My then-inamorata had her younger brother visit thirty years ago
…and he rode from Buffalo NY to Oakland CA on a motorcycle he’d owned only a few months. He reached his destination emotionally and physically shaken, parked the beast behind her apartment and flew back after a fortnight, leaving her instructions to sell the thing.
Contrariwise, the late V bought a motorcycle in 1980, spent three weeks learning to ride the thing, and shipped it to Europe, where she spent a couple of months tooling around on it. She described her terror tooling along a narrow coastal highway in Yugoslavia, in the rain, with lots of big heavy trucks on the road. She prayed, she told me, for the first time since childhood. Me: “In English, or in Russian?” V (almost indignantly): “In Russian, of course.” But although she eventually unoaded the motorcycle, she had no regrets.
cordially,
Contrariwise, the late V bought a motorcycle in 1980, spent three weeks learning to ride the thing, and shipped it to Europe, where she spent a couple of months tooling around on it. She described her terror tooling along a narrow coastal highway in Yugoslavia, in the rain, with lots of big heavy trucks on the road. She prayed, she told me, for the first time since childhood. Me: “In English, or in Russian?” V (almost indignantly): “In Russian, of course.” But although she eventually unoaded the motorcycle, she had no regrets.
cordially,
