The Mom Who Took Off On Her Motorcycle

By Diana Bletter

"This is an absolutely spell-binding read. I can't imagine anyone not enjoying this!
--Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Author of "When Elephants Weep" and "Assault on Truth"

After raising her "4+2+1" brood—four kids, two stepkids and one unofficially adopted Ethiopian daughter— Diana Bletter faced an empty nest. What would she do now? And more importantly, who was she now?
With nothing left to call her own, she decided to ride a motorcycle (with her husband on his motorcycle) from Long Island up to Alaska and back again. Only one slight problem: she'd never been on a motorcycle before.
With six motorcycle lessons' worth of experience, she took off, traveling across a continent, and then up the Alaska Highway, a road that is "sometimes dangerous, often unpredictable, and always saddled with the solitude of a frontier trail." She confronts fierce winds, grizzly bears, helmet hair—and her husband, alone with him for the first time in what seems like forever.
Full of spiritual insights, observations and humor, The Mom Who Took Off on Her Motorcycle captures the way two people, madly in love and yet so different, learn to count on each other and rediscover their passion—despite an accident that almost tears them apart. This story of a 10,000-mile journey to the Great White North is the inspiring tale of how one woman takes off to discover who she was before she had children and to find out who she could still become.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diana Bletter
• Release date: Jan 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9780985343217

Diana Bletter

Diana Bletter's writing appears in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Huffington Post, tabletmag.com, and other publications. She is the First Prize winner of Family Circle Magazine's 2011 Fiction Contest, and her novel, The Witches' Secret, was a semi-finalist in Amazon's 2009 Breakout Novel Award. Her stories have appeared in The North American Review, The Reading Room and Watchword. Her first book, The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women, with photographs by Lori Grinker, was nominated for a National Jewish Book Award. Her memoir, The Mom Who Took Off On her Motorcycle, has just been published. "A spellbinding read," wrote Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of The Assault on Truth and Why Elephants Weep.

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The Mom Who Took Off on Her Motorcycle

Life Lessons on the Road to Alaska

DIANA BLETTER

Parts of this book originally appeared, in slightly different form, in The New York Times and The Southampton Press.

All rights reserved. No part of this book maybe be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the author’s written permission.

This is a work of non-fiction based on notes I kept on my journey and conversations with my husband, Jonny, afterwards. I’ve made every effort to ensure the accuracy of information in this book but assume no responsibility for any inaccuracies. Any slights of people, places or organizations are unintentional. Some names have been changed to protect people’s privacy.

Cover design by www.designforwriters.com 

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The Mom Who Took Off On Her Motorcycle

By Diana Bletter

Published by Diana Bletter at Smashwords

Copyright © 2012 Diana Bletter

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 0985343206

ISBN-13: 978-0985343200

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For kuritsky, of course

PROLOGUE

One soggy gray morning in the Yukon, I spotted a terrifying bridge in the middle of nowhere and did the one thing I had vowed to my husband, Jonny, that I’d never do.

I pulled off to the side of the road and cried.

I was riding my motorcycle, not sitting on the back of his motorcycle with my arms wrapped nonchalantly around his waist. Ever since I’d dreamed up this farfetched, foolish trip— riding a motorcycle from the East End of Long Island to Anchorage, Alaska—I’d been trying to prove that I could be just as Zen about the art of motorcycle riding as the next guy. Yet there I was, gushing girly, geyser-sized tears at the thought of crossing this grated bridge.

And who did I have to blame for my predicament? Myself.

This little ten-thousand-mile journey was my idea. All year I had been trying to figure out what to do after the last of my brood—four kids, two step-kids and one unofficially adopted Ethiopian daughter—left home in the fall. For more than two decades, I had put all my energy into them.

Before the kids, I’d had an exciting life. I’d gone to an Ivy League university and then worked at National Lampoon. I published a book when I was 32 and gave lectures around the United States. But after the birth of my fourth child, I moved to Israel with my first husband, divorced him, and remarried Jonny, taking on his two kids and then unofficially adopting a seventh. Those kids had given me so much and they had taken so much from me, too. And no matter what I was doing as they were growing up, I always felt I should be doing something else. When I was reading someone else’s book while breastfeeding, I felt like a cow; and when I was away from my kids and working, I felt like a cad. I juggled to be everything all at once: a successful writer, wife, mother, daughter, friend. I hadn’t wanted to sacrifice my kids for my work but I had sacrificed my work for my kids. I wanted to ride a motorcycle to discover who I was before I became a mother, and to find out who I could still become now that all our kids had grown up.

As soon as I suggested this motorcycle trip to Jonny, a seasoned motorcyclist, he was packing his buck knife and his traveling toothbrush. Before I had a chance to come to my senses, before the kids were even out of the house, he had bought a blue BMW something-or-other for himself and, for me, a red BMW 650 GS. (Or was it a G 650 GS?) There’s no better reason for a 52-year-old woman to get a motorcycle other than to accessorize her cherry red lipstick.

We left the eastern end of Long Island just after dawn on the morning of the summer solstice in 2009 and reached the New York-Canadian border by the next day. I wanted to stop in Niagara Falls but Jonny sped right by.

It’s chock-full of tourists! he said. Go there with your next husband!

On our way across Canada and toward Alaska, we faced perilously steep hills, desolate roads, isolation, exhaustion, moose, bison, and grizzly bears—and now this, I thought, as I stared at the Nisutlin Bay Bridge in the Yukon. My guidebook had warned me that the bridge was slippery in a drizzle; it had been raining all morning. How did I ever think I could do this journey? I’d been hoping to inaugurate the next chapter of my life but all I could picture were scenes of my death.

In Scenario One, my motorcycle’s wheels glide like a hockey puck over ice and I smack into a trillion-ton trailer barreling over the bridge from the opposite direction. Scenario Two finds me crossing the bridge ever so carefully only to be whammed from behind by a driver in a shiny RV who notices my license plate and despises New Yorkers. I recalled the words of one of Jonny’s friends, this tough motorcycle dude whom I referred to as Mr. X. He had sat me down right before I left for this trip and told me, I know how much you want to do this ride, but I know you’ll never be able to do it.

So now I pictured my funeral, my kids and my husband and the other mourners, and I zoomed in on Mr. X who was shaking his head, a sad, smug expression spreading on his face that meant, I told her so. I looked out at the Nisutlin River with its silvery gray water tumbling between the grassy banks. The water was so cold that if I swerved and fell in, I’d have about 30 seconds to survive. Then again, with my padded jacket and pants and my heavy, steel-reinforced boots, I’d most likely sink and drown and the river would carry me all the way to the Bering Sea. I’d never even make it to my own funeral.

My motorcycle engine was running, but everything seemed still.

Jonny pulled up on his motorcycle, lifted his helmet visor and looked at me. He had olive skin and a muscular build with penetrating, intensely dark eyes. His eyes had captivated and conquered me so instantly that only a few months after meeting him, I had flipped my life upside down. I had ended my marriage with my first husband even though he was a good man and I thought I loved him and we had four children, all under the age of six at that time. Yet in no time at all, I had fallen out of love with him and into love with Jonny, never once looking back.

Until now. Orphaned by the time he was twenty and an Israeli commando by twenty-three, Jonny liked schedules, order, and staying vigilantly prepared for the next war. I, on the other hand, had never encountered a battle outside the house I grew up in on Long Island, and liked writing, reading and daydreaming. But we understood each other. We each had our secrets. We knew things about each other that we had never been able to tell anyone else. Still, was this grueling 10,000-mile odyssey of round-the-clock togetherness more than we’d bargained for?

I flipped up my motorcycle helmet visor that was caked with mud, streaked with rain, and decorated with a splattered assortment of dead flies and mosquitoes. Straddling my motorcycle, shivering with fear, the bridge that stretched the length of six football fields took my breath away. In the distance, after the Nisutlin River, was the village of Teslin, which was north of Juneau and south of so much glacial ice. Beyond that, the mountains rose into majestic peaks, as if they were the earth’s emperors. Even in July their jagged shoulders were cloaked with bejeweled capes of snow.

What’s wrong? Jonny asked.

What’s wrong is that I’ve only taken five motorcycle lessons in my entire life! I said. And we never covered a grated metal bridge in the Yukon!

But you’ve already ridden 2,000 miles to get here!

A stunt woman who looks like me rode those miles, I said. How about I walk the bike across?

Are you nuts? he said. That’s more dangerous than riding across it.

I stared at the bridge as if, just by staring at it, I could somehow transform it into something less formidable. But the bridge didn’t budge, nor did I, and there was Jonny, a man who charged into battles without thinking twice, who never hesitated to fight, who didn’t doubt his courage for one moment and who couldn’t understand how I doubted mine. He could serve as witness and encourage me on but this was a solo act. My test. It was me versus my own fears, my own ghosts.

I’d reached what felt like the end of a lifetime and also the beginning. How would I find myself again? I had no idea. All I knew was that I had to push myself even more and ride even farther than I wanted to go. But where to?

Even deeper into the vast unknown.

CHAPTER 1

Did the present deliver up the future, or must you chase your destiny like a harpoonist?

—Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision

The idea for the motorcycle trip came to me because of a divine sign. Well, not exactly a divine sign. More like two divine signs.

It was October, 2008. I was visiting Westhampton, New York, where Jonny was working at the time, and we were standing in a Starbucks parking lot when I spotted a lone motorcycle parked nearby. Then I saw a woman walking toward it. She was by herself. And she was riding that motorcycle.

I’ve been riding a scooter, a cute little Vespa Piaggio, since I moved to Israel in 1991. (Working as a freelance journalist, the scooter is the best way for me to get around.) But I’d never ridden a motorcycle with gears. I’d never thought that I could ride my own bike. It was one of those goals I’d never thought I’d reach, like winning the Nobel Prize or giving up mocha chip ice cream.

But when I saw that woman by her motorcycle, something ignited inside me. A buzzing, intense curiosity. I just had to go over to talk to her. She informed me in an excited voice that she was on her way to Alaska. Alone. Wow, I said excitedly. That is so great! I have always admired women who set off on adventures. Amelia Earhart was my kind of woman. Plus, my old college roommate, Mary, who I almost never get to see, lived in Alaska.

The idea of this female motorcyclist’s solo journey sparked my imagination. It kindled something deep inside me. I’d worked on and off while our kids were growing up but I’d spent most of my time nurturing their dreams and putting aside my own. Now I was facing an empty nest and I wanted to find some way to mark the transition: not only a commemoration of what was lost but a celebration of what would be.

Yet within minutes of saying goodbye to the motorcycle woman, I forgot all about her and my crazy idea. Then, about two months later, I’d returned to Westhampton and I was crossing the street when a motorcyclist slowed down to let me pass. It was the same motorcyclist from the Starbucks parking lot. I waved excitedly, motioning for her to pull over to the side of the road and Heather—as I later discovered her name—got off the motorcycle to talk to me. She removed her helmet, shook out her long reddish brown hair and told me that she had come back from Alaska. In fact, Heather was returning that very day, at that very moment, and I was the first person she had seen when she pulled into Westhampton.

This couldn’t have been a chance meeting. It was a sign: I had to do this trip. I had to travel west and then north and then northwest across a continent and into Alaska and back. I didn’t even know how many miles it would be or how I’d accomplish it. Logic told me it was dumb and dangerous and unaffordable. And yet. Something tugged at me and would not let go.

Which was how, a few weeks later in January 2009, I wound up in a motorcycle showroom with Jonny. We were gazing down at this thing, this thing that could be mine. It was blue, big and bulky. I’d seen two clear signs for a motorcycle ride and yet seeing this… this… thing up close made my knees jitter.

Look at those sleek lines, Jonny was saying. Check out that exhaust pipe! How cool is that rear sprocket?

I nodded dumbly, desperate to form a sentence. I was stammering and speechless.

Bletter! Jonny said. He always calls me Bletter, especially when he’s excited about something, and he turned to me now like a kid with a hundred dollars to blow in a penny candy store. His dark eyes glimmered at me, then at the motorcycle, then back at me, as if I’d just given birth to it, this 400-pound baby of a BMW. Isn’t it beautiful? he asked. Don’t you want it?

I didn’t know what to say. I had received a message to ride to Alaska, but now I knew that God must have dialed the wrong number. Like Moses with his stutter, I just wasn’t r-r-right for the job. Unfortunately, I had shared my inspiration with Jonny and he’d glommed onto my trip as if it were his own. This was all he talked about. Our daring-duo motorcycle trip: me as Robin, him as Batman; me as Lewis to his Clark. He had joined AAA, requested a Triptik for our itinerary, and made plans to take a leave of absence from his job managing his modular building company.

I stood still, stalling in the showroom, listening as the eager salesman jangled coins in his pockets. I thought about Jonny, who had already traveled so much in his life. For the past few years, he worked in New York while I lived with our kids in Israel; every few months, he had crisscrossed the Atlantic to visit us. More importantly, years ago, he had been an Israeli soldier, often sent into enemy territory on dangerous missions. When he wasn’t serving in the military, he tended to stay at home. It wasn’t that he never made any travel plans, more that he didn’t carry them out. With all good intentions, he paid for flights to Colorado to go mountain biking with friends, or tickets to go white-water rafting in Maine… and then canceled at the last minute. His preferred destination was cozied up on the couch with a big bag of Cape Cod potato chips and a paperback spy novel. He was content venturing down to the mailbox at the end of our driveway. How come he now longed for us to buy motorcycles and take off?

Was he having a midlife crisis? No, he had already checked that box when he divorced his first wife and married me. Was he eager to spend his inheritance? No, because when his parents died, they left him and his brother with hospital bills and $2,000 apiece. He wasn’t looking to leave his job completely—he just wanted some time off. What pushed him, prodded him, and propelled him? I couldn’t figure it out until I remembered being woken up by him at two a.m. a few nights back. He’d just had a nightmare in which he had died.

He’s had nightmares before. He served as a soldier: how could he not have nightmares? Lying in our bed in the darkness, he sometimes pumped his legs, escaping battle zones, dodging sniper’s bullets, grenades and rockets, his knees pounding over and over into my side. Other times, I would feel a kick and then a whooshing sigh, which is the sound he said he made when he jumped two stories out of a building about to explode. One night when I was snuggling next to him, my face resting on his chest, I started to roll over but he pushed down my head and shouted, STAY DOWN!

This nightmare, however, was perfectly peaceful. He simply died. Without a battle, without a fight. That was when I realized that Jonny’s biological clock was ticking. And Jonny admitted he realized it, too.

A woman’s biological clock might start ticking as she approaches 40 and realizes that her time to have a baby is running out. A man’s biological clock has nothing to do with birth, however, and everything to do with death. As men approach the age at which their fathers died, they hear that mournful bell in their ears, a distant ringing. Many men say that the year they turn the age at which their father died serves as the finish line, a chilling reminder of their own mortality. Men are sometimes convinced that they won’t outlast their fathers and they want to do everything they can before it’s too late.

I’m going to be 55 this summer, Thomas Friedman once said in an interview. My father died at 56. So I’ve always been aware that time is short. I am going to grab as much as I can. I am not going to miss a second.

Jonny’s father died when he was 58. Jonny had just turned 57. He’s told me that as a soldier, he wasn’t scared of dying—even during some narrow escapes. One time, for instance, he used a makeshift bathroom in a battle zone, stepped out, and just as the next soldier stepped in a moment later, a rocket exploded, killing him instantly. Jonny had always skirted death; but suddenly, he saw it looming close. How long did he have left? The trip, then, was the first item on his bucket list.

His plan was for us to hop on our matching motorcycles and take off from Westhampton, about 40 miles from the easternmost tip of Long Island, ride up New York State and across Canada, and continue up the Alaska Highway and into Anchorage, spending time with Mary who had been living there for the past thirty years. (She went there on a whim and never left.) I planned to write a blog about my adventures as well as an article for The New York Times on the Matanuska Glacier, an unusual glacier just outside Anchorage. After our visit, we’d do a U-turn and ride back to New York, a pilgrimage of more than 10,000 miles. I knew this trip was a total indulgence. It made no sense financially. It was wrong to spend so much money and not save for our kids and our own retirement down the road. Yet…it was on our bucket list…and if one of us died and we never got the chance to do something fun with the money we earned, what would have been the point of it all?

Well, Jonny was saying to me in that motorcycle showroom. What’s your decision?

I looked at that shiny blue motorcycle and thought of my mother who had preferred luxury cruises and five-star hotels until she lost all her money in a series of bad business moves. Ever since I was a little girl, I knew that I wanted more for my life than I saw in hers: sitting at the kitchen table, smoking cigarettes and drinking red wine. I pictured her pale skin and her sad eyes. Only stupid people can be happy, she always told me.

I’m in, I now said to Jonny, who shot me a wide smile and turned to the salesman. We’ll take it, he said.

Only one slight problem.

I’d never even ridden a motorcycle before.

You have to be a complete meshuggeneh to ride a motorcycle all the way to Alaska, my mother had said before I’d left. I can’t believe how crazy you are!

She was right, I kept thinking as I pulled into the Six Mile Lake campground in Ontario, Canada on June 22. I was crazy. I wasn’t riding the blue model that Jonny and I had seen in the showroom; he had bought that for himself instead. My motorcycle was bright red and sleek and shiny. It was a few pounds lighter than his but it still weighed a lot more than I did. Exactly 532 pounds more. And with all my gear, clothes and sleeping bag, it weighed more than that and I had to use every ounce of strength I owned to hold it up, balancing it between my thighs like a huge raging bull.

We had started the day in fog so thick that a few minutes after Jonny and I left my friend Bara’s house in Trumansburg, New York, we were lost in the gray haze. By the time we rode across the border into Canada, the temperature had soared to 92 degrees. The sun had burned up the fog; it burned up the sky. I was sweating in my black padded pants and black padded jacket fitted with a tortoise-like plastic shield to protect my spine in case I crashed.

I took off my helmet and peeled off my gloves. I clomped next to Jonny in my black boots with steel-reinforced toes. The protectiveness of my clothes and boots was equally reassuring and unnerving. If I had a crash, they would protect me, but they implied the inevitably of