June 18, 2012

Photo Challenge Topic: Something we don’t know about you…

When I was in college I wrote a great big paper for one of my writing classes that had to do with an american icon. I chose Harley-Davidson as my American icon. Would you agree about it’s iconic nature within our culture? I really thought so, but I needed a direction. I couldn’t simply write about  Harley Davidson. After all, there’s a billion and ten things surrounding the topic and I was only assigned to write a paper that was somewhere in the page – range of 30 to 35 of them! 

Because of my own, personal, infatuation that leaned a little too close to the side of obsession with Harley-Davidson at the time, I decided I would focus my paper to women and Harley-Davidson.

That also leads me to explain why I chose a picture of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle as my picture for today’s topic. It is because for a long period of time, I dreamed of riding my own one day.

This pulled up next to us in the parking lot yesterday. 

The paper that I wrote, I named The Bitch on the Back, which, sorry for the word, but was actually what the women were called in the biking community! It was a real, actual term. I presented my paper to my professor all bundled in faux black leather with a zipper that zipped it up in the middle. It really was fantastic-full of poetry, history, myths, facts, fiction, non-fiction, photos…a perfect collection of everything surrounding the woman on or off the Harley. The paper was handed back to me with a lovely red “A” on the front and some very kind words. Perhaps the only “A” I received in college…

That phase of my life has very much phased away. It happened when Logan was born. I still enjoy the sound of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle when one pulls up beside me. I still love seeing the riders and all their leather garb. The culture is still mysterious and intriguing.  But that girl on the back…or behind the handle bars…won’t actually be me.