Peter Cheney’s article, “Why I quit riding motorcycles” in the Globe and Mail pretty much voiced what we all know to be true: motorcycling is dangerous and, someday, we’re all going to get killed or get hurt and quit or just quit while we’re ahead. There are no other options. I especially liked this paragraph, “Historian Jeremy Packer concluded that there are four basic approaches to motorcycle safety. The first is to quit riding. Then there’s Risk Flaunting (epitomized by riders who refuse to wear a helmet and wear T-shirts that read, “You only live once”). Then there is Risk Valorization, where risk is accepted as an unfortunate but controllable component of a desirable activity. Packer’s fourth approach is the one that used to be my mantra: Hyper-Reflective Self-Discipline (which I will refer to as HRSD).”
I think most of us consider ourselves to be among the HRSD crowd. As David Hough found out a couple of years ago, at a certain age you are fooling yourself if you believe you can “hyper” anything. Every day, the decision moment comes closer and at 67, I’m suspecting that I will regret pushing it too far.
