Well, today I learned that my daughter is even more worthy of respect than I had thought she was.
I bought her Vespa when she moved to Madison, and have been putting off taking the class to get a motorcycle endorsement on my license. I rode a motorcycle in my early 20s, but when we moved to Jacksonville I just didn’t feel safe on it…too many bridges with grates, and I always felt like I was going to slip off into the river. So here I am with a practically unridden Vespa and can’t ride it legally…and haven’t ridden it at all because it’s in Orlando. For Christmas, Steve registered me for the Safe Ride class, and off I went this morning to re-learn riding on two wheels with an engine.
I have never felt more insecure in my life. EVERYONE else in the room rides. Not legally, of course, because they don’t have the endorsement, but they ride. I haven’t been on a motorcycle, even as a passenger, in ten years or more, and it’s been thirty-two years since I drove one. I was REALLY scared. But I survived. And I didn’t kill anyone. And the cones I rode over survived to cone another day. And I wonder if a Vespa will be satisfying or if I’m going to be in the market for a small bike soon. One of the most difficult things was figuring out to do with all this damned hair; I had shorter hair when I rode back in the day.
But my point is, Alex took this class with NO riding experience. She gets as anxious as I do but doesn’t have as many years of dealing with that anxiety…I don’t know how she made it through the first hour of class and the first ten minutes on the road course.
Except that, of course, she is my daughter. And she is awesome. And I hope she keeps her motorcycle endorsement, because even riding at 15 mph on a small road course, it is loads of fun to be on a bike! And someday she and Josh will have the time and money to enjoy a ride through the beautiful Wisconsin countryside, and I hope they will (even if Josh rides on the back of her bike).
In other news, I am working hard, healthy, and very, very happy. Back to school this summer. I will try to do a better job of keeping this blog and my Team Research Chickens blog updated, but I’m not going to stress over it. I have learned a lot about stress the past two years — haven’t we all? — and I’m not going to let it run the show.
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