I have been getting anxious to get my scooter up here for some time now. In the interim (and actually since winter), my parents have been very graciously storing it at their house.

My dad's support of my scootering habit has been pretty great. He's been a Harley guy for about 10 years now, and you'd think that his son showing up on a 125cc scooter would be the equivalent of asking for Barbies for Christmas instead of a baseball glove, but he's been nothing but enthusiastic about my interest in anything on two wheels, going out of his ways on several occasions (the day I drove it home, the day I first wrecked it, the night I had to go to the urgent care center...) to pal around with me and the bike.

So I was really thankful that we were able to squeeze in a nice little ride this morning. I wasn't too sure it was going to happen at first. Early on the skies were awfully overcast, and we even had a brief patch of rain. But the weather quickly cleared, and so, after a terrific ham and eggs breakfast my mom whipped up, we hit the road.

Even I have to laugh at the what the pair of us looked like: my dad, in his jeans and Harley t-shirt, on his great big bike, and me following, on a Taiwanese-made, Italian-retro-styled scooter wearing skinny jeans and a bright green windbreaker and cherry-red helmet. We snaked around some country highways just north of St. Charles, and I noticed more than one good ol' boy in a pickup doing a double take and starting to chuckle.

Critics be damned, however, because I was having a blast. Sharing a biking trip like that with your dad can be a pretty moving thing. Maybe it's a cliche, but the idea of two loners making their way down the road together really resonated with me. I think it's hard for fathers and sons to put some things into words. This ride, for me, was one of those moments in life that isn't about discussions, or plans, or ideas even, but simple shared experience, the one who's gone before and the one who is following, in the moment---together.