Inspiration to ride anyone?

[Jay Willie]

(As a copy and paste from another thread. Please bear with me...)

I've heard it said that 'Abstinence makes the heart grow fondler', or something to that effect , anyway since my off last year my seat time has been split between the 'X' and my son's gixxer. Both rides meet some form of anticipating the freedom of an open road and I enjoy and appreciate the fact I can still do this.

Over the last year the whole experience has birthed many new things that have become a completely new 'open road' in life. New vocation means training, a different lifestyle, school, homework, a different lifesyle, new friends, new places, a different lifestyle (did I mention different lifestyle yet? ) and time to reflect on what was and may hopefully be to come. It'll probably be at least another year before I'll see the fruit of this labor.

In the mean time, these changes have me living pretty close to home. The adjustments I've had to make aren't quite as difficult as they could have been and I thank God and count my blessings I can continue to pursue life in a somewhat aged able body and look forward to the days I can slide a leg over, 'kick a stand' and hit the road...

...but I shore miss the busa.

Even though I'm sure my son's gixxer can out run the busa (now simmer down here, this is not that kind of thread ) and the 'X' was the reigning V-Twin champ several years running (may still be the fastest production model V-T...), neither one comes close to the aura of adventure awaiting any who pilot the trade named Peregrin Falcon. There are so many different delectable details available to the few who truly understand the priviledge of co-starring in the same adventure. And she possess so many different talents...

...and tempraments.

She can love you and caress you like no other, and she can turn on you in an instant and show you just where you stand in the class of 'sport touring' bike riders.

The infusion of her enticements to ecstacies beyond end have enflamed the palate of my quest for exotic and sometimes erotic life experiences. There may be other's that can boast of some of her talents but few if ever can compare to the breadth of her repertoire.

IF you're getting tired of your baby, it may just be my friend you haven't asked very much from her that she's been unable to give you what she's got to tickle that little fancy few are even aware of...

...the possibilities are endless.

I miss my busa...

 

[VaBusa]

Yeah, yeah, but what if SHE is really a HE Caesar takes offense

Good thoughts though...I miss riding and don't do it nearly enough anymore. Just part of life now and perhaps one day I'll undo it and ride him again, actually enjoy it... lease:

 

[BigD814]

Yeah, yeah, but what if SHE is really a HE Caesar takes offense

I know this feeling all to well as a new(er) first time father and new job, my riding is not as much as it used to be. I can tell you though that when I do it's a much more memorable and pleasurabe experience!

And yes I said "pleasureable"

 

[Jay Willie]

Yeah, yeah, but what if SHE is really a HE Caesar takes offense

Caesar's probably more offended from the lack of attention ...

...and I did forget to post that this thread may not be politically correct.

Tanks, Vaboo!!

 

[VaBusa]

Caesar's probably more offended from the lack of attention ...

...and I did forget to post that this thread may not be politically correct.

Tanks, Vaboo!!

Vaboo...cracks me up every time...

Caesar is neglected...I rub Tess down so much, her paint is coming off, and poor Caesar, he sits, covered in grime and not feeling loved...

 

[Jay Willie]

And Tess would be the female as Caesar is the male? ???

 

[VaBusa]

And Tess would be the female as Caesar is the male? ???

Mustangs are always chicks

 

[Jay Willie]

Caesar is neglected...I rub Tess down so much, her paint is coming off, and poor Caesar, he sits, covered in grime and not feeling loved...

Poor Omar!! Hopefully this isn't shades of things to come...

...or not...ehm, er come...

Never mind!! Don't even go there!! This thread was meant to be an inspiration to ride...

???...(dang it, will this ever stop?!?)

 

[dmrowe]

Here is an article I cut out of Time magazine back in 1971. I had already been riding for a "few" years at the time and sport bikes and custom V-twins were what we built ourselves in the garage. Now it seems I don't ride as much as I would like too and then the only times I really feel alive is when I am riding, going somewhere, anywhere and usually nowhere in particular. The article is definitely dated but the passion remains the same.

"Se tu sarai solo, tu sarai tutto tuo"

"HAS any means of transport ever suffered a worse drubbing than the motorcycle? In the 17 years since Stanley Kramer put Marlon Brando astride a Triumph in The Wild One, big bikes and those who ride them have been made into apocalyptic images of aggression and revolt —Greasy Rider on an iron horse with 74-cu.-in. lungs and ape-hanger bars, booming down the freeway to rape John Doe's daughter behind the white clapboard bank: swastikas, burnt rubber, crab lice and filthy denim. It has long been obvious that the bike was heir to the cowboy's horse in movies; but if Trigger had been loaded with the sado-erotic symbolism that now, after dozens of exploitation flicks about Hell's Angels, clings to any Harley chopper, the poor nag could not have moved for groupies. As an object to provoke linked reactions of desire and outrage, the motorcycle has few equals —provided it is big enough.
When Easy Rider was released, it looked for a time as though public attitudes might soften. A lot of people were on the side of Captain America and his fringed partner Billy, shot gunned off their glittering, raked choppers on a Southern back road. But for every cinemagoer who vicariously rode with Fonda and Hopper in that movie, there were probably ten who went with their redneck killers in the pickup truck. The chorus from press and TV remains pretty well unchanged, resembling the bleat of Orwell's sheep in Animal Farm: "Four wheels good, two wheels bad!" The image of the biker as delinquent will take a long time to eradicate. "You meet the nicest people on a Honda," proclaims the Japanese firm that has cornered nearly 50% of the bike market in the U.S.; but the general belief is that you still meet the nastiest ones on a chopper.
To the public, the names of the outlaw or semi-outlaw motorcycle clubs is a litany of imps in the pit, from the Animals, and Axemen, through the Equalizers and Exterminators, the Marauders and Mongols, the Raiders, and Road Vultures, to the Warlocks and Wheels of Soul. The unsavory names with which these gangs have christened themselves are apt to make the public forget that their collective membership is probably no more than 3,000, the merest fraction of the 3,000,000 people who regularly ride bikes in the U.S. In fact, these "outlaws" on the road are infinitely less of a threat than the driver of a station wagon with two martinis under his seat belt.
The myth goes roaring on. Business, though, may kill it, for bikes are big business today. At the end of World War II there were fewer than 200,000 registered motorcycles in the U.S. Today there are nearly 2,500,000, most of them imports from Japan, Germany and Britain. The majority are small, almost civilized creatures, below 500 cc. in engine capacity. But the popularity of the big snorting monsters, which can go from a standstill to 60 M.P.H. in less than six seconds flat and cruise comfortably on freeways at 90 m.p.h., has also ascended. It has its perversities to the four-wheeled culture; there is something inexplicable about the very idea of owning such a bike. A big machine is expensive: a new Honda Four costs nearly as much as a Volkswagen; a big Harley, almost $1,000 more. Choppers, the Fabergé Easter eggs of the bike world, are even worse. When all the stripping, chroming, raking, molding, metal flaking and polishing are done, a chopper, righteously gleaming from fishtail exhaust to brakeless front wheel, may have cost its owner $5,000 in materials and labor. Insurance is heavy, since to many companies the fact of owning a bike is prima-facie evidence of irresponsibility. The risk of theft is high, especially in cities, where case-hardened steel chains and medieval-looking padlocks must tether the mount if one so much as stops for a hamburger.
Highway cops dislike bikers and are apt to assume that a Hell's Angel lurks slavering and Benzedrined inside every rider; they take a sour glee in plastering the riders with tickets for the slightest infraction. Worst of all, there are accidents. Big bikes are superb manifestations of engineering skill, but they are utterly vulnerable. There is no body shell, no padding, no safety belt—nothing to cushion the body that wrenched forward over the bars at 50 M.P.H. may be no more than a leaking bag of tissue and bone fragments when the concrete has finished with it. On any long trip, moreover, the biker stands to encounter at least one car-swaddled Milquetoast with blood in his eye whose hope is to run him off the road. Highways are the bullrings of American insecurity and every biker knows it, or ends up in a hospital.
So why ride? There are, of course, impeccable reasons. Bikes are easy to park, they save gas, they pollute the air less than cars. But the impeccable reasons are not always the real ones. Buying a bike, particularly a big motorcycle, is buying an experience that no other form of transport can give: a unique high that like pot has spun its own culture around itself. The name of the game is freedom. A biker, being more mobile, is on a different footing from a driver. The nightmares of traffic afflict him less. Instead of being trapped in a cumbersome padded box, frozen into the glacier of unmoving steel and winking red taillights on the ribboned parking lots that expressways have become, he can slide through the spaces, take off, go ... And the kick is prodigious.
Instead of insulating its owner like a car, a bike extends him into the environment, all senses alert. Everything that happens on the road and in the air, the inflections of road surface, the shuttle and weave of traffic, the opening and squeezing of space, the cold and heat, the stinks, perfumes, noises and silences—the biker flows into it in a state of heightened consciousness that no driver, with his windows and heater and radio, will ever know. It is this total experience, not the fustian clichés about symbolic penises and deficient father figures that every amateur Freudian trots out when motorcycles are mentioned, that creates bikers. Riding across San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge on his motorcycle, the biker is sensually receptive every yard of the way: to the bridge drumming under the tires, to the immense Pacific wind, to the cliff of icy blue space below. "Se tu sarai solo," Leonardo da Vinci remarked five hundred years ago, "tu sarai tutto tuo" (If you are alone, you are your own man). Biking, like gliding, is one of the most delightful expressions of this fact. There is nothing secondhand or vicarious about the sense of freedom, which means possessing one's own and unique experiences, that a big bike well ridden confers. Antisocial? Indeed, yes. And being so, a means to sanity. The motorcycle is a charm against the Group Man."

Robert Hughes

 

[Jay Willie]

Wow!! Although very long, this is a very good read! Thoroughly enjoyed this and thanks dmrowe!

 

[dmrowe]

You are welcome Jay Willie, it is a long read but the meaning hasn't changed. My dear mother (God rest her soul) cut this Dennis the Menance out of the paper and sent it to me. She perhaps was the only one who really understood why I rode all the time...

Also offerred for your consideration:

Words Of Motorcycle Wisdom

The only good view of a thunderstorm is in your rear view mirror.

People ask us why we ride a motorcycle. For those who have experienced
the joy, no explanation is necessary; for those who have not, no
explanation is possible.

Four wheels move the body; two wheels move the soul.

Most motorcycle problems are caused by the nut that connects the
handlebars to the saddle.

Life may begin at 40, but it doesn't get real interesting until about 80 mph!

You start the game of life with a full pot o' luck and an empty pot o'
experience. The object is to fill the pot of experience before you empty
the pot of luck.

If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.

Midnight bugs taste just as bad as noon time bugs.

Saddlebags can never hold everything you want, but they CAN hold
everything you need.

Don't ride so late into the night that you sleep through the sunrise.

Sometimes it takes a whole tank full of gas before you can think
straight.

Never hesitate to ride past the last street light at the edge of town.

Never do less than forty miles before breakfast.

A bike on the road is worth two in the shed.

*Respect the person who has seen the dark side of motorcycling and
ived, (and still rides.)

Young riders pick a destination and go. Old riders pick a direction and
go.

A good mechanic will let you watch without charging you for it.

Sometimes the fastest way to get there is to stop for the night.

Always back your bike into the curb and sit where you can see it.

There are drunk riders and there are old riders, but there are not many
old, drunk riders.

Ride to work. Work to ride.(every day)

Two-lane blacktop isn't a highway - it's an attitude.

When you look down the road, it seems to never end; but you better
believe it does!

Winter is nature's way of telling you to test the electrics.

Keep your bike in good repair. Motorcycle boots are not all that
comfortable for walking.

People are like motorcycles; each is customized a bit differently.

Sometimes, the best communication happens when you're on separate bikes.

When you're riding lead, don't spit.

A friend is someone who'll get out of bed at 2 a.m. to drive his pickup
to the middle of nowhere to get you when you're broken down.

Catching a yellow jacket in your shirt @ 70 mph can double your
vocabulary..

Catching a yellow jacket in your helmet will triple that special
vocabulary.

There's something ugly about a NEW bike on a trailer.

Everyone crashes. Some get back on. Some don't. Some can't.

If you can't get it going with bungee cords and duct tape, it's serious.

If you ride like there's no tomorrow, today will be a BLAST!

The best modifications cannot be seen from the outside.

Always replace the cheapest parts first.

You can forget what you do for a living when your knees are in the
breeze.

Only a motorcyclist knows why a dog sticks his head out of a car window.

 

[Jay Willie]

These are a hoot and well worth remembering! The Dennis the Menace cartoon is great! I'll have to print that out and post it up on the refrigerator. Very good contributions dmrowe. You should start your own thread about these inspirations so others will have a chance to share in your insights. These are great!