Spoiler alert! This is going to be a mess so the faint of heart pass on by!
9.30 am and sitting here watching it chucking it down and it is still barely ‘not dark.’
Hmmm. Going slightly round the bend from not being able to go round any bends.
Last few weeks , inevitably, posts getting a bit thinner with the exception of winter projects and forward planning for 2026. Pining for Spring and freedom.
My personal existential nightmare. 74 on Hogmanay and time running out on me. So random musings maybe to spark some nonsense from other grizzled heads or even from those still with hair?
In no particular order.. thinking back to early days when I was still undeterred from venturing out, almost regardless of weather, on an underpowered machine wearing woefully inadequate gear and balancing actual thrills with sheer misery just to beat the odds? Where did those days go and the utter hubris of the young?
Then, biking in general. Why on earth this fascination for taking an inherently wobbly single track vehicle and endlessly chasing some elusive prefection whether power/ form vs function/conquering the physics and risking life and limb every single time? Don’t have a clue about the percentages but out of the legions of teenagers and beyond who try it out the majority move on mostly never to return. Then ‘us lot’ who just can’t live without it. What does that tell us about human psychology?
Many, many variations on that. For me, somewhere in there, is an innate rejection of ‘rules.’ Don’t like them particularly those that say “you really should not do this!” Really? Why not?
“I ain’t skeered… but, oddly, I kinda like ‘skeering’ myself??? Hmmm.
Freedom is in there somewhere. Fresh air, part of the landscape, escape the crowds, discovery etc. etc. Additionally introversion, need for headspace, trading inactivity for total concentration and commitment required to juggle dozens of brain functions all at once? It may be the only single way that I am in any way a competitor even if it is only with myself.
Maybe a bit of OCD? I have an irresistable urge with even mundane day to day tasks to endlessly keep shaving and polishing performance and eliminating wasted effort. The heart of a lifetime of envy watching true experts at anything plying their crafts whatever they may be even if I will never be any kind of superstar.
How about this? Been watching s few documentaries recently about human evolution, thank you iPlayer, and the central core of us has been this utter compulsion and fascination with tools? Mostly from necessity and mere survival yet in the First World at least that is barely necessary any more. We still play around with it though don’t we? Just can’t help ourselves! We get a perfectly functional new machine and the first thing we do is start to screw around with it? Chasing, chasing…
Now the Guzzi thing. I am admittedly a latecomer but, like several here, you hear “I have always wanted one and now… “ Maybe it is a generational thing but from my earlier biking days I was aware of the strange draw of them. Yeah I appreciated the older BMW’s and Ducatis and Nortons etc but they all either died or abandoned the basic virtues in favour of satisfying the lure of the market. Moto Guzzi somehow clung to the faith and eschewed outright performance and hi tech and, at least to some of us, touched us by retaining a kind of purity we seem to yearn for? There is beauty in that. Kinda like no one has ever produced a better Stradivarius?
Awright, I am gibbering now so well done if you have read this far! Blah, blah, blah if you like and pass on by. Any thoughts from the rest? Give us your versions? What else have we got to do if, like me, the whole Christmas charade doesn’t excite you. Dialogue is something worth it just for it’s own sake? It’s not just about being right.
Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible after I have a fag! Dave.
Thing is so few people can tolerate me. S’why I am a hermit!
