Summer Is Here

After almost a week of soggy, chilly weather, the 4^th of July came in with a bang (pun intended)… 88 degrees and VERY sunny. Searsport held their annual row boat races, Lions Club pancake breakfast, Methodist Church auction, BBQ chicken sale, parade, and at night, fireworks to cap it off. Summer is officially here.

Different people judge the beginning of summer in different ways.

The weather-guessers (more affectionately known as the nightly weather people) like to get technical and say it happens on the summer solstice – June 21^st. Merchants feel that summer begins either on Memorial Day weekend or the 4^th of July. Some of the “regulars” at Coastal Coffee think summer starts when Ken starts putting the café tables out on the sidewalk – which happened on July 3^rd, this year.

I like to think summer has started when the motorcycles appear. It’s like there is a hidden “spigot” somewhere, and somebody turns it on, and motorcycles pour out. All of a sudden they seem to be everywhere! I’ve never owned or driven a motorcycle – I just like them.

They come in all sizes and shapes, and so do the people that ride them. Bikers aren’t road-gang type of people, either. You don’t see a lot of black leather jackets motoring through Searsport, but then, when its 80 degrees out, that’s not exactly black leather jacket kind of weather. I chat with a lot of them when they stop at the various stores in Searsport. When I ask them what’s the thing they like most about a motorcycle, almost to a person they reply, “I just love taking it for a ride.”

Yesterday, for one full hour, I sat with a friend outside the coffee shop and we counted all the motorcycles that went by… 58 of them. That’s almost one a minute. They tend to ride in bunches of 2-3 riders at a time, so we didn’t see a motorcycle every minute, but we seldom waited very long before a nice Harley or Suzuki would appear.

Motorcycles come really well adorned, too… and I don’t mean with pretty blondes on the back end… but with “gadgets”. They have stereo systems on them with ear phones in the rider’s helmet so they can listen to music. Some helmets have microphones, so two riders can talk to each other while they ride. They have big and little trailers that they pull in back of them, and one bike I once saw even had a cup holder on the handle bars. And they all have chrome… some a lot of chrome, and some a little less… but they all have shiny, gleaming chrome.

The “cup holder” bike was a really nice, fully-loaded-with-chrome, Harley. A nice young lady drove up to the coffee shop with it, parked it, and went inside. In fairly short order she came out with a cup of coffee and a small bag, which she promptly stowed in her saddlebag. She put the coffee cup in the cup holder; donned her helmet; revved up the throaty Harley engine; mounted the bike; and rode off.  

Now, according to my State-ID, I am 71 years old, but in my mind I still think I’m 40… or at least I used to. When the “cup-holder” Harley rode out of town, I said to my friend sitting next to me, “Did you see that gorgeous Harley?” He promptly replied, “Harley?... HARLEY? … You mean you didn’t see the gorgeous lady that was
driving it?”

LOL… I guess aging really does change our perspective on a few things.