In his Gut Rumbles weblog (“humorous observations, vitriolic rants and a ceaseless quest for adoration from people who don’t know me”), Acidman writes about “suffering a severe case of testosterone poisoning” while driving his truck home from work.
I don’t have many chances to have that kind of fun in the mud, but when it snows, I still love whipping shitties and have taught my sons how to do them when they were learning to drive, both rear and front wheel drive vehicles. I still get a charge out of doing controlled slides into my driveway and into parking lot parking spaces. Testosterone poisoning? Naw, just slightly under the influence.
I had lunch with my friend Fred yesterday and we got to talking about motorcycles and how we each quit riding street bikes not long after we became fathers, knowing that the likelihood of dying on a streetbike when you’re in your twenties is damn high. He told me he’d just seen a kid on a crotch rocket/organ donor doing 65 MPH wheelies on a crowded freeway. Very stupid — a clear case of testosterone poisoning — but I noticed a sliver of admiration creep into my brain when he described the scene. I love doing slow-speed stoppies/nose-wheelies on my trials bike and I could see myself at joining the nutcases at the Sportbike Gang in my younger years, trying to learn the deadly cool stuff they do.
I remember getting pulled over by a cop when I was 21 after doing a wheelie on my 1971 Ducati 450 Scrambler on a street in St. Paul. El Stupido but a badge of honor at that age, especially while I was trying to prove to my dad that I wasn’t a momma’s boy. I’m now glad I didn’t get my sons interested in riding street bikes, as one or more would likely be dead or severely maimed by now. Maybe when they’re 50 or 60, and their kids have flown the coop, that’ll be a good time to take up road riding with them. I’ll only be 80 or 90, a good time to settle into the Lazy Boy-like comfort of an Electra Glide or Gold Wing.