Mid-Life Rider

“Watching you ride is like watching water fall.”
As a technique freak, it might be the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me.
I’ll have to ask my shrink why, but forever I’ve been interested in technique, probably past the point of rationality. Perhaps it’s due to being a first born or some genetic trait inherited [...]

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Looking through my feet as my bike slid across the turn and into the dirt, my first thought was about the bike. “I hope I didn’t hurt it.” My second thought was, “Hmm, maybe I should get off my hip and slide on my back.” Followed by, “Don’t start tumbling.”
I lay on the pavement for [...]

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Ted Bishop wrote one of my new favorite books, a wonderful contemplation on riding and more called Riding with Rilke (I reviewed it here).
He and I started up a fun correspondence and I persuaded him to opine on some of my own musings about the metaphysics of riding.
You are a professor of . . .
I’m [...]

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“You may never be able to ride your sport bike again.”
You mean my brand new Aprilia RSV 1000 Factory? The one I just bought? The one with 600 miles on it? The bike of my dreams? Never again? It felt like a death sentence.
Maybe six months ago I began noticing pain in my right hand. [...]

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This is just too funny. If you don’t like the F word, don’t watch it.

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Tags: BMW, GS, Charlie and Ewan, Long Way Down, Hitler, Mid-Life Rider

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Robert Pirsig famously opined, or perhaps it was whined, in his landmark “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” about the importance/beauty/honor/rightness of deep involvement with the mechanics of the motorcycle. I remember nodding along in righteous agreement. I was 23 at the time and then made my living (sort of) as a carpenter/plumber/electrician/dry [...]

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A story involving a Mercedes, a Shovelhead, and an SU Carb
“What’s with all the Harleys?”
Probably Steve was at the wheel at the time, but it could have been me. We’d left Rochester, New York three days before on a road trip that would end up in Honolulu, Hawaii. No, we weren’t planning on driving all [...]

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This is a story about building a custom saddle for a motorcycle. And more.
I’ve had the opportunity to talk with and interview a fair number of people about why they ride motorcycles. Many of these stories inevitably wander back to the story of a first bike.
For me, that first bike came when I left Rochester, [...]

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Michael Czysz is following his dream.
He’s building a transcendently cool motorcycle with the intention of competing and winning at the highest levels.
He’s not solving global warming.
He’s not curing cancer.
He is not bringing peace to the mid-east.
In the big calculus of life on this planet, what he’s doing matters not one jot.
But he’s still a hero.
For [...]

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I’m not big on posting random videos and bits from the internet, but this is worth a mention. Watch Colin Edwards do a truly amazing save at Jerez

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Tags: MotoGP, Colin Edwards, Great Save, Jerez, Motorcycle

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