sometimes you do meet the nicest people on a Harley

While our riding partner Bruce went off in search of museums, Christopher and I decided to get our fix at the motorcycle shops in Vancouver, BC.  It was at the Yamaha shop we found out about Trev Deeley, the long time Harley Davidson importer, who just happened to have once imported Triumph and Yamahas to Canada.  They told us of a museum he has with bikes over 85 years old, Harley was still a young 86 at the time.  So off in the rain, how British, we went in search of his building, in a non-descript, older part of the warehouse area.  Funny how the combination of a foreign land, they do speak English there, and an unknown area when mixed with rain causes confusion, but after few passes, we took a chance, and it was right where we were told, now so were we.  An old brick two story warehouse, taller than it was wide, we went in and were greeted by the receptionist, who offered us hot drinks, which we accepted.  She asked if we minded waiting, seems Cycle World was doing an article on the museum upstairs, and would we mind waiting in the office of the president.  He didn’t seem to mind, and after 15 minutes of great talk, she motioned CW was gone, actually they were still upstairs, but we could go up.  As she pointed to the narrow stairs, a man in a wheelchair with two friends came in, also wanting to see the museum.  But she told them they had no elevator, and his wheelchair was even wider than the steps.  When a burly warehouseman appeared over her shoulder, “ever ride on a forklift?” His answer a bewildered stare.  “If you don’t mind, we have access through an upstairs outer door we use to unload motorcycles, it will hold a wheelchair with you, interested?”  Being brave he was, and we all went out and watched as the forklift operator carefully lifted him two stories, in the rain, and placed him in the door.  It looked like it was way up there, from the wheelchair it must have looked like a thousand feet!  But he made it safe, the Cycle World guys took pictures and added him to the story, and an incredible morning was had by all.  You see, sometimes you do meet the nicest people on a Harley......

Rock music tells us we have a stairway to heaven, but a high way to hell.  Quite a contrast.  But it takes thinking outside our terminally small minds to see God in it all.  Under Jesus, God gives us a New Covenant, one with no dates mentioned in it, everlasting, and it is available to all, Jew and Gentile alike.  Bikers, too.  He tells us he will put his law, which is love, in our minds, and write his word in our hearts, who is Jesus.  Under the Old Covenant it was all about external. and based on our performance.  The new one under Jesus, is all about what he did for us on the cross, and is all about the internal change God provides in and to us.  And by his spirit we will have all the power we need, no longer do we have to go it alone, no longer under Mosaic laws, but Jesus brings it down to one, love God first with all you have, and then love man the same way.  He supplies, we act and benefit.  Only a loving God be so gracious and forgiving.  No longer when Christians meet will we be strangers, but friends we haven’t met yet, but with the commonality of Jesus, his spirit will unite us.  We share Jesus, so we can share the new life in him.  Based on being forgiven, another great equalizer, before we were all united by our sin, now we are united by his forgiveness.  We no longer have to go it alone, but we have Jesus, who sustains us, supplies us, forgives and encourages us, and all we need to do is believe.  The focus is on who he is and what he has done, not who we are and what we have done.  A covenant like no other, because there is no other like Jesus.

But yet some chase the highway to hell, thinking they have to or must go it alone.  A true blow to the ego when told they cannot, but still race on.  But just like Jacob saw a ladder to heaven, life is taken in many small steps, until you meet a simple obstacle like no elevator and are grounded.  Yet like the warehouseman who offered the wheelchair bound man a lift, God offers us that same lift.  Seems he is not bound by highways, steps, or no elevators.  His plan for you includes him, and in him we can do and go places mere mortals cannot.  We all clapped and rejoiced standing in the rain as the man was lifted, imagine the fanfare in heaven when one lifts his hands and heart in forgiveness and comes to Christ.  Loud pipes may save lives, but they couldn’t meet the man’s need that day. So many Harleys, but only one forklift.  Not even a v-twin.  When we ride with Jesus, marvelous things happen, we are part of the family, under the New Covenant, forgiven and saved.  Later in our conversation with Bruce, he wondered, “how do you always find such neat places?”  We know a neat God, who is cool. 

You may be one highway away from hell, or one stairway away from heaven.  That morning all it took was a forklift to answer a prayer.  Miracles occur everyday, in everyway.  You might meet the nicest people on a Honda, that day it was all about Harleys and a forklift.  Just like Jesus, one offered, the other accepted, and his whole world changed by what he could see.  Blind from below, a new vision when lifted up.  With no animals harmed or loud pipes heard....

love with compassion,

Mike

matthew25biker.blogspot.com

memories from before you could remember them

Watching a Mecum Motorcycle Auction on TV last night, I was amazed at all the gray hair in the crowd.  Guys like me or older, who have the memories of the bikes being auctioned off from when they were new.  Old guys on walkers who remember the first 1957 Sportster.  Criticizing the right hand shift.  Some who a few years later would have sold all hey had or didn’t have for the new Bonneville in 1959.  Some a few years younger, who couldn’t afford the big bikes of Harley, Triumph, BSA, Norton, and others, who bought Japanese, smaller in size, weird in appearance, but not in performance.  Then in 1968, BSA and Triumph Triples, who wouldn’t have hung out at the local shop just wanting to get a peek, or sit on one.  Only to be upstaged a year later by Honda’s 750, and that’s where I came in.  The first bike I lusted for other than the dirt bikes I played on, was the Mach III Kawasaki, 500cc of blue smoke, two stroke craziness.  Maybe the first bikes I could truly remember seeing in a showroom because I was there.  All the others existed before I rode, and those who rode and remember them are fading like their hairlines.  When did it first happen to you, what was that first bike you remember seeing and having to have?  The one just out of your fiscal reach, what would you pay for it today?  For just one last ride back to when it all first happened.....

As I hang out in shops today I am the old guy, my memories go back way before many of them were born.  They question how we ever kick started a 750cc bike, why would we ride a two stroke and mess with mixing gas and oil?  A tune up every 6000 miles?  Twin rear shocks?  Tubeless tires?  Only spoked rims?  And as the stories get passed down, they wonder how we did it, and how we are still around today to tell about it.  Mention TT pipes to today’s Triumph rider and get a “huh?”  Choppers were all Triumphs 50 years ago, and all shifted on the right side.  Lello had an old Kawasaki with a rotary transmission, about 100cc of fear, as it shifted N-1-2-3-4-N.  Then back to first again!  Unbelievable, I rode one.  Dunstall Nortons and Hondas, I put Dunstall Low Decibel pipes on my R90S, what a sound!  Sissy bars, psychadelic helmets, or no helmet at all.  Windjammer fairings, Krauser bags for my BMW, bungee cords and back packs, all signs of the time when I first started riding.  Things  can remember and relate to because I was there.  Anything before that was everlasting, as in before me.  I depend on those who rode before to keep it real, and those younger depend on my age to keep it real.  Sometimes a far distant reality than they care to relate to.

So how far back is everlasting?  For us it means time, but for God it means forever, as in an infinity of yesterdays, for no matter how far back we go, God was there before us.  Before the beginning, when he created the heaven and earth out of nothing, he was everlasting.  He has seen it all because he as been there for it.  With an everlasting love for us.  Before being formed in the womb, he loved us.  While we were yet sinners, Jesus died for us.  His memories and love for us are everlasting, beyond any dimension we can imagine or think of, to a memory greater than we can think.  Yet how often in the midst of our trials do we wonder if he knows or even cares?  Where is the everlasting love he speaks of?  Why do we try to compartmentalize his love when it knows no boundaries?  It is hard to think of God being compassionate when we are suffering, but we forget how much he suffered through Jesus to give us life, to reunite with us.  We need the white beards and gray haired men who have lived along life in Christ to remind us of how it was, so we can see how it still is, and how it will be.  Everlasting to the end, including now.  Right now.

We all live or have lived in a Golden Age, an age when it all was new and exciting.  When our first ride was too short, and our first time with Jesus far beyond words.  When we were the kids that we talk to today and lovingly share the past.  With an everlasting love from God, who we love because he loved us first.  A passion created by him for us, to include him, to make us whole, for he is holy, complete.  For some of us it was the first sub 13 second 1/4 mile, the first time over 100 mph, disc brakes that really stopped us, and Castrol Bean oil.  When a twin meant vee or parallel, when an inline 4 was news, and an electric leg to start it all became standard.  I can still remember my first non-electric leg bike, my 1981 KZ750, with tubeless tires.  What next we all wondered?  How we remember those times will tell of a passion we had, and some haven’t given it up, at least not yet.  But do we have a passion for Christ the same way?  Listen to the stories the testimonies, of worship teams with acoustic guitars, song sheets with no overheads, and fellowships in homes on weeknights.  Just you and God, and his people, wanting to get closer, the koineia we were searching for, that was there all the time.  Everlasting to everlasting, with us included.  Today, and to be shared tomorrow.  Memories we can share because we were there, but so was God.  We owe it to the younger generation to keep the memories fresh, with each ride newer and more exciting.  To respect those who had a Sportster that would part the hair on your chest, or put some there if you didn’t have any.  Until a 250 two stroke blew by.  Both bikes and riders got heavier, but the ride doesn’t change, unless we do.  From everlasting to everlasting, the passion may diminish, Jesus’ love for us never will. Anything before I as born was history, with a lot of it still being made today.  Don’t shut God out, the audience may change, his love never does.  Which may explain why us old guys never have just one collector bike.....some things are just too good to never let go of....like a relationship with Jesus.  Oh what fun it is too ride....

love with compassion,

Mike

matthew25biker.blogspot.com

gorging on the Rio Grande

Why do we wait to learn some of the most interesting and useful things until later in life?  Where was this supply of needed information when I could have used it, or at least benefitted from it?  For instance I lived a few blocks off Route 66 in 1975-76, Central NE in Albuquerque, in a time when no one cared, or could care less.  Today if I had paid attention, I could publish my memoirs of “Life Along Route 66,” available in paperback or Kindle.  “Missed by that much,” as Agent 86 used to say.  But moving to New Mexico, when my Jersey friends wondered if they spoke English, lived in tepees, and had electricity, I remembered stories of Pecos Bill and the Rio Grande River from elementary school songs.  I imagined old cow hands on the Rio Grande, campfires with coyotes howling, and a rushing river based  on its name, Big River.  Maybe I was safer sticking to future Route 66 culture....as the Rio Grande in many places is anything but grand.  Long, but not so wide in places.  Some places you can walk across it, where only a few miles south it is wide and deep.  But only a few miles north, near Taos, it runs through a deep gorge, with only a bridge across it.  Not there when the pioneers and first settles arrived, they had to step back and wonder what to do next.  I can only imagine after hundreds of miles across prairies and then high desert, how welcoming a river would have been.  But only to find no way to get down to it, or even across it.  Giving a new meaning to end of the trail.

From the north you can see it from the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the Blood of Christ, from the south no way until you are upon.  No one pioneered from the west, so it was up to the eastern folk to deal with it.  Just a big hole in the ground stopping them and leaving a mark for their forward progress, how many headed north into the mountains, or were smart enough to head south for a few days and walk across.  Today a bridge crosses it, a few seconds at 65mph, with the locals selling trinkets and other junk, a sort of Grand Canyon of New Mexico if you will, been there, done that, and have the photos to prove it, no t-shirts available at the time.  But thanks to the Rio Grande Gorge and the bridge across it, today we can see just how Grande the Rio here is, and to tell others, no AAA 175 years ago.

So the Rio Grande has many faces along its route, with a green belt caressing it as it flows through Albuquerque.  From atop The Crest, or from Juan Tabo Campground, you can see a strip of lush green trees as the river goes through town, then fades away again to the north or south.  A view that made quite an impact on this Jersey transplant, and new Christian.  Psalm One was an early teaching, and it tells of a tree planted by water who in its season bears fruit.  Whose leaf shall never wither.  The water being the holy spirit, the fruit is of the spirit, not self induced or taught.  Spirit based, only the spirit can bear spiritual fruit.  I often think of the Rio Grande here, what a beautiful example of how the spirit gives life to an otherwise desert area, and how when we are in the spirit, we will also.  Maybe it explains how some come so close to the water but never go in, or see a gorge and throw up their hands in disgust.  Some will try a detour or stay put, while others are drawn by the spirit to it.  Paul tells us “God is not mocked, whoever sows seeds to please the flesh will reap destruction, but whoever sows seeds to the spirit will reap eternal life.”  We don’t have to wait until we die to experience either one, for Jesus promised on earth as it is in heaven right now.  We can have all the joy of the spirit right now, or just enjoy getting by from one disaster to the next.

So I have learned to gorge on the Rio Grande, or really the spirit.  I enjoy being loved, having joy and peace, being good and kind, seeing Jesus in my long suffering, and learning self control is based upon my choices.  But it all points to Jesus.  Maybe that is why New Mexico is called “the Land of Enchantment.”  From the Sangre de Cristos to the Rio Grande, to the indescribable colors in the sunset, you can see where God set his grace on thee.  All roads lead to somewhere, the bridge across the Rio Grande Gorge is 150 miles or more from any freeway.  Not on the way to anything, unless you know where you are going.  Do you know where you are going when you die?  Are you sure?

Water never looked so appealing as in a desert.  In a desert now, need a drink from God?  His water is available, just like it was to the woman at the well, so we can thirst no more.  But it is up to you, what do you do when confronted by the holy spirit?  Take a ride up tot Crest in Albuquerque and see things from above as God does.  Sometimes things are so close we miss them, it just takes a different perspective.  Only available via the holy spirit, and at prices you can afford.  For like Abraham, we are just sojourners, travelers on this earth for a short while.  God gave him a choice just like he does us.  Jesus was baptized in the Jordan in a low spot, but the spirit rose up in the form of a dove.  Don’t let a gap in your walk with Christ deter you, take in the living water of his spirit today.  For just like the disciples in the boat in the midst of the storm, they made it to the other side just as Jesus said they would.  And to that I say “yippie yi oh kayah!”

No need to wait for the book to come out either....and of course Route 66 crosses over it!  New Mexico, it ain’t new and it ain’t Mexico.

love with compassion,

MIkematthew25biker.blogspot.com