RRider wrote:
I've actually thought about this....like when the last summer I just hung a GoPro around my neck, let the film roll and rode around with my VanVan. I posted the vids to YouTube and got lots of views, a group of followers and plenty of positive feedback. The vids do convey the feel of riding...but they definitely don't capture the whole story - whether I went for a ride because I was happy, sad etc., etc.....mayby I just ask too much....or think too much
Yesterday I ran my buddy up to Spokane for chemo, which is always, or at least should be, a double dose of existential exploration, as A) he's not expected to live out more than a few years and B) Spokane simply sucks -- for over 30 years visiting there has filled me with middle-class anxiety: don't fuck up your life or you'll wind up toothless and panhandling on the streets of Spotucky....
But, oddly, I've spent so much time with friends and family in chemo wards that my response has simply become...shopping. And so I spent three hours killing time by driving around all the moto shops and sitting on a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of bikes.
My findings?
The new/retro Triumphs are sexy but too big and, well, the lil radiator just ruins the lines for me, intruding onto the fantasy that I'm sitting on the 1960s. No, you're sitting on the commodified desire to re-sit on the 1960s. Also, who needs that many ccs to tool around town? Especially if, like me, you live in a town that is 3 miles from end to end.
BUT the Triumph/Husq dealer did have a used MG V7 and THAT is one sexy, perfectly sized bike! Not too big, not too small, jusssst right. And with 2k miles and a price tag of $5,000, if I were the kind of guy who threw away money following his heart's desire, I'd be taking the trailer back up there this morning.
But I'm not that kind of guy, and I drove off to another dealer outside of town which turned out to be a Mega-Dealer (speak that in your Big Time Wrestling! voice): a full safety course set up and about 100 bikes, Beamers, Suzukis, Hondas, Yamahas....
Sat on the CB500x and that was nearly jusssst right. But I think now I see it's a lil too street oriented for me and my guess is I'd quickly both outgrow it AND simultaneously wish for something more dirt oriented...or I'd just want a VStrom, which is essentially the same thing but more everything.
African Twin was standing next to the 500 and yeah, that is one sexy mofo. But 'uge!
The 300 beamer looks uncomfortable as hell and too much like a transformer....
Over to the dirt-ish bikes...
The KLR650 is de riguer around these parts, but up close and personal they still loom to large, or too tall, for me. I'm not short, but they seem...too much...for me to wrangle right now. That may simply be all the plastic on the new ones, but they're just hulkingly *tall* and I have this vision of dropping it on me lil legs, way out in the sticks...which is really where I want to ride more: way out in the sticks.
Kawi KLX250 next to the KLR drips badassitude but damn a dude in his mid-50s with a bad hip is gonna need a ladder getting on and off that thing. Sorta felt like I was staring at one of my students: so hot, but so...young.
And so, yawn, toe -dirt with shame: the ol' XT250 is probably what I really need, tho nearly everything in the whole damn shop dwarfs it, tho the KLR and KLX stare down on it with disdain, tho nearly every single other bike in the shop says "hey cowboy, I like it rough and I can make you young alllll over again."
Nice low seat and the promise of not breaking my leg (in toooo many places) when I drop it. But....
But....
But a lil too small for the highway miles.
And so I'm back to the new Versys x-300. Goldilocks fricken designed that thing, and tho my locks have long turned from gold to...flesh tone and gray, that's a smart lil bike for a not so smart old man.
But no new (or used) bikes this year for me, as my shekels are all headed toward Cannoballing....
So, picked up my buddy at the ward, he popped a couple "lozenges" for the pain and home thru the pouring rain ("April is the cruelest month..."), down thru the poverty of the reservation and on a whim we stopped off at the Indian casino. Jesus, as if the day wasn't depressing enough! Gray faced chain smokers feeding the slots. Even in the hipster-existential-irony of the moment I couldn't make myself lose a dime and I dragged him on out....
Much talk of the dangers of motorcycles (few were as vehemently opposed to my riding as this guy) and I opened up again about how I've lost one or two friends to...death for the past 15 years (including a mutual friend just two weeks ago, at age 46) and how that's actually inspired me to ride, in part because I'm not convinced any of us have that many more years in front of us and in part because the only way to deal with the fear is head on, throttle in hand, eyes sober and bright on the road ahead....
Despite a day in the car all I wanted to do when I got home was ride the V, but it was dumping rain, and it's dumping again and still all today. But tomorrow it's supposed to let up in the afternoon, and it'll be Friday, and if the pleasures in life are fleeting, they are therefore all the more precious. We point our rides toward the West, toward the setting sun, chasing, chasing as it recedes, until, one day, we catch and ride the horizon all the way down to the great who the fuck knows what's next.