September, 1989—“Who goes to a wedding and buys a motorcycle?” Ernie asks at the back of a small Harley dealer in upstate New York. We were on our way to a wedding near Buffalo.
“Yeah, but isn’t it beautiful! I never saw a bike that color.”
“How would we get it home? It’s kind of pricey.”
For me it was love at first sight. Ernie, more deliberate and practical, needed more time.
“It’s the prettiest bike I’ve ever seen.” And it was—a rust-colored 1981 Harley with a brown leather seat and custom white fiberglass saddlebags and luggage rack with pin-striping. A beauty, indeed.
We had stopped for a bite to eat in the tiny one-horse town of Varysburg. After lunch we thought we’d stretch our legs a bit before we continued our drive.
There was a Harley Davidson dealer up the block and not much else. We decided to take a look. We owned a smaller motorcycle—a Yamaha 650. We weren’t really in the market for a new bike, but it’s always fun to look at other motorcycles, especially for Ernie.
Me, I had hoped for an antique shop or two. It was a small dealership, and because it was at the V-shaped intersection of Routes 98 and 20A, the front of the place was narrow and it widened at the back.
Ernie lingered at the front of the store, chatting with the owner. I ventured to the back of the shop where they had some used bikes, and there it was: OUR Harley.
“Ernie, come here. Look at this.”
Our Yamaha had taken us on short rides near our house, but it was much smaller and less powerful than a Harley, and it certainly wasn’t as comfortable as this bike. I began to envision places this machine could take us. I had always imagined that in a different time and place, I would have been an explorer. I loved going to new places, discovering small towns and back roads—taking the scenic route through life.
We had married young—just out of high school—and had two sons by the time we were twenty-two. Our sons were twenty-seven and twenty-four and pretty much on their own. We had built our life around family, but now it was our time. I was ready to make up for missed years of being young and free. The open road and a Harley seemed a good place to start.
On our way home after the wedding, I said to Ernie, “I think that Harley has your name on it.” Back home, I just couldn’t get that Harley out of my mind. Things I’ve heard about Harleys began to play through my head at odd times during the day: Live to Ride; Ride to Live; The Road Starts Here, It Never Ends. I wanted it to never end: our love story, our sharing things we enjoyed, having fun together.
Live free and ride a Harley.
Ernie, too, was haunted by thoughts of the bike. He did some research. He called the dealer and asked a number of questions about it. A deal was struck. Now, how would we get the bike home?
“Well, I could drive you up there, drive the car back, and you could ride the bike,” I said.
“I don’t have plates or insurance. Besides, I don’t want my first ride to be a five-hour trip. I want to get used to it first.”
So, he arranged to take a good-sized van home from work the following Friday. His co-workers could take the seats out in order to fit the motorcycle in the Van. He called the dealer and told him he would come on Saturday to pick up the bike.
As the week wore on, we began to hear about the threat of a hurricane. Ernie decided to go anyway. He left after work on Friday, hoping to beat the storm. He brought his sleeping bag so he could stop overnight when he got tired without the bother of having to look for a motel.
As I waited at home, I looked out the window to see the rain coming down and the wind whipping the big old trees in the front of the house. These were the days before cell phones, so I had no idea what was happening with Ernie. I was glued to the TV and saw the storm continue to worsen. Hurricane Hugo made landfall near Charleston, South Carolina, around midnight on September 22, 1989, as a Category 4 hurricane, with winds up to 140 mph; I was still awake wondering where he was and if he was okay.
When I woke the next morning, the storm had passed, but I still worried about how Ernie was. Finally, the phone rang. I ran to get it, “Ernie?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay? Did you get it?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home. I should be there in about two or three hours.”
“Okay, Hon. Be careful.”
To keep myself busy till he got home, I started to make some chicken cutlets. The kids came home and were hungry, so that kept me busy. It was getting dark, but still no sign of him. I was hoping Ernie would get home before the kids went out for the evening. Finally, I saw the headlights turn into our driveway.
He was home.
I wanted to hear everything. Immediately. But he was hungry and tired. Ugh. I hate waiting. I knew the routine, he would go to the bathroom, wash up, have something to eat. But no, he asked the kids to help him put the motorcycle in the garage. They went out and surveyed the situation. Ernie turned the van around,
facing the garage, and got two long planks of wood to create a ramp. He unhooked the tie downs anchoring the bike, and slowly and carefully led the bike down the ramp. I stood on the side, feeling like I should be doing something. All of a sudden, the bike veered off the ramp and the three of them struggled to right the heavy
machine. I darted ahead to help. For just a moment before they got it back on track, I felt the weight. It startled me, the heft of it.
I was so caught up in the effort to unload the bike that I hardly looked at it much until they had it off the ramp.
Wow. Wow!
Later, Ernie and I sat at the table in the kitchen. There was a bottle of wine someone had given us a while back that we were saving for a special occasion. He uncorked it and poured; we clinked glasses. “To us and the road ahead,” I said.
While eating the chicken cutlets, he told me about his adventure. “Lynn, you wouldn’t believe how the wind was rocking the van. There was a while there when I thought the van would blow over, it was shaking so hard. I was so tired, though, that I fell asleep pretty quick. When I woke up in the morning, it was totally calm.”
“What time did you get up?”
“It was pretty early. Too early to go to the Harley place, so I went for breakfast in that little cafe where we ate lunch.”
“So, what happened when you went over to the dealer? Did the bike look as good as we remembered?”
“Yeah, but when I looked it over, I saw that the rear tire was pretty worn. I tried to get him to throw in a new one. He said he would replace it and give me a break on the price. I said okay, but I wasn’t happy. Then I took it for a test drive. It handles pretty nice.”
“Do you want another glass of wine?”
“No, I just want to sleep in my own bed.”
“Well, tell me more before you do.”
“We had trouble getting the bike in the van. We realized after the first try that it wasn’t going to fit with the windshield on. So, we had to back it out, remove the windshield and try again. Even then it barely fit. We strapped it down real good.”
“You look tired.”
“It was a long day. I’m gonna take a shower and head to bed. See you in the morning, Hon.”
“Good night, Babe.”
Ernie took the bike out a few times by himself. While he as at work, once in a while I would go into the garage and look it, anticipating our first ride together.
Finally, the day came and Ernie wheeled the bike out of the garage and onto the driveway. The air was crisp with fall. I put my helmet on and my leather gloves, then tried to get on the bike.
The Yamaha was smaller and easy to get on; the Harley was so big I had to swing my leg up and around and hop on. Definitely different. Off we went.
The roar of the engine—the distinctive sound of a Harley—broke the stillness of the afternoon.
One of our favorite rides with the Yamaha was Seven Lakes Drive, just south of Bear Mountain. Its endlessly winding roads are a delight on a motorcycle.
The passenger has to lean into a turn when the road curves. I always loved this on the Yamaha; I would lean left and right, in rhythm with Ernie, the bike and the road.
The Harley was different, it didn’t lean as easily and it felt stiffer, almost like it would fall over if I leaned in. It took a while to get the hang of it. As we turned a corner, the raw red and orange of one tree amidst others clad in green popped out at me, and I felt my body begin to relax. It was a much smoother ride than the Yamaha, better for longer excursions.
Those early years, with both kids grown and on their own, we rode free, the wind in our faces. Without the intrusion of car doors and windows, there was no separation between us and the world. Every tree and building was sharply delineated against the blue sky.
We moved in and out of the shade of trees—cool, warm, cool, warm. Everything had an added intensity. The smells, temperature changes, sounds were heightened.
All of a sudden, roads I had been down numerous times before morphed into unknown territory. Details, unnoticed before, emerged like props on a stage set.
There are few moments in adulthood where we can recapture the sense of freedom and joy we had as children—the joy I felt rolling down a hill at the Resey or riding my bicycle down Kimball Avenue or my sleigh down Coutant hill. Moments of exhilaration I was able to recapture on the back of the motorcycle. Older now, the years slipped away and we were young again, the wind whipping past, the road winding ahead of us.
When riding, distractions and problems faded away and I was in the zone, a moving meditation. The world and its problems disappeared; it was a true escape. On the bike, I allowed the intensity, the exhilaration, of the experience inhabit the moment.
At first, we rode fairly close to home—Bear Mountain, Cold Spring, West Point, Storm King. We would stop for lunch, explore antique shops and quaint little towns, go for ice cream. Always an adventure. Then we traveled farther afield, going to Woodstock and Big Indian and byways throughout Connecticut, and into
the Berkshires, once venturing up to Laconia, New Hampshire, and once to Lake George.
We went to a few motorcycle events, ones where there were bikes parked as far as the eye could see, hundreds. There were men and women in leathers, with tattoos and chains, all ages. Others looked like they were Monday-to-Friday executives, living out a parallel life on the weekends. Most were very nice, but some looked positively scary.
I remember one tough-looking guy, talking to his friends, saying he had to head home. He had promised to iron his wife’s dress for a wedding.
One very memorable event we went to was Rolling Thunder in New York City. It had started in 1988 as a demonstration to show support for Vietnam Veterans.
The year we did it, we began the run in Rockland County, and were joined along the way by other groups of riders. Riding through some narrow streets, our thunder set off numerous car alarms. We gained in numbers till we converged from north, south, east and west in Liberty Park. With our toll paid ahead of time, we continued with a police escort through the Holland Tunnel and down the West Side Highway, which were closed to other vehicular traffic. It is hard to describe the cacophony of hundreds of motorcycles reverberating off the sides of the tunnel. The destination was Battery Park for a Vietnam Veterans memorial service. There are a handful of times when my heart has swelled with patriotism. This was one of them.
It was 1976 and the 100th birthday of the Statue of Liberty. Ernie and I had been watching TV coverage of the event, which was supposed to include a spectacular fireworks display by Grucci. Ernie turned to me and said, “This is crazy, people are coming from all over the United States to see this and we’re here watching it on TV. It’s a beautiful evening, let’s go.”
“You’re crazy! You know what the traffic is going to be like?”
“We’ll take the motorcycle and go down along the Hudson and see how close we can get.”
Well, we did. We wended our way down, squeezing between and around cars like all those other crazy motorcyclists do, until we found ourselves not far from Liberty Park, where you have a view across the Hudson to the Statue of Liberty. As we got closer Ernie didn’t want to drive much farther because the traffic was getting heavy and he was afraid the bike might not be too safe in the park itself. He found a place to park, and we joined the rest of those who were walking.
As the night sky lit up against the backdrop of Lady Liberty with her arm raised high, we were dazzled by the breathtaking display with the Manhattan skyline in the background. No other fireworks could ever live up
to those we saw that night in Liberty Park.
In 1995, life took us to Rochester Hills, Michigan. The Harley came along with us. The roads there were straighter and level. Some of our favorite rides were Lexington, a charming little harbor village right on the shore of Lake Huron; Port Huron and across the Blue Water Bridge, so named for the tropical color of the
waters of Lake Huron, and into Canada and along the shoreline; taking a small ferry from Marine City across the St. Clair River to Canada and tooling around.
The Harley came with us when we moved back to New York in 2006. There we enjoyed a few short rides on the East End of Long Island—to Westhampton, Montauk and Sag Harbor. But times had changed and so had we. Drivers were crazier. Traffic was heavier, especially during tourist season. And we were older. We finally faced reality and sold the bike in 2018.
We rode that bike with the wind at our backs for 29 years and 20,000 miles—far and wide. We rode free. It was love at first sight, and parting was sweet sorrow. But it was time.
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