On Tuesday last I made the mother of all impulse buys, stopping by the local Harley shop and purchasing a 2008 1200L Sportster. It had been coming on for years, but until then, the idea of being a Biker Momma was just that—an idea; a guilty unattainable dream.

It started about three summers ago as I waited in my car behind a Harley in the automatic bank-teller line. I was listening to music, thinking idly about life, when my eye was caught as the rider in front of me teetered from one toe-tip to the other, keeping the monster bike upright. Looking closer I realized the rider was a woman, about my age. She was decked out in full leather, complete with fringe and leather do-rag, with Harley Davidson logos plastered across her body. I snorted, thinking disparagingly of mid-life crises, big bikes and small women. But a tiny part of me imagined me in her place, leather-clad with rumbling engine between my legs, hair whipping in the wind as I drove free down the highway. “Maybe someday,” I thought, not in encouragement, but in an attempt to dismiss the vision.

I never was able to get it totally out of my mind.

Last month—as the weather got warmer—we started seeing bikes on the street, and Ken down the road got one. I told Toby I’d thought, on and off, about getting a Harley.

“Mom. That would be really cool.”

I mulled his fervid response for a minute.

“What would be really cool? Just having a Harley around, or having a mother who rode one?”

“Having a mother who rode a Harley would be really cool.”

I was a bit surprised at the answer, but didn’t mention it again, filing it away with all my other Biker Momma thoughts.

Gas prices began to soar. I drive 60 miles a day, back and forth to work and school; I started really thinking how this might affect me, how I might have to change aspects of my life to deal with our new world. I pictured myself on a bicycle, with baskets on the back or the handlebars, pedaling back and forth from the grocery store. While the idea tickled me, I knew it wasn’t sustainable; I’m too busy to do this with any regularity, and I’d have to do it several times a week to stay stocked instead of my usual two times a month. I thought of the 1981 motor scooter in the shed. Blue rescued it for Toby years ago, and had a mutual friend haul it from Iowa to Wisconsin during his last prison stint; Blue imagined Toby “tinkering” with it, getting it running. That never happened—Toby is uninterested in wrenching—but perhaps I could get someone to fix it and I could putter around on that. I’d have to get a basket for groceries, and since it tops out at 30 mph, I wouldn’t be able to drive it to Menomonie. Maybe I should look for a job closer to home? Monday night, driving home from work, I saw a sign: regular unleaded--$4.09.

The vision of a big black hulking monster between my legs became sharper.

I have Tuesdays off now that classes are over for the summer, and on that day I made a list of the places I needed to go:

Bank (deposit check, check out mortgage account)
Grocery store (Naked juice!!! Frozen pizza and milk for Toby)
Farm and Fleet (septic system rootkiller stuff)
Pedicure (pretty feet, pretty feet, makes a girl feel pretty, pretty feet)
Mechanics (see if they’ll fix our motor scooter)

I remembered that there is a Harley dealership less than a mile from my house, and at the last minute I scrawled, “motorcycle store” onto the end of the list, tore it out of the notebook and shoved the paper in my pocket. Since the bike shop was the closest, it seemed only natural to go there first.

The first tag I saw as I walked in was for $24,000. “Shit,” I mumbled, “I may as well buy a second house.” I was dressed in loose jeans and a loose-fitting, light-blue, hippie-top, embroidered around the collar and sleeves, purchased during my trip to Thailand. I was a bit out of character for the shop, with it’s leather-clad, bulked out men, and slender, careworn-faced women. I wandered through the bikes, but really, they all look the same to me: big black, hulking beasts, as available to me as a helicopter. I sat on a couple, trying them out for size, but nothing spoke to me; nothing felt right.

Eventually an older man in a gray Harley tee-shirt and jeans ambled up. “Can I help you?” He asked doubtfully.

“Yeah, I’m thinking about buying a motorcycle, I just thought I’d drop in and look around a bit. These are all look huge. And expensive.”

“I’m Steve,” he said, shaking my hand. “Let’s go in back, there are some used bikes there.”

I followed him, threading my way through the motorcycles and glass cases containing Harley coffee mugs, purses, key chains, and chrome doo-dads, into the back room.

“How about this,” he said, indicating a blue Suzuki.

I looked at the price: $4,000—way better than the five figure prices I’d seen on the showroom floor. Mounting it I found that I had to go tippy-toed to keep it upright, and I remembered the Harley Woman at the drive-through ATM.

“Too big. My feet don’t touch the floor. They all look too big. Besides, I know some people who’d disapprove if I got anything but a Harley.”

His face lit up and he grinned as he turned toward the door, waving his hand. “Let’s go back out front, let me show you something.”

To Be Continued....