Before our interlude of sunshine ended in favor of the regularly scheduled program of rain, I managed a few pretty fun mid-winter outings on the old motorbike.

Perhaps the most enjoyable of all was a Monday jaunt through Linn County that included a lengthy stretch along one of the valley’s most pleasing pieces of backroad blacktop, Peoria Road. If you’ve never been on Peoria Road, check it out. It’s bordered by the Willamette River and vast expanses of green farm field, its sweeping turns are simultaneously relaxing and exhilarating, and there’s almost no traffic.

Except for, of  course, at it’s northern terminus, where it intersects with Highway 34 just east of Corvallis. It’s not exactly vehicle-choked there either, but there typically is a collection of cars, trucks and the like, and there was on Monday as well.

Pulling up to the intersection, I noticed something lying in the road, and I quickly determined it to be a black stocking cap. As not one but two earlier posts have indicated, I am loath to leave any article of clothing adrift on the pavement (or gravel), and so I began calculating whether I would have enough time and dexterity to pick up the cap before the light turned green.

The hat was basically alongside whatever was in front of me — I think a pickup hauling a trailer. I rolled my bike up to the cap and began bending over and reaching for it with my left hand.

When I was a few inches from grabbing it, I felt the bike begin to tip over and thought to myself, just how stupid is it to risk damaging a motorcycle worth a few a thousand dollars for a roadkill hat worth maybe 75 cents?

Quite stupid, I decided, and so I muscled the motorcycle back into an upright position. But then I figured I could put the kickstand down to prevent a costly and humiliating mishap, and so I did, and with the stand in place I could safely complete my quest for the cap.

Grabbing it, I stuffed it inside my jacket just as the light turned green, and off I rode, simultaneously proud of myself and also a bit embarrassed over the level of determination I showed over something I didn’t really need or want; coincidentally, it was the second such cap I rescued from a roadway in the last couple months, having snared a dark blue model in December when I parked near OHSU on a trip to visit a sick friend there.

I was not too embarrassed, however, to snap this photo of myself and my two “new” hats, along with a flannel shirt I found while jogging near the Coffin Butte landfill on Civil War Saturday (yes, I do take a novel approach to wardrobe assembly):