Friday, November 7, 2014

The Beginning, Again

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When I left motorcycle road racing at the end of the 2007 season with a broken collarbone, ankle and severely dented confidence, I told people, in the best of General MacArthur and Terminator tradition, "I'll be back.", more importantly, I promised it to myself. I wasn't leaving due to the injuries, I had been hurt before, but the financial burden had become too much to bear. My Roaring Twenties had come to an end much later for me than others, and the Great Depression of maturity began to set in.

As the years went by I changed careers, zip codes, girlfriends and pant sizes, but I never forgot that promise. It haunted me, I wasn't getting any younger you see. There were times I convinced myself that this was what getting older meant, taking it easy, slowing down and easing in to the inevitable. One day while comfortably coasting towards the grave and feeling miserable about it, I remembered what an old vintage racer once told me. He said, "Son, some people were just not cut out to be Plain Vanilla, it don't work that way, so don't even try". I may have taken some of his meaning at the time, but it was all those years later I truly understood it. I was trying to be Plain Vanilla, and it wasn't working for me, not in the least. It was time to fulfill my promise to myself. What follow are the stories and misadventures of a not so terribly old road racer. From buying the neglected shitbox of a motorcycle at the top of this page and turning it into a race winning bike. Stay tuned.

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