• Welcome, Guest! We hope you enjoy the excellent technical knowledge, event information and discussions that the BMW MOA forum provides. Some forum content will be hidden from you if you remain logged out. If you want to view all content, please click the 'Log in' button above and enter your BMW MOA username and password.

    If you are not an MOA member, why not take the time to join the club, so you can enjoy posting on the forum, the BMW Owners News magazine, and all of the discounts and benefits the BMW MOA offers?

Have I lost it?

oldhway

2 Wheeled Troubador
Be nice, I am not referring to my mind (Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most).

It's a beautiful day today and I took the car to work.

Let me explain. I live 15 minutes from my store. The temps this morning are high 30's low 40's. I just can't bring myself to take the 10 minutes to put the liner in the coat and gear up for a 15 minute ride. Coming home it would be the opposite.

And now I feel guilty. I feel like I shouldn't let the bike sit and I shouldn't mind the hassle as long as I get some saddle time. Have I lost the spark?

Is it just me or do others feel the same way?
 
Come on Steve! I ride to work (10 minutes tops!) in the morning with my jacket (liner in so far), Aerostitch heated vest and a close fitting Nike pull-over windbreaker. By the time I ride home at lunch I'm usually down to just the jacket. JUST DO IT!
 
I also live fairly close to work, and sometimes I just don't feel like riding. I like to think that assessing my riding willingness is part of an almost-subconscious pre-ride check of me, and a good thing. If I'm borderline sick, or just don't feel up to it, I shouldn't be out there mixing it up with coffee-drinking cellphone-using makeup-applying cagers.
 
It happens to me too. Oddly, I think if my commute were longer, I might be inclined to ride to work more often.

I usually leave for work around 6:00 AM for about a 5-6 mile commute and sometimes I just don't feel like dealing with it either, even though it is easily possible. Too little sleep...a little under the weather...forget it. There are just some mornings I prefer to swing by Starbucks on my way in and enjoy a little more peace and quiet before the sh*t hits the fan at work. Other mornings, it's a ball to start off with a twist of the throttle and the wind in my face.

Don't feel guilty about it. Just enjoy a ride after work to let off some steam.
 
Except for a very few folks in the U.S. and a few million in Asia, who have no choice but to ride something, riding is supposed to be fun. If conditions are such (cold, wet, windy, hot, dusty, suicidal traffic, etc) that it won't be fun, why bother? There are few rewards and fewer awards for riding when it sucks, so why do it?
 
Be nice, I am not referring to my mind (Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most).

It's a beautiful day today and I took the car to work.

Let me explain. I live 15 minutes from my store. The temps this morning are high 30's low 40's. I just can't bring myself to take the 10 minutes to put the liner in the coat and gear up for a 15 minute ride. Coming home it would be the opposite.

And now I feel guilty. I feel like I shouldn't let the bike sit and I shouldn't mind the hassle as long as I get some saddle time. Have I lost the spark?

Is it just me or do others feel the same way?

Well if going home would be the opposite, then you'd save yourself the 15 minutes prep time so in the end it all works out, right? :dunno

Time, after all, is relative, right? :laugh

See?

RM
 
Seems normal to me. I had to go to my mechanics yesterday, and didn't take the bike. I needed to bring a laptop, and I was afraid it would take a beating on my bike, and I didn't want to take the time to gear up.
It happens.
 
Home and work are 6 miles apart and I rarely ride. Traffic is bad in the morning, and worse in the evening. To paraphrase Paul: "if its not fun why do it?"

regards,
Mark
 
My work is about 5-15 minutes from my house, depending on traffic and luck of the lights. All on city streets. For me, I had hard time wanting to ride when I spent more time gearing up and taking it off, than I did riding the bike. Now it's a no brain-er. I have to drop the little one--who's two-- off at daycare. So riding the bike's out of the question. The irony here is my "drive" to work is much longer now.

I don't think you lost the spark. It's just that reality and common sense were included in your decision. Sometimes fun trumps that, but this time it didn't. So what.
 
I live about 40 minutes away from work and even then sometimes it seems too much work to put the bike kit on just to ride to work. Bike gets 40-45 mpg, Avalanche gets approx 17 mpg. And actually, the weather typically has very little with my decision to ride. As long as there is no ice on the road, I will ride regardless of temperature.

But sometimes, it's just nice to walk out the door, hop into the truck, and drive off.
 

Karen - stop taunting the working class!!

I retired 4 years ago at the age of 53, but somehow remain incredibly busy. How did that happen?!

I do teach MSF courses at the Road America Race Track (Elkhart Lake, WI) and at Lakeshore Technical College (Manitowoc Co.), but that's just playing with motorcycles all day, and they pay me for it - don't tell them I'd probably do it for a free lunch.

Steve - you haven't lost the spark - just had a misfire.

Hop on that BMW and enjoy moments you'll regret not having some day. :german
 
It could be worse....

I've never been bothered by the extra time that it takes to gear-up for my 14 mile commute, even when it's 12* out and extra layers + the Gerbings had to be wired-in. What's an extra 5 minutes when it's 6am?

However, I suddenly lost my 'Moto-Mojo' while riding to work on Monday... which is to say, my motivation to ride.

Nothing dramatic, no impending doom, and no ill-feelings, just the sense that I'm done. 36 years of riding with only a few bumps, bruises, one break and a few trashed bikes along the way. Beyond that, I just don't have any new goals or challenges waiting for me that involve my beloved motorcycles so... mission accomplished.

So, both of my Boxers are on the market, as well all of my riding gear and extras.
 
Steve, I'm getting to the same point TandemGeek described and maybe you are too. BTDT Syndrome is what I call it. It won't be long before the bike goes and something else takes its place. But then, I've never been one to take the bike if the trip is less than an hour each way.
Tom
 
...the sense that I'm done...TandemGeek

That happened to me two years ago, after a near collosion with a deer, and I sold my bike.

But I'd suggest you keep your riding gear, just in case. :)
 
That happened to me two years ago, after a near collosion with a deer, and I sold my bike. But I'd suggest you keep your riding gear, just in case. :)

You know, it would have been easier to understand if there was some type of 'life altering' event that precipitated the sudden loss of my moto-mojo, but there wasn't. It was quite strange.

There's probably a pretty good chance I'll still have some gear left-over. Almost no one buys slightly used helmets anymore -- not that I blame them -- and I've got a lot of stuff hanging the closet which will take some time to liquidate.

- Hein Gricke TKO Jacket & First Gear S.T.O.P. leather overpants
- Fieldsheer Titanium mesh jacket & Sonic Air mesh pants
- Fieldsheer Four-Season Jack and pants with liners (nearly new)
- Fieldsheer Highlands Jacket with liner & Highlands Pants
- Fieldsheer Highlands One-Piece with upper and lower liners
- First Gear Rainman jacket and pants
- First Gear / Hondaline Rainman-like jacket and pants
- Gerbings heated liner with dual control for jacket / gloves
- Sidi Adventure boots (2 months old)
- AlpineStar Gortex boots

I think at last count I had 8 or 9 pair of gloves, including 2 pair of Gerbings.... and they're all Small or X-Small. And then there's my wife's nearly new and even some brand-new gear

- Hein Gricke TKO Jacket
- Fieldsheer Titanium mesh jacket
- Fieldsheer Four-Season Jack and pants with liners (nearly new)
- Extra pair of Fieldsheer Highlands Pants with liner
- Womens' AlpineStar / Stella Gortex boots

It's amazing how you can amass a lot of 'stuff' over the years, noting most of this stuff has been picked up in just the last 10 years. However, here's the weird thing... and this kind of goes back to the OP's comments.

I've always worn boots, gloves, a leather jacket and a helmet when I ride because I started off on dirt bikes. Blue jeans or khaki's were the norm, and the boots were just work boots, the gloves were always ranchers and the leather jacket was usually nice but not armored.

I never wore 'armor' or a full-face helmet for recreational, off-track riding until about 10 years ago, but even then I didn't always wear overpants. However, in more recent years I've been AGATT with armor being the norm, and I sometimes wonder if that hadn't become almost a subliminal reinforcement of 'the hazards and risks of motorcycling'? Clearly, gear doesn't make riding more risky and it really doesn't diminish the enjoyment, but it does seem to serve as an ever-present reminder that we're trying to protect ourselves from an accident where, frankly, gear will help but only to a certain extent and under the most ideal conditions. After all, blunt force trauma to the torso or secondary impacts with large immovable or wheeled objects aren't diminished all that much by knee and elbow CE armor.

Anyway, just something I was thinking about while driving home in my 'cage' today: driving home... man that's just something I never thought I'd say.
 
My thinking is that it's easy to buy bikes, but it's hard to buy gear , and you can't get much for used stuff. But in your case you could sell off a lot of equipment, and still keep a suit or two around in case your neighbour comes home with an MV Agusta F4 and offers to cut you loose on it for a few hours.

I've been able to use my equipment a few times a year, when opportunities came up to ride interesting machines.

It was quite strange

I think we just go through phases. The nice thing about having a bike around, that's not being used too much, is that you probably don't have as much dough tied up in it as, say, a fun car that's only driven a few thousand miles a year. There's a lot more guilt being generated in that situation.
 
Back
Top