Yeah, the problem I have with that is the only place to ride is the desert and I don't have a way of getting a dirt bike to the places I could ride it.
Do you ever get the feeling that maybe it's time to give it up? Over the last 6 days I've seen two serious accidents, and been forced out of my lane twice by drivers not paying attention. All of this was while driving my pickup, which is huge and white, kind of hard to miss.
It seems like drivers are getting a lot worse, the two wreaks I witnessed were caused by outright stupidity, and I'm seeing more of it every day. It's making me rethink motorcycles.
I never rode, and the small part of me that was thinking of getting a bike some day disappeared when I got in a bad wreck. I was going straight through a green light going ~50, and the other guy was in the opposing direction making a left turn into my lane. He says he thought it was clear so he went, right into my driver front side and all the way down the doors. $22k in damage to a year old Grand Cherokee
If I was on a bike I would have been dead, no question. At those speeds and the way he hit me, I might have lost a limb in the process too.
There is no good reason to ride on public roads. It's just not worth the risk. AFAIC anybody who gets on a bike with other drivers these days is sending a message to their family that they rank their own sense of thrill over seeing them again.
There is no good reason to ride on public roads. It's just not worth the risk. AFAIC anybody who gets on a bike with other drivers these days is sending a message to their family that they rank their own sense of thrill over seeing them again.
Don't be such a drama queen Brandon.
That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. Just like I'm entitled to think you're kind of a meek wuss.
If people didn't do the things they enjoy because it is accompanied by a higher than average risk of death then we would be missing out on a lot of things:
- Ocean navigation before the 19th century
- Flight... all of it. Its foundation was rooted in extreme danger
- Sky diving
- SCUBA diving
- Horse riding (more dangerous than motorcycles in terms of injuries/deaths per hour of activity)
I literally died after a motorcycle crash. 30 second flat line. I gave up riding for the better half of a decade. However, I got back on bc I missed the culture... the feeling, the people, the industry, etc.
The point is, it's more than "a selfish need to thrill seek".
I gave it up for a long time after the accident tha caused the images below. I was scared. But then my fear of living a life without passion overcame the fear of getting hurt again. 2 years and 20k miles later, I still feel it was one of the best decisions of my life.Maybe as more time elapses from my accident I'll change my tune
I gave it up after a number of close calls. Riding in my area is just too stressful. Too much traffic and too many distracted drivers. If it wasn't a 2-3hr ride to somewhere nice to ride I might have kept it. If we ever move out of chicago I might get one again.
Same here, but Boston rather than Chicago and the close calls all belonged to a friend, not me (friend has since crashed two bikes. No serious injuries but his Ducati Hypermotard was totaled and his 1199 damaged). I told myself when I sold it that once I move away from this land of traffic and potholes, I might look into it again. Hoping that time is coming sooner rather than later ...
Then again, the other part of me doesn't want to take the risk. To some, it seems lame to allow injury fear to dictate what you do, but my real passions require me to be injury free. I'd be slightly devastated if I couldn't play piano for a couple weeks or a month, let alone for a true lengthy recovery. Motorcycling is fun but might be too far down the list for me to risk it.
Bingo on the 2nd paragraph. People think giving something up because it's risky means you aren't truly living. I disagree entirely. If the rest of my life is good, I don't need the "thrill" of a motorcycle to feel alive. Once I feel the itch to risk my life on the road, I'll have to look at what's missing in the rest of my life that makes me think I'm not truly living anymore and need to risk everything to feel "alive".
You're over simplifying it. If that activity is something you love DESPITE being risky instead of BECAUSE it is risky then, by all means, continue. If it's reversed then I agree with you.
I hate the term adrenaline junkie (you didn't use it but your post seems to refer to it in undertones). I am drawn to things that are fast or perilous because they are a challenge and I meet like-minded people, while doing it, that I wouldn't meet otherwise. The risk of danger is a side effect - meaning, if i could plug myself into a holodeck and do it with no danger to myself, I'd be 100% on board, happy to walk away from the potential to lose my life.
...There's a lot of types of vehicles that can go fast, but are also surrounded by steel so if something hits you it won't kill you as easily. Why is the two wheeled dangerous version more preferable to you? Why can't you get the same enjoyment out of a car?
If you've never ridden a motorcycle through a windy road in the country you will never understand why we riders ride.
You only know why riders ride once you do it too.
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 weight 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 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 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 sun that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than Pana-Vision and 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 per 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 "Few" bikes over 30 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 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.
I don't understand this post. You said you are drawn to things that are fast and perilous, but you started off saying it's something you love DESPITE being risky. Sounds to me like if it wasn't risky, it wouldn't be fast/perilous so you wouldn't enjoy it.
There's a lot of types of vehicles that can go fast, but are also surrounded by steel so if something hits you it won't kill you as easily. Why is the two wheeled dangerous version more preferable to you? Why can't you get the same enjoyment out of a car?
One of the things I remember most was riding through the country and going up and down hills and how you'd hit these pockets of cold air in places. It was more than just going in and out of the shade. Riding is certainly a totally unique experience.
better not drive a car either then.
I don't see how anyone could rationally make the argument that a bike is safer than a car. Is driving a car safe? No. Is it safer than riding a bike? Fuck yes.
No kidding. If I remember my MSF course its like 23x more likely to be killed per mile.
...something you love DESPITE being risky instead of BECAUSE it is risky...
Do you ever get the feeling that maybe it's time to give it up? Over the last 6 days I've seen two serious accidents, and been forced out of my lane twice by drivers not paying attention. All of this was while driving my pickup, which is huge and white, kind of hard to miss.
It seems like drivers are getting a lot worse, the two wreaks I witnessed were caused by outright stupidity, and I'm seeing more of it every day. It's making me rethink motorcycles.