View from the back of a Harley - Part 2

Wondering if you missed "View from the back of a Harley - Part 1"?  You're haven't.  If you're new to my blog or haven't been around since it's inception back in 2007 you may not have seen this post.  Back then Hubby was driving a Harley Sportster that I had given him as a 50th birthday present.  Our 2nd child had left for college and I was feeling a bit philosophical.

Today we went for a ride on Hubby's Harley Fatboy that he got when he traded in the Sportster. We actually seemed to have taken the same route as I described in the earlier post.  So what was going through my mind today, you might be wondering.  What is the point of this post?  Lots of things, actually.

You see riding as a passenger on the back of a motorcycle gives you lots of time to think - about everything.  So, in no particular order, here are some of the things I thought about.

• Has Sera ridden her bicycle on a long ride since she got back to Columbus? Did the tire pop again?
•  When will Caitlin actually move out?  She's talking about in the next few weeks but we have three pretty busy weekends before we leave on vacation  - and I'm not sure she's thought that all through.
• Is Jack happy?  I don't seem to spend enough time or talk to my oldest enough to get a good handle on his emotional state and I worry.  I want him to be happy.  I want all of them to be happy.
• We really are privileged to live in such a nice area.  Our route away from home led us through Shaker Heights, Pepper Pike, Hunting Valley and Gates Mills just to name a few of the very exclusive areas a stone's through from our house. Then we got to the Chagrin Falls area and rode past the polo fields.  That should give a bit of an idea of the wealth in these areas - how many neighborhoods do you know that have polo fields?  Where polo matches are actually held?

• We rode through a portion of the Emerald Necklace - the network of parks that rings the city of Cleveland.  They are spectacular and I give praise to the founding fathers who thought to preserve this land as green space.
• When we got to the tow path near the canal we were forced off the metro-parks route due to construction and closed roads.  The way home took us past several once vibrant shopping centers that are now virtually abandoned.  The buildings are plights on the neighbors they once graced grandly.  So then I started thinking about the new retail development going in less than 5 miles from our house. An unneeded development that has bulldozed trees and cleared the land of a beautiful old country club to put in a WalMart SuperCenter and God knows what else.  It makes me mad and it makes me sad.
• We rode just under two hours and I was beginning to get a numb bottom.  Actually my whole body hurt from the back to back fitness classes I took yesterday,  Boot camp followed by TRX Suspension Training.  (If you don't know what TRX is, by all means click the link and read the wiki.) I wondered who thought of this stuff and now I know it was a former Navy Seal.  Explains a lot.  Why did I think my out of shape self could handle 2 hours of torture?

Plank position with TRX

• I also thought about the fact that my cell phone didn't fit into my pocket very snugly and if it fell out and broke I would be forced to make my Apple vs Droid decision.  But alas, It stayed in my pocket so crisis averted.
• And before I knew it, we were home.  And I had to start thinking about making dinner and finishing the laundry and the system upgrade we are doing at work tomorrow and the training sessions we are putting together for this week. And we're back!

And that brings us to here, and now.

Thanks for reading along!