Thoughts on why we ride

MrTim

MrTim

Joined
Jan 9, 2020
Messages
19
Location
Johnson City, TN
Bike
2011 Black NT700 ABS
Looks like some people know what the NT700 is, I have a down payment on my NT after 8 days. The buyer is fully aware of these bikes. I suppose they will be the next PC800? There must be thousands of them in old men's garages with little to no mileage on them.

Of course it's not just the NTs that are stashed away, I see low mileage examples of just about anything out there. Lots of people buy them thinking they are still young then find out they aren't or their family wonders what the hell they were thinking or they drop the thing in the garage or at a stop sign and it scares the excrement out of them and then too embarrassed to admit they dropped their $10,000 beauty they stuff them in the back of the garage for 9 years.

I fell into the family obligations category years ago but once I got back into riding after the kids were gone I wouldn't give it up now. I was tooling down a country road in far northeast TN the other day, feeling no pain, and thinking I feel somewhere between 30 and 35. Your problems go away with your concentration and your smile comes on with the throttle. Then I went back home and I was 63 again and a virus was plaguing the world and killing people over 60. If it weren't raining I would not be on here typing this crap, I would be out tooling.

Hope all you folks survive this thing. I plan to avoid it at about 60-70MPH where the virus can't live. Just have to figure out how to buy gas and food and take a piss every now and then without getting in contact with a carrier. Not sure what I will do if they lock down the whole country, we riders should get a pass since we ain't hurting anyone. :p
 
I'd been riding one or twice a week over the winter with a small group of friends. We'd ride to a restaurant usually 40-60 miles away, have a great lunch, then take a different route home. With all restaurants in OH closed as of 9 PM tonight, I'll have to rethink the restaurant idea. The state and city parks are also closed so maybe everyone can bring a lunch and ride to some scenic locale?
 
I hope this doesn't affect the upcoming WV rally, Spearfish or my four corners retirement ride this summer
 
My company just announced that all office workers were possible should start working from home. Many love the idea but I am going to miss my daily commute to and from work. I guess I will use my lunch hour to get my riding fix in.
 
Why Ride
Season of the Bike
by Dave Karlotski​



There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don't even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that's just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds. Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you're changed forever. The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver's license right next to your sex and height as if "motorcycle" was just another of your physical
characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.

But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price. A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars
are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.

On a motorcycle I know I'm alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than PanaVision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard. Sometimes I even hear music. It's like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind's roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock 'n roll, dark orchestras, women's voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed.

At 30 miles an hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the
smells evoke memories so strongly that it's as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it.

A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The
sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul.


It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane. Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It's a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It's light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it's a conduit of grace, it's a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.

I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I've had a handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn't trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride was one of the best things I've done.

Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep, sleep." Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.
 
mikesim said:
I hope this doesn't affect the upcoming WV rally, Spearfish or my four corners retirement ride this summer
Click to expand...
It is starting to really hit the recreational vehicle world. Several big spring events have been cancelled and now it looks like some of the early summer ones are in danger. It doesn't help that most RV Rally's could also be an AARP event...:oops:
 
Lots of events with expected large crowds, regardless of average age, have either been postponed until later or cancelled completely. And I'd guess that the cruise ship
business has died, at least for 2020 or maybe longer?

Tonight most towns have a St Patty's Day celebration with bars typically having overflow crowds and parades in some cities but it's not happening in OH!
 
mikesim said:
I hope this doesn't affect the upcoming WV rally, Spearfish or my four corners retirement ride this summer
Click to expand...

I hope you are able to get your rides in Mike, but this virus is taking us down a path most people alive today have never witnessed. In the last week or so it seems every plan they have made becomes obsolete before the ink is dry. Think of as riding a motorcycle - you have be ready to rapidly change to changing conditions. And as of right now I plan to do a lot of local riding and go on a trip or two if things improve. Good luck
 
I have loved motorcycles ever since my brother got his brand new 1966 Honda 150 Dream...I was 6 yrs old then.
For me there are many reasons I love to ride, but I can't articulate them all.
There is a part of me that lives for the curve; especially if its sharp and steeply up hill. To lean hard and feel the bike digging and digging, or to just push to my limit and see how fast I can go and not scare myself.
Then there is the teenage me who misses riding his horse...There is still that cowboy in all us Yanks.
Also when you stop at a gas station or a hotel or restaurant and you know people are envious of you. Even if the cares of the world are on your shoulder, those people see you as free and loose in The World.
I used to plan my trips down to the nth degree, but now I set out with a general idea of where I want to go and I follow my nose; always looking for the perfect curve or that next vista, the next canyon, the next great burger...

There's so much more I love but I've said enough. I don't ride as much as I should, but I hope I am able and have a running bike to ride for a long time to come
 
junglejim said:
I hope you are able to get your rides in Mike, but this virus is taking us down a path most people alive today have never witnessed. In the last week or so it seems every plan they have made becomes obsolete before the ink is dry. Think of as riding a motorcycle - you have be ready to rapidly change to changing conditions. And as of right now I plan to do a lot of local riding and go on a trip or two if things improve. Good luck
Click to expand...
You and I are lucky....we have a nice place to shelter in place when the curve takes off. Since there arent enough ventilators to go around if and when the curve doesnt flatten, I choose to live. I have N100 masks and pleanty of food and will ride this one out at home. If my wife kills me cause she cant stay away from people, I am not afraid of death. Mother nature cant make the curve NOT flatten out at some point....no one left to infect! Right now, the state of WA cases are doubleing every 3-4-5 days or so (without real testing which will come in two weeks or so, we really dont know) we are on the way up....one thing this great country has that few others have yet , except Singapore and China, is a blood test that not only tells you if you are positive at time of test but also tells you if you have HAD the desease. IF it doesnt mutate too bad, many of us might already have immunity for some unknown time....the test takes one drop of blood and can detect the antibodies your system has to make for you to live....pray for hilly roads and flat curves. Spring Killed the last SARS epidemic, hopefully it kills this one.
 
MrTim said: "I wonder when Kuryakin will come out with a dispenser to mount it on the handlebars."

Now, that's a good idea!
 
Why We Ride

An inspiring celebration of the motorcycling community, this documentary film shares the passion of motorcycle riding and shows the camaraderie of the friends and families who ride together. As told by the many racers, riders, pioneers, and parents in the sport, the story weaves its way through generations of motorcyclists who live each day to the fullest on their two-wheeled machines. The refreshing message about the joys of motorcycling, coupled with state of the art photography, capture the imagination and set the soul in motion.

And it features a 1983 Honda CX650 Eurosport in the opening scenes ...
 
just came back from a short 40 mile ride on the NT .... the reason I ride --- every ride puts a similar smile on me for a couple of days ...

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JustPassinThru said:
R1200GS: Too tall and too much; and I had a medical issue while going cross-country....no physician to be had, for someone not actively dying. Nothing to do but take my tall, heavy monster on down the road, to Dallas, where I was headed.

That convinced me that that thing was too much for my aging frame.
Click to expand...

There are some wonderful bikes I'd like to try, but way too many of them are too much -- too tall, too heavy -- for my aging frame!

I wish I had started this stuff when I was much younger!
 
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