Farewell to those motorcycle days

[toner87]

This is a column that ran yesterday in the Chicago Tribune... I found out about it over at Motorcycle.com, where it created a good old tempest... I can't believe anyone thinks like the guy who wrote this.... What a twit.
t.


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Farewell to those motorcycle days

By Kurt Ullrich, from Maquoketa
Iowa
Published May 12, 2006


This will be the first spring in a number of years in which I'll not go out to my garage, straddle my motorcycle seat, baby-step it backward onto the drive, and go for a ride. About a year ago in a hopeless quest for eternal life, I decided it would be wise to sell my bike. And sell it I did, to a young man just out of high school.

As I handed him the keys I said, with as much compassion as I could muster, "If you kill yourself on this don't expect me to feel bad about it." He laughed. I wasn't joking. It's now a year later and I understand he still lives, though I have heard through the motorcycle grapevine he has laid the bike down a time or two. Dumb kids.

Young people assume they will live forever. To them death is a bunch of annoying nonsense, an incomprehensible state perhaps embodied by the old man they called grandpa or an old woman somehow related to mom. For those of us in middle age, OK, upper-middle age, things aren't quite so clear. We've seen death lurking by the roadside and we begin to start working the odds, though in the case of motorcycle deaths the odds look to favor the house.

Out here in Iowa, the numbers are still relatively low. Death claimed 45 motorcyclists in 2005. A reported 250 cyclists were injured in crashes. No doubt many went unreported. Already in 2006 death has claimed 11 cyclists in Iowa, and the season is just getting started. This is not unusual.

Neighboring states report similar statistics. In Wisconsin, 80 people were killed on motorcycles in 2004, almost double the numbers from a decade earlier. Illinois doubled Wisconsin's numbers with 157 motorcycle riders killed in 2004, and almost 3,000 injured.

National estimates indicate the fatality rate for motorcycle riders is about 15 times higher than the rate for drivers of passenger cars. I don't know what that means exactly, but I know it sounds bad.

Around here, funerals of downed bikers are often replete with a parade of motorcycles roaring to the cemetery. Interestingly, these rituals are reminiscent of those practiced by law enforcement types when a comrade has fallen; the difference seems to be one of style, not substance: a parade of police vehicles with lights flashing, versus a parade of motorcycles with engines growling.

A heart attack 14 years ago was my first real indication a cemetery was in my future, that eternal life is someone's fiction. That's when I knew I likely wouldn't die a romantic death, rocketing too fast on a motorcycle, missing a rain-swept curve. Now it's beginning to look as if one night, in what I hope is a distant future, I'll have a bad dream and a figurative hammer will slam my chest. Gone. No motorcycle parade for me, just some rural folks in Fords stopping by the funeral home on their way home from work.

A few years back, just before dark on a summer's eve, a young man near here laid his motorcycle down to avoid a deer that had stepped onto the road. He and his bike slid across the highway under an oncoming semitrailer-truck. Later I heard about the trucking company having to wash flesh from the undercarriage. You know how some images become engrained in your head, even though you didn't personally witness them? Well, that was one of them for me. A man was dead, a local trucking company had lousy memories, and a deer walked away.

So, will I beat the odds? Nah, I'm gonna die, as will the kid who has got my old Harley-Davidson. He just doesn't know it yet. These days I'm happy to stare glassy-eyed down the highway toward retirement and old age. It's a narrow highway and probably shorter than I imagine, but at least I won't die on a motorcycle. Without a motorcycle I no longer watch for the specters of morbidity and mortality standing by the side of the road, like characters in a Samuel Beckett play. All they do is wait, wait for a corner taken too fast, for deer crossing the highway, for one beer too many. And, as in a Beckett drama, bleakness and regret are eventually overtaken by our tremendous will to live. It's why I sold my bike.

[LonestaRR]

He started dying when he gave up LIVING. He may still be alive, but he's just waiting to die now. It sounds like he lets fear dictate how he lives. That's not how I'm going to spend the rest of my life!!! I'm going to experience as much as I can, enjoy as much as I can and influence as many as I can!
Like This:

[DJ Downunder]

Great picture Kristi...and good for you..

Some people just ..don't get it.

DJ

[mnnden]

Kristi, I agree, Life is for the living, it is a wonderful world, and we have to experence it. But I have you beat on the fish. Den

[collyers]

Get busy livin', or get busy dyin'.

pick one.

Den - did you eat that thing?

[LonestaRR]

Den:

What is THAT fish? And yes you have me beat on the fish, but not the size of the smile! That picture captured my view of life more than any other. I think I caught 50-60 just like that one that day on Lake Cuchilla in Mexico. For the record, that is not the biggest fish I've caught -- it was just the most recent pic I had of me with a fish. I'm usually catching so many, so fast that there is no one quick enough with a camera to get a picture!!

[ebiker]

This is a column that ran yesterday in the Chicago Tribune... I found out about it over at Motorcycle.com, where it created a good old tempest... I can't believe anyone thinks like the guy who wrote this.... What a twit

The Trib will print anything!! It's that time of year again when the *safety nazis* start preaching the dangers of riding a motorcycle.

In the article the author mentiones laying the bike down to avoid an accident.

I question if he ever rode a motorcycle.

Ed..

[toner87]

Den's Fish looks like a Halibut. Best tasting fish out there, IMHO.
T.

[Brownw3]

Unbelievable;

Here's my retort:

I crashed on a freeway on March 11. I was doing about 70 MPH and hit a 6 foot wide swipe of wet asphalt sealer and down I went. Worst case scenario crash...

But I was dressed for the crash in good quality protective gear and a helmet. Was I injured? You bet I was injured. AM I dead, no, not the last time I checked. I've already but 5 or 600 miles back up on my bikes since the crash (still nursing sore ribs.) I too have a family; the last thing I would ever want them to know is that fear (even in an inherently dangerous sport) can not only keep you safe but it can keep you from enjoying the things you love responsibly. I mitigate my risks as best I can and I enjoy the thing I've been doing longer than I've been doing anything (30 years.) Am I aware of the reality of crashing, yep painfully so. Will I let it crush my spirit....

Not in this lifetime.

[wncbmw]

The guy that wrote that article has just quit, period! You can hasten dying by quitting living. How depressing, just coasting to death!

[mnnden]

Den's Fish looks like a Halibut. Best tasting fish out there, IMHO.
T.

Toner87 you are correct, a few years ago I was fishing out of Kodiak Island, and hooked into this one, 150+ lbs, ( a great story goes with it) caught several smaller and some nice King salmon, I am going to Juneau later this year, and you are right, a great tasting fish. And Kristi, your right, you have the better smile!! Den

[Capt. Blackadder]

He started dying when he gave up LIVING. He may still be alive, but he's just waiting to die now. It sounds like he lets fear dictate how he lives. That's not how I'm going to spend the rest of my life!!! I'm going to experience as much as I can, enjoy as much as I can and influence as many as I can!
Like This:

Well said. Carpe diem!

[rdsmith3]

Well said. Carpe diem!

Isn't it a bass?

[LonestaRR]

Isn't it a bass?

I get it.

[MartyWadd]

A guitar?

[CupOHemlock]

That article gave me pause... I am 43 and I really enjoy riding, but I do realize that I am passing (or have passed) a point where there are fewer days ahead than are behind me.

I have all of two years riding experience. The author has 30! If I felt I could not longer control *my* bike I would sell off to the first youngster with means who came along. If I had 30 years of riding under my belt and the physical wellness to ride, I sure would not be handing the keys away. Statistics show that more experienced riders are safer... we all can kind of guess that. It seems to me, as others have opined, that the author has stopped living and begun the process of dying... at least in his heart.

Ride safe

COH (Rich)

[wncbmw]

Life is a terminal condition.

[yjleesvrr]

Give me a break! Kurt Ullrich lives in Iowa and he's afraid that motorcycling will kill him? Try doing most of your riding in the mountains and urban areas. Plenty more things from deer to SUVs will kill you on the East or West Coast. Putting around on a cruiser (yes, I own a Harley too) where roads are flat and straight with nary a car to be seen for miles is not nearly as dangerous. I'd expect an article like this to have been written by a New Yorker, or a Los Angelinos.

[chris]

Dead man walking there. Somebody slap him back into life.

[12bar1]

A couple of weeks ago I rear ended by a delivery truck . I was wearing all the gear and limped away, no broken bones but I felt like I was hit by a truck. People ask me if I will ride again and I smile and say hell yes why not? I am 54 years young and have no intention of lying around waiting to die. Life is too short not to live while you are here. I lost one of my best friends several years ago. He was a biker from way back and loved his Harley's. One day he came home from work and his wife made him a drink. They were going out to dinner that evening so he was sitting in his favorite chair sipping his drink while his wife got ready to go. When she came out of the bathroom after her shower she found him dead in the chair still holding his drink. His name was Bob and he was 46 years of age. He lived life every minute of every day and was taken way too soon. I would be willing to bet if he had a choice between living longer with a “safe and sane” life or the one he lived he wouldn’t change a thing except he would have liked to finish his drink before he went. I say live like there is no tomorrow because no one can promise you there is.