Getting the Bug Tried to amend my carnivorous habits...

Since 1993, my wife Patti and I have been living in the town of Sterling, Virginia, which is about 15 miles up the Potomac River from Washington, DC. It's pretty difficult to live here and not pass by the Loudoun Campus of Northern Virginia Community College on an average weekend when they're teaching the Motorcycle Safety Foundation's Riding and Street Skills course. We'd been seeing people riding around in circles for several years, and I always thought it would be fun to at least take the course just to find out what riding a motorcycle was like.

A second (better) excuse to do so came about in 1994 when I wanted to try skydiving with Patti's brother Mike. Patti very politely told me that I could go if I wanted to, but I'd have to bring a pen to sign the divorce papers that would be waiting at the bottom. Wanting to keep my marriage (which wasn't quite a year old then) intact, I settled for a ride up in the plane. That afternoon I did manage to extract a promise from Patti that she'd let me do something adventurous but not as dangerous as jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. At the time, I selected motorcycling, mostly because I thought it would make a good placeholder.

For most of my life, I've had more or less the typical outsider's view of motorcycling, tempered by the knowledge that not everyone who did it could have been cast in Hell's Angels on Wheels. Some of the people I knew from my other hobbies were bikers who otherwise seemed like normal people, so I figured it couldn't be all bad. There was still a lot I didn't understand about the sport, and to some degree I thought you had to be completely off your nut to get on one at all, much less in Washington, D.C. traffic. (I may have been right on that last point, but I still ride around here anyway.)

After going to work for UUNET in 1995, I started to notice bikes parked in the garage, and sometime in 1996 I did some poking around and found out who the local bikers were and who to ask for information. One, co-worker Cat Stanton, made the great point that if you like riding in a convertible, you've experienced about a quarter of what it's like on a motorcycle. Being the owner of a convertible which I thoroughly enjoyed (and still do), I could relate. But somehow the time just wasn't right, and my interest waned.

Two more years went by, and in May of 1998, two other co-workers, Rusty Snyder and Don Callis, got interested themselves and started making lunchtime trips to Coleman PowerSport, a local dealer. I was maybe 10% interested in motorcycling, but since the people in my group always travel in a pack where there's lunch involved, I went along. Don had a bunch of miles under his belt from years ago, and Rusty had taken Riding and Street Skills three years before. Both ended up taking custody of brand spanking new Vulcan Nomad cruisers, one red (Don's) and one green (Rusty's). For whatever reason, having a seat on those bikes (and a few more trips to the local dealers) landed the bug on me like a ton of bricks. (June, 1999: Both Nomads are now history. Don traded his in on a Yamaha Venture and Rusty's was replaced with a ZX-9R. October, 1999: Don sold his Venture and is now riding a BMW K1200LT.)

Since Patti and I had been kicking the idea of taking the MSF class around and Rusty wanted a refresher, we roped our cohort Jeff Threatt into coming along with us, called the college and signed up for the first class we'd all fit into. Unfortunately, it wasn't until August 31. We had a long wait ahead of us.