We left our home in Mesa, AZ and had travelled over 2500 miles on our trip this year. We went back to visit our family in Wichita, Kansas. The trip had been wonderful, the sites, the sounds, the taste and the joys of riding across country with the love of my life, my husband. How much better could it get? I was not prepared for that second day in Wichita.My daughter had been to Wichita earlier in the year and talked to my cousins Rusty and Eric and told them that we were coming back at the end of May on our motorcycles. Eric called and said let’s have lunch together; we want to see your bikes. I still talk with my cousins once in a while but not as often as family should. I had been busy raising my family and living my life. Sometimes we forget, it is the people who touch our lives that are so very important, I was about to get reminded of that in such a powerful way.We pulled up to the little café and went in and had a great lunch. They asked if we wanted to come over and see Rusty’s wife, Denise, who was at work just a few blocks away. In my mind I thought, we have a few moments in our busy schedule, we were trying to see as many people as we could with the short time we had in town so let’s hurry and get this over with. In my outside voice I said “Sure let’s go”. I asked if Rusty wanted to ride over there with my husband, Sandy, on his bike a 2006 Street Bob with a 2-up set so we can take the grandkids for rides. His face just beamed but he wasn’t sure how he could get on the back of Sandy’s bike, “No problem,” said Eric, “I will pick him up and put him on there.” You see Rusty has MS. He can still walk, but not as well as he use to and he cannot throw his leg over the back of a bike to ride. So Eric picked Rusty up and gently set him in the seat. I mounted up on my 2004 V-Rod and we headed over those few short blocks. Then it happened: We were sitting at a stop light and Rusty had his ball cap turned backwards holding on to Sandy as I pulled up next to him. Rusty looked over at me with that SMILE. You all know that SMILE, if I have to explain you won’t understand.I was transported back 40 years ago as Rusty and I use to race horses across the pasture at my folks place. Feeling the wind in our faces and finding the freedom and understanding that life is just beginning and we are can do anything we want and go anywhere we want and life is ours for the taking. Rusty would look over at me with his ball cap turned backwards and smile at me as we raced to see who get there first. Never sure where there was but we were both racing to get there.The light changed and I was back in the moment. My heart changed, I am not in a hurry now. I am no longer racing to get there. I am there, right where I am suppose to be and with the people that matter the most in my life at this moment.Our lives took very different paths and life has been great to me. Harley has become a large part of my life in the little time I have been riding (that is another story). The plains across Oklahoma and Texas have a beauty of light, to run the twists and turns in the back roads through Missouri and Arkansas, to see the fields of grain across Kansas, the Rockies in Colorado, the herds of antelope across New Mexico are all breathe taking. But they did not come close in comparison to the look in his eyes and his SMILE. THAT WAS THE MOMENT!
