This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

by Ann Patchett

I do not believe that there were more happy marriages before divorce became socially acceptable, that people tried harder, got through their rough times, and were better off. I believe that more people suffered.

How you ride says everything about how you see the world. In the Winnebago we see the world from inside our house. We watch it as it rolls sedately past our living room window. But on the back of Ronda’s bike, leaning deeply from side to side, I am the jutting purple mountains. I am the asphalt and the birds in the sky. I remember everything about the twenty minutes I spent in the blown-back cloud of Ronda’s hair. People are more than willing to die on motorcycles because for that moment in the Badlands of South Dakota they are truly and deeply alive.