When I was 24/25 years old I bought a motorcycle. My brother had already had one so he taught me to ride and helped me purchase my first bike. Shortly after, my dad bought one…then my mom bought one…then my sister bought one. We all had motorcycles and a short era of riding together began.
It was the best days of my life with Dinah and with my family. We rode everywhere and nowhere. The 5 of us in our little family bike gang couldn’t be stopped.
With Dinah riding beside me, my life was always exciting. One day, we traded in our real motorcycles for my Dad’s Vespa scooter. He had this before he had the courage to get a Harley and we decided to take it for a drive. I drove, she rode on back. We went through woods and pretended we were Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels from Dumb and Dumber, her favorite movie. As we were riding around, laughing hysterically at I don’t even know what, we saw a pretty large hill that had a drop off at the end. Dinah goes, “Let’s ramp that.” I smiled and turned the bike around to gain some “speed” and distance. We started to pick up speed…15mph…20mph…30mph…35mph…and we hit the hill. We gained some serious air and we were giggling and screaming the whole time like you would on a rollercoaster. We didn’t even think about how this scooter would take a landing. As we were in the air I saw that we were not going to land this thing on its tires. We were turning and as we neared the ground I remember saying to Dinah, “We’re gonna crash, hang onto me.”
Instead of her landing on me, I completely landed on her, and, as always, she was the injured one and I walked away with scratches. She banged up her legs and elbows pretty good but didn’t require stitches this time.
We still laughed about that till the day that she died. It was a pure “Jackie & Dinah” moment. It was crazy and impulsive. It was stupid and fun. It was exactly how Dinah and I enjoyed spending our time together. You would think we were teenagers at this time! Nope, we were grown, married adults!
Memories like these with Dinah now haunt me, yet bring a smile to my face as I remember the craziness we were together. And somehow…even in Dinah’s death…she still makes me laugh my face off and cry till my eyes hurt. She was, and still is, the only person that could ever do this to me.
