April in Ohio is a month of countless possibilities. Some of those possibilities are even positive. Snow is possible. A 90-degree afternoon is possible.
I recently made a quick round trip to the family homestead in West Virginia. The afternoon I rode there, the temperatures were in the low 80s. Just 24 hours later, as I rode home, the temperatures were falling into the upper 40s. A 35-degree temperature swing calls for some creative packing, but such is April in these parts.
Anything is possible.
When I lived in Puerto Rico, there were only two seasons: regular and hurricane. There wasn’t much difference between the two, except the latter involved a generally higher level of awareness and greater attention to Atlantic Ocean radar images. But other than that, riding a motorcycle was pretty much the same kind of activity all year round.
Not so here at 40 degrees north latitude.
The seasons enforce certain cycles. May through September are the months for taking trips, squeezing in those track days and making the most of life. October is when I search for that one perfect fall weekend, knowing my days are numbered. I enter November and December with a brave countenance. There are always some decent days when it still feels non-painful to be on the bike. January and February are desperate months, when I pore over maps, plan a thousand trips and swear I won’t let a single beautiful day go to waste the following summer. March is the month of wild flings, when any chance for a ride is seized. March came a few days early this year, when I made a desperate run for Savannah in the final days of February.
Then there’s April. First the redbuds brighten the forests with their purplish-pink fuzz and soon the dogwoods will take their turn on stage. On days like that 80-something afternoon I rode to West Virginia, every motorcycle that doesn’t have a gunked up carburetor from poor winter storage is on the road. Ninety percent of us are riding, 10 percent are swearing and cursing in dark despair in a garage.
I’ve been there. A periodic April activity for me is taking the carburetor off my mother’s Suzuki GN125 and cleaning it. Despite my careful use of fuel stabilizer each and every fall when I put her bike into hibernation, the tiny orifices in that little carburetor get gummed up about one of every three years, requiring disassembling and cleaning before it will start. This was one of those years.
It’s a fiddly task, annoying mainly because I feel I shouldn’t have to do it. I used fuel stabilizer. I did what I was supposed to do. I should be rewarded with a motorcycle that starts in the spring. But things on the microscopic level don’t always agree with my assessment of what should happen.
Fortunately, my more modern fuel-injected bikes aren’t so sensitive. And although it’s a fiddly task, I’m happy to do it. My mother doesn’t ride much any more, and I want her to have as many more rides as she feels like having. An uncooperative bike doesn’t help achieve that goal.
Today, sunny and warm, in the upper 60s, was one of those positive April possibilities, and I unexpectedly needed to take some things to my wife at her “small college on the hill,” as she calls it in her blog. It was a great excuse, a welcome opportunity, to get out on the back roads and putter along, to marvel at how the distance of just 30 north-south miles can be measured in the number and size of leaves and flowers on the trees, and to remind myself of those particular spring hazards, such as winter grit and gravel in the corners and the moist green grass sprayed unnecessarily onto the roadway by inconsiderate homeowners riding their John Deeres like plump suburban sultans mounted on elephants. A day to catch a whiff of crab apple blossoms sneaking in through the helmet visor.
Any day when the positive possibilities of unpredictable April come through is a good day, indeed.
