Best of luck with that!
Dang. I’d be pumped. Hope you love every minute. I’m envious
Tyou HO community! We are house swapping for the next four years. Some of it work related. Tuscany and then Milan. I’ll stay in touch once settled. Tons of details to get the move off the ground. Good energy.
A very happy holiday to all! 
. Eat well!
R
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@Rooster hope your and Ms. Rooster’s move went/is going well!
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A beautiful home and a ton of details to make it workable. my wife is so happy. I’m in NJ for the week; a job that was just too good not to fly back for. Then back to the country. At some point I’ll have more to share. Just checking in to say hey-my body clock is haywire.
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I wish I had taken better preventive care of my ears and feet over the years. Loud rock in the 80s and cheap ass shoes have hurt my declining years.
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Sadly, motorcycles.
I wish i had never bought one and definitely not raced motocross for so many years.
I crushed two lumbar vertebrae that give me grief every day. I bashed in my face by ramming face first into another motorcycle in the pre-Jofa face guard days. I broke a couple bones in my foot because i was an idiot and rode in tennis shoes. Broke my left arm and buried dozens of cactus spines so deep the nurse was digging them out for quite a while.
And I spent prime water skiing days on motocross tracks instead of at the lake.
And walking up on that skunk all unaware was poor judgement, too.
Tomato sauce does NOT take the smell away. But it sure seemed funny to my Dad.
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Our Dalmatian was sprayed by a skunk. We bathed her in tomato juice in my wading pool. She ended up pink, and smelled like tomatoes and skunk for weeks.
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Ouch.
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The highs were pretty darned high, Natascha, but the lows were rather painful. There are few rushes as enjoyable as an endorphin rush from racing at high speed or a hard workout and riding motocross supplies both.
Phoenikia, I think the whole “tomato juice will reduce the smell from a skunk spray” is a practical joke that parents invented long ago and continue to use to this day. LOL! I did not turn pink, but I did feel like an idiot, and a stinking idiot to boot. By day two I was noticing it a little less but everyone else seemed to be smelling it nearly full strength.
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I never experienced that level of speed, but endorphins run pretty high when you’re flying through a winter forest on horseback 
I spent most of my childhood and adolescence on horseback & was lucky enough never to sustain any lasting injuries — despite falling off a few times, a horse literally landing on my leg once when the klutz stumbled over his own feet, being bit in one boob, and kicked a few times. One particularly hefty Haflinger once stepped on my pinkie toe & broke it — but nothing as consequential as yours (took a far more recent job accident to fuck up my ‘seat’ forever, apparently 
).
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I’ve been kicked once in the arm by a horse. My breath was taken away, and my arm was numb and unable to move…and then the pain set in. That hoof mark remained there for awhile. As did a shoulder bite from a particularly ornery pony.
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They got some strong chompers, and very hard hooves 
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I still have mine. I used to commute back and forth to work on my Yamaha, as I can use the HOV lane as a single rider. Other states may have different laws, but (where I live) motorcycles can use the HOV lane at any time (as a single). It was the only way to get through traffic to get to work. Moreover, it gets 55 mpg when I stay out of the throttle and ride gently.
I’m glad I kept it. If things get much worse (financially), I may do some “gig” work – delivering food for DoorDash or Uber Eats. Using some scrap lumber and an old car windshield sun screen (that I cut up), I built a thermal box. I wanted to see how stable the bike was and if I could handle riding with a box on the back. I didn’t even notice it was back there. So between the box and some bluetooth speakers in my helmet (for directions from my phone), I have a plan.
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Looks fun but be careful. As you know, drivers do not pay enough attention to riders.
My last street bike was a CB-360 so i am kind of out of the loop, though.
Yes… I’ve since added some red reflective tape to the box. I may throw an extra (battery powered light) on the back of the box. We’ll see – I hope it doesn’t come to it, but I have a plan.
I wish I had gotten something in the 300cc range instead of this 600cc bike. I don’t use half the power it has and I’d rather have had the extra mpg’s for commuting.
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It’s true that some states don’t consider motorcycles to be “high occupancy”, but they are according to federal law, so any state that accepts federal highway assistance money (they all do) that issues tickets to riders for violating HOV lane laws is doing so illegally, and any rider who gets one should be able to contest it and win.
As for me, I stopped riding about 25 years ago. The Spawns were growing up, and I started feeling less and less safe. I had one of the earliest 600cc road bikes and loved it. My brother let me ride his ZX-11 once, and when I cracked the throttle WFO, I started laughing it was so much fun! Shit happens fast at 120MPH!
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I remember when Yamaha released the TZ-750D back in the late 1970’s and we were all impressed because it had over 100 hp. We all believed that Yamaha only released 100, just enough so it would qualify as “stock” on the pro circuit. And then Yamaha started buying them back as more and more of the 100 buyers started to die in horrendous, high speed motorcycle wrecks. I doubt our rumors were true but that is the stuff that fascinated 15 year old racers at the time.
The crazy thing is that 100+ hp is not all that uncommon now. But it was a big deal back then.
Bob Hannah and Kenny Roberts were the names back then. One on a stock YZ250D to avoid claiming issues and the other jamming a TZ750 engine into a flat track frame.
“You can’t pay me enough to ride that bike again!” LOL!
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Our oldest motor bike shop for Harleys in the London, Ontario area recently closed. It seems the market isn’t there for big bikes with lots of horsepower.
I see a lot less people on Harleys or bigger Yamahas lately.
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I wonder if the mid-sized bikes are smooth enough now that the heavier, lower rpm bikes are seen as being too much of a good thing? I remember street bike guys used to say they wanted a certain size bike or bigger because the smaller bikes got tiring after a while.
I have no clue, I was a 2 stroke motocross rider not a 4 stroke street bike guy.
Interesting, though.
