My motorcycle club brothers laughed when I collapsed trying to lift my fallen Harley, their eyes filled with pity for the old man who couldn’t handle his own bike anymore. After fifty years on two wheels, I’d become the thing I feared most – a burden they carried out of obligation, not respect.It happened at Sturgis, of all places. Four hundred thousand bikers from across America, and I had to fall in front of my own brothers. My knees gave out as I tried to right my Heritage Softail after parking on an uneven patch of gravel. The bike wasn’t even that heavy – I’d lifted it thousands of times before. But at 72, my strength wasn’t what it used to be.
The laughter cut deeper than the road rash on my hands.
“Easy there, Ghost,” said Razor, our club’s new president, a man half my age with twice my strength. He lifted my Harley with one hand while two others helped me up. “Maybe time to consider something lighter? Or three wheels?”
The suggestion of a trike felt like a knife to my gut. In our world, those were for old men who couldn’t handle a real bike anymore. Men who were done. Finished.
