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Gary Zamchick, a high school buddy, said that the trip is perfect for “what now’ers.” I never head of that term until now – I don’t know if he coined it or not.But I think that is true that the time that one begins an empty nest is a what now time. Every other part of our lives are fairly well marked on our cultural map…Graduate school, college, work, marriage, kids…and then? That’s where the what now question hits and hits hard.Anyway, today I’m thinking about what Pirsig says in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The whole time that I’ve been planning this trip, I must admit I’ve been acting very girlish about the motorcycle maintenance aspect of it. I just didn’t care. I didn’t even know what a throttle was. All I knew was the color of my motorcycle (a cute fire engine red). I knew the size of the engine because that is in the name of the bike: a BMW 650 SL, brand new model. When I first saw it, I felt like I was looking at my new 387 pound baby…I decided that I’m going to pay more attention to the bike itself and not be so intimidated by the machinery of it. I want to act a bit more interested in understanding how it works and notice tire pressure and all those gadgets. I don’t want to get mentally lazy on this and tune off just because I have no Y chromosomes. So, at the risk of boring some of you gal readers, I will be trying at least to report on my progress in mechanics and finding the art in the maintenance. Stay tuned!