Dave Brown

Signs from God

I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in God. But sometimes certain things happen that require me to take a certain course of action. I call those signs from God. He doesn’t need me to believe in him for him to send me calls to action.

For instance, I’d always wanted an excuse to move to Japan. When I was working at a marketing company in Vancouver, I managed to acquire a Japanese girlfriend who wanted to move back home. And then I learned that I still qualified for a working-holiday visa. And then I was laid off from the job at the marketing company (mainly for political reasons). That amounted to a sign from God saying “Move to Japan already”.

On a more minor note, I really like Chucks because they’re the most comfortable shoes I own, but I’ve wanted a pair of basic black Chucks for a while, because while having them in lots of colors is cool and all, sometimes you just want a default pair of shoes. I strolled by ABC-Mart today, and discovered that they not only had basic black Chucks on sale for really cheap, but they also had my size (which is unusually large, and generally unavailable in Japan). God mandated that I buy a new pair of shoes, which is just what I did.

I’ve been sort of undecided about upgrading my restricted-to-400cc-motorbikes licence to an unrestricted license for a while. I sort of wanted an unrestricted license, but it’d always seemed like too much trouble to me to actually get one.

Then I received a note in the mail last week from the driving school that I got my restricted license at, proudly announcing that they were introducing their new unrestricted license lessons. This was God tapping me on the shoulder saying, “Hey! You should be getting on with this!”

So, just in the spirit of Checking Things Out, I hopped onto my bike and headed over to the school just to have a look at the bikes they were using for this, and to ask about what sort of discount they’d be offering for their unrestricted-motorcycle-license course.

The discount was significant. That made me more interested right off the bat. Then I wandered out to have a look at the larger bike they were using to teach the course.

They’d gotten a shipment in of Harley Davidson Sportster 883s.

Well, this was tantamount to God clapping me on the back and saying, “GO!” I’d fully expected them to have gotten a few Honda CB750s, which would have been a semi-incentive. But really, I couldn’t possibly give up the chance to ride such an impractical, overweight, sluggish bike for several hours, end up with an unrestricted license at the end of it, and, best of all, not have to keep the bike.

So now I’m enrolled in the Large Motorcycle Driver’s License course at the local driving school. I’ll be spending a couple of hours each week for the next few weekends riding around on a six-hundred-pound Harley. You bet I’m looking forward to it.