Screw you!

Why would a guy at my point in life, 63 years old, if I’m to be honest, suddenly decide the one thing in life he needs is a motorcycle? Well past a mid-life crisis, but the rocking chair not yet in sight, why screw up getting to the rocking chair by throwing a leg over a death machine and daring those sensible enough to travel on four wheels to put you into a hole in the ground? With the work that I do, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to let firsthand experience dissuade me from engaging in such recklessness.

It’s Dangerous!

Probably the most common argument you’ll hear.

I’ve seen the tibias sticking through pantlegs, the flail chests, a single finger in the middle of the road while the body is yards away. I’ve even picked up a helmet with the rider’s head still inside it, his body already bagged up. While visually horrifying, what most people don’t realize is the folks above– and most others left in the same fashion– didn’t feel a damn thing. They may have seen it coming, true, but had only an eyeblink to give it a thought. There are worse ways to go.

There’s plenty worse than getting killed.

No argument here. Sitting in a wheelchair for the rest of you life wouldn’t be pleasant when you’ve spent most of your life upright. Then there’s laying in bed, drooling, crapping yourself, eating through a tube, having no concept of time, space, other people… family. Folks saying you’d be better off dead– and you’d agree with them, if you had the capacity– and when you finally do slip off to whatever it is or wherever it is we’ve wondered about all the time were were alive, all will say it’s a blessing. No argument with that, either. But you can face those circumstances by means other than hitting a guardrail or getting broadsided by a soccer mom gaping at her cell phone. My father died paralyzed from a tumor that suddenly decided to grow into his spinal cord. He didn’t exactly court that fate, yet was trapped in bed for ten months while the cancer finished the job. My grandmother had a massive stroke, and several more, and got to finish her life in a manner much like my second scenario. She took her prescriptions every day, and never missed a doctor’s appointment but, despite her dedication to his orders and her measures to prevent a medical catastrophe, it happened nonetheless. Best laid plans of mice and men… Guardrails and distracted soccer mom’s are at least tangible.

Your fate may not be in your hands…

Yes, there are massive potholes, gravel, oil and even roadkill out on the road. They all have the potential to trigger a high side “yeet” into eternity or a low side final trip into oncoming traffic or an oak tree. You my have the skills of an expert, but God or whoever’s in charge of the universe can lay something in front of you that no amount of conscientious piloting of your two wheeler can save you from. And, of course, there are the distracted soccer moms… and teenage girls putting on make up, and reckless boys in their fast motor cars, dads singing along with the radio, hungry travelers chewing a cheeseburger, folks racing to beat traffic lights, cell phones, rowdy kids in the backseat, drunks, and the age old: “I just didn’t see him…” muttered by the shaken commuter staring at the blood on his hood and the antifreeze spilling on the street. They’re out there, and at least four times more of them than back when I was riding my Yamaha dressed in a T-shirt, gym shorts and deck shoes. Yes, I was a “squid” in my youth. These days, despite my helmet, padded jacket, riding pants, gloves and boots– All The Gear, All The Time– and the hours of online research, remembering I’m “invisible” and that the “cagers” are all out there to kill me, the day I left the dealer on my brand spankin’ new motorbike, I was the happiest I’d been in years. And after I’d gotten the first mile behind me, and the nerves, jitters, and outright terror had left my system, I was even happier than the happiest I’d been in years.

When I come back, I’m going to tell you exactly WHY.