The summer after high school graduation, I worked two jobs to pay for nursing school. During the midnight shift as a waitress, a charismatic young man at the counter flirted with me for hours as he consumed seven cups of coffee.
For the next month, the hot guy visited the restaurant on my shift flirting with me enough to earn warnings from my boss. At this point I began to believe that he liked the coffee but not me. Why hadn’t he asked me out?
Finally, one night about 3:30am, he shyly asked, “You don’t want to go for a motorcycle ride in the morning, do you?”
“YES!” I almost screamed in reply. Finally!
I got off work at 7am and he was to pick me up at 7:30. I flew home, changed and waited by the door.
I waited…and waited…and waited. No call, no doorbell. I had been up all night working. After an hour I went to bed. Three hours later the telephone rang. It was HIM.
“I fell asleep. I am so sorry. Can I pick you up now?”
My better judgment and pride told me to cancel but I had waited 30 days for this and I wasn’t about to miss it. My heart said yes.
Ten minutes later he was at my doorstep. White tee shirt, jeans, long hair, beard, and motorcycle. I still remember the look on my mother’s face . . . NOT GOOD!
What did my mother know? What could go wrong?
What I didn’t know
He didn’t even own a motorcycle. After I accepted his invite, he rushed to his best friend’s house and ‘borrowed’ his motorcycle.
Within minutes of picking me up, he cut off a metro city bus.
What I didn’t know
He had little motorcycle experience. He had never ridden a passenger before.
Twenty miles out of the city he pulled into a deserted wooded cemetery as my brain screamed ‘serial killer!’
What I didn’t know
His grandparents were buried there.
What I didn’t know
The weather forecast! The sky turned black and the clouds opened up with a torrential downpour as we ran out of gas on the freeway. I stayed with the motorcycle as he hiked to the nearest gas station.
What I didn’t know
Motorcycles have a reserve tank, so we weren’t really out of gas…he just didn’t know that.
I barely got home in time to dry off and get ready for a concert date with my 'boyfriend'. (Before you think me a total b#*@!, . . . our high school relationship was on the final days of breaking up and the concert tickets were bought far in advance.)
What I didn’t know
I had just spent my first day with my future best friend and husband.
Like Jamie in Montana Wild, whose insides screamed, warning her of what could happen if she traveled to Montana, I was unsure. And luckily like Jamie, I listened to my gut…and my heart. Don’t worry about what you don’t know. It was one hell of an adventurous ride that changed my life forever!
Kiss life in the face!
Roni