A Life in Waiting

As my lack of writing this week might signify, I have had a pretty busy week.  I’ve been working late, squeezed in a couple of side jobs and spent time stressing over the timing of everything in relation to date of departure and financial status.  However, I suppose it can’t be all that bad considering that I am writing this right now as I lay in my tent overlooking a slow moving stream in the base of the Catskills this misty Sunday morning. 

I really fought with myself on whether or not I should go camping.  It was a last minute excursion that Scotty put together that I felt I needed to attend.  It’s getting closer and closer to my last days here and I really haven’t done much with my friends recently.  So here I am.  The decision turned out to be two-fold.  Since I will be traveling throughout Europe on a motorcycle, including camping at times, why not use this trip as a trial run, so to speak.  So I clipped on the saddlebags, strapped down my backpack onto the backseat and away I went. 

Turns out that it was a great idea to bring the bike.  I have already realized a few things I need to adjust and some more things I need to make this successful.  For one, as large as the saddlebags may seem to be, they don’t hold much.  So I really need to depend on my duffle bag to carry most of my gear.  One of my plans is to find a way to fit all of my camping/sleeping gear into one side.  Not looking like it can be done, but I am going to try.   

But all in all a good night.  Now let’s see how we do on the second attempt.

View from my tent as I wrote this.

There’s a routine Eddie Murphy does in one of his classic stand up routines, I forget whether it’s from Raw or Delirious, where he’s talking about how his family can be so overly dramatic. His example was of his aunt falling down a flight of stairs, and it is so drawn out and long that all you hear is thump, thump, thump followed by “Oh lord help me Jesus”, and then more thumps until her next outburst. Somewhere in the middle, and this part always cracks me up, you hear her say, “Oh, my shoe!” as her shoe falls off. Classic.

That’s exactly how I’m feeling these days. I’m forever falling down a flight of stairs, and just as I feel like it’s coming to an end, I realize that it was my shoe falling off and I still have more to go. As most of you (still just Maria) have noticed, I never finished my motorcycle saga from last week nor have I added anything to this webpage either. And I am sorry. Not specifically to the three people reading this, but more to myself because I really want to document as much of this as possible. I was attempting to go into super detail with the motorcycle buying story, but apparently it was a bit too early to go long, and now I have a half assed story. So I will attempt to sum up as best as I can, as it was over a week ago and I probably forgot most of it by now.

Now as y’all remember, Bo and Luke had gotten themselves in a pickle… Oh wait, wrong series. Seems like that is always the tagline to all of the To Be continues that I remember as a kid. Those two were always getting into so much trouble…

Now as you all will remember, I didn’t feel a kinship to Frenchie’s bike and was now heading deeper into the Manhattan South to see the second bike of the day. As I was a few hours early, I wasted a few hours in a few good ole Starbucks. I finally meet Tarek (yes another European), and we go check out his bike. Bike is beautiful, clean and what I was looking for. Only problem, clutch issues. But for the price he was selling it for, and because of my lack of finding anything else, it seemed like a reasonable offer. So we decide that on the coming Saturday, I would return to the city and check out the bike in more detail with a mechanic (Jimmy) and see if it’s a good deal or not.

So now I’m all excited. I finally find a bike that I feel comfortable with, given that Jimmy approves. It is now Thursday, and during my typical morning ritual, I scour through eBay and Craigslist in search of more BMWs. And lo and behold, there is this cherry 2002 R1150R in my (sort of) price range! It is unbelievable! The too good to be true kind. Not only that, it has all the bags I need, new tires, brakes and all other updates I would have wanted. But it has 75,000 miles. You read that right, not 75 HUNDRED but 75 THOUSAND miles. Quite a bit for a bike. Especially one that I plan on driving all over a foreign land where English as a Second Language is not a course at the local county college, but the norm.

So after I get a hold of the owner Luca (yet another European) and set up a time to look at his bike prior to our other appointment on Saturday, I begin my search to find out how much I should be worried about the high mileage. Long story short, it’s not too big of a deal as long as the bike was well maintained and certain things were checked. So a little more confident, we head down to Manhattan Saturday morning to check out the bikes.

Our objective was to check out the newer, cooler R1150R first, because if it wasn’t what we wanted, then we would go pick up the other bike that needed the clutch work, among other things. We navigate ourselves through East Side traffic and arrive at the bike shop where Luca works and the BMW is sitting out front at. Let me just tell you, it was love at first site. This beemer was impressive! It was clean, flawless and in perfect shape. Hell, it was damn sexy!

After talking with Luca for a while and having Jimmy scrutinize over this bike without finding a single flaw, I had to buy it. We agreed on a price and a pickup time and off we went.

So now I have bought a bike and am picking it up the next day, but I am a few dollars short. So who do I turn to? The one person in the world that has never said no to anything I’ve ever asked (except for that time I wanted to head down to west side docks at 10 o’clock at night by myself when I was 16, but that’s a whole other story) and has been one of the main supporters of this crazy thing I’m attempting, my cousin Jeremy. Not only does he lend me the money that I am short, he also comes down with Maria and myself Sunday night to pick up the bike.

Now normally I would just bypass this part of the story as it is mostly routine stuff, but of course this one has a twist. Well actually I will still bypass it as this is getting long, but I will mention that Luca, in his saddened state of selling a bike that he is noticeably attached to, incorrectly fills out the backside of the title. Not thinking it too big of a deal, we simply correct it and continue the sale. Fast forward to the following day at DMV, where I had busted my hump getting all documentation together to register my new bike, I find out that what he did is a big no-no in the DMV world. Where common sense would normally kick in with a normal human being, the ill equipped DMV wench would not accept the incorrectly filled out title. Just more headaches.

So as this coffee house I am sitting in is closing around me, I will just finish this up by saying that Luca has agreed to meet me this coming Saturday morning in Jersey City to get the title replaced, so I can hopefully register the BMW the following Monday. Wish me luck.

I really need to thank two people here. Jimmy, who has given up two FULL Saturdays and countless hours of phone calls and research to help me find the right bike. He has truly been a huge help and could not have gotten to this point without him. Thank you Jimmy, I really appreciate it all.

And the other is also a cousin of mine. Jeremy has been such a huge part of this whole adventure and has helped me almost every step of the way. I can’t thank him enough, even though he would probably just shrug it off. Thank you Jer, I owe you more than you know.