A summer of change

The summer of 2011 brought a significant change to my life.

For most of my adult life I had ridden motorcycles.  At that particular point in my life I owned a 1980 Honda CX500D and had ridden it from ~11K miles to over 85K miles and I also had a 1993 Honda Goldwing GL-1500 which was my pride and joy.  I had loved riding for as long as I could remember and looked for every opportunity to hop on one of the bikes and ride.

During the Spring and Summer of 2011 my wife and I lost a few acquaintances and a family member to motorcycle crashes.  Our own kids were still very young and my wife approached me and let me know that she worried about me when I rode motorcycles and asked if I’d be willing to sell one of them.  I didn’t put up much of a fight and agreed to sell one.  I had wondered a few times myself with the advent of smart phones and distracted drivers whether riding two wheels was worth the ever-increasing risk. I had already seen some really crazy things on the roads by then and it seemed liked things were getting worse.

In the process of deciding which motorcycle to sell, I realized that selling one of them was just the first step in my wife’s larger two-step plan and determined that maybe I should just beat her to the punch and offer to sell them both at the same time since I was riding less and paddling more anyway.  I put them both up for sale and then asked a question to which I knew it would be hard for my wife to say no.

“If I sell both bikes, may I take some of that money and buy a really nice, rather expensive kayak?”

I got the expected answer and soon was on the search for my next kayak.

I already had a few in mind, but a serious search commenced at that point.

I still do miss those bikes to this day, though.