Goodbye to motorcycling

By this time tomorrow, I will be motorcycle-less for the first time in years.

When I first got a motorcycle, my idea was cheap commuting. But what I found is that a motorcycle is like a fancy mistress, it always wants more money, more trinkets, more of your time to get dirty with it. Motorcycles are high maintenance whores. But I wasn't too upset with that, because it was a fun whore. Problem was, this whore -- a nice fast sport-touring bike -- killed my knees on long rides. Which sort of defeated the purpose of having a nice fast sport-touring bike.

So I got a dual sport so I could go play in the national forests, and also have more room for my knees. But what I found is that playing in the national forests on a dual sport is sort of fun in that you never run into a road that has an end to it (you can turn a dual sport around literally on a dime by laying it on its side and spinning it around), but you can't carry the sorts of supplies that would save your life if you broke down in the middle of nowhere. I was always a bit nervous riding a dual sport well away from anyplace that anybody would venture for days, because if I fell and broke a limb, well, I'd probably die.

So I mostly rode the dual-sport on pavement, got a Jeep for the forest roads, and was much happier with that. So I thought, what about a nice fast sport-touring bike again? And ABS, so I could commute in crappy weather rather than chickening out because of oil-slicked roads? So I bought my Wee-Strom ABS. And it was good. The nice thing about the Suzuki V-Strom 650 is that it is a very comfortable and roomy bike, though the weird styling does tend to make things rather buffety in the cockpit. But then I hurt my leg, to go with my bad knees and my bad back. So now I have a bad leg, bad knees, and bad back.

At this point, I've decided the only reasonable thing to do is hang it up. It's just not fun for me to ride anymore because too many body parts start hurting too soon into the ride. So hopefully by tomorrow evening the V-Strom will have a new home. I guess I'll just have to be satisfied with my Jeep, because at this point trying to get myself healthy is much more important than a playtoy that hurts me to ride.

-- Badtux the Gimpy Penguin