Fair description of being a biker?

Saw this on another site...I thought it was brilliant..

"Riding a motorcycle doesn't call to everyone. It carries a level of risk that is anathema to most.And it demands a level of competence, a degree of engagement that is unusual in today's society.Like an old craft, the skills and the wisdom necessary to be successful at it don't come quickly,but emerge only slowly, over time. Most people today simply don't have the patience or the inclination to deal with that sort of thing.
But for those of us who do, to that tiny minority who are drawn to it, the rewards are immeasurable.
For us, riding imbues life itself with colour, tinges it with adventure. It connects us to a time when people weren't perhaps quite so shy about how they lived. A time when everything wasn't a careful, exacting calculus of risk and reward. A bolder time when a fear of getting hurt didn't stand as an impenetrable shield to the simple enjoyment of life.
So, yeah, those of us who ride are definitely different. But it's a good difference. We carry something that once was common but now is rare. Something of the distilled essence of what got us all here.
We're the last wolves, in a land of sheep."

:cool:

Like it Toph , captures it in a nutshell , we're very lucky . That's the sort of thing that's worth carrying around in your wallet to pull out once a month as a reminder :cool:

Love it, that needs printing off and giving to everyone that says they want a bike but their not allowed or ask why we take the risks we do.

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Originally Posted by DC

Like it Toph , captures it in a nutshell , we're very lucky . That's the sort of thing that's worth carrying around in your wallet to pull out once a month as a reminder :cool:

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Ive got something in my wallet I look at now and again just as a reminder............. :)

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Originally Posted by Wes

Ive got something in my wallet I look at now and again just as a reminder............. :)

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:o

I found it tough when I was without a bike, everyone I know who rides, who’s tried to go without ends up with another bike before too long. I met a distant cousin recently who lost his left leg in a motorcycle accident. You’d have thought that might put him off or made him resent them, but he still rides and has adapted his current bike with the gear shift up to the left hand grip. Seems mad, but they are such a draw I get it. Flowing and carving through the countryside, it’s a real draw.

Heres a video I found online a while ago, braver men than I, see the clip when they’re pretty much full lean going over a bridge. The sound though, it’s guttural. Love it :) want to to get out there and ride those alpine lookin’ roads :) also a sweet looking green speed 4 in the vid.

https://youtu.be/2sFZEnlUuOk

Totally agree Toph :cool:

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Originally Posted by Wes

Ive got something in my wallet I look at now and again just as a reminder............. :)

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Yes, I do understand you. I have a photo of my family in my wallet (my wife and our son, also we are waiting for the birth of our daughter, so I hope to change the photo soon :)), so I can look at it from time to time. Also my wife presented me with a new red devil stingray leather biker wallet, so every time I take it out of my pocket, it reminds me about her.

Its true but I think you can say that about quite a lot of things.
Snooker, welding, jigsaws and flower arranging "demands a level of competence, a degree of engagement that is unusual in today's society. Like an old craft, the skills and the wisdom necessary to be successful at it don't come quickly,but emerge only slowly, over time. Most people today simply don't have the patience or the inclination to deal with that sort of thing."
I got my first bike 30 years ago when i was 11. I wouldn't consider myself to have a unique skill set.
I'm often in awe of friends who have other hobbies that I couldn't dream of mastering.
My personal Maxim is "Do whatever makes you happy just so long as it doesn't spoil someone else's fun."

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Originally Posted by wiltshire builders

My personal Maxim is "Do whatever makes you happy just so long as it doesn't spoil someone else's fun."

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Exactly so :cool:

"Four wheels move the body, two wheels move the soul..."

Yes, it can be dangerous, like so many things in life, but for me the fun simply out weighs the risks. Nowadays I ride more conservatively than I used to, but it doesn't diminish the enjoyment that being out on a bike brings, and if the majority of the public don't get it then it's their loss.

There's a letter in the latest Bike mag in which the writer bemoans the lack of youngsters on bikes and I have to agree. When I turned 16 (summer of 1978) very one of my mates at school had a moped. Sure, not many of them will have persisted in riding since, they'll have fallen into the "get a car, get married and have a family" rut but many of them will have yearned to get back out on a bike and probably did so in the boom of born-agains from the 90s onwards. Sadly, today's youngsters won't have had that seed planted in their youth and won't "return" to biking in their middle age. I do feel sorry for kids nowadays, to ride a bike they have to be so dedicated to negotiate the minefield of tests and licence levels that have been thrown into their path... it's a long way from the carefree days of my youth - get a provisional licence and a moped at 16, ride for a year, renew the provisional at 17 and get a 250 with L-plates, pass an easy test and that's it; a lifetime of riding whatever I wanted to was opened up to me. Nowadays it's been made so difficult in order for some obnoxious oily politician (whatever party, they're all the same) to congratulate themselves on reducing the bike-related casualty figures, not by making the roads safer nor by educating the car-driving morons about us, but by the simple expedient of making it so difficult to get licence that few bother any more.....