Rough Summer for Riders

The weather is still beautiful out, but now that school's back in, you can't help thinking that the summer is over; the days are numbered until it starts raining. If you are a motorcycle rider, this weighs even heavier on you. You put the liner back in your jacket, you get the bike all ready for storage...and in the meantime you are checking the weather channel every evening, trying to hold on to that last little bit of sunshine. It's dismal. And we barely even had a summer when it was here. I put my motorcycle up for sale this year, so I haven't been riding it in a few months anyway, but for months I have been craning my head every time I hear the raw open sound of a motorcycle accelerating, and this is especially bad since I've recently moved close to the Georgia viaduct. I can lie on my couch and watch all kinds of beautiful bikes race down Venables. So in a way, while the beginning of the rain always makes me sad, it is a bit of a relief as well. I don't have to find a place to store my bike (I am too much of a wuss to ride in the rain), I don't have to go through the separation anxiety between me and the beast, and as an added bonus, I didn't die this year.

I read a short story on Nerve the other day that included the line, "Ari knows that if she hadn't died that night, she would have died another night. People who ride motorcycles die." and I freaked, because that's so not true! T here are lots of motorcyclists out there who don't die, how dare they say something so depressing and dark! But it stayed with me for a few days nonetheless, and in that time I thought about all the people I knew of who had died on their bikes and how, despite Motorcycle Awareness Month and all the driver training initiatives, there are still a LOT of bike accidents and drivers in Vancouver are still assholes.

This was not meant to be a depressing post, I just wanted to write a little bit about the motorcycle community in Vancouver, that community would not be what it is without Julia Sit, who died earlier this summer when her bike went off the road. Not only was she an experienced rider, but also an advocate for motorcycle safety, a strong voice for Vancouver's community, the president of the Vancouver Riders of Motorcycles in BC - VROMBC - and the main reason that her family's restaurant, The Flying Swan (1724 W 4th Avenue) has a sign out front indicating that it is a "Motorcycle Friendly Cafe". For her family and friends there must also be some relief that summer is over.

There are a lot of questions surrounding Julia's death, and not a lot of answers. The road was dry, she was an experienced and careful rider, her bike was in good condition, and so on. Nothing to indicate why she wouldn't have made the corner. Vancouver's motorcycle community was shaken last year when Julia's boyfriend Bog was killed in a motorcycle accident and almost a year later the message boards at VROMBC and bcsportbikes are echoing eulogies and comments to the effect that the rider community around here will never be the same. And Julia is not the only hole in it. bcsportbikes.com has 3 funeral notices on it, a tribute to fallen riders section in the works, and so many seemingly innocuous comments about death and dying; "a bad day of riding is still better than a good day of work. Unless you die, of course", "every day I break my previous record of consecutive days still alive", etc. Tough stuff.

In the spring there will be new hope and new bikes and new excitement, and I know the community will not fall apart. Julia's voice will carry though and others will rally to keep the group strong. In the meantime, the Flying Swan is still open for business, still motorcycle friendly, and the food is delicious.