Family and Motorcycles

I didn't make a blog post last week. Some personal stuff happened and my life spiraled into a bit of chaos. Don't worry, no one is dying. This is more or less just some issues that tend to happen when you're a homeowner. Something was outdated and I was dragging my feet in fixing it. This came back to bite me. I follow psychology professor Jordan Peterson who has a great metaphor for instances like this. He says you need to slay your dragons while they're small instead of letting them grow into unmanageable problems. I had an issue and I failed to address it quickly enough. This is my fault and I need to use this as a life lesson.

 

Okay...back to more positive motorcycle stuff! I did buy a motorcycle for my kids. It is a 1999 Honda XR 70R. It is a little big for them now, but it was a deal that I couldn't pass up. I have been giving them little rides around the yard on it and teaching them about the throttle and brakes. I've also been trying to instill in them the proper respect for the inherent danger that there is when riding. My wife is also having a blast riding it as it's the first motorcycle she's ever operated on her own.

 

This interaction with my family is really helping me through this stressful time in my life. My advice to you if you find yourself in a similar situation is to focus on things that bring a smile to your face. Those are family and motorcycles for me.

 

"If something's nagging at you, just a bit, it's probably better to deal with it before it's a full fledged dragon." - Jordan B. Peterson

A Quick Adventure

 

Last week I had time off from work. The funny thing was that between get togethers, trips out of town, and projects at home I had very little "free" time. It was the first time in the history of this blog that I didn't upload a brand new weekly post. I barely had any time to go riding, but I was able to go for a couple hours on Thursday evening. It was quite an eventful 85 miles.

 

We (my wife and I) departed at 5:30 pm. I had been out in the sun working on our deck and sweating like mad, so I decided to forgo the riding jacket and just wear a t-shirt and jeans (it was 85 degrees and humid). We arrived at our friend's house and he and another friend joined us. I decided to ride my favorite twisty roads since I haven't done much riding except the daily commutes.

 

As we arrived on our first bit of curves, we came upon a bunch of traffic. Damn! With the road being twisty there was barely any good places to pass. Needless to say, this was a disappointment. As we approached a local state park, we realized that the cars were all going there. The rest of the stretch was plenty of fun as we were able to drag our knees on the rest of the corners.

 

Then, as we reached our first intersection, we noticed more traffic. We waited for what seemed like 5 minutes for an opening to get on to the next leg of our ride. Damn tourists! I, however, knew we could avoid traffic where we were headed as it was a little traveled backroad. This backroad may be my favorite in the area since it is filled with beautiful scenery and switchback curves. I breathed a sigh of relief as I noticed barely any other vehicles on this stretch.

 

However, about 8 miles in to this 12 mile road I started noticing rocks on every corner. At first, I was easily able to pick a line that avoided them, but as we went on the rocks became more abundant. This made us decrease our cornering speed considerably, which actually turned out to be a good thing. At the end of one of the corners a deer was standing in the center of our lane. None of us came close to hitting it, but it did make us grateful for our reduced speed.

 

This is where we began to make our way back home. We had put on about 45 miles and I knew we had to get back since my mom was watching our kids and had to work in the morning. As we began riding toward home on the main highway (country highway not a freeway) I noticed a rabbit racing across the road. As I rode closer I noticed something black chasing it. It was a fisher. If you don't know, a fisher is like a large weasel and is about as viscous of an animal as you can come across. As I veered to the right side of the lane to avoid it, the fisher reversed direction and nearly ran in to my rear wheel. Thankfully it missed and everyone was ok.

 

Finally, as we were making our home stretch, I marveled at the eventful ride that we had. Just then, extremely dark clouds rolled in and a downpour began. There were gravel sized raindrops that left red welts on my bare arms (another instance of it being dumb to not wear proper riding gear). I grit my teeth and clenched my handgrips as I rode the last couple of miles. My first thought as I finally parked in my garage was that I would definitely have to write about this ride.

 

"Adventure is worthwhile." - Aesop