Well, it’s been a crazy couple of years.
I used to see those motorcycle ads on Craigslist all the time. You know the ones. “Must sell, just had a baby. Best offer” And I would think to myself “What a fucking loser! I will never do that…”
And yet here we are. This will be the 4th bike I’ve sold since my first kid was born in 2015.
It’s been a “winter project” since about mid 2013, continuously on the back burner, getting built and then stripped and rebuilt again.
But like the man said: “Must sell. Best offer.”
Here’s the thing though. I still have what my wife would probably describe as an unreasonable number of bikes.
For purely time and money reasons, I’m thinning the herd, but at the moment I have a CBR929RR and three dirt bikes, along with a few more projects and basket cases stashed in alleys and garages across the DMV.
It just feels like there is a huge amount of pressure for parents, at least in my social universe, to quit “the bike life” once babies are in the picture. So is it really that negligent to be riding a donorcycle with young children?
As I think back on all the close calls I’ve had in the course of learning how to ride, on the death and injury I’ve personally witnessed, and on the handful of friends I’ve lost to road accidents over the years, my gut reaction is that this is not a hobby that I would pick up today with two little ones at home. Now that I more or less know what I’m doing, I’m inclined to keep doing it, but coming home safely to my kids is something I think about every time I throw a leg over my bike.
If I ever fail to come home from a ride Hux and Will, I love you guys, you’re already the coolest kids I know, and I’m certain you’re going to grow up to be men I would be proud of. Give mom’s new boyfriends a chance, make sure you pass your classes in school but don’t let them get in the way of your self-education, and please forgive me for not being there to celebrate your successes and pick you up from your crashes.
Unfortunately, for all the effort I put into being a skilled and responsible rider, there’s just no such thing as 100% safety.
And if I’m being honest, motorbikes are not transportation appliances for me. I like going fast. I like the adrenaline rush.
But I’ve been around and seen some shit. All it takes is one split-second loss of attention, a patch of gravel, or a corner that keeps closing on you, and you’re over the high side sailing through the trees and praying for your fucking life. Not to mention the road zombies, glassy-eyed, half-awake drivers, lit up in the goulish green light of their phone screens as they crush you to death with their cars.
It’s enough to make you think about hanging up your helmet.
Hell, my own dad did when I was three years old. He had been a dirt racer and all around gearhead his whole life, but because of his time on the track he had exactly one speed when he got on his bike: flat out. One day he was coming home on a dirt road he had ridden a hundred times, wide open as usual, and he caught a bump wrong and ended up way off on the shoulder, totally sideways and heading for an inconveniently placed boulder at about 70mph. The way he tells it, the flat track instincts kicked in, he stayed on the gas, missed the killer rock by a few inches, parked the bike back at the house and never rode it again.
He went so far as to forbid me from riding any kind of motorcycle until I was out of college, and before I bought my first bike I actually went out to lunch with him and told him “It’s not your fault I think bikes are cool, and it’s not your fault if I get hurt or killed.” His response was “Yeah, but your mother would still divorce me so be fucking careful.” He ended up getting a bike again a couple years later and even rides occasionally at 73 years old.
But here’s the problem. Maybe my dad was objectively right and responsible to quit when he did, and I’m so glad I grew up with him around. But it sure seems to me like he renounced one of the only things that made him genuinely excited.
The pleasures of family life are very real, and I think we both enjoy a good round of golf as much as the next guy, but I also think that he struggled (as I would) to find anything that could light him up the way riding did.
I’ve come to see that it’s all too rare to feel that kind of excitement, and to be a good parent, a good partner, and a creative happy person, you have to find a way to keep your internal fire lit. I think we have to find a way to keep doing whatever it is that turns us on. Maybe in a safer, more contained form than before we had lives counting on us, but we have to keep doing it.
For now I’ve got enough life insurance that I’m worth more dead than alive, so at least I know my kids won’t go hungry.
But life is short and fragile no matter what you do – at 34 I’ve already lost more close friends to cancer than motorcycles. There are no guarantees, and all we can really do is try and pack as much life as we can into the years that we get.
Keep the rubber side down.
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