Wasn’t it the Temptations who made a tune with the title “I’ve Got Sunshine On A Cloudy Day” popular back in the ’60s? I know the tune was about “my girl,” but I will take the title to how I was feeling on a motorcycle ride that I led for my club on Sunday.

Storm threat in the afternoon and cloudy skies were concerning, but sunshine of a different sort was calling…

… me and 11 of my friends to ride and view a spectacular display of acres and acres of sunflowers in full bloom. This patch of flowers is in the far western edge of my home county near the Potomac River.

Up until a few hours before the ride was scheduled to take off, I was dithering and tempted to cancel it, using forecast of rain as an excuse. I had tons of things to do to prepare for my upcoming motorcycle adventure, including more senior pals to take grocery shopping and meals to prepare for the spouse to have to eat while I am away.

However, for a variety of reasons, I decided on Sunday morning to go through with it.

I was a little late getting out of the house, because the Spouse had a request for me to update his mother’s financial statements. He always seems to come up with these requests at the last minute. But not to put him off, I began working on this tedious activity until I just had to run.

Then just as I shut down the computer, the phone rang. The call was from a long-term family friend who wanted to know if I were leading the ride today. “Yes, I am… come with us!” She agreed and I was very happy to see her join us for the ride.

Many of my long-term friends and riding partners showed up as well. I gave the safety briefing, and we were off.

We dodged traffic and frequently were divided by traffic lights. My good friend who rode sweep (last in line, a safety position) was on the radio and so was I. He could advise if we all made it through the light or if we got split up — in which case, I would find somewhere to pull over safely to wait for the others to catch up.

We finally made it to the sunflower fields. It was crowded, but we found a non-muddy, safe place to park our bikes.

We admired the fields of flowers and took a lot of pictures. I really appreciated this experience and deep happiness I was feeling. (I regretted that my spouse could not join me. I miss him so much on motorcycle rides.)

After viewing the sunflowers and reassessing the weather, we decided to get lunch. The restaurant that I picked out was too busy and told me that we would have to wait at least an hour. I told them, “no thanks, we will go somewhere else.” I don’t wait at restaurants, ever. Too busy? Leave and find another place. Especially that day with the weather threat increasing.

We rode three blocks east and found a nice little restaurant that was not crowded. But again, the weather was looking more and more threatening. My life-long friend and I decided to have something to drink to rehydrate (it really was quite warm) and then ride home.

As we were on our way home, the streets were very wet. A storm had dumped a lot of rain just minutes earlier. But I employed all of my training and safety skills — slow, steady acceleration and deceleration, and using both brakes to avoid locking up the wheels, skidding, and going down.

I made it home safely, though I was not all that happy with the fear I was feeling of having a crash just a few days before going on my most crazy-awesome motorcycle bucket-list adventure of my lifetime.

Anyway, I had sunshine on a cloudy day with my friends, and enjoyed it immensely.

Life is short: smile at perfect strangers — you may be the only sunshine they see today.