Hi, I'm Doug, And I'm A Bike-aholic

I'm sure my wife is beginning to think I'm insane. My neighbor Dr. Jim, the psychologist, is probably taking notes on my motorcycle ownership behavior for some future conference speech to be entitled "Abnormal Motorcycle Ownership Behavior In The Mature Adult Male" with yours truly as "Subject A." I blame it all on my very early childhood: I was one of those babies in the 1950's who chewed the lead paint off my crib. Dain bramage, that's what it is.

Anyway, in a moment or week of whimsy, madness, or just another manifestation of my short attention span with any given motorcycle I sold the '03 Kawasaki Concours I bought a few months ago.

When the Concours arrived at the palatial 40on2 estate the bike was mechanically very solid and decently cared for. It had lots of farkles added by the previous owner and really only needed a bath and a good detail job so the day after I bought it I spent the best part of ten hours detailing the Connie. A good detail job means more than just a hose job and Armor All.

When I detail a bike I go over, under, around, and through. I take panels off, I have little brushes for getting into recessed areas. After the wash job I rinse it with filtered water and use the air hose to blow water out of the cracks and crevices so there are no unsightly water deposits where no one can actually see. The Concours shone like a new penny when I was done. People who saw it were amazed that it was so clean at 25,xxx miles and after three owners and also how little I paid for such a nice bike.

I rode the Concours a bit during the summer, plotted longer rides but never got around to making them, and generally lost interest in the bike no matter how nice it was.

On my last ride on the Concours I rolled off an easy 200 miles visiting Saguaro National Park and was bored stiff when I got home. Somehow the bike failed to move me to ride further that day even though I had the time and the weather was not excessively hot. Nor did the bike entertain me on shorter rides; the Concours is a bike for rolling up serious miles and it needs a lot of asphalt to show what it's got. Short afternoon hops, which are mostly what I do anymore, seem mundane on the bike. Too much bike, too little road. Or maybe too little rider these days?

So the Concours is gone to a new home in northern Arizona with a fine fellow name Roger who knew a good deal on a clean bike when he saw it. I wish him well. And thanks to my good horse trading skills and my ace detailing I didn't lose any money on this bike.

Now I need to find something else, something that will inspire me to ride and also fits my very meager retired guy budget. Now that I'm retired no monthly payments are allowed. Of course I could go back to work, get another job in order to make the payments on a snazzy new Gold Wing or BMW. I could stick a fork in my head too.

Bike-wise nothing very interesting fits into the budget so I'm thinking maybe just buy an old Sportster, bob it in the current fashion, and start hanging out at the Silver Bullet Tavern down the road just to fill up my spare time. Think "Extreme Makeover: Doug Edition." Something like the little item below from Craig's List comes to mind. Or maybe that would be the final proof that I need to have myself locked away for my own protection?