Everybody is entitled to the mid-life crisis of their choosing. The gig economy is working out in a way where my generation's version of that will be to pick up a sixth job delivering insulin or air pollution cotton filters here in about ten years when we're all dying from wildfires and nuclear fallout. It will be thrilling to find a new lease on life by working for a Bay Area tech start-up that pays us two dollars a ride to drop off life-saving necessities, instead of staying inside the bunker and watching Netflix 3.0.
Former Governor Mary Fallin has found her own mid-life crisis excitement, and it is exactly as stereotypical as you could possibly imagine. The Tulsa World recently profiled Fallin to find out how she is spending her retirement:
OKLAHOMA CITY — After 28 years in office, eight as governor, Mary Fallin quietly left the heat of a very public spotlight.
“Life has been wonderful,” Fallin said in November as she prepared to celebrate her 10th wedding anniversary with Wade Christensen, an Oklahoma City attorney.
[...]
She has been traveling quite a bit, including a trip to Sturgis, South Dakota, on a three-wheeled motorcycle with her husband.
Ask her about it and she pulls out her phone to show off the pictures.
She said she and her husband didn’t immediately tell their family they had purchased the motorcycle.
“They were mad,” she said. “They told us we were too old and it was too dangerous for us to be riding a motorcycle.”
But the couple had a blast, extending a two-day trip into six nights.
Since leaving office, she has traveled to eight different countries and has taken several weekend trips around the United States.
After having an executive security detail for years, she loves driving herself around.
The travel is no surprise, since even as early as 2012 her (state sponsored) wanderlust was well documented. Somehow, the motorcycle thing threw me off, although it shouldn't for reasons we'll get into in a moment.
I don't know a whole lot about biker culture, but Sturgis always had this association of absolute debauchery. My buddy has a VHS tape of one of the early '90s rallies that is just women flashing their titties and drunkeness, and it climaxed with a scene of some guy who set a port-a-potty on fire and rode his motorcycle through it.
Sturgis is probably much more tame now if it attracts sexagenarians on three-wheeled cruiser bikes, but it's wild to imagine Fallin out there with her leather tassled vest shotgunning Busch Lights and whooping like a maniac.
We should have known she has always had a need for speed, and has already been previously sighted with the wind in her hair since her retirement from public life:
And going through the archives, this isn't her first time riding a fat hog. From 2013:
1st family after a successful Harley ride at the @NatlGovsAssoc meeting in Milwaukee pic.twitter.com/uMKlnF1V9I
— Governor Mary Fallin (@GovMaryFallin) August 3, 2013
The article was otherwise pretty boring, as most anyone's post-retirement story would be, but we'll leave you with the one last nugget that would be enticing to longtime TLO readers:
She said her children are glad she is out of office.
Fallin said when a person is in public service, their children can get made fun of, bullied and have silly stories printed in the media.
Her daughter, Christina, was a frequent target of criticism on the internet. She said Christina, a new mother, is doing fantastic and is glad her mother is no longer in public office.
“They are just trying to live their lives,” she said. “It comes with the territory. I know my children are relieved to not see some of the personal attacks against me and against them on the internet.”
That's sad to hear. What group of heartless losers on the Internet would attack a politician's innocent children? Even if the children are grown adults who wear Native American headdresses, park their camper on the Governor's mansion lawn, or ride the coattails of their mom's political clout and name recognition to try and advance one of their numerous fledgling careers, that's uncalled for. The people who engage in such antics should be ashamed, and forced to ride with Mary Fallin on a three-wheeled motorcycle to South Dakota as punishment.
