The Beast Is No More

So why do I have a trailer now?  What happened to La Daze?  Well, all that took a while to come about.  And may take some time to explain.

First off, lamentations.  The Beast is no more.  After the accident, it sat out there in the garage for 6 months.  I rode it a couple of times.  But it just wasn't fun any more.

Motorcycling is one of those things that gets dramatically more dangerous as it becomes less fun.  Like downhill skiing.   Even the semblance of physical grace requires a certain gleeful ignorance.  Otherwise known as  faith.  Without it, your natural human clumsiness comes to the fore.  All the terrible things you imagine happening are more likely to happen if you allow their potential to distract you.

Sometimes the worst thing you can do is think too much.  I don't believe my brother ever had that problem.

It's not all imagination, of course.  I had a few real close calls up in the mountains.  Twice in one day, deer ran right out in front of me while I was cruising at 60 mph.   A car turned abruptly into my lane in Arkansas, without giving any signal.  I was nearly thrown a couple of times by almost invisible cuts and ruts in the road.  And once on the Interstate I got boxed in by huge rumbling trucks, and had to ride in that box for several miles.  They probably thought it was funny.

But what finally took the air out of motorcycling for me was all the grinding worry and daily toil of dealing with my brother's care.   It's still going on a year and a half later.  Nothing is worth putting someone else through all that.

I sold the Beast to a guy with terminal cancer and an apparent death wish, who rode off blithely without a helmet.  He said he'd lived his life too quiet, and was determined to finish the last months loud.  Well, that's what he said.  Good luck to him.

As an RV ploy, a motorhome pulling a big road bike sounds better than it turned out to be. Big bikes, the sort I like, are only stable on pavement.  And in reasonably good weather.  I turned the Beast over trying to ride up a mildly rutted 4 wheel drive road out of Silverton, just to prove I could.  And actual off road bikes are not to my taste.  Can't stand the nee-nee-nee whine of the the motors or the riding position.  And I'm certainly too old to carry off the look.

Give me a jeep, or a 4wd truck.  I really missed my truck, up there in the mountains.

I sold both bike and trailer for what I gave for them a year before.  I was out about $600 for motorcycle paraphernalia like helmets and rainsuits, etc.  It was fun while it lasted.

To paraphrase Chief Joseph, "From where the sun now stands, I will ride no more forever."

Yeah, nobody believed him either.