Saved By The Bell? ... Or ... Tormented By Time

Damn... You look at the way things lay and you make a decision. You make a choice... and then... time jumps up and stacks junk in your way.

The weather obstructs your work, dinero shortages to do a job slows things down... peeling one layer of a job reveals unexpected issues...

... and there you sit... with that damned thing between your ears now having the time to second guess every choice and conjure up all sorts of new difficulties to get you into.

Sonja, my Raider, still sits over in the garage in several pieces. Her seat is up on one shelf... her pipes lay on a big work table... the saddlebags sit on a work stand (work on them arrested waiting on a reply from Tsukayu) the covers off each side of the motor lay beside the pipes. Removed so I have better access to the jugs behind them to polish the tarnish off the edge of the fins.

The off side foot peg dangles where it had to be taken loose to get the pipes off...

Yesterday... I pulled the bent shift lever to see if it would straighten up without failing. I bent it when the bike fell in that lil' U-turn didoe on San Juan Island in Puget sound. Left it alone for all this time 'cuz I was fearful that cast aluminum wouldn't bend back again.

So... I figured now's the time... bend it or replace it...

As I was whacking the shift lever about half an inch back to where it should be, clamped in a vise, with a two pound ball peen, and the cast aluminum DIDN'T crack! :) the visions hit me like a brick...

... Climbing up over going to the sun up in Glacier, rolling around that island in Puget sound, ripping through the Arizona desert north of 120mph... running along the Clearwater River in Idaho... through Yosemite... along the PCH in California and Oregon... rumbling through the Yukon... twisting along Hwy 12 in Utah... through Arches and Canyonland NP's... The Black Hills... too many roads... too many memories.

I tried to see my world without two wheels in it... It's as bad as my world without Horses in it...

I have discovered that walking away from my Leather Shop... and from Horses... was a mistake. They added something I guess I didn't appreciate fully. Taken out of my life they turned out to not be trivial take-or-leave things. Their absence cut open a void that hasn't filled in.

Taking this bike now? I don't know... a weak quivery feeling ran through me... a little voice whispered; Are you effing nuts? How much of you are you going to abandon? for what? seeking approval that will never ever come? 

So... I don't know what I'm doing!! Ha ha... so what's new huh? I've been spinning like a friggin' top, dancing to other peoples fiddles since I was a broken twenty year old runt just coming home.

I look back at the times I've sold off tools, this or that... in attempts to buy my way around obstacles... and honestly? I don't know that it ever succeeded. I'm inclined to back up and sit down.... and just wait things out for a while... Let time do it's thing... and see what happens.

... maybe a magic elf will come 'long and screw my head on straight.

Grab Your Handles and Ride