When my friend said, “Hey! I got this brand new composter out back – wanna see it?” I said no, mostly because it was 35 degrees outside and I was uninterested in leaving her couch. When I did finally get off my butt because we were leaving, I said, Sure, let’s see this composter and as I was walking towards her back door, my husband Will shoves this jewelry box in my hand (and on an aside, people who know me know I don’t do much jewelry, so when I saw the box, I mentally shrugged my shoulders and said to myself, Yeah, I’d wear diamond earrings if someone gave them to me, not to mention that it wasn’t quite Christmas yet – it was only Dec. 22) but then this little key fell out, and as I turned to him, the back patio light went on, and there was a Kawasaki Ninja with a big red bow on it. Naturally, I then did the girl thing and started to cry.

I’ve always wanted a motorcycle and we actually had one about 4 years ago, but it had been stolen and we had never replaced it. And Will decided I should get one that fit better than our old one, and started working on this present back in October. And apparently, all of my friends knew about it, and I was completely oblivious. What I DID notice was that he would be gone at the most inopportune times of the day, and wouldn’t answer his cellphone and I’d get all annoyed with him about it. But then I’d get busy and forget… while he spent weeks finding it, getting tires replaced, and it inspected, and moved from one place to another – he had even gotten a new email address so that I wouldn’t come across something I wasn’t supposed to see by accident. Even the day he gave it to me, he had disappeared at the worst time – our office manager was sick, and I was swamped, and starving by the time lunch rolled around, and I called him up and got all irritated, told him he should get me something to eat on his way back and what was he thinking, going away on a day like today? What he had apparently been doing was taking his helmet and jacket to our friend’s house so that they wouldn’t be in the car already and ruin the surprise and so that he could ride it home for me, since it was a certainty that I would have had a couple of glasses of wine. Details count here, people, details count – he thought of everything.

So now I’m riding around again, after retaking the Motorcycle Safety Course as a review, and while yes, it’s exhilarating and dangerous and all that, I have always wanted to be a good rider and now I get to practice that.

Of course, I first had to injure myself with my last motorcycle…