The Midlife strikes

In February when Diane and I were in Maui a shortage of rental cars on the island forced us to rent a motorcycle as an alternative for the duration of our stay there. For 10 days we rode around together on 2 different Harleys, a Buell and a Vulcan. It was a blast, Diane actually got to feel comfortable riding on the back and for me it brought back memories of an earlier time when for 2 1/2 years I went almost everywhere astraddle a 1969 Honda CB450.

The 450 was a sweet machine. An engine size of 450cc may not seem like much today, but at the time it came out it was the largest Japanese bike available. It had a top end of 104 mph (109 with the wind blowing just right) and cruised quite easily at 80 mph. Its only drawback at such speeds was the engine vibration which travelled up through the handlebars and rendered my hands numb after an hour or so. (This was before the days of counter-balanced, rubber mounted engines.)

Some have criticised the CB450 as topheavy, but I found it to be not only agile but very well balanced and stable on the highway as well. I once had a catastrophic blowout of the rear tire at 60 mph on the 401 near Windsor, Ontario. The flapping tire caused the bike to yaw uncontrollably up to 45 degrees from the direction of travel, first to the left, then to the right and then to the left again before I slowed down enough to pull off and stop. Each time the rear end threw itself from one side to the other, the motorcycle amazingly seemed to self-correct its steering without any conscious input on my part. (Or was it the hand of God? I guess I'll find out when I get to heaven!)

Such hair raising moments aside, I enjoyed every mile I rode the 450 - all 14,000 of them. I finally sold the bike in 1978 when Diane and I moved out west, and aside from a six month period in the 90's I have been off two wheels ever since. Until Maui, that is.

All this is a roundabout way of saying that I got the motorcycle bug back, and started shopping for a bike after we returned from Hawaii.

I decided that I was too old for this:

and that I was not yet old and fat enough for this:


Besides, the price tag on both models was a little rich for my budget. So I settled for something a little more age-appropriate:


This is a 1986 Kawasaki 750 Vulcan. It is a light cruiser now out of production which was a standard for about 20 years and is now considered somewhat of a classic. It's a good way to go for a used bike - proven reliability and parts are easy to get. It cost me all of $1,900.

Like me, it was in its prime 20 years ago but has been reasonably well maintained. When it was rebuilt 8000 km back it was bored out to more like 850cc, so it may have improved on its designed top speed of 124 mph. It is unlikely however that I will ever find out if that is so. (I will make that concession to age - or to the wisdom which comes with age!)

The motorcycle handles well though with Diane on pillion I find it wallows a bit on the bumps and wanders slightly on a tight curve. I'll try tightening the suspension which should fix the first problem. I not sure what I can do about the latter however. On the cruiser frame the centre of gravity is a little further back than what I am used to, and at 483 lbs I'm guessing that the bike is not quite heavy enough to offset the effect of Diane sitting over the rear wheel. As a result, the front wheel is just a little light, hence the wandering.

The carburetor flattens out somewhat at 7000 rpm, which is not surprising since it has sat for 3 years. Taking it apart and otherwise servicing the bike will be a weekend project once tax season is over.

Then I'll be able to try its legs.

One flew away.....

Ten days ago I returned from a week in Costa Rica, having flown down to accompany our youngest daughter Rachel in her move to that country. Rachel will be serving there with one or more local missions in outreach to the poorer people in the slums around San Jose. She doesn’t plan to return in the foreseeable future.

This move has been a long time coming. When she was a child, Rachel gravitated to the missionary stories in the church library; she had no notion of becoming one herself, but such books drew her in a way she couldn’t explain. It was not until she went with her church youth group to inner-city L.A. on a short term mission trip that Rachel began to get the idea that such service might be for her.

In her high school junior year Rachel asked us for permission to go to Latin America on a student exchange. We put her off until graduation, but when she finished school she hadn’t forgotten. Rachel worked a year, and then with her savings and a newly arranged line of credit she launched out and went to Costa Rica to study Spanish in a home stay program for nine months.

Upon her return from Costa Rica, Rachel worked for another year and then enrolled in the Calvary Chapel Bible College in Lima, Peru. During this time Rachel felt a growing, newly definite sense that God was calling her into missions. It was not so much an aspiration or an ambition so much as an imperative, an undeniable sense that this is something that she must do in obedience to God’s Spirit.

In reponse to this, Rachel began working singlemindedly to pay off her debts upon her return from Peru last April. Her goal was to become free to go back to serve in Costa Rica on a full time, permanent basis. She largely succeeded in reaching her goal and now she has followed through.

In doing so she is going against the grain of conventional thinking. Rachel has no training other than the year in bible school, no sending mission (she is being supported directly by family and friends) and no firm arrangements at the other end. She also has had to come to terms with the knowledge that any marriage hopes she might have (and she is a normal young woman in this respect) must take second place to God’s call for her.

Rachel also has been discouraged at times by the voices of our comfortable Christian culture: “What are your qualifications?”; “Why do you need to go away? There is so much to do here”; “What about a career? You need to think about your future” and perhaps most insidiously, “The era of Western missions is over; don't go, just send money”. (Rachel says that when she first encountered this thesis in K.P. Yohannan’s Revolution in World Missions she became so angry that she threw the book across the room.)

But what Rachel does have is our wholehearted support. We are very proud of her decision to put God first in her life, we trust her ability to discern His call and we know that whether or not she is specifically supposed to serve in San Jose, she is walking God’s way and He will steer her right.

Still, it’s not easy to see Rachel go. As our youngest she is the one we feel most protective toward even at the age of 23. And she is a young 23, dewy-eyed and innocent looking. No one would know to look at her that at 19 she traveled alone in a dodgy part of Nicaragua, or that she made her way at age 21 through bandit-infested jungle to visit the Peruvian headwaters of the Amazon.

As the time approached for her departure, I became more and more aware that in the busyness of our arrangements we would have very little quality time together. I therefore asked Rachel if she would mind if I flew down with her. “Since this is to be your future”, I said, “I want to be the one who walks you down the aisle into your new life.” And she agreed.

We flew out on a red-eye flight March 30, arriving in San Jose about noon. We rented a small third world style SUV called a Terios and spent the next four days at Manuel Antonio beach on the Pacific coast and driving around the interior before ending up in the Orosí valley near Cartago Thursday. During these days Rachel and I walked and explored and prayed together. We talked perhaps more than we ever had- about her dreams and her feelings and how God had brought her to this point. It was a precious time and passed all too quickly.

On Friday we spent an hour wandering around Desamparados looking for the place where Rachel would be staying. Our job was made especially difficult by the fact that Costa Rica has very few street signs or numeric addresses. All we had to go on was the vague description “700 metres south of the playing field close to Dos Cercas.” We spent all of our time looking without success for these two landmarks, until in our random driving we stumbled on the condo complex itself. Only then could we backtrack on the directions to find the playing field and fix its location so that we could find the home again the next day.

That night I treated Rachel to a fairly sumptuous meal at the Outback steak house in Escazú. We were both aware of the irony that the price of this feast was a quarter of what would be her monthly budget for living expenses (Rachel is adamant that she will live according to local standards). Say farewell to North American affluence!

The next morning I brought Rachel back to her new home at which we met the woman whose apartment she would be sharing. Yahaira (sounds like Elvira) is quite friendly and invited us in to chat for a little while. When she asked Rachel in Spanish if our family was Christian I found myself giving her an impromptu testimony of faith.

Our introduction stretched to include the serving of a crepa and coffee and the review of Yahaira’s family pictures (one can’t decently rush these things in Latin America, even with a plane to catch), but the moment came when I could delay no longer. I gave Rachel a hug and a kiss and that was that. Our little girl was on her own.

Primeval Sin

On my flight back to Calgary early Sunday morning I sat beside a businessman who was flying in to to see his sales rep in the city. As we landed he said "My salesman will be here to pick me up".

Since it was 1:30 am and there were plenty of taxis at the curb, I thought that was a little over the top on the salesman's part and commented "Wow, that's dedication".

"Well, he knows what to do to keep his job in a recession."

My neighbour must have read my mind, because after a pause he continued in an attempt to justify himself: "In these economic times things get a little more primeval."

I'm not sure what the man meant by "primeval" but in the context I gathered he was describing a Darwinian order of relationships based on raw power: dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, etc. In other words, he was pulling his employee out of bed at an ungodly hour rather than pay a $25 cab fare - just because he could do so.

I could only shake my head at how foolish and shortsighted this fellow was. Did he really think that his employee could not make him pay for this in some other, more significant way? Many employers really do not understand how often their people go the second mile for them unasked, and how poorly the business can operate when they stop doing so. And they forget that grinding the peons will only make the good ones flee at the first opportunity. But sin is like that. It's not only wrong in itself, but it's self-defeating as well.

I retrieved my luggage and walked outside to catch a taxi. I was going to stay at my son and daughter-in-law's for the night, but since I could get my own ride I didn't wish to disturb their sleep.