By Wayne Carpenter

A few summers ago, while enjoying a visit from my grandkids, 8-year-old granddaughter Hadley wanted to ride with me on my Triumph Bonneville.

I was proud, but apprehensive.

I secured permission from her parents, buckled on her grandmother’s helmet, and we gingerly rode around the block at 20 mph. Back in our driveway, I asked if she was OK.

“Sure, can we go again?”

That’s my girl! She was literally grinning from ear to ear.

“You know, PaPa, you are really old and you can still ride a motorcycle,” she said.

At the time I was 64, practically a living fossil.

Each summer, we manage to stretch our ride a bit, and now her other sisters, Elle and Aila, also ride with me.

Yes, I still ride motorcycles. And I enjoy it even more than when I began at 14.

I remember the freedom I felt on my little Honda the first time I rode away from my neighborhood and down a country road with the wind in my face.

It certainly wasn’t a fast bike, but I felt as if I was flying. Leaning into the curves, up and down through the gears, the clouds floating by, and the asphalt rushing past beneath my feet. Life was good.

Unlike riding in Dad’s Ford, riding a motorcycle was freedom. More than a half-century later, I’ve not forgotten the rush.

A typical teenager, I thought I was invincible and life would last forever. Growing old happened to my grandparents, not to me.

Now, in my “late, late middle age,” almost 70, and having survived cancer, I know all too well how short life is. The highway may roll on forever, but, for me, riding off into the final sunset is much closer than dawn.

As a rider, I find the topic of motorcycles often comes up with my fellow baby boomers. Most of these conversations fall into familiar groups.

The first is composed of those who don’t ride, have never ridden and can’t fathom why anyone would. Like one old friend who always greets me with, “You still ridin’ that donor-sickle?”

The second group thinks motorcycles are OK for younger folks, but politely questions why anyone almost 70 would continue to ride those contraptions.

Those in the third group wish they had learned to ride when they were younger and regret never taking the plunge.

But there are many who understand. We get it.

Riding is part of who we are, and we can’t imagine not riding. We dread the day when age or illness will inevitably force us to park our rides for the final time.

Until then, we love the surge of the engine when we roll on the throttle, and the wide-open-sky euphoria of the open road.

The forward motion keeps us shiny side up, but the sights, sounds, and smells spice up our experiences. Rolling past a barbeque joint, while inhaling the aroma of live oak and mesquite as the meat simmers over the live coals. The scent of a hay field’s first cutting, or the cool quietness of an early summer morning before the sun bakes the blacktop.

The perfume of wildflowers in the spring or the colors of autumn leaves. Spying a formation of geese flying south in the fall, or a hawk surveying from his regal perch atop a telephone pole. Mid-summer breakfast rides before the heat of day or a cold beer after a long afternoon cruise.

The sudden rush of cool air as you drop into a valley on an early September morning. Rolling home at dusk with a full moon rising, pale orange on the horizon as a bat flutters past. Peering into the fading light warily looking for deer along the roadside.

Knowing how that cheeseburger will taste after a 200-mile morning or bench racing with your buddies over a frosty mug.

I could ramble on, but morning’s fog has lifted, and it’s kickstands up. Yes, Hadley, PaPa is really old, but he can still ride a motorcycle.

Wayne Carpenter is an AMA member from Belton, Texas.