Keep An Open Mind - Ride, She Said!

I eat crow.

Yes, let's start off this post where I confess what I said a year ago to not only my kidlets but my family and friends as I began dating again.  Oh yes...

As I flipped through profiles and emails on online dating sites I dinged people who owned motorcycles and dogs.  "No way will I ever go out with a guy who has a bike or owns a dog!" I would say to my kidlets.  "No flippin' way!"  My kidlets are twelve, and they would love to antagonize me as to who Mr. Date would be.  Would he drive a sports car?  Or a beat-up minivan?  Would he be a cat person?  Or would he be one who owned snakes?  The possibilities were endless.  However, I had my standards.

No motorcycles.  No dogs.

Why?  I kept stereotyping motorcycle guys to be overly macho, and dog owners to be, well, overly attached to their pets and wimpy.  For those of you who have done the online dating scene before, you know how it can go.  There are all these profiles - just TOO many - and to differentiate between the potential date can be tough.  The whole process is awful.  I hated it, and agonized over it.  How could one possibly know someone from a blurb on the Internet and a few pictures?

So what did I do?  I went to a psychic.  Yes, no logic rules when one is in the dating scene in one's 40-something years.  However, I received the best advice in a long time from the psychic that one could ask for.

Keep an open mind.

Creepy?  She said I would meet someone in October who worked with children.  I did.  But above all, she kept telling me that hot, August night, (gosh, sounds like some sort of Harlequin novel), "Keep an open mind."  What happened?  I met someone who adored motorcycles and had a dog.  My boys rolled their eyes and said, "Nice going, mom."

Keep an open mind.

I went for my first ride on a motorcycle since college a few years ago.

It was on a 1970 Harley.  How cool is that?  Even I was impressed, the girl who had refused to consider someone because they rode a bike and owned a dog.  For about six months I had spent hours with Breadman, the person who not only had a dog but loved bikes, and off we drove for over two hours through the countryside of New Hamsphire.

Today's trip took us off to Peterborough, New Hampshire.  Our original destination on the Kawasaki Z11 (I think I got that righ!) was King Arthur Flour Cafe and Bakery in Vermont.  Upon rethinking, we decided upon Burdick's Chocolates in Walpole, New Hampshire.  However, spring in New England can be a finicky beast.  It was cold!  For the ride up I kept thinking to myself, "Your hands will hold dark hot chocolate.  Your hands will hold dark hot chocolate"  as my fingers became more and more nimble, despite the gloves protecting them.  Instead we stopped at a cute little shop, Ava Marie Chocolates, and then had diner food, in Peterborough.  Perfect!  

Wow!  I notice so much more when on a motorcycle versus in a car.  Granted, while on a motorcycle I am a passenger, and have the opportunity to observe.  When I'm a passenger in a car I usually sleep, I result of being carsick so much when I was younger.  Today I saw so much that I wanted to whip out my iPhone and photograph.  I saw a store that bore the name of one of the kidlets - both first and last name. 

There was the religious bumper sticker worn off that was so telling.  It was suppose to read, "Got eternal life?"  Instead, it now read, "Got eternal li e?" Oh, how to photograph that would have been a gem!  

There are the mom and pop stores throughout the New Hampshire countryside that make me realize that all is well with the world.  Why? The small, the familiar, where one can enter and know that they will be greeted as if they were a local, even if they drove seventy-five miles from Boston.   Breadman and I talked this weekend about where we'd eventually like to be when we retire.  I think I'd like to be in a small, Vermont town, as long as it has a good library.  But upon discovering New Hampshire today, I was surprised.  I always thought of New Hampshire as being the Pheasant Lane Mall.  Oh, does my suburban upbringing ring loud and true.  

Keep an open mind.

From motorcycles to guys with dogs to small towns in New Hamsphire, never stop learning.  Keep an open mind. 

Ride on!

xoxo MausiGal