The Sunday paper run By Ron Davis #111820


I’M SURE IT’S A DILEMMA FAMIL- iar to all news-junkies like myself. Continue to flip and fold your way through good old-fashioned news- print and ink or go digital and click on your favorite paper or news ser- vice. My dad was a newspaper man who subscribed to two or three daily papers, and on Sundays, he made the weekly pilgrimage to the drug store to pick up papers by the pound from Milwaukee, Appleton, and the Twin Cities. With each member of my family of six pulling out their favorite sections, our living room was usually carpeted ankle-deep with news, sports, classifieds, and comics. I did recently leap headlong into


the 21st century though, fixing my news habit with an online subscrip- tion, and yet…I still can’t seem to break my habit of making the Sunday Paper Run. It’s pretty tempting to just hop in


the car and drive the five miles to town for the paper; heck, I doubt the young lady at the gas station would care if I showed up in my slippers and pajamas, but instead, I push myself through the tedious ritual of saddling up my motorcycle: ear plugs, helmet, riding jacket, armored gloves... carefully inch the bike out of the garage, hop on and hit the starter—it immediately begins to feel worth it. The country roads around here are


deserted on Sunday mornings, and I’m free to worry less about traffic and take in more of the view. In late summer the flora and fauna are in a headlong crescendo of get-up-and- go. A pair of fawns gambol obedi- ently after their mom across the road and into the safety of the woods, cranes in a bean field pause from


92 BMW OWNERS NEWS October 2015


their breakfast to glare as I roll by, and the first tentative groups of blackbirds have started to buddy up on power lines. The morning sun sparkles off the dew on bur- dock, Queen Anne’s lace and dill in the ditches, and the wind, slightly scented with windrowed alfalfa, feels fresh-scrubbed. I stand up on the pegs to let it blast over me. As my speed picks up, my professorial


week of making the world safe from dan- gling modifiers, faulty pronoun reference, and apostrophe abuse seems to fall behind. Now, I can play, and I tilt the bike into a long sweeper, searching for the perfect line of entry, apex, and exit. The bike is on rails. The feeling I get streaming smoothly through a long curve at 60 miles an hour is a little like hitting that sweet spot with a five iron, smacking a chunk of oak just right with a splitting maul, or what I imag- ine it’s like schussing


down a black


diamond slope. Needle-sharp focus, a quickening heart rate, tension…and release. After picking up the paper, I turn the


wrong way out of the convenience store—a quick, extended detour is in order—a sub- lime strafe north through the lazy curves on Highway 49, a pause on a bridge over the Tomorrow River to check for trout, some dainty maneuvering around the frost heaves on Isaacson Road and then, it’s homeward bound. As I coast into the garage, I can already smell cinnamon rolls and coffee, and after shedding my gear, I almost forget to pull the Sunday paper out of my tank bag. I wonder, was the paper really the reason for this run? Maybe it’s a two-wheeled tribute to family traditions… or maybe it’s just an excuse for one more summer ride.


lifestyle


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