Count Desmo's Last Ride

[Count Desmo]

Hey DDGM and Bonfy, didn't mean to scare you guys with the title of the thread!  I didn't even think about it when I wrote it.

[NuTTs]

Hey DDGM and Bonfy, didn't mean to scare you guys with the title of the thread!  I didn't even think about it when I wrote it.

Jeremy,

I´m so sad to read that you´re leaving the community and biking for a while. I hope you do find "life after 2 wheels" and it works out. If not, we´ll still be here.

Kurt

[junior varsity]

has your wife given up frivolous shopping?

y'know, for the family's and the kids' college funds sake?

i'm just saying....

[Count Desmo]

has your wife given up frivolous shopping?

y'know, for the family's and the kids' college funds sake?

i'm just saying....

[bdub]

I know where you're comming from. I didn't ride for years because of family (not wife, mom & dad). Then got married and a youngster. She's in college now, so mid life brought me back and my first street bike. Try fly fishing and backpacking.

Good Luck, do you need someone to watch your bikes?

bdub

[robartlum]

Good luck Count Desmo!

Im just getting started riding but I do know I will stop for a bit once I get married and have kids. Im only 20 and I figure I might ride now without any dependents.

Oh the joys of youth and middle age. 

[IowaS4r]

So your giving up motorcycling for your family.  Oh man.  I wish I could agree with that, but I do not.  I have 4 kids from 11 to 4 and I have two streetbikes and a dirtbike.  I decided to go the dirt bike route with my kids, and they all have their own ride and they absolutlely love it.  My daughter rides the wheels off her Yamaha 50.  I look at it as I enjoy motorcycling so much, to not open my kids to the experience would be  short changing them of a possible lifelong enjoyment.  Plus, it erases the "motorcycles are dangerous" stigma.  NOt to mention the afternoons spent riding, teaching, and seeing their faces light up at the sound of the engine starting.  They put their little helmets on with all their riding gear, ride around for hours.  They fall off, run into trees, wipe out; they cry and learn the importance of driving safe and what happens if you are careless.  They always get back on and ride again eventually. 

Sell your Monster and get a couple 50's -- they are like $1100 a piece.  Then get yourself a kick ass KTM.  You can regulate the speed on the little minibikes, and they are small enough to keep in yor garage.  If your girls are a bit too big, get a 4 stroke small displacement like an 80 or so.  Honda and Yamaha make some great bikes for kids; especially Yamaha.  My daughter got a pink helmet, pink Thor riding gear, and she picked it out herself.  She liked that more than getting a bike.  If you think of it this way -- they are part of you and you enjoy motorcycling; they will probably really enjoy it just as much.  Plus, it really really is some quality time spent with the kids, and they never turn down the offer of going riding.   

As far as any safety concerns.  I was widowed 9 years ago, and everybody told me to sell my bike and raise my kids.  I thought about it, but then again I could be driving on the interstate with the kids in my Taurus sedan and get creamed too.  I worry more about a car accident that a motorcycle accident.  I drive my car a lot more miles in Iowa weather and see obits for families killed in car accidents regularly.  BUt, when it is a car accident, nobody tells you to sell your car because it is dangerous.  Planes crash, trains wreck, boats sink.  Houses catch fire, weather can blow a house apart, and you can get shot by a jerk robbing a gas station.   

Do your daughters a favor and expose them to the joys and challenges of motorcycling.  you can take riding vacations to remote scenic locations.  Then when they grow up they can buy street bikes and go riding with you and think how lucky they were to have a dad who showed them a lifelong passion.

[slyfox]

You're supposed to give up all those "good" habits 

big

I like that

[slyfox]

Good luck Count Desmo!

Im just getting started riding but I do know I will stop for a bit once I get married and have kids.

Really?? Why??

I agree with IowaS4r

[Count Desmo]

Iowa S4R, I agree with everything you said...but that doesn't mean it applies to my situation.  My youngest daughter is only 1 1/2, so we're a couple of years away from dirt bikes.  It is a possibility, but who knows?  Each person has to do what's right for them and their situation.  I'm glad you have found happiness in your decisions.

[Tangerine Dream]

Jeremy, I totally understand your decision and I'm sure that it's the right thing to do.  I, too, made the promise that I would give up riding when my son turned six. I've got a little over three years left to ride before I have to fullfill that promise. But I've been thinking lately that I may do so sooner than that. Like you, I too have the option to do the dirt bike thing instead. I am almost certain that I will do that. We have a farm in SE Oklahoma that will allow me to keep the bikes down there and it will always be a treat to get to ride them while we're there. Plus, it may provide an incentive to go there more often. My son loves riding on the tractor with his grandpa and feeding the cows 

You get my respect for standing behind your word    I see so many that do not everyday.

Don't be a stranger. You've got my number and are always welcome here in OKC 

[Count Desmo]

Thank you, Trent.  That farm sounds like a lot of fun!