During this past Winter, I’ve had plenty of time to contemplate whether or not to keep up my riding or let it go. I tried my hardest to keep going, but in the end, my better judgement won and I decided to close this chapter of my life.
This decision could readily be derived from my most recent track day experience, and feeling burnt out from it. It was simply too time consuming and difficult to make the pilgrimage to the middle-of-nowhere and ride at triple digit speeds. Don’t get me wrong, riding at the track was amazing fun. When I first dragged my knee, I was instilled with the most captivating sense of badassery ever.
But therein lies the catch: ONLY riding on the track is fun for me. Even though I went through all the work of converting my bike back to street mode, I found no enjoyment cruising around on the road. If you’ve ridden on the track before, then you will probably understand my perspective and I will not need to explain. If you have not… the reasoning is simple – you can’t really RIDE on the street. At least I can’t, because I’m not willing to risk ending up as a hood ornament on someone’s car.
Along with my recent ear troubles, I was forced to pull the plug on my riding and take it easy. My fresh Dainese gear was sold and eventually my bike followed suit. A buyer came up all the way from San Diego to pick it up:
I might have shed a tear seeing the CBR loaded up and leaving me. A lot of work and money was invested into that bike, but there really was no point in keeping it. I wasn’t going to ride it on the street, and I don’t have the time or energy to track it anymore. Better to let someone else reap the rewards of my work than let the bike fade away by collecting dust.
Following through with all of this was quite hard for me. Not only because I had to sell all my stuff, but because I was really only getting started with my riding career. There was much to progress and improve. Oh well, I’ll swallow my pride on this one…
Farewell Motorcycles, it has been a short but thrilling ride.
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