A love story.

It's Sunday now, and the weather has been nasty for some days now.  It's cold in LA.  What the hell is this?  Right when I feel like I am ready to take a ride or two on a day off or so, the weather is a stalemate to procuring my desires.  A couple days ago however, it was so that I was aware the weather was going to be nasty for a few days, although Friday didn't yield any indicators of the incoming storm I'd been waiting for.  Nonetheless, early on Saturday morning, eyes still closed, I was laying in bed listening to the cars drive by on the street below, on what sounded to be wet roads.  My heart started sinking to the mere thought that my precious moto was sitting all alone outside in the cold rainy weather. I tried to talk myself out of such feelings because I know she's lived through weather harsher than this, but for some reason I was pained with the thought of leaving her a moment more out there, defenseless.  And I could not go back to sleep for the life of me, due to the nagging discomfort the idea of her loneliness was causing me.
     Rain pouring down, I carefully selected the dirtiest pair of jeans from the "to wash" pile, so that when I came back in soaking wet I could just discard them back in the "wash" pile and move into something dry and clean.  Then I threw on a measly shirt and my least favorite coat, and walked out the back door to the stairwell with my glasses and bike key.  When I got to the bottom of the stairs, there she was, drenched, and oh so happy to see me.  I said my morning hellos as I always do, and carried on a small loving monologue with her, such as how excited she was going to be to get inside the nice warm apartment, and well, she'd get to see it for the first time.  That's always exciting.
     I backed her away from the wall, and into the parking lot to get turned around.  I started the engine.  Lately, it's been kinda stalling before it kicks over, so I plan on looking at that while I've got her inside.  Anyway, she got to roaring, that faithful bird, and we rolled out of the parking lot and onto the first side street, rain coming down harder than ever.  I imagined someone might have seen me, and thought I'd bout lost my marbles taking of on my moto with nothing but glasses and skimpy attire for these conditions.  But as always I didn't care, and the thought merely gave me a good chuckle.  I approached the main street, but instead of pulling onto it, I made a harder right and slowly rolled through a river of water and onto the curb along the front of my building and on towards front door. I made a sweeping left arch and then steered a double backing right up through the narrow front door corridor.  When I got my wheel to the front door I shut the engine off and put her into neutral.  I leaned hard over the front handlebars to key in the door code, and turned the little finger twist and pulled hard.  Now that damn door has one hell of a pullback on it and it's a real pain in the ass to get open with one hand.  But, I got that door open.  It's a narrow door, so I had to shimmy the handlebars left and then right to get them through.  And I repeated that same process to get her through the second doorway, this time making a hard left to the elevator lift down the hall.  It was tight so I had to back up twice to make the rest of the turn.
     I was at the lift.  I pushed the call button, and there went the chugging of the old industrial lift motor as it brought her down down to me.  Thud.  It landed.  I pushed the open button, and the door started to open.  Years of piled on maintenance grease make it hard for the door to open all the way as it was proving today.  So I dismounted my bike, and stood up on the lower split arm of the door while pushing on the upper door, making their ways apart, until the bottom became flush with the floor.  I then aimed my bike in a diagonal fashion from the left corn towards the far right and into the lift we rolled.  But when my front wheel hit the corner and i realized the tail end of my bike was going to get hit by the lift door I had to rethink my angle.  I rolled back out and did a fantastic 20 point turn with the space in the hall to get my nose to point into the left far corner and have my tail in the right corner closest to the door.  This proved to work better with the way the walls were in relation to the lift shape, and I also had better access to the elevator buttons.  Down came the door.  Straddling my bike, we rode up.
     The lift stopped on the third floor and I opened the door.  However, there was a small problem.  I was looking at a huge concrete wall extending about a foot and a half from the left corner of the elevator where my nose seemed stuck, which didn't seem like an issue when I'd first gotten into that position, but now I was like, "well, here's how I'm spending my Saturday."  The quick thinker I am yielded me fractions of a second later with a little clever navigation of the bike, such as a little left steering and right leaning, and shimmying so that I got that front tire around the edge of the barrier, and rolled into the hallway.  It's a damn good thing I've got a straight shot to my front door from the elevator, cause all I had to do was roll off the elevator, and right through my front door.  Once inside, she was still shaking off the weather and so I grabbed a nice towel, and dried her off.  Wiping away whatever dirt and grease I could in the process.
     Happy.  I was happy.  And so was she.  We were finally together again under the same roof.  Just like we used to be when I was back home, spending all my evenings in the garage under a lamp on the concrete floor, sometimes the two of us comforted by a long strip of old carpet, classic rock playing in the background of my hyper-focused attention to my bike, and figuring out what else I could tinker on, or clean.  And there was no other place I would rather be.  Love.  This is love.