Blessing of the Bikes

I can forsee a trend where motorcycle riders possessing a belief in God will seek a blessing for their bike. As the mainstream media continues to feast on motorcycle accidents and deaths, riders are becoming ever more aware of the Grim Reaper.

I imagine most, if not all, of the motorcycle ministries out there already do this for their members. But there aren't many motorcycle blessing events set up for the general public. That may start to change.

The Kileen Daily Herald, a newspaper in Central Texas, published an article about a bike blessing at Fort Hood, where the general public was allowed to participate in...

"We are concerned about the safety of our soldiers and civilians," McCullar said. Capt. Michael Albano, the squadron's chaplain, asked God's blessing on the motorcycles and encouraged the riders to keep their safety rules in mind even after the blessing.

Every year our riding club participates in a local event called, "BFE Ride", where BFE stands for "Bikers for Education". The event is held at a Catholic church in Fallbrook, CA. Just before the poker run gets underway, the priest comes out with a bucket holy water and shakes droplets of the blessed liquid on every motorcycle.

After the ceremony, everyone walks out to their bike to see if there's actually water on it. You can always hear people say, "Yea! My bike is blessed!". Other people will say, "Shit, and I just washed my bike too!"

Do these blessings really work? Well, I've had it done to my Yamaha Road Star at this BFE Ride, and a couple years later I had an accident on it. Perhaps, it didn't work. Although, I did come out of that accident pretty much scott-free, with nothing more than road rash on my right forearm. Interestingly, after I fell off the bike, the damn thing kept rolling! In fact, it rolled right through an intersection that's normally quite busy. Except, no cars hit it. Maybe the blessing worked.

I dunno. I think these bike blessings are going to become more commonplace as the media reports more heavily on each and every motorcycle accident.