The Fear of Riding

(If you've yet to realize I have a new, raunchy blog (that all you little working slaves shouldn't be reading at work, trust me), then you need to email me for the URL. )

It's 7am and all I want to do is sleep.

I was awake until past 1am, having been idiotic enough to come home and write after hanging with WhippedBoy at the beach. I have been known to actually have fun with WhippedBoy, but what we always have is great conversations. I reveal more to him in conversations than I probably do with anyone else, because we have a lot in common when it comes to life experiences and how we got to be who we are. After those conversations, it's not unusual to feel like writing when I get home.

And the effect lingers this morning. The problem?

It's what I know I finally need to confront and write about -- the scooter (think Vespa, not Razor) accident last summer that I was lucky to survive. I've never written about it. (This is my scooter, by the way, in the photo.)

I recently went through this hell of writing a 2,500-3,000 word article on scooters in Vancouver for a major local paper, and I was told Tuesday that a major rewrite was needed. I wasn't surprised, I suspected something along that line.

I'd rewritten the fucking thing four times, start to finish, and felt like crying every time. The thing kept coming off as an opinion piece, and I didn't even realize until last night that a lot of it was about safety issues, all the wrong things when you're writing an interest story for a quarter-million people.

Although a rewrite is needed, I was encouraged to do one. The editor liked the idea, liked my writing ability, but thinks I'm off-topic. And I am.

So, WhippedBoy and I were talking about whether or not I do the rewrite. In a way, I feel like I have to. But now I think I just don't have it in me. Last night, talking, I was able to finally acknowledge something that I've been avoiding: For me, riding has changed. Most of the time when I get onto my bike, I enjoy it, but there's a lot of fear.

Fear that escalated two weeks ago when a woman I knew, a very prominent female motorcyclist and safety advocate and all around cool chick was rounding a corner on the Sea-to-Sky Highway when she wiped out, landed in a ditch, and was killed instantly. The riding community was stunned. Personally, I cried and was in a fog until the next day.

For the last two weeks, a lot of thoughts have been running through my head. Two years in a row, I had very serious accidents on Labour Day weekend. And that weekend is coming. And I'm terrified.

And still, I've not told the story of the accident. But soon, I will. This weekend, I intend to force myself to write it all out. It's time. It will be a heavy piece. It'll be hard for me to come to terms with the fact that I remember almost nothing at all about the accident itself. That doesn't mean I don't remember the fear, the shock, the pain, and the horror. For once, I have no idea where this will lead me.

I don't think I realized how much this accident was still fucking me up until I spoke with my friend last night. I didn't realized how much it'd been blocking me.

Think about it, of all the things I write about, with posting every day, the one thing I almost never mention is riding -- something I loved doing so much that I started a club locally that today has over 200 members. It amazes me that I've never written about riding itself, nor about my cute little scoot, or the way I feel when I zip down a rural road on a hot sunny day, darting in and out of tree-canopied sections.

It may not be a crotch rocket, but I consider my bike a huge part of who I am. That I ride, that I had the balls to get back on after destroying not one but two bikes in my accident, that I still have the balls to ride now, considering the fucking idiocy that guides the majority of Vancouver's drivers.

But my fear's getting stronger. And now it's time I write something on it.

So, posting this? Kind of like a contract. Now I have to write it. Soon.