firstbike Riding to honor a son By Marjorie White #195629


I BOUGHT MY FIRST BMW MOTOR- cycle on December 30, 2013, exactly six months and eighteen days after my 25-year-old son died in a collision while riding his Ducati Monster two blocks from home. The driver of the other vehicle did not see my son. Sometime during those six months and eighteen days I decided that I was going to ride a motorcycle from our


farm in Maryland to Calabasas, California, where Tommy lived and died. I was going to make drivers aware of motorcyclists. What better way to honor my son? I wasn’t sure how I was going to do this, as I had not done a lot of road riding other than a cou- ple of miles on back roads on my Yamaha 100 Enduro back when I was 16. I walked into Battley Cycles in Gaithers- burg, Maryland, that December day


knowing only that I wanted a used, enduro style BMW. As I wandered around the showroom, a young man asked if he could help me. Relieved that someone actually talked to me, I said, “Yes,” and continued saying, “I may start crying, but I want a motorcycle that I can ride across the coun- try and take on the back roads of National Parks.” If Kyle McGill thought I was out of my


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BMW OWNERS NEWS February 2016


lifestyle


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