and here's the thing,while it fills me with regret I will never forget...
A two lane blacktop and the feeling of carving a curve just right. How life was perfect when the sun was hot and I rode into the shadow of tall pines and the temperature drop cooled me. Turning the throttle up until the road stripes blurred. The sorrow the first time a rider friend was killed. How cold and miserable a hard rain can be. The smell and pinging of a cooling engine in the silence of a rest stop. How I loved those I rode with. The pain and joy a simple machine gave to me over 40 years.
A morning comes dark with the air chill and dewy as the sun rises over a lake. I'm riding a Kawasaki and Dave has a 4 cylinder Yamaha. They call these "pocket rockets" for their performance and speed. We mount, I choke the cow down as we fire up and listen as they warm and I glove up. Dave signals OK? and I chop the choke as the motor steadies and signal to go. It's a half mile, mostly uphill to the two lane black top, we turn right. Now down the road we dance as the sunlight dapples and jazzes and jumps between the stands of pine. Beethoven wrote an Ode to Joy and that our motors snarled and spit, even sweeter to our ears. And still the morning rose.
Here is where I'm supposed to tell you something that ties this together, but I can't. It doesn't make sense and never will. It cost and it hurts and it cripples and it kills. It costs and it inconveniences and drives your loved ones crazy. There's a thousand reasons that less than 4 wheels is a loser idea. And there isn't a single sane reason motorcycles exist. Except this-for over 40 years they gave me joy at times. Seldom in the rain and almost never in the snow and only now and then when cloudy or cold. But when it was right, it was the best joy and when wrong was just still joy and I seldom got that on more wheels.
I'm now old and no bike will ever again be mine, I'll miss the older days of stiff-legging a start while tickling primers and chokes but also the dead reliable plug n play of later rides. I'll denigrate today's cappuccino riders just because the modern stuff is so easy and so good. But I know even in midst of pediatricians in chaps and lawyers in faux cuts breathe the souls of two or three kindred souls. The legacy was passed to me by guys who rode harder than me on cruder gear and with less companions, if I now pass it on to others it is only fit. Take what it gives you.
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