You only live once...

New friends at Las Cocos beach.  Three visiting French girls. 2006

Unless of course your name is Bond... James Bond. 

The VX 800 Shaftie over looking a small cove.

As of late, the topic of discussion has often centered around friends, family, celebrities passing away into the great beyond.  Let's face it, death is a part of life.

Another oft mentioned fact centers on the increasing cost of our using motorized vehicles.  Again, in our society, it would be difficult to give up the family car and of course having a garage/shed/barn full of motorcycles has costs associated with them.

I visited last  Friday with my former competitor Layton Johnson.  Layton (LJ) started in the business like many of us old timers did, and I was surprised when he told me his age.  Not going to repeat that here but he's older than I.

My honey, the woman that 'captured me'

Because I have a "young" wife, a good triple bypass that's nearly 10 years old now... and a shed/garage full of bikes, I still feel I can tackle those gnarly Arizona desert tracks and kick ass, albeit slowly. I still feel like I can bend a corner with at least some aplomb!

Some feel this is appropo for moi!

During my latest visit with LJ, it struck me how uncannily similar our stories are.  We both got into the biz for primarily the same reasons, put our money where our checkbooks were and provided services to encourage others to ride.  I truly hope he and I get to go out for a ride or three this year and yak a bit about customers,  distributors and experiences riding.

My 71 CL 350, pretty mint!

My garage includes mostly older models (my newest is an '08 scooter) and I was thinking this past week of which machines I would put on the road in 2014.  Cost of course is a major consideration, and here on the Island, it is expensive to ride a bike or drive a car.  Not only is there a 14% tax collected each time you buy/register something, but there are higher costs for insurance, plating each year ($100/car and $40/bike) and that other tax grab... the annual "safety inspection".  Of course all these measures are to bolster the "public" purse, after all, there is little in the way of fossil fuels in these parts to depend upon.

T Bird on Honeymoon in Lunenburg.

Now that we are pretty much settled in and the apartment building we bought last May is ticking along fairly well, I feel I will have more time available and may actually feel retired and not just tired!  I was going over the cost of using the road system and of course there is the maintenance of cutting several acres worth of grass and putting fuel into dirt bikes too.  It ain't cheap.

I do love those triples!

On the other hand, using my philosophy of riding in Europe and Baja and the SW USA, and now here on Prince Edward Island, I'm tabulating which bikes and how much it will cost to have them tagged for the year.  I have to have some justification for placing a half dozen bikes on the road.  After all, there has been no paycheck for three years!

Hearing of so many people dying around me as I had alluded to, just makes me realize, yet again, life is finite.  Years ago when asked how I could take so much time off to spend months in Baja living on a beach, my answer would be simple... "I may not be able to do this when I'm 65!" 

Palapa numero ocho, Bahia Conceptione, Baja Sur.  Mi casa!

And, that's the truth.  Last year when I bought the 955 RSi, I knew it was an unusual bike to have here at this age.  After all it is a sports touring bike with the the lean towards sports.  Not near as radical as the 919 Honda sitting next to it, but none the less, still pretty 'cafe'.

Fireblade.

I am going to put it on the road even though I despise having to pay through the nose for all these taxes PEI forces on us.  I will ride it for a few years and likely sell it at some point to someone deserving of such an incredible bike, only because I'm not destitute (remember I started over twice) and because physically... I still can. 

After all... life is finite.

Just another fabulous Island scene.