Thread: Motorcycles

Originally Posted by randydance062449

I am sorry that you need to stop riding. Your perspective is much longer than mine so you know what is good for you.
I started riding at the age of 69, I am now 73 years old and enjoy riding immensely. I wish I had started much younger.

Where I live now, Dunn County Wisconsin, we get about 6 months of riding season. The rest of the year it is much too cold.
I do have the luxury of riding only in a rural area that is hilly and pastoral. During the infrequent times that it is necessary to ride in a big city, I find it to be less than pleasant and rather stressful particularly dur ing "rush hour". If I were living in a city and riding there every day I would not enjoy it nearly as much.

My age does have a downside for riding. The most obvious is my reflex time, it is not as fast as when I was young, but the biggest change I have had to make is in my riding/driving habits which have been built up during my 73 years on this 3rd rock from the Sun. The "rolling stops" have now ended and a full stop at every stop sign is my norm, being hyper-aware of driveways, parked cars, intersections, and whitetail deer is my norm.
As a result I have become a better rider/driver because of my motorcycles.

2002 Harley Heritage Softail Springer
1998 Honda VFR800
1999 Honda Valkyrie
2001 Yamaha Vstar 650

If you enjoy riding, by all means continue. We obviously have a limited time on this earth to enjoy a few passions, and if riding is one of them, ENJOY!

I have had too many close calls since I was 16 and started riding. I had a very bad accident (I won't go into here) when I was 17. Lucky to have survived. I dumped the Triumph 1200 (heavy bike) once in heavy rain on a tar slick. I was forced off the road by a woman texting and drifting into my lane (oncoming) forcing me into a ditch and damaging the bike. She only stopped and came back to yell at me about how motorcycles were hard to see and should be illegal.

I have logged tens of thousands of long distance riding miles. I got out of it without much more than a sore back, stiff legs, and a sprained foot when I was forced into the ditch by the texting woman. It is just my time to say goodbye to the 2 wheel transportation devices.

As I posted, I'll miss it at times, but my car has air conditioning and heat, it's mostly waterproof, it puts protective steel around me, and it has Sirius XM Radio. I'm at the age now where that's excitement enough. But the memories of all my moto touring and camping will remain.

One more memory worth mentioning. A ride from West Virginia to Florida via I-77 to I-95. Where I-77 terminates at I-95. OK, let's be accurate so someone doesn't have to correct me. I-77 actually terminates when it hits Highway 26 near Columbia, SC, and you are on highway 26 for a short stint for the rest of the drive to I-95.

Anyway, I am again lucky enough to hit the highway in a group of large bike riders. About 15 or 20 riders also going to Florida. They welcome me into ther group. We get to Georgia (quickly) and we start passing speed traps. Yet no police try and pull us over. This was when the speed limit on I-95 was 65, and we're doing 80 plus, so 15 over and then some. It would be quite a job to pull over 20 large bikes going that fast without causing issues on a busy interstate like I-95. We tool through Georgia and just before the Florida state line, there are two Georia State cops standing on the shoulder outside their cruisers just shaking their Stetson donned heads as we fly by. Like saying to us via the head shake, "Get the heck out of our state and don't come back you idiots".



I'm fairly certain I took this photo the day of that high speed Georgia ride. This would have been at a Starbucks just south of Jacksonville, FL.