Varoom into spring

This Side Up

John Howell
Posted 4/14/15

All it takes is a sunny weekend, temperatures in the 60s, and the nightmares of winter melt away.

It seems to happen that quickly, although the reminders of winter are to be found on virtually …

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Varoom into spring

This Side Up

Posted

All it takes is a sunny weekend, temperatures in the 60s, and the nightmares of winter melt away.

It seems to happen that quickly, although the reminders of winter are to be found on virtually every road – find me one without a pothole – the higher than usual natural gas bills and yards everywhere that are still lifelessly gray and brown. But I’m not complaining.

I actually got to turn off the car heater and open the windows. But then everybody was doing that this weekend. I looked around waiting for the light to change at Airport and Post Roads. There was one driver with her head bowed as she focused on her smart phone, but for the most part there were smiles and even a few drumming their fingers on the steering wheel to tunes wafting from their radios.

But it was what was right in front of me that caught more than a passing glance.

It was a couple on a Harley. The bike’s throaty blat, blat, blat, which the driver evoked with every rev of the engine, drowned out the music from those open windows and announced, as only a Harley can do, “I’m ready for the light to change.”

The driver and his feminine passenger were dressed in matching jeans and jean jackets. She wore a black helmet. His hair was smooth and shiny. The bike was shiny, too. The light changed. Everyone started to move to the rumble of the Harley. It was a satisfactory feeling, like the engines of all the cars were singing the harmony.

“Yah, spring is here,” the bike was saying. “We’re on the road and we’re going places.”

I happened to be going to Warwick Mall and, for a while anyway, I had my own motorcycle escort. We climbed the Coronado Street Bridge over Amtrak and dropped down onto Kilvert Street. The bike’s rumble reverberated as we passed businesses and former mill cottages, echoes that ordinarily would be considered obtrusive but under the circumstances were a celebration of a spring finally arrived.

There are many sounds that trumpet spring and few more stirring than the chorus of tree frogs as they celebrate their vernal pools. Carol had me stop earlier last week on West Shore Road near the wetlands bordering Buckeye Brook. She had thought the ritual might have started, but no, the woods were silent.

I can’t imagine it will be that way for long now.

And then there is the evening song of robins. They are so strident that they’re impossible to ignore. It’s like they’re squeezing in as much as they can before the shadows fade and darkness settles in. They were at it Sunday evening, proclaiming the end of the first warm weekend in a long time.

Some will argue the motorcycle is no match for peepers and robins. After all, how could anything manmade rival the splendor of Mother Nature? I’ll grant that the songs of the frogs and the robins are spectacular and inspirational, especially after being cooped up all winter.

The motorcycle, even if you’re not riding it, is something else. It can be boisterous and even angry. Annoying is a good word. But with the first days of a spring, they’re a joyous expression.

I saw it and felt it as I followed the Harley on Kilvert Street. The driver slowed to 20 miles per hour, then gunned it, tilting the bike from side to side. He was probably doing 45 and was way ahead when he went over the incline leading down to Metro Boulevard. There was a cruiser parked perpendicular to the road, the window down, the officer taking in the scene.

Instinctively, I took my foot off the gas. The biker saw the cop, too. He slowed. He stopped fishtailing. Even the engine seemed to be muted, although I don’t think that’s possible for Harleys.

I expected the cop to flash on the lights and pull out. But, no, that didn’t happen.

I looked at him as I drove by. I believe there was a smile. He had heard the sound of spring, too. It was that kind of a day.

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