With apologies to Robert Pirsig, I don’t know that I ever found anything approaching Zen when performing motorcycle maintenance. I do, however, routinely discover new and creative swear words and create impressive scars.

Or at least I did.

In my Story of Jasmine, my old Honda CB360, I mentioned some egregious wrenching faux pas and that I grew into a decent mechanic. What I didn’t mention – who I didn’t mention – was my friend Kirk. I don’t know this, but I suspect Kirk saw from the beginning that Shawn’s truck never did run quite right. He likely knew Perot (my CB200) was absolutely never going to run again. Because Kirk could fix anything he touched.

I don’t remember who got theirs first, but he also had an ancient CB360 and where I was able to keep Jasmine running reasonably reliably, Kirk kept the same model bike with all its questionable engineering choices running with the efficiency of a Swiss watch. Which was good, because I’ve never seen anyone push an antique right to the edge of its performance envelope. But if something broke – and, despite his meticulous maintenance, it would – there wasn’t a question of whether it would be fixed. The only question was how much better the repair would be than when the bike came out of the factory.

I tried to glean everything I could from Kirk in terms of wrenching, but he had the touch. Maybe for him it was Zen – I’ll have to ask him. I saw skinned knuckles, fascinating conjunctions of four-letter words, and dollar signs. But I did learn…

There’s a gap of about fourteen years between those old riding days of Perot, Jasmine, and, later, Pumba (1985 Honda V-65 Sabre). If you know me, then you already know what brought about that gap – a little argument between Pumba and the hood of a gray Volvo that turned left in front of me. Spoiler: Pumba and I lost. Between not being able to walk on my own for eight months and finances, I wasn’t able to get a bike again.

But, man, did I want one. I still read all the magazines (most of which have gone out of business), then blogs. I could tell you merits of various cylinder configurations, the bells and whistles offered by one manufacturer versus the other. For a while I thought my next bike would be a Honda Valkyrie… and then that went out of production. Maybe one of the shiny Moto Guzzis with their V-twin cylinders peeking out the sides…

In the back of my mind, though, my dream motorcycle never really faltered. Since I first saw one at a show in the 90’s I was deeply in love with BMW’s big opposed twin “boxer” GS bikes. When the stars aligned (or so I thought) and I was able to buy my dream bike – a 2014 BMW R1200GS Adventure (Amelia) – I deliberately bought it new because I knew it had so many electronics and I didn’t have a garage to work on it – not that I’d know how to do anything anyway, right?! I’ll let the warranty (and extended warranty) deal with that!

A few months ago, I was at a Costco gas station at 9 at night when I went to start the bike, I realized my mistake. The starter clicked rapidly, the tell-take sign my battery was dead, and a cold dread washed over me. Sure, I was stuck – I had to do the crabwalk of shame to get the bike out the way of the next car in line. That didn’t bother me – everyone’s had that situation whether on a bike or a car. No, as I was waiting for Akilah to come with a jump starter, the panic I felt was due to the fact that I didn’t know how to get to the battery.

Yeah, I’d managed to ride Amelia – Amey for short – to Death Valley twice, over the highest pass in the Sierras, up to the uppermost islands of Washington state and I didn’t know where the goddamn battery was.

Akilah showed up (of course), and I got Amey home, all the while admonishing myself for having to use YouTube on my phone in a Costco parking lot to figure out how to jump start her. I wondered where that guy was that was able to perform the fairly herculean task of adjusting the valves on that ridiculously awkwardly canted V-4 in Pumba…

Okay, I wasn’t that hard on myself. This is one of the ways in which I’ve grown in the last few years – beating myself up over mistakes (real or imagined) doesn’t get me anywhere. That sounds obvious, and I’m sure some of you are rolling your eyes and audibly saying “duh,” but I cannot express how hard fought that lesson has been for me. I suffer from crippling self-doubt. It’s taken me a long time to push past through that terrifying fear of failure and just try. I fight it every day, every hour, right now – “Does anyone really want to read this…?” (answer: “Who cares? Worst case you’ve got it down, and that’s creating something”).

I went back to YouTube in the light of day. I changed the battery myself. That picture up there? That’s me changing my rear brake pads myself. I’ve got some other things to do in the coming weeks leading up to an exciting trip I’m taking in June (that’s another story), but I’m feeling really confident I can do them. In fact, as I was reading the manual, I said out loud, “Oh, I’ve done that before!” See, despite her German lineage, despite electrically adjustable suspension, Traction control, ABS, despite a goddamn CANBUS… it’s still a motorcycle. I can work on motorcycles (thank you, Kirk).

Maybe I shouldn’t apologize to Mr. Pirsig too much, after all. My high school drama teacher gave me a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance after the first time I rode Jasmine to play practice (yes, I know how cliche that sounds, but it really did happen!). I appreciate the book, and it’s one I like to revisit every once in a while and I still wrestle with the philosophy. In the end, though I think I wanted more motorcycle than existential exercise – more of William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways on two wheels. Or even Kerouac, On the Road… My problem, I know, is I’m too much Pirsig’s romantic and not enough the rationalist.

Can a leopard change its spots? Can a romantic even out his rationalist? Can I push through my staggering fears? I’ll tell you this, it starts with changing my own battery…