I’ve just had some rather upsetting news. A friend of mine has just put his motorbike up for sale on eBay. He tells me he’s going to use the money to buy a people carrier or some other shed on wheels. I can’t think of anything else more tragic. But then this is life isn’t it? He has two very young children now and can’t see any opportunity in the future to be able to make the most of a bike. Its just going to sit there getting dusty for next three or four years which is such a shame and so it has to go. When he told me I had to sit down, genuinely upset both for him and myself. I’d hoped to get out and go for a blast together somewhere this summer but that will never happen now. He’s made the sensible decision to do what’s right for his family and sacrificed his pride and joy. I do admire him for that, but it’s so sad.
This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this issue. About a year ago I was on shift with a colleague who had been through the same thing. I found him late in the night browsing a website of classic cars. He told me all about the car he used to own, going into immense detail and becoming very briefly animated as his excitement grew. But that excitement died visibly as he relived the day it was sold and it’s new owner drove off in it. With the money he bought a people carrier. So sad.
I hope I never have to make a decision like this. I don’t want to look as forlorn as my friend did earlier. I think something has changed within him and it’s probably the realisation that one for the last bastions of his youth has finally fallen, soon to be replaced with a shed on wheels.
Tragic.
Just couldn’t resist commenting on this. It’s a rite of passage, something you just have to do, and it comes to us all. It’s all to do with responsibilities, commitments, and doing what has to be done:
‘When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’
I’m not saying that a motorbike is a childish thing, but the day will come when you realise that you have to get rid. You’ll find that the time and commitment you put into your bike has to go into something else….mundane, boring and ‘sensible’.
A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
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My bike will never go. Never. And I will also maintain a stockpile of cult classics in my movie collection to ensure the memory of youth lives on.
“Just what is it that you want to do?”
“We wanna be free. We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. And we wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time. That’s what we’re gonna do away baby let’s go. We’re gonna have a good time. We’re gonna have a party.” – Dialogue from the The Wild Angels (1966)
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Hmmmmm……… never say never. It can bite you on the bum 🙂
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