It's Just Too Much Trouble

I pulled my dirt bike out of the shop for the first time in a year last weekend. I'd been putting this off for a while but the time had finally come. I cleaned it up, put some air in the tires, checked the air filter, and gave the kick start a good whack. Much to my surprise after about 7 kicks the thing fired up. This was going to be harder than I thought. It settled into a steady idle, looking all clean. I felt a twinge of regret. Maybe I should just keep it, you know, just in case I get the urge to ride. But that hadn't happened in over a year, which is still hard for me to accept.

Well just load it up right now and take it up to the track I told myself, go ahead, it's running great. Maybe you don't really want to take the pictures, write the add, and put it for sale on Craigslist. Then I thought about loading the gear, the gas can, the pop up, and pushing it into the back of the truck like I've done thousands of times in the past, and I just sighed. It seemed like too much trouble. Is this how things end? After 41 years of moto will I just go out with "it's too much trouble"? Come on man, you knew this was coming! My moto friends and I had talked about this day years before. We wondered if we would be forced off the bike by injuries or just get too feeble to ride. One of them suggested we'd just stop wanting to go. I always said they'd have to pry my cold dead hands off the handle bars, looks like I was wrong. I shut the bike off, pushed it in front of the garage door, and took the pictures for the add.

It's amazing all the stuff I've collected over the years while pursuing my moto hobby. Until I started listing it for sale I never realized I had so much junk. I'd kept records of every race, how I finished, and anything that happened that was worth remembering. As I read them I could picture the day, who was there, whether it was hot or cold, and even how I felt. Most of these events no longer exist. Public land for riding has disappeared and the places that are left are no fun to ride on. I have pictures on the wall of my shop from the 80's and trophies from races located on land where you can't even ride a motorized vehicle today. 4 wheelers and just too damn many people moving into the state eventually killed the best places to ride. So I typed the add, uploaded the pictures, and pushed the post button. When will your last ride be? Will you enjoy the last day you swing your leg over a saddle? Will you go out with a bang or will it just be "too much trouble"?

Enough of that melancholy crap! B and I borrowed a couple of single speeds last Friday just to see what all the excitement is all about. Now I get it! It was fun, different from the geared bikes, and so now we want one. Only problem is we couldn't just get one, we'd need two of them. So we're shopping around.

In my beautiful little town of Havana there's a restaurant T and I enjoy called Oscars. It's no big deal, just a little Italian food and a nice courtyard. We rode the bikes up there the past two weekends and after a couple of Becks I had a great idea. I should get a group of local cyclists together for a Friday evening tour of Havana. We could start at someones house for drinks, go to another house for more drinks and maybe some snacks. Then on to a restaurant for well, more drinks, and maybe something to eat. Sounds like fun huh? Would be great except I can't think of more than 8 people in town who ride and of those 8 only 4 of them could ride more than a few blocks. Anyhoo it was a good idea while it lasted. Maybe I could recruit some folks from out of town. Interested?