Bike Week

IT IS MY FAVORITE TIME OF THE YEAR in Arizona. We have the spring temperatures we've had all winter, but now we have the sounds of birds and the smell of new flowers. Our eyes and ears are also tuned in to the sight and sound of rattlesnakes. They fascinate me. If you get in their way, they'll rear up and look at you and rattle with such a fierceness that you willingly give them the right of way. There is an order to things. And this is an order I gladly respect.

Springtime here brings another sound: the sound of 50,000 motorcycles moving in and out of town. With that many on a stretch of two miles, it's a constant vibrating roar. There are so many, you cannot hear the typical start or stop or whether they're nearby or far away. All you hear is the constant, steady white noise. It will be about two a.m. before the white-noise lull will give way to the doppler shift.

It's bike week. For 27 years it has been a local tradition. It is our little Sturgis. The town becomes unrecognizable but in a way that feels like the “rebellious, no rules, party of the century is here to stay” feeling. Somehow this little town of 5,000 morphs into 70,000. It would be generous to say there's standing room only in the local bars and streets. Year after year I have watched the visitors come and go. And year after year I didn't notice the subtle changes. It wasn't until this year that I felt the pivot point of a paradigm shift. The realization of what I was seeing struck me with such a force that I had to stand frozen in the middle of a sea of bodies and go inward to try to reclaim my composure, emotions, and balance.

I know there had to be signs all along, but my naked eye couldn't see it until I saw it in plain writing on T-shirts and trinkets this year. There was no denying there was a disturbance, and the rattle was reverberating throughout the town and nation. I am now paying attention and watching.

For as long as I could remember, what came with bike week were p