Only motorcycle wrenching? or life lessons too?

I am perpetually skeptical of people. People change.. their character changes.. their thoughts… beliefs.. moral values… and the list of things that change on a lopsided pretext of evolution is endless. People change.

So for someone to be on my trusted list, they have proven it beyond reproach.. they have earned it..

However, the symphonic high pitched and almost operatic wail during a throttle blipped downshift on a Yamaha R6 on the other hand doesn't. Not one bit. Not in the 400 shifts of the gear lever on a single track day or the 4 million that it's designed to do across its lifespan.

The way I see it, there is some absolute evil in the world. Hunger.. terrorism.. oppression… threat to human life in any form. But just about every other problems humans claim to have are made up... born out of ignorance mostly and lack of perspective.

What worries me more is not the lack of exposure in people. But their inability to open their minds when the world presents itself. Classic case in point; forget the fact that the human body exerts severely to digest a piece of meat, my earliest memory of being told not to eat meat was, “God punishes people who do wrong and eating meat is doing wrong.”

I wasn't old enough to question, how the man in the other corner of the world, ate snakes since he was 14 and live a 100yrs?  Disease free... Free of any form of punishment from god.

Just about everyone I have told these stories to say, “you are passionate about it” and, assume the sole reason driving me to get back on a bike and race is that. Oh! I am passionate alright!! But, almost no one even takes the effort to understand that there might be other reasons.... Something deeper..... Even after repeatedly explaining it.....

3 years  back, I bought a 1995 CB1000 for 900$. It was called the “Big One” and somehow I missed the clue. You should google it if you don’t know how it looks like. And for something that looks like that, it weighed in at a neat 560lbs(246 Kgs). And I can tell you from experience that it really did weigh that much. How? It fell on me…. In traffic… and my leg was trapped under it and the hot engine was burning through my riding suit and boots. Cause? Engine overheated and seized as it ran out of coolant. The cooling system had a leak and it doesn't have an temperature gauge to warn me.

So picture this…  a 500 lb bike falls on you in the middle of a road.. Filled with people.. Mostly young and agile.. and who comes to help you? No one! NONE!

Still wonder why I still started this blog with that specific statement?

I told this to my then team mate and the first thing I heard was - “You should get rid of it”

So I got rid of it right? Nope! I stripped it apart.. EVERY BIT OF IT even made a meme about it.

Yes… I was angry and took it apart to fix it. But, I didn’t have an inkling of where to start or what to do

And when I did start working on it*, I stripped 13 bolts on it before I understood the concept of torque. 

That was a crash course in “PATIENCE”.. A life skill if you ask me. How? It took me 6 hrs of careful drilling without damaging the threads of the brake rotor mount on the wheel. And damaging that would mean..  no brakes….  Which would mean no bike…

 

*None of it would have been possible without MotoGuild (formerly: MotoShop), its awesome owners (Wilder, Aleks & Tracker), the mechanics who teach there(Shawn, Aamir) and the community around it.

To make matters a tad bit more difficult, as if it wasn't already, buying another wheel wasn't an option. Honda had the genius idea of putting on an 18 inch wheel in an age when all the manufacturers had 17 inch inch wheels as standard.

What else did this experience teach me?

1. Effective planning
2. Getting into things only after doing research
3. 1 step at a time
4. There are no short cuts
5. Everything can break. Just have to give the right force at the right angle and in this case, I shouldn’t have
6. There is fix for every known mechanical problem to man, some less than ideal, but there is… just have to search for them….

Sound familiar? 

And over the next 14 months, 

I serviced the forks..

Replaced the clutch…

A valve adjustment and changed the entire ignition system and spark plugs…..

Re upholstered the seat…. Yes!! I even learnt how to pressure steam a (faux)leather piece for the perfect fit and then staple it to the seat frame after applying a composite adhesive......

Changed the chain and sprockets….

Indicators… head light…. Loose connections in the wiring harness… and the list goes on.

Oil pan… tires … air filter.. 

And the list goes on

But the most brutal life lesson came when I had to sell it…. "Every good thing comes to an end.." Life moves on…. We move on…

In the next 2 months, I learnt 3 new programming languages, designed some of the most complex data pipeline projects at work, ran 4 half marathons, paid of my debts in a systematic fashion & started volunteering.

Here is the bottom line... Motorcycling made me a better person back then and it continues to do so no.

So for that reason alone.... I want to make motorcycling a way of life.. 

Motorcycling makes me a better human....