My motorcycle gave me three years of virtually no problems. Then water got into the tank and caused it to intermittently stop running. A week after I had that fixed, the fuel pump broke, maybe because of the water issue. Once that was fixed, the bike felt better than ever, and I felt good making a 200 mile round-trip journey to Carmel, CA with Justine on the back.
Our ride down was as pleasant as a three hour ride on a small street bike can be. Our legs cramped up a bit, and the backpack I fastened to the tank slid around, but the beautiful scenery of the pacific coast highway kept us pleasantly distracted.
After a visit to Carmel that went by too quickly, we loaded up the motorcycle again and headed back on Sunday afternoon.
We took highway one up to Santa Cruz, and then decided to take route 17 over the mountain to save some time and see something different. The bike charged up the mountain until we were about 90% of the way to the top, and then it died.
The engine just stopped. Electrics kept running, but the motor went silent. Luckily, it died right next to a turnout, so we pulled over and had space to investigate the problem. The engine would turn over, but there was no ignition, just the mechanical sound of the electric starter turning the engine over.
From my days of owning a finicky moped, I know a little bit about simple engines. So I began to check for fuel, spark, and compression. Halfway through this process I realized the engine was way too hot to really check for most of these things, and so I gave up. I did notice that the gas tank was suspiciously light, though. Maybe we were out of fuel and my gas gauge wasn’t working properly.
Mostly out of frustration, I pressed the start button again, and the bike roared to life. Justine and I looked at each other and scrambled to get ourselves and our backpack back on the bike. We kept going until the top of the mountain, and the bike died again. We pulled over, discussed it briefly, and decided to just coast down. Maybe if we could reach a gas station we could fix this.
So we rolled down in stealth mode, motorcycle completely silent, weaving in between traffic. We were worried that if we didn’t maintain momentum we might get stuck at even a small uphill.
The motorcycle sputtered back to life around the bottom of the hill and we limped to a gas station, again dying just as we arrived.
We filled it with gas, and it started up fine. Then we went to whole foods for a consolation smoothie, and discussed what to do. It seemed as though the fuel had fixed it, and I was happy to backwards rationalize various problems that fuel could have fixed. Maybe we were low. Maybe there was some water in the tank that was now diluted.
Spirits high, we sprinted down the highway, always in the right lane, just in case. And, of course, that case happened and we found ourselves on the breakdown lane of highway 280, still an hour outside of San Francisco.
I noticed that the temperature seemed to be creeping up pretty quickly, and guessed that maybe it had something to do with heat. So we sat on the side of the highway and waited for the bike to cool down.
And that’s how our evening went. A two hour trip turned into five hours, and many times we found ourselves just sitting on the side of the road, jiggling the tank and waiting for the bike to cool, hoping it would spring to life again. Sometimes it did, other times we waited and watched the sun fall lower in the sky.
Eventually, through trial and error, hoping and pushing, and even dropping the bike at a standstill for the first time ever, we limped to half a mile away from Justine’s house and walked the rest of the way.
We’re pretty early in our relationship. It’s been two months, but I’ve been away for at least half of that. We’re not in the police-style interrogation mode that I delight first dates with, but we’re still feeling each other out, seeing how we work together. We’ve booked a trip to Europe next month, party because travel is one of the best way to figure those things out.
I was really impressed with how Justine handled the whole situation. We joked around the whole way, enjoyed silently coasting down the mountain, and entertained each other as traffic zoomed by us on the highway.
I’ve worked really hard to stay positive in these situations. Not a veneer of positivity that masks frustration and discontent, but really being positive about the situation. I guess she has, too, or maybe it comes naturally to her.
The trick, I think, is to train yourself to always be happy with the best possible option available to you. Contentment is almost always relative. If you had no money at all, and you suddenly had $1000 in your bank account, you’d naturally be happy about that. But if you had a million dollars and all of it vanished except for $1000, that happiness might not come so easily. Same situation, different context, different emotions.
Too often we compare our best possible option with an option that no longer exists or never did exist. What good is it to compare coasting down the mountain against having a fully functional motorcycle? Our choices were to sit there and wait hours for a tow truck, freak out and do nothing, or to coast. Coasting was the best option, so we decided to just be happy with that.
You can use that relativity to your advantage. Our brains sometimes naturally think of better impossible options, but worse possible options don’t come as easily. I was grateful we’d made it that far up the mountain, that it was a nice day, that I had a travel companion who was also being positive, that I had a motorcycle to begin with, and that I could enjoy the view as we rolled down the mountain. There’s plenty to be happy about if you look for it.
The ability to be happy with the best available option is powerful. It makes your life so much easier. It makes other people’s lives easier. It gives you objectivity and the power to act in difficult situations. It brings you gratitude. This is a skill to build, not a have-it-or-don’t attribute. You practice focusing on the positive and ignoring options that don’t exist. Be grateful for the best available option you have, and if it goes away, be glad for the next best one.
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Photo is a white puerh tea being brewed in my little travel tea set in Carmel.
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