2015.01.31 The Motorcycle Experiment
I am a motorcycle rider. It's just part of who I am.
However, contrary to earlier assumptions, this visceral truth does not mean that I will always want a motorcycle. This valuable realization came after years of yearning, sometimes desperately, for another motorcycle. A vague need managed to coalesce into a specific lust in 2008 when I met the BMW R1200R.
Then, years later, I had an opportunity to get a close relative of that bike. And as a sweetheart of a deal, from a like-minded friend who let me have the bike his grandfather had left behind.
It has been a fantastic bike. Fast enough, cruise-able enough, and just plain cool.
Here's the crazy part though: I kind of hated riding it. This is no fault of the bike, per se. Instead, it is my own fundamental spoiled-ness. My love of riding motorcycles was generated through long years of utterly empty back-mountain logging road rides on dirt bikes, and long lonely twisty highway rides though my angst-ridden early adulthood. Both kinds of riding takes focus - on the road, and the machine. Riding, for me, has been a zen-like state of momentum-enhanced joy.
Whereas riding in Portland kind of fucking sucks. Why? Because it's hard to be zen-like when everyone is trying to kill you. Constantly. And the roads are not great, and often slick. And most people are paying almost no attention to driving their fucking vehicles.
Yes, it is true that people in cars also tried to kill me in BC. But the difference in numbers is massive. Not only are there a shit-tonne more drivers in PDX, twisty BC-road denizens are - on average - much more attentive drivers.
So my experiences with a really great bike in a city that I love was pretty much a total shitshow. And that's not even counting the deer I clipped. That's right, I clipped a damned deer in urban PDX, after 20 years of driving through dense deer country and managing to never hit one. The Wife's opinion of the Great Bike Experiment soured after that, though I tried to not let it affect me.
Today, the bike sold. To a very nice BMW-loving guy who will commute in it. Bravo to you sir; you're a more resilient rider than I.
What's actually crazy? I miss the bike terribly.