A Little Twist of Texas

Recently I read Linda Raven Moore’s A LITTLE TWIST OF TEXAS. This is the story of Linda getting on her motorcycle and traveling solo from California to Texas… Well, sort of. As any classic rock singer will tell us, life on the road isn’t easy, and a portion of Linda’s trip was made without the motorcycle, but adaptability is part of the tale.

Because Linda is a gifted storyteller, I was completely drawn into her narrative. I fretted over the idiosyncracies of “Beastie,” the motorcycle who could be really known only from a long trip such as Linda’s. I felt the buffeting of the wind that caused delays along the way. I marveled at the amount of thought and planning that goes into everything: what and how one packs for an extended motorcycle trip. Where and what to eat when you’re crossing miles of uninhabited desert. The pain of unlayering and undressing just to use the bathroom.

Linda’s keen appreciation for the sights and people along the way brings her story to life. Her humor and her willingness to be frank about her vulnerabilities and insecurities make this more than just the story of a road trip. It’s also the interior journey of a woman who can handle bumps and detours as she follows her dream.

I hope there are more trips and books to describe them.

My Own Great Motorcycle Adventure

My first boyfriend was Tim G., and damn if I can remember what kind of motorcycle he had in high school, but I was forbidden to ride it. Oh, the temptation! On frosty ninth-grade mornings, I would stand with my friends on the circle in front of our school, anticipating the engine sound that would herald Tim’s arrival. It was the seventies, so Tim had his Easy Rider helmet, much like this:

And the coolest leather jacket ever, which I wish I had a photo of, but it looked a little like this one, only better:

My heart would race as he drove up. I was totally crazy about that boy. Which of course meant that when he asked me to take a trip on his bike to Cheaha State Park, I ignored my parents’ dire warnings of how much trouble I’d be in if I got on that motorcycle.

It was one of the best days ever. Quite cold as we neared the top of the mountain, but that just meant I hugged Tim even tighter. My instinct was to pull against the motorcycle on curves, but I finally just placed my trust in Tim and did what he told me. It was invigorating to ride through that much physical beauty and feel so close to it all.

There was one thing no one had warned me about, however. When your hair is even longer than this:

you don’t leave it down. Hair doesn’t really cinematically flow in the wind when it’s sticking out from under a helmet. Instead, it gets whipped around so violently that when you get back from your eighty-five-mile round trip, your hair is nothing but snarls and tangles.

Of course, I couldn’t go home looking like that. My parents would have known exactly what I’d been up to. I sat on the living room floor in front of Tim’s mother, one of the truly sweetest ladies I ever knew, and she painstakingly combed out every tangle and tried not to make me cry in the process.

My parents didn’t know until years later about that trip, long after Tim was just a memory. But a good memory, because every awful pull of the comb was worth that glorious day on the back of a motorcycle with my first love.