A Lesson In Ownership

In 1992, Red and I and my six year old son, Josh, headed up the rainy Alaska Highway on an 81' Goldwing Interstate (for which we’d paid the grand sum of $2495) bolted to a used Motorvation sidecar ($2200). By the time we’d reached Stone Mountain Provincial Park, we’d figured out the handling of the rig, and had settled on the most efficient packing plan. We were camping all the way, and were having an hilarious time. We had learned how to power slide through gravelly corners and how to coast across slippery construction mud. We'd learned how to lift the wheel, and Josh, at will, and how to lean over the car's wheel to keep it down when we wanted.... We were wet, filthly, happy, and excited. Instinctively, we knew that this was the most important trip we had ever taken.

Somewhere near Muncho Lake, we passed a Harley rider alongside the road, a rider with such a look of distress on his lean face that we slowed, stopped, and turned around to see if we could help. We rumbled and clattered to a stop near his machine, a beautiful, custom-painted Harley Big Twin.

“Hey! Do you have a problem? Can we help?” I grinned at the man.

“Hell, yes, I got a problem! Goddamn this road..... worst road I ever been on!" The man absolutely snarled as he spoke, and he spat into the gravel at his feet at the end of every sentence.

“Bad time, huh?” I asked, already wishing we hadn’t stopped.

“Bad time? I’ve had a hundred paint chips in the last two days! They should warn people about this road! Look at that paint! I got $27,000 into this bike and $5000 of it is paint! Look at the chips in it!”

I wasn’t sure what to say, and my wife and child were uncharacteristically silent, staring at the fellow like he was from another planet.

“Friggin place,” he muttered. “I’m trying to find a truck with an empty trailer to haul me and my bike outa here! This is no place for a quality machine!”

I looked around at the high granite peaks, the immense forests, the eagles riding high on mountain currents. “Kinda nice up here, though, “ I ventured, without much hope.

“Screw that,” he yelled. “I just want gone!”

Seeing that there was absolutely nothing we could do for the fellow, we waved goodbye and continued on. Later in the day, we stopped for gas and a rest.

“What was the matter with that man, Daddy?” My son asked. “He was mad, huh?”

“Yeah, he was pretty unhappy.”

“He had a nice bike, though........”

“Yeah, almost too nice,” I replied.

“What’s that mean, Dad?”

I reached out and ruffled his hair, and tugged at one of his elf-like ears.

“Someday, when you’re a little older, we’ll have a conversation about how sometimes you don’t own things, sometimes they own you...... and when that happens, you are almost always unhappy.”

He pondered that for a moment. “Our sidecar bike don’t own us, huh? We own it – and so we are happy?”

I smiled at him. “That’s right, my brilliant son, we own it. It doesn’t own us, and happy we are!”

Later that night, we built a huge fire in a campground and roasted weiners and marshmallows, laughing all the while; while all around us loomed silent granite peaks and the darkening, age-old evergreen trees.