#ChrisKallfelz

There comes a point where you just do not feel like stopping, where getting off the bike feels unnatural. It doesn’t start that way, it ends that way. Presumably you probably have a destination you want to get to: your own bed, your own coffee maker, your spouse, your front porch. Interstates are great for that, and I detest them. They are heartless, soulless slabs of asphalt and concrete looking at the same thing over and over again: orange barrels, the usual fast-food slop chutes, and truckers and tourists. That’s not living.

We live in an age of specialization and performance. A few words written by one of MO’s finest the other day drove this home to me. He had muttered those magic words: “200 miles per hour.” That is a very impressive number indeed. There was a time when topping a “Ton” (100 mph) was the magic number to the porridge pot helmet crowd on their British cafe racers, today we can kick around the notion of 200 mph without being regarded as completely daft.*

There has been a quiet evolution taking place that I believe is making roadracing opportunities more broadly available to a wider audience. This is good for both aspiring novice racers who seek to acquire their license and some seat time, as well as veteran go-fast guys who have a bike loitering around in the garage all safety-wired up with number plates getting dusty. A quick glance at the WERA rulebook, Chapter 11, Vintage Rules, would give you a hint. The notion of what constitutes “Vintage” has changed over time, and particularly in the past year.

Recently we have had a spate of rather serious columns about tedious but fun-loving affairs like horsepower limits, helmet laws, novelty helmets, and ethanol fuel. That’s all well and fine, but I’d like to change things up a bit here in the interest of you, the reader (because that is why we are here in the first place), and share with you a small glimpse into a lifetime of moto-stupid. I’d like to think in a way that I pushed the boundaries of dumb so you don’t have to.

How much is enough? When does a rational person look at what is available in motorcycle showrooms and say, “Okay, that’s enough for me.” Or even more paternalistically, that’s enough for you, too. What is too much? Is there too much?

I rouse with a start early, abnormally early, every day. I’m a creature of habit, I take comfort in my pre-dawn routine. I warm up a cup of coffee and read the Washington Post while everyone else is still drooling on their pillow in the dark. Must be some sort of survival mechanism, I want to know what blew up overnight. I can’t recommend this routine to everyone in good conscience though; the world’s headlines are no way to start the day, it’s woefully depressing stuff depicting a divisive world for the most part. I often retreat to the sports page where some respite from the real world can be found, well, in most regions anyway. “Most” regions does not include the Washington D.C. area though – our professional sports teams have been perennial disappointments. So inevitably, after reading about various sectarian factions trying to slaughter each other in the Middle East, and a third of the Washington Nationals starting rotation on the disabled list, I almost always find myself perusing bike sites on Facebook looking for something with a little less carnage and missed playoff opportunities. I was pretty dubious a few years back when I had a handful of friends pestering me about getting on Facebook. I didn’t really understand what it was all about. Well, I figured it out in short order, and one of the really cool things I discovered early on were the various sites dedicated to bikes and the people that ride them. I’m curious about the world and the people in it.

When you approach it from the outside looking from a distance, it looks like a giant ant hill rising out of the North Carolina clay. It’s imposing and weird at the same time, encircled in fence at the top. It is Oz and you’re here to meet the wizard.

“Deadline” is a term coined around the Civil War era, used to denote the line that prisoners of war shall not cross lest they be shot. Cross the line, be dead – pretty straight forward.

It’s that time of year again. There is ice, and snow, and muck outside and the wife is making noises about, “tidying up” the basement. In the absence of a garage the basement is, in large part anyway, my domain. Nothing strikes fear in my heart like hearing her utter that phrase, “tidying up.” Tidying up in her parlance means disappeared, like the Bermuda Triangle, never to be seen again.

I find myself sitting up at 2:30 in the morning sipping a cup a coffee and just letting my mind wander. This has become a pretty common occurrence here lately. I lost somebody I was very close to over the holidays, and it really put a damper on the, “Ho, ho, ho” aspect of the holiday season. And so I sip coffee at o’dark-thirty in a quiet house, on a quiet bay, and let my mind wander, looking for good and some sense of order in the dark.

Something unusual happened awhile back. My boss contacted me and wanted me to take a look at copy for an upcoming column coming out, a column written by John Burns. I have a great deal of respect for Mssr. Burns. The body of work John has produced over the length of his career speaks for itself, so what could I possibly add to anything John had to say? But okay, El Jefe wants me to look at something, sure, send it my way.