Fear of death or injury

[Tortuga_imp]

I've just discovered [url=http://wmoon.wordpress.com]the blog of Wendy Moon. Wendy had "an alternative view of the efficacy and safety of the Motorcycle Safety Foundation rider training curriculum".

Wendy wrote that she no longer considered it worth "the mental effort required to maintain that protective attitude. I am not free to live in the now because I’m enslaved to the future 'what if.' ...So we gradually distance ourselves from experiencing a full and free life and we don’t even know it. As a society, we’re like kids so bundled up against the snow we cannot move at all.... Embracing that risk rejuvenates the soul and empowers one to live the rest of her life as she wants."

Statistics are useless for knowing what will happen whenever YOU get on a motorcycle. Aggregating the actions of large numbers of people ignores the fact that people vary widely in skill level, acuity of awareness, quickness and appropriateness of response. Everything else being equal - which it never is - one rider could always be in much more danger of serious injury or death than another.

I doubt there has ever been a person on earth who has not lived in close proximity to lethal risks on a daily or even minute to minute basis. We who are alive are simply adapted to such things and don't even think about them in most areas, but for some reason there is an inordinate fuss made about motorcycling.

You may have noticed me referring to Wendy in the past tense. Yes, she is dead ... from a sudden heart attack at the age of 57.

For a man who has just 50 posts under his belt, this is by by the most evocative, relevant and life changing of all I've read.

Who really gives a cuss what oil or chain lube we use when this man has summed it up in the raw reality that we're all here for a good time, not a long time.

Thanks Greg.