Winter Commuting Blues

This morning was the first time all winter I was glad I'm not carpooling. I travel about 45 miles each way to the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic where I'm an Orthopaedic nurse. I lost my carpool slot last April when I began another season of motorcycle commuting, and since then, everybody from my carpool seems to have gotten jobs elsewhere. Now the price of gas is down, and nobody wants to carpool anyway. This morning, I was getting ready to leave, fed the dogs, the goats, let the chickens out, and quickly ducked into the chicken house to see if their feeder was full, then headed off down the road in my trusty Corolla (shod with 4 studded Nokian Hakkapellita 5's, of course). Cruising along, iPod percolating in my head, heat slowly coming on. . . hmmm, getting a little funky in here, hey? Whew, I guess! Check the bottom of my right boot, and the lugs are packed with what looks like half a pound of nice, fresh, chicken shit. Now, let's face it, I'm a nurse. Not much in the way of excrement holds any terror for me- but I had to drive with the windows open. That would have surely been the end of any carpool right there! Just a little excitement for a commute that's usually about like watching the "Main Menu" of the Fargo DVD for an hour. There are just so many Pema Chodron meditation CDs, language programs, etc., I can listen to, and riding season is still at least a couple of months away. Whine, whine, whine. . . and the R1200GS's sit and wait patiently, the lights on their Battery Tenders glowing green in the dim light of the barn's frozen fluorescent tubes.

We both commuted on sport-tourers (and sport bikes) for years. . . musta been we got too old. Mostly it was great, we have some amazing roads, but coming home up that steep dirt road, making the 90-degree turn off the road, over the sheet of plywood- held up with 2X4's- that covers the ditch, then another fall-away 90 down to the barn. In the rain, in the dark, doing that maneuver on a Ducati SS750ie, or almost doing it and getting spit off downhill, sliding down toward the barn on your chest while your little red darling lays on her side and screams bloody murder. Ah, what fun! So, a couple of years ago, while we were house-hunting for a place on a paved road, we were at Max BMW Motorcycles in North Hampton getting my R1100S serviced, and Mary took a used GS for a test ride. She bought it on the spot. Two days later, we set out on an errand run that turned into a 250-mile hell ride (half an hour on a 10mph detour behind an oil truck?!). Mary finished fresh on her stock GS, and me, on my Corbin-saddled, Ohlins-suspended, R1100S, was completely knackered. Got to get me one o' them, I said, and traded my S away for a demo at Max's. "You bought new bikes?" asked our friends.

"Sure," we said, "but we saved ourselves a ton of money- because now we don't have to buy a new house!" The "barn move" isn't anything any more, with all that steering lock and those chunky tires. Even better, I've got about four different routes home, all with varying amounts of dirt. . . mmmm, sliding corners, can't wait!