I'm totally dressed like a biker chick today.

A few months ago I bought a pair of motorcycle boots. I didn't need them, and I really couldn't afford them, but I bought them anyway. See, the building I work in is across the street from a mall, and for one reason or another I end up walking through the mall at least once a week. Most of the time I'm literally going through the mall to get to someplace on the other side--bank, grocery store, what have you--and I avoid actually going into any stores. The one exception is Nordstrom, because as it happens, the mall entrance that is closest to my building leads directly into it. More specifically, it leads directly into the shoe department. This is dangerous.

I am by no means a shoe freak, especially compared to...well, the majority of women, if you believe the movies. On a shoe-craziness scale of one to ten, I'm a two at best. Still, I am not wholly immune to their charms, and walking through Nordstrom's shoe department on a regular basis means I am frequently exposed to the siren call of footwear. In fact, right now I can picture the exact location on the sales floor of a pair of silver-sequined Chuck Taylors, and can even hear them faintly calling: "Jenny...buy us...buuuuuyyyyyy uuuuuussssss...."

Ahem. So yeah, I kept passing by these motorcycle boots--the real deal, hand-crafted, built to last--for weeks on end, and I'd always wanted a pair, and I finally broke down. I don't regret it, even though I'm still having to cut back on discretionary spending to defray the expense. They're fucking awesome.

I'm wearing them today specifically because I have a hair appointment later and I want to show them off to my stylist. I'm also wearing jeans--my office is very casual--which are being held up by the only belt I currently own, a black one encrusted with silver studs. I have a nice black top on, so I still look professional, especially since I sit at a desk and most people only see the top half of me. Except, it's really cold in the office today, so I put a hoodie on over my top. It's a Harley-Davidson hoodie. It's black and says "H-D Riders" across the chest in bright orange letters. It also says "Live to Ride" down the right sleeve. I just took a walk to the mail room, and as I was waiting for the elevator I suddenly became conscious of the fact that, with the boots, the jeans, the belt, and the hoodie, I totally look like a biker chick right now.

Oh, the hoodie also has lettering on the back: "Chick's Harley-Davidson, Albuquerque, New Mexico". I got it when I took riding lessons there. They didn't go so well.

It all started with Justine Shapiro. Do you guys ever watch Globe Trekker? It's a travel show on PBS. It was inspired by the Lonely Planet series of guidebooks, so it's hipper than the average travel show, and the hosts try to dig beneath the touristy surface of the places they visit to get at the real culture. Justine is one of the hosts. She's also an actor and an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker. She's smart, funny, very cute, a bit of a snob, and I'm totally in love with her.

One of the shows she hosted covered the Southwestern US. She seemed less than thrilled about that particular assignment, and was hilariously bitchy about it at first. Eventually she came around though--it's so beautiful there, how could you not? At one point she rented a motorcycle to drive between Santa Fe and Taos, which I found both really sexy and kind of inspiring. I'd never felt the desire to ride a motorcycle before, but watching Justine do it I suddenly did. I started thinking about how cool it would be to ride a bike through the desert, and the more I thought about it the more I started to really like the idea.

So I looked around for a place where I could learn to ride, and found Chick's, the only local dealer that offered courses approved by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation. Their Basic Rider course is a three-day affair: four hours of classroom training on a Friday evening followed by sixteen hours on a bike over Saturday and Sunday. I signed up, and a few weeks later, ridiculously early on a Saturday morning, I found myself in a huge empty parking lot, astride a motorcycle for the first time in my life (excepting the couple of times I'd ridden behind someone else, which doesn't really count). The bike they use for the course is the Buell Blast, a small(ish), relatively lightweight American-made cycle.

Sort of goofy-looking, but you've gotta start somewhere.

At first everything was great, as we learned to start and stop the bike, put it into gear, and drive slowly in a straight line. Things got more complicated as we worked on turning, using the complex and not-at-all intuitive method called countersteering. Nonetheless, I got a basic feel for it, and started to feel pretty good about myself and my fast-growing skills. Unfortunately, to that point we'd been doing everything in first gear, and the next part of the course was shifting. This was my downfall.

My dad once tried to teach me to drive a manual transmission automobile, an experience that proved highly frustrating for both of us. My problem was letting the clutch out too quickly, causing the car to lurch and stall. I ended up having the same difficulty with the motorcycle. I started to get really stressed as the other women got the hang of it (I forgot to mention that this particular class was women-only) and went flying around the lot, while I stalled my bike over and over. Eventually I started having trouble even getting it into first, and at one point I ended up falling over with the bike on top of me. Remember when I described the Blast as "relatively lightweight"? Well, when it falls on top of you, you really understand what they mean by "relatively". The instructor had to help extricate me, and I had a couple of lovely bruises the next day.

As the class was winding down for the day, we were called upon to put all of the skills we'd learned so far to use. When I stalled the bike for about the forty-kajillionth time, the stress finally became too much and I started crying. Man, I do not like crying in public, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is because I am an ugly crier. My nose turns bright red, my face contorts spastically...it's gross. It had to be quite a picture, a grown woman sitting on a motorcycle sobbing hysterically. I was too embarrassed and upset to go back the next day, and so I never finished the course and never got the motorcycle endorsement on my license.

Why am I talking about this now? I guess 'cause of the boots. But also because Portland Community College offers rider courses, and I'm thinking about trying it again this spring. I get a little stressed just thinking about it, but I still want to ride a bike through the desert one day.