.

I’ve discovered what it takes to sit in motion. The very act of handling a motorcycle—watching for every aspect of the road, the weather, and other drivers—all of this happening at any speed requires a presence of mind, an alert awareness that most of my daily activities lack. It is a dangerous sport, one in which the necessity for acute attention to each moment is also the element that produces such exhilaration. “Be here now,”’ as Ram Dass extolled, takes on dramatic new meaning when you’re perched atop a Screaming Eagle, powering your way along the irregular surface of the earth. Motorcycles are sometimes called “crotch rockets.” I consider mine to be a speeding zafu.

I’ve begun to realize that every time I take to the road, I put myself in direct contact with the immediate landscape. That landscape includes all the towns and houses full of people, and farms with cows lolling in fields, deer leaping across the highway. It becomes so vital, so real that I ache with gratitude. I’m filled with the satisfaction of being alive, melancholy as it is, since I know I can’t cling to the moment or make it last. I am grateful for the temporary privilege of inhabiting a body that can straddle a bike and make it go someplace. Anyplace.

The road as a metaphor for life could be done to death. Indeed, the potential for actual death, or at least painful mishap while out on it, is no mere cliché. For me, it’s become poignantly so. Riding my motorcycle forces the present tense into all my senses, and every cell in my body gets Pema’s point: there is no place to go. There is only being present to all the fear and uncertainty and discomfort, as well as all the joy that ensues. Although I learned to ride so that I could spend time with my husband, riding has turned out to be a compelling encounter with myself, one that I am committed to for its own sake.

So, I will continue to ride to watch my own life as it rolls out in front of me. I will ride just to witness the unbearable glory of hills and trees. I will ride to make eye contact with those children in cars, staring back at me in awe and wonder. I will ride until I can no longer get a leg over or grip a clutch. And then, grateful, I will come home to the heart of the matter—which has been my destination all along.