I'm writing this in early October, and the weather has been gorgeous.  There's not too many days left where the weather will be decent enough to ride, so you gotta make hay while the sun shines, figuratively and literally speaking, if making hay means getting out there and chewing up some miles. I'd been planning all day to make some hay and when I got home from work, I fed the cat, then went out and made some really excellent hay. In fact, the ride was so good I ended up doing it twice.

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I'm a blessed guy in that I am fortunate enough to own two big comfy cruisers. I certainly do *not* need two, but I like having two. If you're a regular reader, you know one of them as Sheba, Our Lady of Serenity, who is a 2000 Honda Goldwing in a simply luscious shade of red. The other is Blue Lady, who is a 2008 Harley Electraglide Ultra in a gorgeous shade known as Suede Blue. The color is really what finally tipped over the seesaw when I was trying to decide if buying it was a good idea. It turned out to be a good idea indeed.

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I went out on the Goldwing this evening at my favorite time to ride, which has always been as the sun is just starting to color the western sky. Typically I will ride until the backlights on the gauges start to become visible, and then I will turn and languidly make my meandering way homeward. This evening's ride was every bit of enjoyable, though it bums me out when the party is over at 6:30. Oh well. It's that time of year. I'm still grateful that the weather is this gorgeous, so no complaints from me.

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I was sitting in my office getting ready to crack open a beer after getting home and folding some laundry. I was officially done for the night. I had just pulled up a video on YouTube and was settling in when I heard it through the open window. Someone's motorcycle out there in the night, bellowing its song into the ether as the guy lays into it and canes it all the way into fourth gear.

There's a strange, evocative pull to the sound of someone else's bike, especially when it's heard from far away on a warm evening. It always makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and I always think the same thing when I hear it: Man, I wish I was that guy.

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It only works when it's a Harley doing it, though. I somewhat resent the crotch-rocket guys, the guys who are splitting lanes and doing wheelies and other such flapdoodle when regular folks are just trying to get home from work. So when I hear some punk kid's Yamaha R6 bang off the rev limiter at 14,000 RPM when all I'm trying to do is relax, I get a little huffy. Also, much as I love the Goldwing, it isn't capable of making any noises that sound like anything other than the ripping of silk. The Goldwing is a stealth machine. It's a spy. It's a two-wheeled Mata Hari in an evening dress, and it can dance a pavane as easily and noiselessly as it can steal your documents.

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A Harley, though: that's different. Harley-Davidsons make primal sounds, noises that satisfy the reptilian brain hiding underneath everyone's highly-developed cerebral cortex. It's like what a steak might sound like. Maybe a really good pork chop. It's a sound that pleases your inner child, like the crack of a baseball bat when some guy boots it out over the left field wall. It's like AC/DC's "Back in Black." It just sounds...right, especially coming in through the window at just shy of eight o'clock on an unseasonably warm October night when a half-moon is riding low and easy in a hazy autumn sky.

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Whenever I hear that, I think it. Man, I wish I was that guy.

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Even as the hairs on the back of my neck began to go back down, a smaller voice, one that is usually full of solid reason, told me that, if I'm going to do it, it has to be tonight.  It has to be now. It will be too cold to ride at night next week, and it will stay too cold for a long time.

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A Harley doesn't start so much as awaken. You turn on the ignition, the fuel pumps whir, and when you hit the starter, it lights off like an event. Crank-pow. It's running and making sure the whole world knows it. It rattles and shakes and quivers. It's anxious. It want to go somewhere, anywhere, and it wants to go there NOW.

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Motorcycles will never cease to delight and amaze me. Sure, they're just machines, that operate under the dictates of physics. But I can think of no other instance where the outcome is greater that the sum of the parts. Bikes are creatures of spirit, of want, of lust. They lean on their kickstands like James Dean; they dive into corners and curves like a fighter plane; they waft down the highway carrying the lucky pilot like a potentate on a litter borne by underlings. They're both poetry and impressionist art put in motion, and they even have their own soundtrack. I know that, for as long as I am able, I will never tire of jumping on and riding off somewhere.

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Tonight, "somewhere" means out west. Now *I'm* the guy other people are hearing through *their* windows, and I want them to know it. I want to get on Route 126 and head thataway, and if you know 126 out of Plainfield, you know that the only "thataway" 126 is capable of giving you is towards Yorkville.

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Getting out of town and out into the sticks, the Harley does what it does best--haul hiney. Sure, it's a rattly mess while you're waiting for the light to turn green, but when you're doing 70 it's as smooth as a hot ball bearing. I don't even need music playing; tonight I'm letting the engine do the talking. It makes a sound that is familiar and comfortable, churning away beneath you at a lopey 2000 RPM in 6th gear. It's a sound as welcoming as listening to your grandparents having a conversation in the next room. Sure, you can't really understand what they're saying, but the cadence of loved ones talking is enough to tell you that you're home and everything is okay.

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I make it to Yorkville and wait for the light to let me turn left onto 47. I plan to turn around and head back the way I came. I don't enjoy riding at night like I used to, anyway. Hell, once was a time I'd go out riding all night and wouldn't get back until 3 in the morning. That was a long time ago, and I don't have the reflexes I once did. Plus, the goggles I grabbed are kind of scratched up. They turn my vision somewhat astigmatic in the glare from the headlights of oncoming trucks, and it seems as though most of them have their hi-beams on and ignore my plaintive pleas to hit the dimmer switch by madly toggling my own hi-beam.

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But, out here heading south on 47, I'm looking that lazy half-moon right in the face. "Come on; a little farther," it says. Maybe I'll shoot down to 52.

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The stars are bright pinpricks, and the temperature drops and rises in 10-degree jumps that make you gasp with the reaction when you hit a low spot where fog has collected. It's exhilarating, and, even if it does make you wish you had brought gloves, it doesn't last too long before you climb out of the dip. You have your own hi-beam on now, and the cold yet comforting cone of light that it throws shows the lines that border the highway in sharp relief. You can see the floodlights on the combines out in the fields harvesting, and from time to time the dry smell of the corn they are collecting reminds you that it's fall.

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I end up taking 52 into Shorewood, where my good friend Dave "Daddy-O" Picco and his wife Diane used to live. I head back north on towards Plainfield on River Road, and now the exhaust is bouncing off the board fences that separate people's yards from the street. I'm taking it easy because the speed limit is only 35 here, and there's no sense being a jackass. A family is walking down the adjacent sidewalk, pulling their toddler daughter in a wagon while their slightly-older son pedals gamely on his tricycle. At first I think it's way past his bedtime, but then I remember that it's only a little past eight thirty. He points to me as I go by and I hear him exclaim. Hiya, kid. I remember a long time ago when *I* was the kid on the tricycle. You'll get there someday, and it's gonna be every bit as awesome as you think its gonna be.

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My goodness, but I love to ride. And hey, Michael Culley, thanks for selling me this thing.