Motorcycle Maintenance, and age

Perhaps this is not the first thing that springs to your mind when you read this blog - so let me explain. A dear friend of mine, a fellow motorcyclist, has spent many years now restoring a splendid vintage bike. It is now close to being perfect - with some discrete modern updates - and one of the plans was to take it on a long road tour.

Last week his back ‘went out’. He’s been diagnosed with various disc ailments - all of which translate into two main categories: (1) painful, and (2) not likely to get better.

Over the past few years I’ve been enthusiastically discussing his restoration project with him, and all that time the sands of eternity have been trickling through the hour glass.

Is there a lesson here? Undoubtedly. It seems we spent so long talking, getting caught in the details of this upcoming adventure, that the adventure itself didn’t happen. And now it may be a lot harder to make it happen without severe pain - and where’s the sense in that?

Of course, skeptic that I am, I rarely accept right away the grim diagnoses that the medical establishment throws at me or anyone else. I’ve managed to get better from enough ‘incurable’ ailments over the years to let me realize that one should never, ever, give in to hopelessness. Perhaps this one of one the lessons that has to be revisited. And perhaps there’s a bigger one.

Cherish each moment. And don’t postpone paradise.