In April of 2004 I bought a 2004 Harley-Davidson Sportster 883 XL. At the time I was 38 years old and suffering from a thyroid deficiency. In case you don't know, your thyroid gland is in your neck and regulates your metabolism and your mood. I was losing weight at the time and somewhat depressed because my thyroid was not producing enough thyroxin.

After I bought the motorcycle I took a riding course through Harley-Davidson and got my motorcycle endorsement on my driver's license. I am glad that I took the course because I learned a lot about motorcycle safety that translated well to driving safety in general.

I had a lot of fun riding the motorcycle. I was living in Denver Colorado and I was always within sight of the mountains. I loved taking state routes into the mountains on sunny weekends. One of my favorite rides was riding from Denver to Estes Park. It was about 120 miles round trip but the countryside was some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. I did take a six hour trip to Silverton which is a small town in southwestern Colorado in the mountains. My ass really hurt when I got to Silverton.

I told my brother Thom that I had gotten a motorcycle and both of us agreed that telling my mother that I had gotten the motorcycle would be a bad idea. My mother has gotten her nursing degree back in the early 1950's. She was an RN and when she took her state boards, she scored the highest anybody had ever scored until that time. Had she been born 15 to 20 years later she would have gone to medical school and become an MD. I should also say that she had gotten her master's degree in nursing and became an associate professor of nursing at a nearby state college in Ohio. Because she was a professor at that college I was able to attend for free and got a bachelor's degree in physics. But the point of this is that my mother, like most nurses that worked in an emergency room at some point in their careers, hated motorcycles.

So I kept it quite that I had gotten a motorcycle and I had no intention of ever telling my mother.

Then I was visiting my parents at Christmas of 2005. One morning I was sitting with my parents and having breakfast when my mother said, out of nowhere, that she and my father are very accepting people and I could tell them anything and they wouldn't get upset.

I was about to get upset. I was thinking to myself, "Is this because I am 39 and not married? Does she think I am gay?"

I was about to make an angry and rude retort to my mother when I heard a little voice in my head say, "Your mother just gave you a carte blanche, are you sure there is nothing in your life that you wouldn't like to admit to get off of your chest and be done with it? A carte blanche is a rare item, don't waste it."

I have to give my mother credit that when she says something that she does keep her word.

I looked at my mother very seriously and said, "Well, I did buy a motorcycle about a year and a half ago."

The look on my mother's face told me that she would have been happier had I told her that I was a gay bottom into BDSM. Then I saw the wheels spinning behind her eyes looking for a loophole to what she had told me about being open minded.

When she couldn't find a loophole I saw the look of defeat and she asked,"You do wear all of the required safety equipment?"

In Colorado, the only required safety equipment when you ride a motorcycle was a pair of glasses, not even safety glasses. I was happy to tell my mother that I always wore a full helmet, a leather jacket, gloves, jeans, steel toed over the ankle boots and leather chaps. I really don't want to get road rash if I am in an accident.

A few months later, I was talking to my oldest brother Chuck about this incident. He told me that I should have told our mother, "I like threesomes. The good kind of me and two females and not the bad kind of more than one male. That really feels good to get off my chest!"

Honestly, as funny as I thought that comment was, I could never had said that to my mother.