Winter overstayed its welcome this year, and one of the biggest prices we’ve paid is not riding in months. Well, at least I haven’t ridden. Can’t say the same for my husband, who is a bona fide cheater.

Since at least November, when we stole our last late autumn tour through the crisp Ozark countryside, I’ve walked past, around and beside my beautiful red bike leaning on its stand in our garage. Riding weather’s just around the corner, I’ve told myself on numerous occasions. Not really, but my optimistic tendencies kept me going through the depressing gray weeks of January and February particularly. At one point, Raye and I got so down about the inhospitable conditions we spent a week or two planning and eventually booking our next big European riding trip this fall – 10 days touring the Pyrenees in Southern France and the coast of Spain.

Within the past few weeks, however, the weather has started warming up, I am sure the bulbs in our front yard will eventually find a way to bloom, and I find myself thinking about riding nearly every day. I called home from the office late one afternoon this week and asked my son where his dad was – “he’s on motorcycle rides” he told me. Rides? Yes, he’s taking out one bike after another, returning long enough to hop another one of his bikes and disappear again. This is a man who believes you can’t have enough bikes – some of which are theoretically in our garage only because they are beautiful to look at.

Cheater, I told my husband when I got home. What was he doing sneaking out for “rides” when I was glued to a keyboard with a cell phone sticking out of one ear? Just making sure everything was in good working order, came the reply. Cheater, I repeated, acting a little ruffled. But he wasn’t fooled. He knew I’d be interested in the details, so he pressed on, telling me how each bike performed, how the roads felt, how long the afternoon light had held up.

I got up this morning and saw daffodils blooming everywhere in our front yard. Riding weather has arrived, indeed. Good bye winter. Hello warm wind, soft leather, endless road.

There’s something entrancing about the dance of the leaves of fall, especially if you are lucky enough to live someplace where fall is an actual season and not a weekend event.

Fall in the Boston Mountains of Northwest Arkansas comes just when you can’t take one more day of 90-plus heat and humidity, when your car AC can’t work hard enough, and when you start to think there might be something to global warming after all.

Then, mercifully, one September morning there is a cool mist that settles on the fields, a noticeable chill in the air at night, and a wind that comes up along the hillside whistling gentle songs in the back of your consciousness.

The magic of the leaves starts with color.  Right at the tops of the branches, green slowly gives way to scarlet, vibrant orange, or vivid yellow.  Over the course of a few weeks, you can almost track the earth’s tilting by the way the colors migrate from some of the grander maples around town, down through their branches and along the roadside to smaller trees of all kinds.  Different colors for different trees, but very few are left unpainted by late October.

As grand as color is, it’s the way fallen leaves dance that entrances me most.  Flying down the back roads and highways on our bike of choice (BMW K1200 RS), it’s as if they rise up to meet us even before our tailwind catches them.  An unseen wind seems to appreciate our mutual search for speed and adventure, racing toward us across a field and swirling up a tumbling wave of painted leaves just as we cross its path.

I am mesmerized by their movement.

So it is not surprising that my husband and I found ourselves many a night this fall with maps spread out across the kitchen table plotting weekend rides.  We couldn’t stay away from the lure of the leaves.

Apparently we were not the only ones who couldn’t kick the habit.  As I learn more about motorcycling, I have discovered that I live in one of the most beautiful places in the central United States for riding.  During our many escapes this past fall, we met riders from Texas, Kansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Missouri and I’m sure many other places I never asked about.

All had come for a quick weekend Arkansas riding fix – to maneuver the hairpins of the Pig Trail, or follow the crooked highways of Newton County, to stop in Eureka Springs or Hot Springs for a meal or a massage, to get to the top of Mount Magazine or the bottom of the Buffalo River waterways.  Where you ride doesn’t really matter.  It’s that you get to ride that counts.