If I Wrap It Tight Enough

By Vicki Boling and Terry Boling

This is the amazing story of a woman’s passion and obsession with the sport of motorcycling. Follow Vicki’s motorcycling experiences from the beginning as a child helping her father rebuild a motorcycle and the first ride with him on the mountain roads in Western North Carolina, learning to ride her own bike, terrorizing some of the best motorcycling roads in the Southeast, and through the aftermath of a disabling accident resulting in paralysis of her left leg.

Learn of her struggles to heal both physically and mentally but never giving up on her desire to ride. Meeting a fellow motorcyclist and soon married, her husband helps Vicki ride again. Due to the extent of the injuries, her motorcycle had to be modified. The physical limitations from the accident forced her to change her riding style, but she was riding again.

Déjà vu would strike a few short years later when involved in another accident. This time her right knee and left shoulder and arm were injured. Vowing to ride once again, this recovery would have new challenges. Healing and rehabilitation was longer than expected, and an unforeseen challenge was the development of spinal pain. This pain was unbearable and affected walking, standing, and sitting.

Vicki’s story has humor, sadness, disappointment, and struggles but is full of motivation. Would she ride again? Read her book and find out!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vicki Boling
• Release date: Apr 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463359433

Book preview

IF I WRAP IT TIGHT ENOUGH

by Vicki Boling

with Terry Boling

Copyright 2018 by Vicki Boling

Cover photo by Terry Boling

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or parts thereof, in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a (we hope favorable) review.

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 your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Published by

Free State West Publishing

Huachuca City, Arizona

Dedication

To every person who gave me the encouragement and strength to overcome the obstacles along the path to my goals and to the people who provided guidance and support of my motorcycling obsession.

Acknowledgments

This book could not have been written without all the people who supported me throughout my riding career and the writing of this book. Some of the more notable people whose efforts I am grateful for are, in no particular order, Clark McCall for always letting me know I can do anything I set my mind to do, David Skinny McCall for helping me so much in the early days of my riding, Larry Larry B Blythe for always being there to pick me up when I was down, Larry Rabbie Rollins for being my roomie on many bike trips, William Billy Trowbridge, Jr. (RIP), who taught me a lot about riding and who was always giving me pointers, Kevin Roesch for making it so I could go home after the second major accident, Ruth Boling for everything she has done for me, and my husband, Terry, because without his constant and relentless nagging that I had to share my story, this book would have never been written.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1: THE MOTORCYCLING BEGINNING

2: A BIKE OF MY OWN

3: PENELOPE

4: THE PURPLE PIRANHA

5: TIME OF MOURNING

6: CRASH, CRUNCH, OUCH!

7: A NEW BEGINNING

8: SILVER STREAKING FUN

9: RUDE AWAKENING TO REALITY

10: HAPPINESS IS BLISS

11: GOOSE, GOOSE, DUC!

12: DEJA VU

THANK YOU

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

HOW TO CONTACT

GLOSSARY

1: THE MOTORCYCLING BEGINNING

One of my earliest and best memories of motorcycles stems back to my youth and a special time that I spent with my father. My dad was not a motorcyclist, by any means, so I was surprised to see him tote home an old Kawasaki motorcycle.

The bike was complete and in nice condition, but the engine was bad. I was around nine years old at the time and had never really been exposed to motorcycles. The thought of helping my dad with the bike, and maybe being able to ride on it, was exciting.

With my father’s regular job and his many weekend projects, we spent time working on the little Kawasaki only on weekday evenings, when my father would come home from work.

I looked forward to this time spent with my father. I would make sure that my homework was done before he came home, so I could help him as soon as he was ready to go work on it. I believe my mother did not like the motorcycle and the time my father and I spent working on the bike. This dislike might have been some of the root cause of the grief I would later receive from her as an adult when I had a motorcycle of my own.

My involvement with the motorcycle engine rebuilding consisted mainly of grabbing various tools and handing them to my father or making beer runs to the kitchen refrigerator. I was delighted on the few occasions he asked for my assistance in reaching through the frame rails and the engine to reach a bolt in a small crevice. My father was a rather large man, and he couldn’t get those big, meaty hands into some of the small areas that I could. I loved the fact that he really did need my help with the bike and not simply as a go-fer.

Because of the limited time we had to work on the bike, the project stretched out for many weeks, which felt like an eternity for me. While working on the bike, my father would tell me how the bike would become mine when I turned sixteen. I could only imagine what it would be like to ride a motorcycle on my own and thoughts of just how cool I would be when I rode the bike to school. The mental images of riding the bike would sing in my mind like the exhaust note of a fine-tuned motorcycle with race exhaust.

The day of truth came and my father put gasoline into the bike’s fuel tank.

Several attempts at starting the bike were utter failures as the engine either showed no attempt to catch or just stuttered, stumbled, hiccupped, and backfired. My father made a couple of small adjustments to the carburetor while mumbling something under his breath I could not make out clearly, but I’m sure my mother would not have appreciated his language.

With the next attempt to start the bike, it fired and purred like a kitten. I was elated, but my father acted as though it was no big deal. I was so happy this motorcycle – that I helped my father rebuild! – had roared to life.

He let the motorcycle idle for a minute or two and revved it up a few times to see how it was running. He turned the bike off and turned to me while smiling and asked, Do you want to go for a spin?

The smile on my face got larger as I responded with I sure do!

My dad let me climb on top of the bike. It felt as if it were twenty feet tall as I climbed onto the seat. He had me reach over and hit the starter and the little bike roared to life again. He told me to go ahead and rap the throttle and, when I did, the vibrations of the bike woke up my soul and the warm tone of the exhaust opened my mind. My face lit up with excitement as I asked my father, Dad, when can we take the bike for a ride?

It was a few more days, on the weekend, before my father decided to take the bike out for its maiden road trip with the rebuilt motor. Dad was going to let only me ride with him on the bike and not my little brother. To this day, many years later, I can still hear one of his main lines of reasoning behind letting me ride with him. He said, You can hang on better than your brother if we have to run from the police.

We lived out in the countryside in the mountains of North Carolina, but, even then, we had to worry about the stray sheriff’s patrol when we took the little Kawasaki out for its test run. The bike did not have insurance nor was it registered, so actually running might have been necessary. Sometimes, alcoholics don’t make the best of decisions.

It was a nice sunny and warm day when my father pulled the bike out of the shed for the test run. The bike fired right up and I climbed aboard. Neither of us wore a helmet or any other safety gear, but this was around 1980, and safety gear was never really emphasized back then. I recall my dad wearing his work pants and a white T-shirt as I tried to reach around him the best I could, coming short by a significant distance. I was not worried about being unable to reach all the way around him, as just sitting on the bike in anticipation of going for a ride was exhilarating. Before I knew it, he had revved the engine a little, smoothly let out the clutch, and we were moving.

I do not know how far we went or how fast, but it was a lot of fun. We cruised around on the little back roads as the pavement curved with the winding of the creek. These were old horse and buggy trails that were not paved until recently. We were reliving the routes of travel of past generations and following the footsteps once made by horse, pony, or donkey, and we were upon our own iron pony.

This is the only ride I can recall having on the old Kawasaki. My dreams and thoughts of riding the bike to school never became a reality, because the bike was totaled by my cousin Eddie about a year after that lone ride.

My father passed when I was nineteen years old, so he never knew how this little motorcycle that we rebuilt together was the first stepping stone to a passionate and obsessive relationship I would have with motorcycling. This relationship would build my self-esteem and self-confidence like nothing else in my life.

A couple of years after the maiden trek on the Kawasaki, I experienced my next exposure to motorcycling which was the first with dirt-bikes and the first of having the crap scared out of me on a motorcycle. My cousin Randy had a few dirt-bikes over the years, and he asked me if I wanted to go for a ride one day. I was hesitant and leery of his suggestion, but felt more at ease when he told me, Don’t worry, Vicki. I’ll go slow, and I won’t scare you.

The bike was rather tall, so I climbed aboard, and as I started to hold on to him, what happened gets a little fuzzy in my memory. Bystanders might say that he slowly pulled off and we had a pleasant putt around the yard and some trails, but my perception is a little different from what others might have seen.

I swear to this day that as soon as I barely had a grasp on his waist, he revved the throttle and popped the clutch with the rear wheel spinning, dirt being kicked into the air, the front end coming off the ground like a bucking bronco rearing up, and my butt sliding to the rear fender. I was hanging on for dear life as the front end climbed higher into the air, my legs were waving in the air behind the bike, and my body position would have been more appropriate if I were wearing a skin-tight Spandex bodysuit, long cape, and a large single V on the chest.

Somehow I climbed back onto the seat when the front wheel returned to Earth, and I clung tightly to my cousin. I don’t have any idea what was going through his mind at the time, but believe a demon had possessed him, as he weaved in and out and between the trees and large rocks on the trail. We might have gotten airborne at some points in the ride, but I wouldn’t know, as I often had my eyes closed and prayed we wouldn’t hit a tree as, once again, I was not wearing any safety gear; not even a helmet.

When the ride was complete, he came to a sliding stop in front of my aunt’s house and I was mildly shaking. This is if the word mild is one expressed during an earthquake hitting an 8.5 on the Richter scale. I have no idea what the look on my face might have been nor the condition of my hair, but I know it could not be any different than some of those people on the roller-coaster rides where the amusement parks have the camera take a picture of the riders at the fastest and scariest section of the ride.

I said a few choice words at my cousin, as though a demon had possessed me, but I swear those words were not actually coming from my mouth. I do not know how those words that were going through my mind were becoming audible, especially at the volume and tone for which they were being projected.

I swore to him that I would never sit on a motorcycle with him again, but it wasn’t long before I had a temporary lapse of memory and took another ride with him. To this day I have no idea what in the world I was thinking, because it was a repeat performance. My cousin’s disposition was a little on the mean side and, once again, I had fallen for another of his traps. Ah, to be young and naïve again ˗ no, I would not want to be.

When in high school, my brother was given a small Suzuki DR100 dirt-bike. I learned how to ride a motorcycle with this little Suzuki. The bike was rather small and did not have a lot of power. It was an excellent bike to learn on. My brother and I would ride along the dirt road that went alongside our house, but we also had some trails through the woods. We even built ourselves a small track at the bottom of the hill that weaved through the trees, had a couple of small jumps, and even came designed with a nice mud bog.

Learning to ride the motorcycle was not difficult at all and became second nature very quickly. I really enjoyed riding it, as it was a lot of fun. Some of the attraction I had to riding was not only the fun-factor, but also that it was simply exhilarating, required some skill to ride, and I loved the fact that not many people I knew could ride a motorcycle. I definitely did not know of any other girls who rode motorcycles, so being able to ride gave me a sense of accomplishment by knowing that riding a motorcycle was a bit of an oddity.

My brother and I would spend hours riding the Suzuki, going through tank after tank of gasoline when we had the chance. We would tear up the yard by roosting dirt as we slung the little bike around. After repeated trips in the same section, we could see the start of a berm developing, which helped us with our turning speeds. Sometimes with enough drive out of the curve, we could pull a wheelie, which was something else I used to like to do on the motorcycle.

Tearing up the yard was not too big a deal, as the yard was not manicured very well, but my brother and I would often get yelled at when we were done riding on those days when we concentrated at the mud bog. It was fun slinging the bike through mud, splashing it all over, roosting it onto each other if the other was too close to the edge of the bog, and we often became covered from head to toe. We even got the mud in our hair, as it was a while until mom and dad bought us a helmet to share but we did not wear. Our mother wouldn’t allow us in the house with the muddy clothes and we would usually get hosed off with the garden hose and then have to change clothes before going through the house.

Another time, also while in high school, I was at a friend’s house and one of their friends had a Honda CR500 two-stroke dirt-bike. The guys fired it up and started riding it around the field, whipping it around, roosting dirt, and riding wheelies with it. A couple of people knew I could ride a motorcycle, so they started telling me I should take it for a spin. Despite its being a lot larger in physical size and displacement, I figured it would not be any huge deal to ride it.

The Honda was tall, as in really tall. The guys dug out an old milk crate for me to stand on to climb on top of the bike. This definitely was not like the little Suzuki, as it felt weird, sounded strange, and the height truly made me uneasy, but I revved the bike up a little and let the clutch out.

I first took it easy, but found out quickly that with just a little bit of throttle, the thing took off like an angry hornet. It was not just fast, it was scary fast, and the front end was easy to loft into the air. I was completely shocked by the power this bike had, but to this day I will say that the bike was pure brutal power and it scared the marbles out of me. This thing would scare the horns off of Satan, if he were to ride it.

I wound up creeping the bike along and, instead of whipping the bike around to turn, I used the whole edge of the field to turn it around. I did not ride it much and was pretty happy to hand it over to the next hapless potential victim. Riding this CR500 gave me a whole new perspective on motorcycling and the differences in power that different models can have. This experience definitely taught me that motorcycling was not anything to take for granted and that these machines needed to be respected. The CR earned my respect in the snapping of the fingers.

When I was seventeen, I had moved out of the house and was living with my Crazy Cousin Karen. While living with her, I started dating Bruce, who had a street and trail motorcycle. I rode with him quite a lot, but he never would let me ride it by myself or with him as my passenger. He was very stingy with it. Maybe he was afraid I was a better rider then he was. Bruce was fine with the bike when on roads that he knew, but he scared me when he was on roads he did not know. On these unfamiliar roads, the speeds were a bit outside of my comfort zone for the operator’s skills, the bike, and the laws of physics, but fortunately we never did crash. I was uneasy during these times and the uneasiness took some of the fun out of riding.

Some of the most pleasurable riding experiences I had during my early motorcycling exposure were those with my friend John at the controls. I was twenty or twenty-one at the time and had known John for a little while when he had recently bought a Kawasaki ZX-11. We were hanging out and talking about motorcycles when the topic of my knowing how to ride dirt-bikes but not having a motorcycle license came up. John asked me if I wanted to go for a ride on his ZX-11, and I took him up on it.

John was a very good rider and rode at a very comfortable pace. We rode around Asheville, up Town Mountain Road, a twisty section of State Highway 74 near Lake Lure, and toward the Blue Ridge Parkway. The bike was smooth and flowing at his control. The road was winding back and forth, as it snaked up the side of the mountains. We went through open valleys of fields and pasture and up the side of the mountain through dense, wooded areas where the trees made a canopy over the road and blocked out the sun. The pace was just fast enough that we would dip in a gentle, ballerina-like motion as the bike caressed the flowing curves of the road. First to the left, then to the right, upright, lean to the right again, and on and on the rhythm of the road went. As we got to the higher elevations, gaps between the trees became large enough in some areas to allow me to see the mountain range of which this curvy road was a part.

Once on the Blue Ridge Parkway, the curves were larger and more flowing, but now I had these terrific scenic views of the wonderful Smoky Mountains. I had always enjoyed car rides on the Parkway, but being on a motorcycle was a lot different. I could feel the wind, smell the trees and fresh air, and the feelings were surreal. I did not want these feelings and this ride to end, but it eventually did. I was disappointed that we could not ride longer, and the burning desire to own a motorcycle I could call mine went from a single match to a five-alarm fire.

I went on rides with John on several occasions, but they had to be when he did not have a girlfriend. Having a girlfriend and taking some other girl for a ride on the back of a bike is nothing that ever seems to go over well. It was not anything I would appreciate someone doing to me, so I did not want to place myself in that situation. The rides with John were always pleasant, enjoyable, and a lot of fun. I felt comfortable enough with him and his riding ability that I would let him do wheelies with me on the back of the bike. He was courteous enough to ask me before each wheelie, so I was never blindsided when he would loft the front wheel skyward.

A fond memory I have is when a long-time friend borrowed his brother’s motorcycle and took me up U.S. Highway 276 through the Pisgah Forest, just north of Brevard, North Carolina. The bike was an older Honda CB900, more of a standard-class bike, and the large seat was comfortable for me. This section of the Pisgah Forest is nice as the majority of the road twists and turns along the edge of a mountain trout stream. The lower section is nice without too many elevation changes, and we rode past Looking Glass Falls, which can easily be seen from the road.

It was a pleasant ride through the lower section with all the vegetation and tree canopies over the road, but then we started to climb the mountain to the Blue Ridge Parkway. The road got steeper and had much tighter curves. It was a lot of fun, and the reason this ride and this section of road are so dear to me is that it is what I would later consider my road. I would spend a lot of time on this road, storming up and down it, memorizing every twist, turn, bump, and pothole. I would adopt it as mine, but that is a tale for later.

Probably the most notable early experience was one that I had with an ex-boyfriend. Bobby had a Honda CBR600F2. I was young, naïve, and looked for the positive in everyone at the time, so I believed him when he said he had a race license. I do not know what he supposedly raced, but it sure was not motorcycles, from what I had seen of his performances. I dated him for a couple of months and we went on several motorcycle rides. Typically, we would ride with a bunch of his friends, and we basically just cruised around and spent a lot of time on the Parkway.

These compounding motorcycling experiences as a passenger constantly had my mind thinking of what it would be like to have my own bike. Adding more Blue Ridge Parkway miles made riding as a passenger more bearable, as I could really soak in and absorb the views. Having ridden my own bikes, in the form of dirt-bikes, gave me the insight that I knew, I truly knew, that being in control of my own