The meaning of life – on the back of a motorcycle

TRISTAN RICHARDSON/FOR THE TORONTO STAR

Wheels Editor Mark Richardson took his mom - who's fighting cancer - for a ride on his motorcycle.

Mark Richardson

WHEELS EDITOR

It’s not an easy thing to ride on the back of a motorcycle.

It demands complete confidence in the rider at the controls and, if it’s a bare-bones bike, it also requires a certain agility and strength to not fall backwards off the machine.

Not to mention that guys find it demeaning – an affront to their machismo.

But last weekend, there wasn’t enough room for all of us to fit in the car that was driving us to the races at Atlantic Motorsport Park, so a colleague who was riding a motorcycle, Didier Constant, offered me the rear seat.

It was a sportbike and the pillion was quite small, with no back support. I trust Didier as a safe and experienced rider, so swallowed my pride.

“I’ll go slowly,” he said.

Normally, when I carry passengers on my motorcycle, I suggest they just relax and enjoy the scenery. On the perch myself, though, I realized that I should tell them to wear boots with heels so that they have something to hook onto the footpegs if there’s no backrest, to stop them from flipping backwards when the bike accelerates.

That’s the real fear.

I hooked my hands around the rear grab bars and tried not to press too close against Didier. And as we settled into cruising speed on the highway, I thought of the passenger I’d carried on my own bike just a couple of weeks before.

In July, I rode to my mother’s house in Maxville, Ont., north of Cornwall, to celebrate her 73rd birthday. I didn’t think this was going to happen: in the early spring, she was diagnosed with lymphoma and began an aggressive treatment of chemotherapy.

At the time, I wrote on these pages about driving her to the hospital and how I didn’t expect her to return home, but of how she had asked me then if, once she was better, I would take her for a ride on my Harley.

I agreed, of course, without much hope that it would ever happen.

But the human spirit is a wonderful thing, and the spirit in my mother is difficult to restrain. She shaved her head so that her hair would not have a chance to succumb to the chemo and then she knuckled down and took on the cancerous growth in her stomach with a determination that never wavered.

Now it’s shrunk from the size of a grapefruit to the size of a pea and, while her fight is not yet over, her feisty strength has returned. She eyed my motorcycle in her driveway and took the proffered helmet; with the help of a footstool, she took her seat on the pillion and I felt her start a little when the V-twin rumbled into life.

“You go slowly now,” she said. “I don’t want it to be like the last time.”

The last time was maybe three decades ago, when she let me take her for a ride on my Honda 350. I’d cracked the throttle and leaned it around the corners and scared her; we both learned a lesson that day.

“I’ll go slowly,” I said.

As my sister and my son watched, we pulled away and out onto the rural road that runs into town. There were flowers now at the side of the road, where on that early spring drive there had still been snowdrifts; I could feel my mother moving on the rear seat as she turned to look at them and smell their scent in the air.

The road was empty and, after maybe a minute, the whole feel of the motorcycle seemed to subtly shift. It loosened up. Only later did I realize that it was the feeling of my mother relaxing on the pillion, comfortable that this was going to be all she’d hoped for, after all.

It was a cool day and we didn’t stay out for long – just enough to cruise through town so that my mom could wave at her friends. I brought her home again and she dismounted the bike with unexpected grace, no need now for a step.

We hugged, as we’ve not hugged for a very long time.

Remembering all this, I finally relaxed on the back of Didier’s motorcycle. He must have felt the subtle shift in its balance, because he twisted his head to the side and called back into the wind: “Is everything okay back there?”

Yes, I told him. It’s wonderful. Life really is wonderful.

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