In the days following the accident, I learn more. The man was hospitalized for five days with a contusion to his skull and two broken ribs. My insurance company interviewed me and came to the conclusion that I had not been at fault. But then the police department issued its own report: I had been driving too fast for conditions and was at fault. Their decision stunned me. Hadn’t the man been dressed in black, crossing the street in the dark, no crosswalk or intersection in sight? There was no way I could have seen him until the last moment. The report did not claim that I was speeding.
Meanwhile, calls and letters from an attorney hired by the man’s family started to arrive. I was being sued for damages that exceeded my policy limits.
I ended up talking with the officer who’d investigated the accident. In a clearer state of mind, I clarified what I knew and what I suspected about the man’s state of cognition. She did a deeper investigation, and though she shared none of what she learned from that investigation, she eventually amended her report to say that no fault could be assigned. There’s relief in that, but I still want to be told flat out that it’s not my fault. I want the officer’s vindication, as if it will also hold me not at fault for the demise of my marriage, my mother’s illness, and all the other horrible, sad things in life.
This is the meaning I construct from these events.
Sometimes life goes incredibly well and we’re filled with light and joy. And sometimes, the loving of each other becomes painful and fraught. We struggle on. We try to love each other as a response to depression and illness. We try not to hit each other with cars. We try not to create additional damage. We fail to live up to our own ideals. Yet we succeed, every so often, in being fully human and alive, even when the pain of living feels as if it might destroy us. And with so much stacked up against us, sometimes all we can do is hit the open road. For me, it’s time to pack up and see what’s out there in the big, bad world.
SECTION II
LEAN
•CHAPTER EIGHT•
LEAVING HOME
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
—E. E. CUMMINGS
Day One: Friday, August 23
Hollywood, California, to Cedar City, Utah: 472 miles
I wake at 3:00 AM, certain I’ve slept less than an hour since I turned out the light. The adrenaline has been too much. It’s been rousing me every few minutes. I keep thinking about what I may have forgotten or worrying yet again about some far-flung-but-certainly-pending tragedy I cannot possibly control but which, if I worry about it hard enough, I hope to avert.
Without turning on the light, I dress in my armored textile riding pants and jacket and gather my things that have been packed, waiting by the door, for days.
Creeping down the steps of my studio apartment and past the California-perfect pool shaded by citrus trees and bougainvillea, I lug everything I hope to need for this journey. The night is black and utterly silent—amazing considering the place is only a few blocks off Hollywood Boulevard. I move past the main house, the home of friends who gave me shelter when I separated from J nine months ago. Their dogs bark from inside. I was hoping not to wake anyone, to make as little fuss as possible.
I’ve been striving to make as little fuss as possible my entire life. But there’s something about this trip – about being seen and heard on a motorcycle—that I hope will make me more comfortable with spreading out and genuinely owning my life.
I pull up to Rebecca’s house at three thirty. I’ve been parking my motorcycle at her place since the separation, as I don’t have safe parking in Hollywood. Working by the beams of our headlamps, I strap down my T-bag, a smallish soft-sided piece of luggage that slides over my sissy bar. My tank bag attaches with magnets and allows me to read driving directions through the clear plastic sleeve. I check my tire pressure and figure out how to use the Bluetooth device that will let me communicate with Rebecca on the road. I put on extra clothes, worried I’m not dressed warmly enough. It’s chilly now and at speeds of seventy will be even colder, yet the day will be in the hundreds by the time we hit Vegas.
We sip coffee, exchanging few words. This five-thousand-mile journey has been a year in the making.
During these final preparations, I’m heartened to realize I know a thing or two about what I’m doing. This aptitude surprises me. I can’t help acknowledging that this entire journey has been basically a fluke. Even my friendship with Rebecca is a coincidence. I was the head room parent at the K–8 parochial school both our kids attended and talked her into being the room parent for one of the grades. I knew her to say hello on the schoolyard, but not much else. One day, I emailed a few friends to see if anyone wanted to trot around the high school track with me. One of them was also named Rebecca. “I don’t think you meant this for me,” the motorcycle Rebecca wrote back. “But I’d love to join you for a run.” Soon, we were meeting three and four times a week to run together, but as novices, we couldn’t jog and talk at the same time for lack of breath. We wore headphones for at least a year while we pumped our arms and legs around a track. Eventually we turned off the music and started talking.
I initially thought we had little in common. But there’s something about sweating next to someone who is struggling just as hard as you, breathing heavily, working intensely, one of us feeling strong one day, the other feeling strong the next, that opens up a kind of willing vulnerability. If you don’t have to at look someone, you say things you might keep hidden in a face-to-face setting. We gradually talked of ever-deeper things, exploring ourselves and our lives. We told each other just about every secret we might otherwise hold closely.
• • •
Our motorcycles are finally balanced and packed. We nod at each other and fire up the bikes. Rebecca takes the lead. The first stop is a gas station near the 210 freeway in Pasadena where we meet Edna and George, who will accompany us on part of our journey.
Originally, Rebecca and I had planned to do this trek alone. But George and Edna asked if they could ride to Milwaukee with us. We agreed, knowing that we might be grateful for their help on the road. We have a lot to learn. But by the time we turn our bikes back west and head home some nine days from now, we had better know what we’re doing. We’re going to be all alone by then.
“Do we know where gas is at each stop?” I quiz George under the jaundiced fluorescent light of the gas station. Since I am on the bike with the smallest tank, I need to ensure we stop every 120 miles or so. The others are on much bigger bikes with ranges of 200-plus miles and may forget that I will run out long before them. I carry a siphon tube in my tank bag in case. If I were to siphon a little gas from Rebecca, we might both make it to the next station. I’m praying we won’t need to use it.
George has done much more cross-country motorcycling than the rest of us and is a small, sinewy man, with a long salt-and-pepper ponytail and weathered-brown skin, a stunning blend of Native American and Japanese heritage. He smiles at Rebecca and me with wrinkled, kind eyes, nodding at my question.
“We’ll stop in Barstow,” he tells me. I am comforted to have this one bit of information.
The plan for today will take us through Las Vegas and then up to Cedar City, Utah, where we’re expected by friends of Edna and George who will give us hospitality for the night.
“But first we’ll stop for lunch at Whiskey Pete’s in Primm,” Edna says, referring to the little Vegas-wannabe town populated with low-rent casinos just over the California-Nevada border. We’re going to meet up with an Australian couple there, also part of Edna and George’s extended two-wheel coterie.
I knew Edna for a number of months before I realized she was George’s wife. She’s model tall to his compact stature, platinum blonde to his weathered brownness. They’ve been together for more than four decades, since Edna was fifteen. George is riding a big, older Harley Ultra Classic. Edna’s ride is just a bit more petite, a custom-built
Barbie Harley. A Barbie doll is embedded on each side of the sparkling Pepto-pink gas tank. Edna’s glitter-pink helmet and bubble gum–colored leather gloves are perfectly matched. She loves when little girls in cars see her, point at her, and wave. She always waves back. Over the course of this trip, countless men will ask to take a picture with her and her bike. She will accommodate them, but it’s waving to the little girls who don’t know until they see her that they can grow up to ride Barbie Harleys that will give her the most pleasure.
I am a woman who plans things down to the most microscopic detail. I have long believed that if I worry enough about something, I can keep it from happening. As a kid, my mother’s chaotic behavior startled and often frightened me. My response was to try to manage my surroundings, to be as certain as possible as to what was to come.
This trip, I begin to see, is going to be an uncomfortable exercise in letting go, in welcoming the unknown.
Still, what surprises me most is the fact that I’m here in the first place. As I have explored my new obsession with motorcycles, I’ve tried to sculpt this passion into some kind of coherent narrative, to find a way that it might add up and finally make sense. So far, I have failed. One thing I have learned, though, is that I am a novelty seeker, and in life, that’s a good thing.
I imagine a twelve-step meeting in which those who share this trait tell our stories to each other, trying to understand how we got here and how to make sure this trait serves us rather than destroys us.
Hi. My name is Bernadette and I am a neophiliac.
Defined as a personality type characterized by a strong affinity for novelty, neophilia is at one end of a continuum experts call novelty or sensation seeking. It’s a subset of what psychologists have named “The Big Five” inventory of personality traits. These five include (1) openness to experience, whether one is inventive and curious, or more consistent and cautious; (2) conscientiousness: one’s inclination for efficiency and organization, as opposed to being easygoing and careless; (3) extraversion: whether one is outgoing and energetic or solitary and reserved; (4) agreeableness: how friendly and compassionate versus analytical and detached one is; and (5) neuroticism: one’s degree of sensitivity and nervousness compared with feelings of security and confidence. You can take the Big Five personality test here: www.outofservice.com/bigfive/.
Risk taking and sensation seeking are part of openness to experience. This trait is characterized by an appreciation for emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, and art; unquenchable curiosity; and a draw toward a variety of experience.
When it comes to the terms risk taking, sensation seeking, and novelty seeking, a number of psychologists and psychiatrists all seem to be studying the same attribute, calling it by slightly different names and considering the trait in different ways in relation to overall personality studies. No matter what we call it, neophiliacs have a tendency to seek varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences and often take physical risks for the sake of having them. These experiences may take the form of extreme adventure activities such as skydiving, snowboarding, and mountain-climbing. But the trait also expresses itself in unsafe drug, alcohol, or tobacco use, gambling and stock market speculation, and reckless sexual exploits. Men generally score higher than women for the trait, with sensation seeking typically increasing during childhood, peaking in the late teens or early twenties, and thereafter decreasing steadily with age.
Interestingly, researchers have found that those who demonstrate this openness to experience trait often align with liberal ethics and politics and enjoy thinking in abstractions and symbols. Those on the other end of the spectrum hew to conventional and traditional interests. Generally, they prefer that which is plain, straightforward, and obvious over the complex, ambiguous, and subtle. Closed people prefer familiarity rather than novelty and are resistant to change.
“Novelty seeking is the fundamental trait, and risk taking is one of its manifestations,” says Winifred Gallagher, whose book New: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change focuses on this trait. As a species, we’re highly neophilic—lovers of novelty—but as individuals, we differ by degree. Novelty seeking refers to the intensity of your attraction to things that are new and different. Someone at the low extreme of the spectrum avoids novelty and prefers the familiar, while someone at the other end actively pursues novelty and is bored with the routine. Most of us, of course, fall somewhere between those two poles.
Sensation seeking isn’t simply craving new experiences and going after them, but the emotional intensity, energy, and concentration we bring to the experience and the passion that invigorates the pursuit, whether in work or sports, relationships or the arts, driving style or food preferences.
It doesn’t matter if one is drawn to explore the great outdoors or the great books, “by becoming more curious and interested in life, you’ll also have a more curious and interesting life,” says Paul Silvia, psychology professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. “The tendency to either approach or avoid novelty is the most important stable behavioral difference among individuals in the same species, period.”
When it comes to risk, we have to weigh our choices. Deciding to try something new might reward you in many ways: prestige, money, career success, or maybe a fabulous lover. Or, you could end up unhappy, frightened, broke, or humiliated.
Learning that novelty and anxiety are a package deal makes me feel better. Though I’m not as terrified each time I get on Izzy Bella these days, the fear still lurks. So why would anyone—why would I—try scary new things when fear is blocking the way? As it turns out, emotions like surprise, curiosity, and interest are more satisfying for some of us than fear is daunting, and that attraction pulls us over the fear threshold. These buoyant feelings are what inspire us to lean into something new. “Like a sip of champagne, bubbly curiosity lifts us out of quotidian reality and a business-as-usual mind-set and slips us into the approach reaction with the unfamiliar,” Gallagher says.
So what’s the difference between novelty seeking and risk taking? Gallagher believes risk taking is a specific form of novelty seeking in which the novelty you seek is an intensely exciting, arousing experience. One’s reaction to a roller coaster is a good gauge of that person’s degree of risk taking. Do you say: Get me out of here? or I’ll try it once? or Let’s do it again?
Initially I’m stumped because I’m not a big fan of roller coasters or anything that combines the pull of gravity with perilous drops. So how and why do I find myself in this category?
• • •
We take off from Pasadena into the darkest, coolest part of the night. We’ve downed a fair amount of coffee but I’m already exhausted for lack of sleep. I’ve been packing for days, agonizing over what to bring, discarding what wouldn’t fit in the compact bag, making last-minute purchases like heavy gloves for when we hit the Rockies and Yellowstone, panicking about what I have forgotten. Cold-weather clothes fill most of my bag: leather jacket, down vest, long underwear, ear and neck warmers, a rain suit. I may need these items only one day of this trip, but I’ll be grateful to have them if the weather turns harsh.
The first hour on the ride is uneventful. The sun is not even tickling the horizon yet and the morning is cool, but I’m warm. And relaxed. And soon very, very sleepy. Motion is supposedly a reliable hypnotic for a restless toddler but I never sleep on planes or in a car. Still, I cannot keep my eyes open. The thrum of the road with the drone of my pipes creates a kind of white noise that lulls me toward Mr. Sandman. I shake my head and try to perk up. I don’t think I’m in any danger, but I keep waiting for the fog in my head to clear. I drift into the fast lane. I sit up straighter and force myself to pay attention. But then, I’m ahead of Edna and fast approaching George’s rear fender. How did that happen? I ease into my place in the formation, but George drops back to gesture if I’m okay. I nod that I’m fine. Falling asleep easily is not part of my nature.
Thankfully, he’s been around tired
bikers enough to know the signs. He signals for us all to pull to the shoulder.
“You need to walk around, have something to eat,” he tells me.
I’m embarrassed. I hate to be the one responsible for everyone having to stop. I am most secure when I serve as a knowledgeable, astute member of the team. I hate feeling like the weak link. After some food and a brisk walk, though, I am alert again and grudgingly grateful he made the call. I would have risked my safety not to draw attention to myself. What a ridiculous, humbling thing to admit.
After the fifteen-minute break, we’re back on the bikes. The sun is starting to warm in the east, the darkness seems less inky. I’m finally out of danger. But I also acknowledge that my need for perfectionism and self-sufficiency is going to kill me if I’m not more careful.
• • •
I learn that people who share similar sensation-seeking drives tend to be more romantically compatible with each other, and that divorced males score higher than single and married males. Divorced and single females score higher than married females.
The term neophobe applies to individuals on the opposite end of the spectrum—those who exhibit a strong desire for safety and predictability. Neophiliacs and neophobes together account for 15 to 30 percent of all people overall, approximately 10 to 15 percent on each end of the continuum. “The remaining 70 to 80 percent are moderate neophiles of different degrees,” explains Gallagher. This refers to people who “want to be neither scared stiff by too much novelty and change nor bored stiff by too little.”
Harley and Me Page 10