ZAC: A long way for nothing
There was a teacher’s strike in my final year at university, in March. What’s a 21-year-old student to do? Keep up with assigned readings, as the teachers suggested? Ha! I did the sensible thing: rode my 25-year-old Kawasaki KZ440 from Charlottetown to Fredericton, in pursuit of love.
It’s the dream of every single dude on a bike: find another single girl on a bike and ride happily off into the sunset, and there was this girl in Freddy who was into bikes and was getting pretty interested in me, too. The whole plan looked like a genius-level maneuver from my perspective.
Never mind that it was an all-day ride on back roads on the ancient motorcycle, in freezing weather. Never mind that I didn’t have proper heated gear. Never mind that I got lost in the dark on the way into Fredericton, riding along the frozen St. John River into the night. I had a goal, and as soon as I got into town, I dumped my gear off at my cousin’s place (he was my usual riding partner, and general partner in crime in those days) and headed over to start the wooing process.
It all went pretty well, or so I thought; she even braved the cold for long rides into the country with me, in March! Could she be The One? I certainly thought so, and it made the cold ride home much easier, a few days later. I remember stripping layer after layer of my gear off when I got home, the coldest I’d ever been in my life, but thinking my mission had been successful.
Alas, the romantic mid-winter rides must have chilled her heart, because a few days later, I didn’t even get the courtesy of a call — just an email with one of the standard excuses people use. Wasn’t me, it was her, or whatever. Maybe she preferred guys with non-antique sportbikes?
All that riding through the winter to see her hadn’t worked the trick, despite my gallant courage in the face of frostbite and hypothermia. But at least it gave me a real taste for something else I’ve fallen in love with over the years since: budget motorcycle touring.Â
