I Owe You

SOMEBODY is in New York City for BlogHer and didn't set up a post before leaving. SOMEBODY can't get the hotel Internet to work so SOMEBODY is stuck posting from her phone. That SOMEBODY has a real post floating in her brain but will have to write it later. Or something.

CUTE PENNY PHOTO, ENGAGE!

Then and Now

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"That's SO cool!" Alexis proclaimed as she watched the woman pull back on the bow and release the arrow.

"I know how to do that," I told her. Showing off? ABSOLUTELY. It's never a bad time to make yourself look cool in front of your kid.

As Alexis stared in wide-eyed in amazement that her mom knows a tiny little bit about archery, I smiled at the memories of how fun it is. I haven't touched a bow and arrow since junior high. It was one of those random gym class things we did when the school year was winding down, the weather was improving, and teachers were sick of dealing with us all.

I can't imagine that schools still allow junior high kids touch weapons during the regular course of school. I wondered if there was ever a time when all schools did.

It occurred to me that I could find out if archery in gym class was a crazy NoDak thing or not. I pulled up Facebook and asked. It's not just a NoDak thing.

And that's when I saw his face.

Facebook is a landmine for most everyone I know. I control my personal landmine by steering clear of my personal page. It's all "Burgh Baby" all the time for me--I don't even pass by my personal account for weeks on end. For some reason I had clicked a wrong link and wound up in personal land, though, and there he was staring at me from the "People You Might Know" box.

He was one of many reasons why I loved archery.

It was an individual sport best played with a touch of solitude. Solitude was good in junior high. Very good. When I was alone, I wasn't on the outside looking in. Being the smartest in the class and the poorest in the class was really a bad combination that led to weeks and months and years of cruelty from the other kids. I don't think about it much because ... OBVIOUSLY. Why go there? Just ignore those faces on Facebook and you can skip that part of life you spent crying every day as you stood outside looking in.

I quickly closed the window on my laptop, slamming the window on the past.

The Now is good. I can't fix those days of being on the outside looking in, but I can sit back and enjoy Olympic archery with a fantastic little person who thinks I walk on water.

 

What Kind Of Woman Rides a Harley?

Delete. Delete. Delete. Delete. Delete.

It's just what I do when I open up my inbox. I delete and delete and delete.

"Post about this!" "Write about that!" "Interview this person!" There are a lot of people willing to tell me what I should write about in this space. They aren't worth your or my time.

But one day I deleted one of those, "Write about this!" emails and it gave me pause.

"Why did I just delete that without even reading it?" I thought to myself.

"Because I'm not that kind of person," I thought.

What kind of person? A Harley-Davidson kind of person. That's what kind.

I don't really know why the deleted email kept popping into my head. I just knew that it was bothering me that I had dismissed it without pause because I'm not that kind of person. I felt like I owed myself an explanation for drawing that conclusion, so I dug the email back out of the depths of the deleted and read it all the way through.

BlogHer and Harley-Davidson were offering to send me to Milwaukee to learn all about Harleys, and there was an opportunity to learn to ride.

"I'm not that kind of person!" I declared to myself.

And the internal debate began. I flashed back to the dog days of summer in North Dakota and to how my aunt and uncle used to ride a Harley. Before you go and think they were pretty badass, they also competed as square dancers. You were far more likely to find them wearing plaid shirts than you were leather, and there wasn't a single tattoo on either one of them. I think "badass" when I think about Harley-Davidson, and they were hardly badass.

So why was I assuming I was not the right flavor of cool to go learn how to ride a Harley?

I made up my mind right then and there I wasn't allowed to say I wasn't that kind of person until I had legitimately given it a chance. So off I went. I went to Milwaukee and learned all about Harley-Davidson.

While I was there, I toured the Harley-Davidson Museum, I visited their corporate offices, and I learned how to ride a Harley. It was SO much fun.

But the thing that stuck with me is I learned exactly what kind of woman rides a Harley.

Mothers ride Harleys. Mothers who are sweet and adorable and absolutely fantastic at their jobs.

(By the way, those two are Rider's Edge instructors. They get paid to teach people how to ride Harleys, and they do it well. Very well.)

The woman on the right? She's a former professional basketball player and soon to be derby girl. She is the kind of person who rides a Harley.

You know who else rides a Harley? Young professionals who most definitely are going amazing places. That's Dana on the left. She's going to rule the world one of these days.

The woman in the middle rides a Harley as well. But Amanda is more than a Harley Woman, she's a cancer survivor.

Mothers, daughters, derby girls, driving instructors, marketing professionals, cancer survivors . . . they all ride Harleys.

Screw the stereotypes. You know who rides a Harley? AWESOME PEOPLE.

You can learn more about the experience of learning to ride a Harley Davidson by watching the My Time to Ride series. I've watched every single episode because it's absolutely fantastic watching women break free of stereotypes and discover they ARE that kind of person.

If you were to buy a Harley, what color would you want? Answer below in the comments for a chance to win a Harley-Davidson Women's Pink Label Embellished Nylon Jacket. Oh, and I'd pick flat black. Or shiny black. Or maybe red. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WOULD PICK THERE ARE TOO MANY CHOICES GAAAAH.

Ahem.

Anyway. The rules.

Sweepstakes Rules:

No duplicate comments.
You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:
a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
b) Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the
following unique term in your tweet message: ""#SweepstakesEntry""; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post
c) Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

The Official Rules are available here.

This sweepstakes runs from July 31, 2012 to August 27, 2012

Be sure to visit the Harley-Davidson No Cages brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ reviews and find more chances to win!