The Motorcycle Story pt. 2

If this is your first foray into an article written by me, then stop now. You are coming in mid-story and I can’t afford a good editor and voice-over guy to give you a “previously on” moment. So please find The Motorcycle Story Pt. 1 to really get this right.

Now where was I? Oh yes, as you can imagine with the emotional and physical trauma the accident brought into my life, my wife forbade motorcycles forever. I was not really in a place to argue. Fast forward a few years, a new house, and two kids. I have always struggled through cars. By that, I mean I usually couldn’t afford anything decent and drove cars that needed work to keep them going. I don’t know crap about that and have killed two engines in my lifetime from neglect. I don’t remember what exactly happened but we found ourselves down to one car and drastically different schedules. We had no money for anything. I mean we had absolutely no way to get any means of transportation and we were desperate.

Then in a car ride one night as we are discussing options, my wife stopped. She quietly suggested that one reasonable option was for me to get a motorcycle again. You would have thought somebody farted in church from the silence that followed – except had it been a fart I would have been crying from laughing so hard. Yeah – Erin suggested I get a bike, and I gotta say I was terrified. But after some discussion about it, I agreed to call Douglas to get advice on how I should go about getting a bike. He immediately stepped up and gave me one of his motorcycles to use for free. And there it was, a reality that I never saw coming. My wife of all people thought of it and suggested it, and then it was there waiting for me at no cost.

I took a slower and wiser approach to riding this time. I went and obtained my full driver’s license on a course, and was super cautious. And by cautious, I mean bone-breaking nervous the first day I rode it to work. Do you know what it is like to be so nervous everything tingles and your muscles tense so hard it hurts? I never want to feel that way again and knew I couldn’t be that way for long at all. The first morning ride to work was torturously long. But the ride home was bad. My jaw was killing me from clinching and about half way home I had to pull over. I had to pace for a few minutes to relax the muscles and in those moments I spoke to myself. I knew in my brain that my fear was a bit irrational, and even the justified part was running out of control. I knew I would hurt myself if I could not control my body. So, in short, I told myself out loud that I have to get home, and that if my wife could believe in me to be safe then I know I am safe.

I have no idea why these moments were out loud. It wasn’t like I knew anything about the power of words, or that I was trying to invoke the Law of Attraction. I was just so at the end of my rope I had to hear it out loud to let go. To be honest it seemed a little weird at the time, but what’s crazy when you learning to control your own life? So after my little talk, I got back on the bike physically relaxed. Not comfortable or confident, but the muscles let go.

I rode that bike for the year and in the fall returned it to Douglas. We bought a $700 car to get me through the winter that was by all accounts a ghetto sled. The following spring was the year of the George W. Bush big time tax rebates. I was getting $1800 and my wife and I decided to buy a bike with that unexpected income. Of course that wouldn’t but me much of a bike, but it would do. I started shopping around and never quite found anything real in my price range. Then a coworker of my mother-in-law says he has a bike for sale. It was only a few years old, had low mileage, and one owner. It happened to be his son-in-law’s bike who defaulted on the payments and he just wanted to get rid of it for the loan payoff. Yup, you guessed it – $1800 on the penny. At the time of the sale, the blue book value on the bike was $3600. So again everything falls into place without me ever seeing it coming. It was what we needed when we needed it.

I rode that bike rain or shine when the temperature was at 50 or above for two years. The first year I ended up letting it sit for a few months. I had to get a new battery and some tune up work done in the spring and learned my lesson. The second winter I tried to maintain the bike but as life goes, my attentions were drawn elsewhere. In the summer of 2008 we were able to buy a minivan for the wife, so I got her car. When the weather got bad or cold, I ended up forgetting to maintain the bike, so I gave up. Come the springtime, though, more problems started to arise as Douglas and I worked on it. Ultimately after a full day of working on it, Douglas said it would take a shop to fix it. I didn’t have that kind of money so I had to park it. That was 2009. In 2012, I finally got the wild hair to fix it myself. So with the help of YouTube and a manual, I tore my bike down and put it back together which was a huge moment for me.

Then the best moment was I was able to crank the bike and it ran. DUDE! Yeah, it was awesome. Then I took it for a spin around the block and it started stalling. Long story short I fixed one problem and discovered another one. But I was still stoked because I fixed the first problem. So I arranged for Douglas to take the bike in the fall of 2012. He would tinker with it since he had time and loved working on things. As time progressed, he had to find some parts and then get another buddy to use some space alien discombobulator machine thing to make it work, I dunno. As spring moves into summer, I let the notion of actually riding go. I knew I had attracted this entire path and that only recently had I started attracting change.

And a lot has changed since I fixed the bike myself. The New Media Expo 2013 happened in a big way, as did the Success Freaks career. I mean, a book and a conference later and boom – I fixed that too and had no idea I could. But the best thing to happen out of this year was another little quiet moment. No, it was not my baby daughter being born. Pssshhh, she’s a human and prone to her own lessons. This is my story yo. No, the best thing to happen was my wife called me up one night driving home and told me that she had been thinking about something for days and had to tell me. Even though it scares her immensely, she wanted me to do what I needed to do in order to pursue Success Freaks full time.

Yeah, I was stunned into silence, happy, and terrified all at the same time again. Like the beginning of this part of The Motorcycle Story, she had seen the right path for us to take when I had not been looking for it. I am always focused on the big picture and see most of the things that I need to get to the big picture. It helps to surround yourself with the people who can see the small steps it takes to get you there. I am still a little stunned that she was ready to make that leap. But I know when to listen, I know when to take the next step, and I know when my partner joins me in freedom.

Do you see all of the epic dominoes that had to fall for “something to give” in my life? From that lowest moment of my life – me speaking those words out loud – to today, where I get to report my second ride in less than 24 hours of having my motorcycle back in working order, thanks to Douglas. Be aware of what you need, attract the people into your life that will help you get what you need, and know that the hard moments come and go just the same as the easy ones. Enjoy the moment, learn the lesson, live free.

Welcome to the New Age.