Another birthday and I’m HOW old???

Well, let me tell you, tomorrow I have another birthday. Now to choose an age to celebrate! 48 was a good year, one I’ll remember and even if I didn’t, I’d claim its fame and move on to 49, because you must move on and 49 sounds good, though not as good as 39, but then I digress, literally. Ya, 49, that’ll work. It’s the new 39, you know, so THEY say!

Funny, I remember how my mother would guard her age like it was an inaccessible fortress, which it was! Even her closest friends didn’t know her real age, and I chided her for that! Well, no longer. Now if anyone asks, I do not know my mother’s age and I’m going to be 49 and that’s my irreverent answer to this endless age paradox.

Much has been written through time regarding paradoxical age, making one ponder the irony. Here are a few of my favorite quotes on the subject of age.

Robert Frost: A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.

George Burns: You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.

Anne Sexton: In a dream you are never eighty.

Oscar Wilde: To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

Agatha Christie: An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.

Victor Hugo: Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.

Pope Paul VI: In youth the days are short and the years are long. In old age the years are short and day’s long.

Riding a motorcycle helps design a youthful persona. However it’s not why I ride. I ride for that feeling I can’t get anywhere else, for the challenge, the stimuli, the quest. To feel the elements, to celebrate the sunshine, to wrestle the wind, to know the firm touch of the rain, all these things contribute to the draw of the ride. I love the thoughts that burn under my helmet riding the road less traveled, the scenic route or even the less profound “way home”. It’s all brilliant and special from the seat of a motorcycle. Those that ride share this secret handshake and all the unspoken words of the road.

So, as I ponder yet another year, it’s with celebration. After all, I have seven seasons of riding under my helmet, an amazing husband that supports and encourages me, wonderfully crazy family and friends, and the clarity to know age is truly only a number!

Riding Redux…
2005 John Fastfar and me at the first Pashnit Gathering held at Big Trees near Sonora.