Sunday, January 23, 2011
Every day is a new beginning if you really think about it. Every day offers me the chance to experience something new and exciting, if I'm open to it.
Something about January feels full of promise. Even though it's bitter cold and everything seems dead and frozen, spring, new growth and possibilities are beginning to creep in with the expanding daylight.
Something about the newness of the year makes me want to clear the clutter from every corner and make room for something new to enter into my life.
I made this newspaper dress about four years ago in my sculpture class. It sat on a shelf in the garage gathering dust until today, a beautiful, still winter's day. The fire pit bulged with leaves and kindling raked in last week's abnormally warm temperatures. This dress begged to become my first installation piece.
I love the work of Andy Goldsworthy, Christo, and Chihuly not just because of the beauty of what they create, but because of how their pieces change from minute to minute into something else.
I took almost 100 photographs of this dress burning. Here are just a few of the images.
Something about January feels full of promise. Even though it's bitter cold and everything seems dead and frozen, spring, new growth and possibilities are beginning to creep in with the expanding daylight.
Something about the newness of the year makes me want to clear the clutter from every corner and make room for something new to enter into my life.
I made this newspaper dress about four years ago in my sculpture class. It sat on a shelf in the garage gathering dust until today, a beautiful, still winter's day. The fire pit bulged with leaves and kindling raked in last week's abnormally warm temperatures. This dress begged to become my first installation piece.
I love the work of Andy Goldsworthy, Christo, and Chihuly not just because of the beauty of what they create, but because of how their pieces change from minute to minute into something else.
I took almost 100 photographs of this dress burning. Here are just a few of the images.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
South Dakota Memory I
Our birthing begins our journey towards death. Of course, we don’t see it that way. At least not then. The first death that touched me involved cats…orange tabby cats. They showed up at our door crying for food on a beautiful autumn day and my sister and I begged to keep them. I believe there were three of them. I don’t remember what we named them…we might have been three or four years old, the cats, kittens really, not full grown. We could play with them outside, and we fed them outside. They were not allowed in the house. Dad’s rules. The snow started early that year, like it can in South Dakota. It wasn’t a light snow, it fell thick and heavy through the night as the temperatures dropped. The cats mewed for a while. “They’ll be fine. Their cardboard house is full of blankets. They have each other and long fur,” Daddy said convincingly. The wind picked up howling around the corners of the house hungrily, whipping the snow into sharp peaks. We fell asleep; the cats whose mewing had stopped long ago were forgotten. In the morning though, with the drifts of snow piled so high up on the porch that the door wouldn’t open, we remembered. Mom bundled us up and shoveled down the steps, throwing huge scoop shovels full of snow off the buried cardboard box. We reached inside…the cats had turned into ice replicas of their living selves. They were frozen as solid as the clothes mom pushed through the wringer washing machine on wash day. They lay flat, rock hard and lifeless.
My Grandma Anderson’s death is the death I remember most from my childhood because I loved her so much. She lived in a little silver trailer out behind my uncle’s house. I thought it was a doll house, it was so tiny. Uncle Kink had built a little addition on one side of it big enough to hold a couple of chairs and a tiny bathroom towards the back. From here, you walked into the original Jet Stream. It had a dining room table with bench seating on three sides and a galley kitchen with tiny appliances, doll sized compared to those we had at home. This lead into the only bedroom with a double bed that filled up nearly the whole room.
I visited Grandma a lot. She fed me tiger meat (raw hamburger on crackers), and thin mints with ice cold milk. We played cards and Parcheesi and she read me love stories from True Grit magazine. Because I was chubby and got teased a lot by the other kids we would discuss how to get rid of my belly fat. “It looks like bread dough.” “I wish we could just take a butcher knife and cut it off.”
I remember asking once or twice about my grandpa, but she wouldn’t talk about him. She had been 23 when she came out to the Dakota’s to homestead her one hundred and sixty acres. He had been in his forties when he came up from Missouri to homestead the land next to hers. He courted her and married her fairly quickly. I don’t know at the time if she knew that he had another family in Missouri…several children and a wife who he had promised to come back for. I doubt it.
My father was the second of three sons. He never had anything good to say about his dad either. He got whipped and beaten so much he finally left home and school in the 8th grade.
“What makes a man that mean?” he asked me once a few years before he died. He’d been telling me about his dad throwing a mattress over my Uncle Kink when he wouldn’t stop crying. “Kink wasn’t even a year old. The bastard took that big heavy mattress off the buckboard and threw it over the top of him.”
I was sitting in Mrs. Meyers 3rd grade classroom when they came and got me and told me grandma had died. It was early spring and she’d been walking down to the post office and had a stroke. We didn’t get to go to the funeral. I tried to ask Faye some questions about the whole thing, but she just crawled under a big chair in the living room and said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
My Grandma Anderson’s death is the death I remember most from my childhood because I loved her so much. She lived in a little silver trailer out behind my uncle’s house. I thought it was a doll house, it was so tiny. Uncle Kink had built a little addition on one side of it big enough to hold a couple of chairs and a tiny bathroom towards the back. From here, you walked into the original Jet Stream. It had a dining room table with bench seating on three sides and a galley kitchen with tiny appliances, doll sized compared to those we had at home. This lead into the only bedroom with a double bed that filled up nearly the whole room.
I visited Grandma a lot. She fed me tiger meat (raw hamburger on crackers), and thin mints with ice cold milk. We played cards and Parcheesi and she read me love stories from True Grit magazine. Because I was chubby and got teased a lot by the other kids we would discuss how to get rid of my belly fat. “It looks like bread dough.” “I wish we could just take a butcher knife and cut it off.”
I remember asking once or twice about my grandpa, but she wouldn’t talk about him. She had been 23 when she came out to the Dakota’s to homestead her one hundred and sixty acres. He had been in his forties when he came up from Missouri to homestead the land next to hers. He courted her and married her fairly quickly. I don’t know at the time if she knew that he had another family in Missouri…several children and a wife who he had promised to come back for. I doubt it.
My father was the second of three sons. He never had anything good to say about his dad either. He got whipped and beaten so much he finally left home and school in the 8th grade.
“What makes a man that mean?” he asked me once a few years before he died. He’d been telling me about his dad throwing a mattress over my Uncle Kink when he wouldn’t stop crying. “Kink wasn’t even a year old. The bastard took that big heavy mattress off the buckboard and threw it over the top of him.”
I was sitting in Mrs. Meyers 3rd grade classroom when they came and got me and told me grandma had died. It was early spring and she’d been walking down to the post office and had a stroke. We didn’t get to go to the funeral. I tried to ask Faye some questions about the whole thing, but she just crawled under a big chair in the living room and said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Death with dignity
They leave the old man wrapped in a blanket. The rest of his people move on after saying their good-byes. A blizzard consumes the prairie and covers his body. At least that was the movie’s portrayal of the fate of the Lakota aged, those unable to keep up with the people’s nomadic lifestyle.
Jimmy Stewart, I don’t remember the character he played, or who played his wife. I do remember that rather than be consigned to a nursing home, they go into their garage, get in their car and start the ignition, drifting off into a carbon monoxide induced death.
Both of these scenes remain in my mind thirty some odd years later when faced with the dilemma of an 88-year-old mother consigned to a nursing home. She watched those movies with me, always with tears in her eyes, always with admonitions against those who would consign their parents to such a fate. I was being groomed to make sure it did not happen to her, but in spite of all our efforts to the contrary it did.
It was the day before summer break. I had not quite finished my 45 mile commute to the high school where I teach, when I received the call that Mom had fallen and could not get up. She had been living between my sister and myself for the past four years when a series of mini-strokes had made it impossible for her to keep living at home in her small South Dakota town, 40 miles from the nearest clinic, 100 miles from the nearest hospital.
So, for four years, she made the rounds between where I lived in Reno, Nevada and where my sister lived in Riverton, Utah. Every 8 to 10 weeks we would do the “Mom” exchange, meeting in Elko (the half-way point) to have lunch and trade off on “Mom duty.”
Over those four years, she seemed content to sit on the couch reading, waiting for us to return from work to cook supper and have a bit of conversation before she retired for the evening. The dogs were her day-time companions, and although bound to a wheel-chair she was able to wheel her way around the house and make her way to the toilet when needed. For showers she needed assistance, so shower day was Sunday. Because coumadin had been prescribed, she also required monthly visits to the lab to test her blood and make sure her blood levels were where they needed to be. Sick days could be taken from work to make these visits, or appointments could be made late in the day, and for four years, we kept the idea of a nursing home at bay, and then she fell and broke her hip.
Hospitals rarely keep anyone for longer than a week these days, and an 88-year-old with a broken hip is no exception. We went with her into surgery that night at around 11:00 p.m. and were there when she came out shortly thereafter. Assured that everything had gone well, we went home to sleep, arriving back at the hospital early the next morning for an almost instant decision making process.
Rehabilitation hospitals and nursing care facilities vie to have Medicare patients instated in their place of care, at least for the first three weeks. For those three weeks Medicare pays a premium, and the facilities may actually make money. If the patient requires longer rehabilitation, the payment Medicare allows drops substantially, but they will keep paying for another 100 days, as long as the patient is “making progress” . After one hundred days, if the patient fails to keep improving, private pay (the patient’s own bank money) is tapped, and when that money runs out the State’s Medicaid program hopefully takes over.
At the time I was reading a book by Toni Morrison which made a comment about how western society files away their old in nursing homes and forgets about them, filing away their wisdom at the same time. Not too long ago I would have shaken my head in agreement, but when faced with the situation, I found myself getting angry… and defensive. Unless a person has the type of job that allows them to stay home and work, how are they able to take care of a parent who needs 24 hour care?
Luckily, unlike most Americans, I have a job that gives me three months off every summer, and when Mom fell the whole of that 80 days stretched in front of me. My goal was to have Mom back in her wheelchair, wheeling happily from room to room, hopefully stronger and in better shape than before she fell and broke her leg. After all, her mother, had broken her hip at 87 and had returned home within three weeks where she continued to live and take care of herself until she died at the age of 93.
Each day I went to the rehab center (that’s what it was before we realized rehabilitation wasn’t going to happen). For the first two weeks I went off and on for eight hours of every day, cutting that to six, then to four, and in the last few weeks before I had to return to work to two. I was exhausted, emotionally and physically, and Mom was not getting any better.
I had learned a whole lot about my fate, which at 50 seemed to loom just around the corner, and I didn’t like the look of it. Like most people, I had managed to convince myself that if I ate healthy, exercised daily, and scheduled in regular check-ups with my physician, somehow this infirm, old-age thing could be avoided. Mom had believed the same. She was no doubt one of the few mothers in South Dakota to make homemade Granola, buy carob powder, and purchase a multitude of vitamins from a supply catalog that arrived monthly.
In her late seventies she was still trekking to Pierre, South Dakota for the Senior Olympics, where she not only participated, but won medals. In her early 80’s she was still driving herself to book signings through-out the state to promote two books she had written and published about her life. Yet, here she was at 88 unable to walk on her own, getting weaker by the day in a place that was definitely not healthy for her. It did not appear; however, that there were a whole lot of options that were any better.
In agonizing over this situation with friends my age, all thought they would prefer to do what Jimmy Stewart did in the movie. I know though that death is a tricky creature and by the time he’s knocking at your door, you probably won’t be able to walk to the car, much less kneel down to stuff a rag up the tail pipe. Pills were another suggestions, but chances are you won’t be able to lift your hands to put them in your mouth and asking someone else to do this seems out of the question. The obvious solution would seem to be to make sure these places are more humane, or that there are more choices for people faced with this situation.
How to make this happen? I have no idea, but since my time may be right around the corner, I’d really like to hear some suggestions. Maybe it can be the torch I take into retirement.
Jimmy Stewart, I don’t remember the character he played, or who played his wife. I do remember that rather than be consigned to a nursing home, they go into their garage, get in their car and start the ignition, drifting off into a carbon monoxide induced death.
Both of these scenes remain in my mind thirty some odd years later when faced with the dilemma of an 88-year-old mother consigned to a nursing home. She watched those movies with me, always with tears in her eyes, always with admonitions against those who would consign their parents to such a fate. I was being groomed to make sure it did not happen to her, but in spite of all our efforts to the contrary it did.
It was the day before summer break. I had not quite finished my 45 mile commute to the high school where I teach, when I received the call that Mom had fallen and could not get up. She had been living between my sister and myself for the past four years when a series of mini-strokes had made it impossible for her to keep living at home in her small South Dakota town, 40 miles from the nearest clinic, 100 miles from the nearest hospital.
So, for four years, she made the rounds between where I lived in Reno, Nevada and where my sister lived in Riverton, Utah. Every 8 to 10 weeks we would do the “Mom” exchange, meeting in Elko (the half-way point) to have lunch and trade off on “Mom duty.”
Over those four years, she seemed content to sit on the couch reading, waiting for us to return from work to cook supper and have a bit of conversation before she retired for the evening. The dogs were her day-time companions, and although bound to a wheel-chair she was able to wheel her way around the house and make her way to the toilet when needed. For showers she needed assistance, so shower day was Sunday. Because coumadin had been prescribed, she also required monthly visits to the lab to test her blood and make sure her blood levels were where they needed to be. Sick days could be taken from work to make these visits, or appointments could be made late in the day, and for four years, we kept the idea of a nursing home at bay, and then she fell and broke her hip.
Hospitals rarely keep anyone for longer than a week these days, and an 88-year-old with a broken hip is no exception. We went with her into surgery that night at around 11:00 p.m. and were there when she came out shortly thereafter. Assured that everything had gone well, we went home to sleep, arriving back at the hospital early the next morning for an almost instant decision making process.
Rehabilitation hospitals and nursing care facilities vie to have Medicare patients instated in their place of care, at least for the first three weeks. For those three weeks Medicare pays a premium, and the facilities may actually make money. If the patient requires longer rehabilitation, the payment Medicare allows drops substantially, but they will keep paying for another 100 days, as long as the patient is “making progress” . After one hundred days, if the patient fails to keep improving, private pay (the patient’s own bank money) is tapped, and when that money runs out the State’s Medicaid program hopefully takes over.
At the time I was reading a book by Toni Morrison which made a comment about how western society files away their old in nursing homes and forgets about them, filing away their wisdom at the same time. Not too long ago I would have shaken my head in agreement, but when faced with the situation, I found myself getting angry… and defensive. Unless a person has the type of job that allows them to stay home and work, how are they able to take care of a parent who needs 24 hour care?
Luckily, unlike most Americans, I have a job that gives me three months off every summer, and when Mom fell the whole of that 80 days stretched in front of me. My goal was to have Mom back in her wheelchair, wheeling happily from room to room, hopefully stronger and in better shape than before she fell and broke her leg. After all, her mother, had broken her hip at 87 and had returned home within three weeks where she continued to live and take care of herself until she died at the age of 93.
Each day I went to the rehab center (that’s what it was before we realized rehabilitation wasn’t going to happen). For the first two weeks I went off and on for eight hours of every day, cutting that to six, then to four, and in the last few weeks before I had to return to work to two. I was exhausted, emotionally and physically, and Mom was not getting any better.
I had learned a whole lot about my fate, which at 50 seemed to loom just around the corner, and I didn’t like the look of it. Like most people, I had managed to convince myself that if I ate healthy, exercised daily, and scheduled in regular check-ups with my physician, somehow this infirm, old-age thing could be avoided. Mom had believed the same. She was no doubt one of the few mothers in South Dakota to make homemade Granola, buy carob powder, and purchase a multitude of vitamins from a supply catalog that arrived monthly.
In her late seventies she was still trekking to Pierre, South Dakota for the Senior Olympics, where she not only participated, but won medals. In her early 80’s she was still driving herself to book signings through-out the state to promote two books she had written and published about her life. Yet, here she was at 88 unable to walk on her own, getting weaker by the day in a place that was definitely not healthy for her. It did not appear; however, that there were a whole lot of options that were any better.
In agonizing over this situation with friends my age, all thought they would prefer to do what Jimmy Stewart did in the movie. I know though that death is a tricky creature and by the time he’s knocking at your door, you probably won’t be able to walk to the car, much less kneel down to stuff a rag up the tail pipe. Pills were another suggestions, but chances are you won’t be able to lift your hands to put them in your mouth and asking someone else to do this seems out of the question. The obvious solution would seem to be to make sure these places are more humane, or that there are more choices for people faced with this situation.
How to make this happen? I have no idea, but since my time may be right around the corner, I’d really like to hear some suggestions. Maybe it can be the torch I take into retirement.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Shades of Gray
Sitting in the Dr's office yesterday waiting for my blood to be drawn I read Time Magazine and came across an article on cyber-bullying. As a high school teacher for over twenty years, I know bullying in any form ranks in the top ten of high priority concerns.
Bullying has always existed. I graduated from high school over thirty years ago and as a fat kid took my fair share. Because I survived, I like to think it made me a stronger person, or at the very least a more empathetic one. This article featured photos of five dead boys...none knew each other, all were under twenty, all committed suicide, all were gay. Between the brutal bullying of the high school halls and the escalated availability of the cyber world to commit the same crime with greater ease and a far greater audience, they succumbed and gave up on the goodness of life.
I've never understood extremists: Dr. Laura, Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, Osama Bin Laden, my neighbor three houses down. From a very young age I've had trouble with black and white. My world has always consisted of a pretty large gray scale. Maybe that's why I'm now an art teacher. Teaching this gray scale is one of my greater challenges. All students pretty much see black and white...it's the thousands and thousands of grays in-between that boggles their minds...mine too for that matter.
Anyhow, it's the new year, and sometimes I find it valuable to look back into my history and see how my present has shaped up in spite of, or because of, that history. I've been keeping journals for a long time and came across this newspaper clipping from a year 2000 excerpt.
Dear Dr. Laura,
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's law. I have learned a great deal from you, and I try to share the knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it is an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how best to follow them.
When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. How should I deal with this?
I would like to sell my daughter into slavery as it suggests in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking but most women take offense.
Lev 25:44 states that I may buy slaves from the nations that are around us. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans but not Canadians. Can you clarify?
I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 10:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?
Lev 20:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room there?
I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging. I look forward to hearing your answers to my questions on your talk radio program.
--A Listener
I glued that clipping into my journal an unbelievable eleven years ago. The five boys featured in Time magazine killed themselves within the last year, and the current Congress spent a whole lot of time on "Don't Ask; Don't Tell" over the just recently ended Christmas break.
I don't pretend to understand the Bible. I don't understand it, even after reading it and re-reading it again and again. So, instead of trying to understand it, I pick passages I do understand. "Love one another." (John 13:34) and "Judge not, that you be not judged."(Matt 7:16)
Bullying has always existed. I graduated from high school over thirty years ago and as a fat kid took my fair share. Because I survived, I like to think it made me a stronger person, or at the very least a more empathetic one. This article featured photos of five dead boys...none knew each other, all were under twenty, all committed suicide, all were gay. Between the brutal bullying of the high school halls and the escalated availability of the cyber world to commit the same crime with greater ease and a far greater audience, they succumbed and gave up on the goodness of life.
I've never understood extremists: Dr. Laura, Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, Osama Bin Laden, my neighbor three houses down. From a very young age I've had trouble with black and white. My world has always consisted of a pretty large gray scale. Maybe that's why I'm now an art teacher. Teaching this gray scale is one of my greater challenges. All students pretty much see black and white...it's the thousands and thousands of grays in-between that boggles their minds...mine too for that matter.
Anyhow, it's the new year, and sometimes I find it valuable to look back into my history and see how my present has shaped up in spite of, or because of, that history. I've been keeping journals for a long time and came across this newspaper clipping from a year 2000 excerpt.
Dear Dr. Laura,
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's law. I have learned a great deal from you, and I try to share the knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it is an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how best to follow them.
When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. How should I deal with this?
I would like to sell my daughter into slavery as it suggests in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking but most women take offense.
Lev 25:44 states that I may buy slaves from the nations that are around us. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans but not Canadians. Can you clarify?
I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 10:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?
Lev 20:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room there?
I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging. I look forward to hearing your answers to my questions on your talk radio program.
--A Listener
I glued that clipping into my journal an unbelievable eleven years ago. The five boys featured in Time magazine killed themselves within the last year, and the current Congress spent a whole lot of time on "Don't Ask; Don't Tell" over the just recently ended Christmas break.
I don't pretend to understand the Bible. I don't understand it, even after reading it and re-reading it again and again. So, instead of trying to understand it, I pick passages I do understand. "Love one another." (John 13:34) and "Judge not, that you be not judged."(Matt 7:16)
Monday, January 10, 2011
Late Rider
Late Rider: advice for women who would ride
By Deanna Peters
At thirty-eight, inspired by two retired men on Gold Wings, I decided I would ride a motorcycle. In their black leathers they looked anything but retired. That, I thought, is what retirement should look like.
Ten years later, at 48, I got my first bike. Metallic blue, fringed leather coming out of the handle bars, a fat seat, and small enough so I could plant my feet on the ground, the Suzuki GZ 250 grabbed my heart and pulled me on board. It was love at first sight, and the thing I loved most was the fact that I wasn't afraid of it.
I decided on the Suzuki by going to all the different motorcycle dealers and sitting on their "little" bikes. I talked a lot to people who rode. A lot of men thought I should just jump right on a Harley, but Harley doesn't make a bike for beginners, at least in my opinion--well, not beginners like me. After listening to lots of horror stories by women who tried to ride the big bikes their husbands or boyfriends bought for them without success, I decided a lot of women probably were a lot like me.
I take a long time to sort things out. I weight all the angles. I think about what scares me, what excites me, and what risks I'm willing to take. Because I rode behind someone for years, I already had a love of motorcycles, but during that time, someone gave me a 650 Honda that was so tall when I sat on it the tips of my toes were the only thing holding the bike up. Knowing nothing about how to ride, my first try wasn't very successful. I got it going, headed down the road until I came to a stop sign. I stopped okay, but I couldn't hold it up because I couldn't plant my feet and the bike tipped right over. I heard similar stories by a lot of different women only their bikes were a lot bigger.
At 120 pounds, with no direction from anyone about how to get the bike back up if something like this happened, there was no way I could see to pick it back up. So, it lay there until someone helped me right it and, embarrassed, I rode it home, parked it in the garage and never got on it again. Like the women I had listened to, I went back to riding behind someone. I still had a longing to ride my own bike, but it wasn't until I sat on the Suzuki that I knew I would.
Even before I bought the bike, I went to the DMV and took the computerized test for a beginner's permit. I got the book, studied it haphazardly, and promptly failed the test the first time. I just studied harder and passed it the second.
Then, I poured over Craigslist until I found the Suzuki I had fallen in love with at the dealership. I bought it and started to ride. I rode on short five mile and under rides, I rode with groups: Hondas, and Harley's and Yamahas. A few bikers made fun of my "little" bike, but most were really supportive, happy to give me advice and tips on how to improve my riding. As a whole, most bikers are really more than happy to welcome another rider into their tribe. Many riders, came up to talk and look at my bike and were surprised to learn it was only a 250. It didn't look little, and it had a big heart.
For the first year, it was a perfect bike. It cornered easily, and if I tipped it over, which I did (once, in the driveway) I could easily right it again. The second year, though, I began to understand the people who in the beginning told me, "Once you start to ride, you're going to want to ride with the big dogs."
Although my little bike could do the speed limit almost everywhere, hills became a problem...well, okay, the Sierras aren't really "hills". I'd have to shift way down, and I'd fall behind on the uphill. Although the other riders were more than gracious, I knew I was holding them back. And, frankly, it was pretty hard work keeping up. Forget it if there was any kind of wind, which anyone from Nevada knows happens three or four days a week.
I didn't know how hard my little bike was to ride until I purchased a 650 Yamaha V-star Classic, which I still ride. In fact I bought two of the same bike, so if one is ever in the garage, I can keep on riding.
For those ladies out there who have always wanted to ride, but don't really know how to get started, I have four suggestions: One, scope out bikes and talk to people who ride. Two, get your learner's permit and three: ride, baby, ride. The fourth and probably most important thing is to take a safety class. Most colleges offer them on weekends for very little money considering the invaluable information you take away. And, most of them have bikes (250's) in all makes and models for you to ride while you're taking the class. That way you don't even have to buy a bike first. You can try it out and see what you think. At the classes, you ride for two eight hour days, and at the end of that time, you have your motorcycle license and a lot of valuable experience, including how to right a big bike if you tip it over.
By Deanna Peters
At thirty-eight, inspired by two retired men on Gold Wings, I decided I would ride a motorcycle. In their black leathers they looked anything but retired. That, I thought, is what retirement should look like.
Ten years later, at 48, I got my first bike. Metallic blue, fringed leather coming out of the handle bars, a fat seat, and small enough so I could plant my feet on the ground, the Suzuki GZ 250 grabbed my heart and pulled me on board. It was love at first sight, and the thing I loved most was the fact that I wasn't afraid of it.
I decided on the Suzuki by going to all the different motorcycle dealers and sitting on their "little" bikes. I talked a lot to people who rode. A lot of men thought I should just jump right on a Harley, but Harley doesn't make a bike for beginners, at least in my opinion--well, not beginners like me. After listening to lots of horror stories by women who tried to ride the big bikes their husbands or boyfriends bought for them without success, I decided a lot of women probably were a lot like me.
I take a long time to sort things out. I weight all the angles. I think about what scares me, what excites me, and what risks I'm willing to take. Because I rode behind someone for years, I already had a love of motorcycles, but during that time, someone gave me a 650 Honda that was so tall when I sat on it the tips of my toes were the only thing holding the bike up. Knowing nothing about how to ride, my first try wasn't very successful. I got it going, headed down the road until I came to a stop sign. I stopped okay, but I couldn't hold it up because I couldn't plant my feet and the bike tipped right over. I heard similar stories by a lot of different women only their bikes were a lot bigger.
At 120 pounds, with no direction from anyone about how to get the bike back up if something like this happened, there was no way I could see to pick it back up. So, it lay there until someone helped me right it and, embarrassed, I rode it home, parked it in the garage and never got on it again. Like the women I had listened to, I went back to riding behind someone. I still had a longing to ride my own bike, but it wasn't until I sat on the Suzuki that I knew I would.
Even before I bought the bike, I went to the DMV and took the computerized test for a beginner's permit. I got the book, studied it haphazardly, and promptly failed the test the first time. I just studied harder and passed it the second.
Then, I poured over Craigslist until I found the Suzuki I had fallen in love with at the dealership. I bought it and started to ride. I rode on short five mile and under rides, I rode with groups: Hondas, and Harley's and Yamahas. A few bikers made fun of my "little" bike, but most were really supportive, happy to give me advice and tips on how to improve my riding. As a whole, most bikers are really more than happy to welcome another rider into their tribe. Many riders, came up to talk and look at my bike and were surprised to learn it was only a 250. It didn't look little, and it had a big heart.
For the first year, it was a perfect bike. It cornered easily, and if I tipped it over, which I did (once, in the driveway) I could easily right it again. The second year, though, I began to understand the people who in the beginning told me, "Once you start to ride, you're going to want to ride with the big dogs."
Although my little bike could do the speed limit almost everywhere, hills became a problem...well, okay, the Sierras aren't really "hills". I'd have to shift way down, and I'd fall behind on the uphill. Although the other riders were more than gracious, I knew I was holding them back. And, frankly, it was pretty hard work keeping up. Forget it if there was any kind of wind, which anyone from Nevada knows happens three or four days a week.
I didn't know how hard my little bike was to ride until I purchased a 650 Yamaha V-star Classic, which I still ride. In fact I bought two of the same bike, so if one is ever in the garage, I can keep on riding.
For those ladies out there who have always wanted to ride, but don't really know how to get started, I have four suggestions: One, scope out bikes and talk to people who ride. Two, get your learner's permit and three: ride, baby, ride. The fourth and probably most important thing is to take a safety class. Most colleges offer them on weekends for very little money considering the invaluable information you take away. And, most of them have bikes (250's) in all makes and models for you to ride while you're taking the class. That way you don't even have to buy a bike first. You can try it out and see what you think. At the classes, you ride for two eight hour days, and at the end of that time, you have your motorcycle license and a lot of valuable experience, including how to right a big bike if you tip it over.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Resolutions
New years prompt change if only because the year is new. It makes me reflect on what I don't want to bring with me into the fresh clean slate of a brand new year. It's scary. It's like standing on a cliff and looking over the edge and seeing only layer upon layer of cloud banks. How far below is the ground? If I leave this toxic relationship, how do I know there will be another one that's any better? If I quit this job, how do I know I'll be able to find another one? If I...If I...If I...There are guarantee's are there? And that's scary. Do it anyway? Not impulsively or irrationally, or spur of the moment, but if this is something your gut tells you you need to do and has been telling you for quite a while that it needs to be done...then do it. Take that step...either a platform will appear under your feet, or you'll sprout wings.
I went to church today. A different kind of church because I've been feeling stuck around really unhealthy people, stuck in really unhealthy relationships and situations. That's what I took away from the sermon. I'm going to choose to believe it for me this year.
I went to church today. A different kind of church because I've been feeling stuck around really unhealthy people, stuck in really unhealthy relationships and situations. That's what I took away from the sermon. I'm going to choose to believe it for me this year.
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