Friday, June 13, 2014

A Bike by Any Other Name

As anyone who knows me knows, I just got my first Harley-Davidson motorcycle a couple of weeks ago.  Not my first bike mind you— my fifth, in fact.  I’ve owned two Suzukis and two Yamahas in my day, all good bikes, but all flagstones on my path to Harley-Davidson-ism.

Frankly, I’ve never named a motorcycle before, but when I got my Harley I was told that I had to come up with a name.  For her.  What to do, what to do.  It took me and my ex almost a year to name our son, for God’s sake, and now I had to name my bike?

Ok, to the Great and Wonderful Internet I ran, looking for ideas.  Sources for names in the color of the bike (burgundy and gray), the type of bike (large cruiser), the sound of the bike (put your head on the inside of a bass drum and let the drummer do a syncopated beat with felt mallets), the model of the bike (FXSTC Softail Custom).

Nothing.

And then— nothing.

I was having absolutely no luck for a writer who prided himself in his ability to come up with some really catchy titles in his day.  The Great and Wonderful Internet was no help— I did not want the stereotypical “Big Thunder,” “Rolling Thunder,” “Riotous Randi” type of a name.  I wanted a name that fit the bike, much like, after almost a year of deliberation, my ex and I chose the name “Matthew,” which fit him and the whole experience well: it means “gift from God.”

Anywho, I wasn’t having a whole lot of luck (the actual lyric to the song was, “Want a whole lotta luck”) (…kidding).  I rode “her” for a week or two, getting the feel for “her,” and allowing “her” to get the feel for me, hoping that between the two of us we could come up with a feel for a name.

Finally, more in exasperation than in any semblance of reason, I flat-out asked:  “What’s your name?”  If you live long enough, and pay attention well enough, you come to realize that everything has it’s own voice.  People, dogs, gnus, light bulbs, and yes— motorcycles.

Through the chesty gargle of “her” V-Twin vocal chords came a word: Erin.

Well, the relief on my face was palpable.  It was comical too, because I had a look of pure joy in the odd moment that my motorcycle told me “her” own name.  And then of course I looked around sheepishly to see if anyone had seen me talking to my Harley.

My Big Girl, Erin.  Yes!  It was somewhat appropriate, too, as the word “Erin” is actually an old name for “Ireland,” and as anyone who knows me understands, I write about things Irish and British under the big umbrella of Celtic/Gaelic.  My license plate is “Ard Righ,” for God’s sake.  It doesn’t get anymore Celtic-Gaelic than that.

I was happy.  We were happy.  I told people.  They were happy.

It was right around then that a cloud wafted across my sunshine.  I realized that my Harley probably couldn’t speak English very well, what with all of “her” compression and what not.  I began to have “buyer’s remorse” with the name Erin.

I started to try to pay even more attention to the sounds “she” was making, trying to literally get into her head (gasket).  Over a few days, I started to see the scene from the movie “Forrest Gump” (a favorite of mine that I am quoting all the time) where Forrest is standing on the pier talking to Lieutenant Dan, and suddenly his boat steams by in the background and plows into the pier.  Forrest looks at it, looks back at Lieutenant Dan, and calmly says, “That’s my boat.”  I love that line, and I was starting to think (hallucinate would be more apropos) that my Big Girl Erin was putting the idea into my head:  Jenny, of course.

While I liked the name Jenny, it didn’t exceptionally bowl me over. After all, I liked Erin too, and I did like Jenny, but neither made the endorphins flow.  I mulled it over for another week or so, riding my Big Girl almost incessantly, to the tune of over fifty miles a day, in both sun (I have a great tan now— and oh by the way, the sun down here is like living in a clear plastic tee-pee on the surface of Mercury) and the rain (not as bad as you’d think— worst part is that even the softest summer shower hits your face like a pellet shot from a Red Ryder .177 caliber long rifle at a little under 1300 feet per second so that you come away looking like you’ve rediscovered the Chicken Pox).

…holy crap, I sidetracked so far from my original idea that I’ve forgotten where I was going with all of this!  Oh… ok, never mind.  I’ve got it back.  Sorry…

As I was riding today, I was thinking of the name Erin, and the name Jenny, and I had Tom Hanks going in the background with, “That’s my boat.”  Seriously, it was starting to get crowded up there in that hat rack I call my head.

And of course I had my Big Girl purring seductively along underneath me as we wound down and around the bows and bends that make up Dogwood Road.  She turns heads wherever we go with that sonorous sound, and then she keeps those heads turned with her sun-dappled curves.

I downshifted as we went around a particularly snappish twist in the road, and as we came out I gave “her” clutch a squeeze, twisted the throttle, and toed us back up to the higher gear.  Suddenly, Big Girl took off like a shot— seemingly of her own volition— for about a hundred yards up a straightaway, instantly clearing my head like a slap of reality, replete with the image of dumping us on the hot macadam, blowing all other thoughts out of my head.

Let me tell you, there’s nothing like a deluge of adrenaline to bring clarity to a body.  And when the flood receded, one thought was left, one thought floating like an ark in the adrenaline-swept ruin: I had “her” name.

Apparently, it wasn’t a name she was trying to convey to me when I came up with “Erin,” it was a title.  Errant, as in, naughty.  She liked Jenny well enough, though.  She must have gleaned from my meditations that had the ex and I had a girl instead of a boy, her name would have been “Jennifer.”

Finally, we come to the end of my tale.   In typical female fashion, my Big Girl did it her way, tossing a cold glass of adrenaline in my face, that I might actually hear what she was saying, not what I wanted to hear.


Her name is Errant Jenny.  The Errant Jenny.


© Ray Cattie

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