Motorcycles

I've been reading up on them a bit. I'll probably never have one mostly because Amybear would kill me and, frankly, I might kill me too if I went ahead with it. But they're still neat.

This all started with the skyrocketing gas prices. I commute about 70 miles round trip a day. I drive a small car, a Mazda Protege. But even at that, it is costing me between $20 and $25 dollars to fill the tank right now and I have to do that a couple times a week. So what can I do to stretch my driving dollar? Well something with lower per mile costs seemed like a good idea.

That brought me to cruising bikes. Comfy for the hour and a half I'd spend in the saddle on nice days. The Kawasaki 800 Drifter has style and will get roughly twice the gas mileage as my car. I'd have to fill it up every few days, but it's only a few bucks a fillup. Once I got the hang of riding, I could move up to something larger with a bit (ok a lot) more power like Vulcan 1600 Mean Streak or more power and longer cruising range like a Honda 1300 sport/touring bike. I believe my friend Rob has one of those.

That is he has one unless you are his mother, in which case: Motorcycle? No Rob doesn't have anything like that. Rob is a good boy who only drives safe and boring lumbering beige sedans. Like Toyotas. Toyota doesn't make a motorcycle. What are you talking about?

Anyway why not buy something? Well for starters I live in an apartment with nowhere to keep and maintain the damn thing. Motorcycles are not take-to-a-garage affairs. You do your own work. Unless you want to be sneared at.

But more importantly I have connected the dots on the riding experience. If you talk to motorcycle guys long enough you will here things like "I really messed myself up a year ago in an accident" or "my buddy really messed himself up a year ago in an accident". As Izzy put it, there are bikers who have had accidents and bikers who will have accidents and bikers who fit in both groups. And spending a lot of time on a bike commuting is only increasing the likelihood of that sort of thing happening. So the practical part of me that wants to be in one piece for an extended period is more than worried enough to say no.

And fortunately one of my coworkers has moved to within a mile or so of me, so I may be carpooling soon anyway. Yeah.

But motorcycles are still cool. Its just that I'm not. I mean I called them "neat" in the third sentence of this post, wasn't that your first clue?