News-Record.com

Motorcycles are completely romantic to me.

Look at Tom Cruise and that Kawasaki Ninja in Top Gun. How about "The Motorcycle Diaries."

Freedom. Rebellion. And yet vulnerability. Plus, all that leather. There's a lot there to get excited about.

But the topic of motorcycles is a minefield for my boyfriend and me. He loves them. He's been riding since he was a teenager. I doubt I'll ever be able to drive a motorcycle because it takes at least three beers to even get me thinking about getting on one. I need my judgment good and impaired before I can overlook how it will feel to hit the ground at anything faster than walking speed.

And the other reason the topic is dangerous is that I have had so many crushes on so many guys with bikes. A friend from our hometown who looks kind of like an astronaut in his Kevlar riding outfit -- a hot astronaut. A girlfriend's neighbor whose name I did know, but who will forever be remembered as Moto Guzzi. He's the first guy that got me on a motorcycle -- and how I learned about that three beer rule. And I can't leave off, you know, my boyfriend. He's in there too.

So when my b.f. and I were driving back from the beach yesterday, we saw so many guys on motorcycles having so much fun, I could see him thinking about his first love (Cheezy, but true. As a teenager, my poster was Tom Cruise, his was the Ninja.). And I was thinking about all the motorcycle crushes I've had. Not exactly something I feel really comfortable sharing with him (but I'm not worried about this blog. He never reads anything I write :).

So for me, it's motorcycles. But there must be other topics, something you both get excited about, but can't really do together because of baggage or whatever. With five hours in the car yesterday, I had plenty of time to stew over whether it might be the kind of reservation that, over the course of a relationship, becomes one of those wide, frozen rifts. Maybe I'll just get a bike and see if it goes away. That is, until I get nailed by some 16-year-old girl in a Lincoln Navagator sending a text message about Miley Cyrus. Or worse, a 50-year-old man doing the same thing.