Moto-Therapy, Friends And A Honda Hawk GT Can Change Your Life | MEGAPHONE

Sometime last April, on a perfect sunny day, riding by myself across Nevada on U.S. Route 50—the Loneliest Road in America—I linked a chain of gratitude together. I was midway through a winding, 2,400-mile motorcycle ride from Los Angeles to Denver, pressing the reset button on my life. It took that far, surrounded by the immensity of an empty landscape, to begin wrapping my brain around how I'd come to this point.

At the beginning of 2014 I quit everything, first leaving my job, then my husband. While reconnecting with old friends (and old, long-dormant parts of myself), a long-time acquaintance suggested borrowing a giant American V-twin for some mototherapy. That acquaintance was Indian Motorcycle's PR Manager Robert Pandya, who I originally met years ago on an email list for cultish followers of Honda's Hawk GT.

I originally joined the "Hawklist" after purchasing my first motorcycle, an all-stock, 1988 Hawk GT. Jerry, an enthusiastic friend of my then-boyfriend, introduced me to the Hawk: "Cool bike…way ahead of its time…single-sided swingarm…you need it." I bought a nice, local example advertised in Cycle Trader—much to Jerry's disappointment because he'd been planning on buying it for his girlfriend.

Riding was something I always wanted to do, but the anxiety gene I’d inherited from my mother still crept in from time to time. Jerry was always there to calm my fears: “You’ll drop it a bunch…do something dumb like forget the kickstand…don’t worry, you’ll be fine.” He was right, mostly.

A few days later—the morning after my boyfriend Mike and I helped Jerry tune up his RC51, in fact—I was headed to my MSF class when I got a call from Mike. Jerry was in the hospital, in critical condition. A car pulled out in front of him on the way to work. They took him off life support four days later.

I sold that first Hawk GT years ago, after my focus turned toward track riding. When I first picked up that 850-pound Indian Chieftain, I felt that old anxiety return. The last bike I had ridden was my tiny, 165-pound Honda RS125, and it only took two hands to count the number of times I’d ridden on the street in the previous seven years. But once I remembered the standard, non-GP shifting pattern, I was comfortable. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine…”

The ride was amazing. The weather was perfect, the bike was outstanding, and I didn’t have a single problem—I even remembered the kickstand. But 2,400 miles later, after I flew home to Milwaukee, I was feeling anything but fine. The trip had stripped away all the walls I’d carefully constructed to protect me. I returned home feeling like every nerve was exposed.

It was Robert who astutely observed that I was always content when I was on a bike. So when Chris—another old Hawklist friend—offered his BMW R1100S to join him for a few hundred miles through the rolling forest and farmland of Southwestern Wisconsin, I said yes, of course. Comfort and order returned until I was almost home, and I missed a head-on collision by just a few feet. "Winning the lottery isn't always winning money," Chris said afterward.

Soon after, yet another Hawklist friend generously gifted me with the use of his Hawk GT, sitting unused in a Kansas City storage space he was about to lose. I rode it the long way home, where it was soon joined by a brand-new Triumph Scrambler. I was a regular rider again.

That sunny day in Nevada on the Indian, brimming with gratitude, I realized that chain begins and ends with Jerry. My current happiness, the life I enjoy now as a motorcyclist, and so many of my best friends can be traced back directly to his suggestion to buy that Hawk GT. Even if my chest caves a little every time I see an RC51, I think of him and thank him for the good-natured push to challenge myself, a push that changed my life.