I'd Never Been To A Motorcycle Rally Before; I'm Not really into crowds of people. Good, curvy roads are invariably what I'm looking for when I head out on a motorcycle trip. Not burning precious daylight hanging around a campground somewhere.
But my friend Earle convinced me that a rally need not be just a social gathering. He said a lot of riders use them simply as a home base for riding the good roads in the area, a place to stow one's gear and come back to in the evenings-much like we do at the condo or cabins we rent during our periodic multiday trips into the Blue Ridge Mountains. The camaraderie and entertainment at the rally site is just a bonus. Kind of like an extended family to enjoy that end-of-the-day brew with.
And so when he pushed out our usual May run down the Blue Ridge Parkway to coincide with the BMWRA rally in June, I decided I'd give it a go. I figure most things are worth trying at least once.
I had already scheduled a couple of shorter, three-day motorcycle trips-our annual Memorial Day weekend "Chicken Run" into West Virginia and another long-weekend trip into southern Virginia. As I happily recounted in an e-mail to some of my motorcycling buddies in late May, "I'll be on the road three of the next four weekends, 11 days in total. How great is that?" And it was. If there is something better in this world than being on the road with a good motorcycle, I haven't found it.
Alas, that's not the way it is for a lot of guys. The notion that they might be able to get away for days at a time to enjoy their motorcycle is . . . extraordinary. It's not that they don't want to. It's not that they can't afford it. And it's not that they can't imagine how much fun a trip like that would be. It's that they can't get permission. Hell, a lot of guys can hardly get away for a good, full-day ride.
I'm far luckier than most guys, and I know it. I'm away from home on at least four or five multiday bike trips every year, along with a week away for hunting. And I've been doing that for years.
I'll grant that my long-suffering wife, Ginny, has the patience of a saint. And notwithstanding her understanding that motorcycles are an enormously passionate thing for me, I'm sure if you asked her you'd probably get a very different perspective on my repeated wanderings. But the point is that some of us are lucky that way. We're able to get away and enjoy our bikes the way they were intended, with long miles and adventure in the making. Others aren't so lucky.
So why is it that some of us can, while others can't?
John, one of my older riding buddies with much experience at this, long ago coined the phrase "kitchen points" to describe that currency of exchange between husband and wife. John reasons that our marital relationships are inevitably a series of gives and takes, and that doing something like heading off at dawn's light for several days on the road sans wife requires a commensurate payback. That might be anything from an outright gift to the completion of a chore that one's beloved especially wanted done to embracing the thought of her having free time to indulge her own passions.
We all laughed the first time we heard John's depiction of marital wisdom. But as with most things humorous, we recognized the grain of truth in what he said. It's funny how over the years our small gang of riders has repeatedly evoked his kitchen points characterization to describe the value proposition of something. We'll be back at the condo, sitting around with beers in hand after a long day of riding, kicking around ideas for future rides and new places to go visit. Inevitably, at some point someone will shake their head and wryly disclaim, "Nah, it would cost too many kitchen points."