The V-Strom is put away for a while. The little Kawasaki is still in front of the garage, waiting for a 30 degree day when it will start and I feel brave enough to start it. I've brought some projects into the house to work on for the winter, the Kawasaki may follow.
Every year, when I put away the bikes it feels more like the last time. Due to an excessive number of household projects I feel a lot older this season than in the past. Of course, I am 60 and that IS a lot older than I was a while back.
The magazine and contributors put the Cheap Bike Challenge to print and that period of my life is behind me. I may tell more of that story here, but my editor wants me to wait until the reaction to the article lets him know if readers want to hear more about it. The MMM winter issue is always a bigger deal than the rest of the year, since it is the last of the paper until March.
I get way ahead of the magazine with my column, so I have a lot of ideas sitting unread at the end of each year. This year, because of this blog, I have an outlet for those unaccepted rants. Beware!
5 comments:
This is the terrible thing about getting on in years - just as you begin to feel you're getting a few decent ideas worth sharing, they come and bundle you off in a wheelchair with a rug over your knees. After that, a nice overweight girl in a nurse dress comes on fine mornings and wheels you to the solarium for your hour of Vitamin-D. Whatever it was that you'd wanted so much to write down now seems less important.
What else can a person do but carry on as before? As if planning to live forever? How can a person do otherwise? Plan to die? Get "ready"? For something completely unknown? Good luck. I'm sticking with what I know.
KC
Know what you mean, Tom.
Monday I tripped the power switch to my garage door opener to 'off' Bikes inside, list of projects and would rather be riding and procrastinating on the projects.
Sigh...
Andy
Kevin,
I've heard my whole life that as we get older we become more conservative. "Conservative," to me, has mostly negative connotations. As in, "that was a conservative line around the curve." I've never been particularly afraid of death, but I'm not a fan of pain. Now that getting out of bed involves more pain than I used to experience while doing something stupid or exciting (as if there is a difference), my tolerance for pain appears to be going up. Honestly, I feel more radical/liberal than I was when I was 20 and I was pretty liberal then. Of course, at least one of my kids thinks otherwise, but I've set the bar for them.
At some point, I suspect that the "nice overweight girl in a nurse dress" is going to seem like a positive change?
TD
All that baloney about being a Socialist at age 20 or you have no heart, but having to be a conservative at age 40 lest you have no brain is just too clever. People become conservative in proportion to how much they accept society as a whole as their context. If you don't/can't accept it and see much of it as collective nonsense ("the madness of crowds") then you will hold whatever conclusions you feel the facts you've discovered warrant. And you might very well become more radical with age, since you learn more.
Will the man in the street continue forever to applaud the corporate CEO who is paid 500 times what his employees receive? During WW II the ratio was more like 40-to-one. The great skill of the Republicans lies in getting the general public to vote against its own interests because it expects to become rich one day.
KC
KC,
Well said!
Signed,
A fan in Tucson
PS The weather down here remains optimal for 2 wheels. This time of year that internal combustion going on between the knees finally becomes a welcome source of warmth. Consider becoming a snowbird & wintering down here once you get the opportunity to retire. What can I say -- year 'round riding!
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