Learning to appreciate what we have

 It is a lot more easy to say than to actually truly appreciate. We often don't know how good "it" is until "it" is gone. I am trying. I have found that for me I often have to take risk to find appreciation and risk taking has it's drawbacks though I am shall I say lucky to not know much first hand of these drawbacks but only to know of them and that is something always weighing in on my calculated balance. I think risk taking is actually healthy. I think that learning how and when to take a risk is a survival skill that helps us evolve.

After I raced the Bottpower at Pikes Peak in 2017 I was pretty disgusted with myself for taking such great risk and knowing ahead of time how deadly a machine I was throwing a leg over. I came away from that experience a bit shook but through years of reflection I now know what a rare lesson of life I had learned. That bike may have damaged me a bit but it also made me a stronger risk taker. Case in point, when I had to use my SV in practice with it's 650cc compared to the 1344cc Bott bike It was like comparing ditch weed to black tar heroin. I was hooked on adrenaline and needed a fix so I sold my little SV and bought Hot Carl's proper ZX10 superbike. I wanted to do the late great Carl proud but I found the bike very serious and something about following in Carl's footsteps may have also been rattling chains in the back of my mind so when I moved back to the western slope, 5 hrs away from any tarmac tracks I sold it to help pay mortgage while my new shop got it's feet on the ground.

A couple years later I was asked by an old Denver friend if I wanted to buy my old SV back. The friend had bought it from some person who had bought it from the person I had originally sold it to. I admit that the only reason I brought it back home was because of sentimental fondness of the bike and because that I had put so much work into building the thing. When I rolled it back into my shop it was a bit haggard and smashed up but not neglected. It is after all the perfect learner track bike and I cant say that I didn't lay her down a time or two. Now what? 

 

Since some lucky lessons learnt on my 1993 Katana 600 I owned when I was a teenager I have always been very opinionated about sport bikes not belonging on open public roads. Every time I test ride one I know that handcuffs or a body bag very near. Perhaps it is the lack of racing this season or a 37 year old's brain short circuiting; First I transferred the title into my name just for the fun of it as it was still in the name of the person I originally bought the bike from the first time. Then I wired the license plate on and rode it around the block. It was happy to lift the front wheel and made me giggle like a kid with fire crackers. Then I wired up some lights and put a charging system back on it. I loaded it up in the back of my new shop truck I took in trade for an engine build and went home and drank too much knowing full well I was about to do some dumb shit.

I awoke with a pounding dehydrated desert dust bowl headache.  I weezed on the burnt wildfire air while squeezing my beer gut into my custom fit leathers, a gift from Roland Sands,  my wife simply said to me "Be wise." My first side road or more like a canyon route,  Colorado State Highway 141, is a dream road for such riding. I am surrounded by literally some of the best twisty roads in the world. Much of this road was freshly paved. The first cager I came up on waved me around and I took this as a pass to not slow for another cager all day. Complete outlaw organ donor style. Naughty. That guy. Sorry. Not sorry.

 

Some hours into my loop and about as far from home as I would be the old trusty SV spat it's chain in the middle of a very, very desolate straight stretch of desert. No shade. No cell service. No tools. 100 plus degree temps. I walked down the road for a while and finally found my old 520 DID ditch snake. A cager past me that I had overtook in the middle of a hairpin corner some time back and they had a look on their face like a pompas judge on American Idle or whatever those talant twat twiddling shows are. Sitting in the shade of my clip on handlbars I began to wish I had packed a bigger water bottle or at least a pair of plies. buzzards began to circle overhead,  no shit.  Just when I started to think about taking a long hot walk somebody finally pulled over and asked if I needed help. "As a matter of fact...." He had to dump a load of trash and said he would return and he did. We chucked the bike into his work truck and he was glad to drive me into busy holiday weekend Moab some 45 minutes away refusing any compensation from me! Not all the world has gone to shit.  I then found out that both bike shops in town were closed. A very busy side by side (golf carts for assholes) rental shop had some friendly mechanics who scrounged up a chain for me. I believe the universe provides and keeping some some faith in fellow humankind may be our only hope.

 

 The Colorado River road out of Moab is a beautiful section of curving cliff wall perfection. It is also busy and it was at this point in my adventure that I took to embracing the risks and overtook cars like I was a Valentino Rossi slash Road Rage 3D video game demon. Knee down, hill crest jumping, full concentration, and zone engaged. The final stretch from Utah back into Colorado took me by my holy ground by the name of Sisco, a now re-awaking ghost town, where Vanishing Point was filmed. As I passed graffiti on a crumbled old filling station wall proclaiming: KOWALSKI LIVES!!  I felt alive. I felt awakened my self. I pondered these feelings all night and all day yesterday into another night and as I walked into my shop this morning I realized that I am very appreciative of what I have and I probably ought to take that license plate off and throw it away. But will I?