part 1: where passion comes from
part 1: where passion comes from
it happened to Hannes; it could happen to me
________________________________________________
My last ride on a motorcycle of my own was in 1976, the year we left the United States to live in Europe.
My riding came to an end in 1984, the year we returned.
What happened in between (leaving aside for now the life-shaping experience of living in Italy, Greece, and Austria for eight years—quite another story) was that on the same weekend that Christine and I flew back to the United States, my best friend in Vienna, “Hannes” (a pseudonym), left for North Africa on his BMW motorcycle and was killed in a horrible accident.
I was so shaken by the news, which came in a letter from his fiancée, that I spent several days pondering what had happened to him, and accordingly (because he was just as overly cautious and careful a rider as I was) what could happen to me. With plenty of input from Christine, which I was willing to heed, I chose to stop riding.
But I couldn’t just shake off the loss and the deep wondering of “how?” and “why?” and instead chose to write out my feelings. The result was the start of a new career, as I sold my first piece of writing (see “Margin” for the complete text of the article) and went on to write freelance full-time for eight years.
Postscript: I will be pleased to learn that you’ve taken the time to read the article, even if you’re not a motorcyclist. You no doubt know people who ride, and they might benefit from a tragic story of what befell someone else who simply and understandably may have underestimated his margin of error in life’s everyday matters. Consider this addendum:
Two issues after the one in which my article
appeared, the same magazine published a
brief but affecting letter to the editor, in which
a fellow wrote from a hospital bed to say in
essence “I wish I’d read your article on ‘Margin’
before I had my accident, which happened in
a moment of inattention.”
Tuesday, January 13, 2009