Pillion.....

Pillion

1. A pad or cushion for an extra rider behind the saddle on a horse or motorcycle.
2. A bicycle or motorcycle saddle.
3. One who rides on a pillion.
[Probably from Scottish Gaelic pillean, diminutive of peall, rug, or Irish Gaelic pillín, diminutive of pell, rug, both from Old Irish pell, from Latin pellis, animal skin.]




She climbed on the back of my 1978 Suzuki 750 GS nearly twenty years ago, and has
been back there since. She’s survived a major, life-threatening accident, and has gone through four bikes, 41 states, and two continents. She’s camped in the rain, the snow, and the dust, and has eaten everything from cold spaghetti straight from a can to fresh caught salmon in a five star restaurant without a whimper or a whine.

She’s ridden through rainstorms, windstorms, hailstorms, snowstorms, dust storms, and lightning storms. She’s helped me pitch a tent and make camp on gravel, mud, sod, concrete, and, on one occasion, in a Pennsylvania campground alongside the Susquehanna River, a campground so deserted, weird, and spooky that we thought we had ridden into a Steven King novel! She’s seen Paris, France, and Paris, Tennessee. She’s stayed in luxurious hotels and in hovels worthy of the third world..... and nothing seems to bother her.... nothing... nothing except perhaps me getting seriously upset about some piddling, insignificant issue – and that she doesn’t like, doesn’t like it at all.

She’s ridden in heat that almost stifled us, and in cold that rendered her speechless. Only once, high on the frosty summit of Lost Trail Past in Idaho, during a 29 degree, icy morning, did she run inside a heated building and refuse to come out and get back on the bike. She had an accomplice, though, my laughing elf of a son. Both of them wrapped their hands around cups of steaming hot chocolate and sat and laughed at me from behind the plate glass window, laughing merrily at my frantic gestures for them to come back out.... Sometimes at night, when she sleeps, I remember how they both looked behind that window, and I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud, to keep from waking her.

Countless times we have run into problems on our trips that she solved, that she fixed, and she was often the reason we got home. She is almost unconsciously competent, and once she applies her steady mind and steady outlook, things get better....really better...and really fast. She's amazingly adaptable, amazingly flexible....

Once, we were all packed up on the bike and ready to set out on our second trip to Alaska. For some unaccountable reason, I didn’t want to go up there that year.... didn’t know why....just felt we shouldn’t go....no reason that I could identify, and we had been planning the trip for months. I just had this overwhelming sense of impending dread that I could not overcome. And it was no joke. She finished locking up our house and came down our steps, smiling, as usual...

“Honey,” I said. “I know you’re not going to believe this, but... I’ve changed my mind. We’re going to Arkansas instead of Alaska!”

She blinked at me...just once...just one blink, and then she smiled and said, “well, okay, sure, but I better go back in and let my mother know!"

A year ago this summer, she almost lost her left hand in our first major accident, and I wasn’t sure she would ever ride again. But ten months after we were released from the hospital, she climbed back on the back of our new bike that we had bought with the insurance money, and said cheerfully, “whenever you’re ready!” We started it up and rode across the country again, from Washington State to North Carolina, and then out along the beautiful Blue Ridge, and if she was nervous at all during the trip, I never knew it.

Occasionally, I’ll catch a glance of her in my rearview mirrors, her lovely hair and soft smile
hidden by plastic and fiberglass, and I ask the gods: What did I ever do to deserve her, my life’s
partner, my wonderful pillion! She puts the sun in my skies .... and I’ll love her forever.