Met an old biker dude while riding today. He parked next to me on the street when we stopped for lunch. He was wearing racing leathers, helmet, and serious racing gloves. Wisps of gray beard and gray hair poked out of his helmet around his face mask and around his neck. His eyes were bright blue and smiling.
He rode a Harley Davidson XR1200 - go do a minute of research on them if you know nothing about them.
Aside from our two bikes, the rest of the bikes in the lineup were Harley Davidson cruisers.
I’m not accustomed to anybody in the general public, nor from the Harley crowd, ever asking me about my bike. I ride with my wife on her HD Dyna Superglide who gets compliments and questions all the time.
This old bloke says, “Nice BMW, what year is that? “. We started a conversation him asking about my bike, me asking about his. I pointed out my daughter’s Suzuki Intruder. He was knowledgeable about that make and model as well.
This fellow really wanted to talk, and I finally had to break it off to leave. But somewhere in the list of stories he rattled off, “My job in High School when I was 16 years old was working at a Norton Motorcycle dealer, who also serviced BMW’s.”
He casually mentioned this was in 1956.
Hang on a second.
You were born in 1940 - that makes you 82 years old.
You’re still riding? Still racing? Still telling stories about bikes you fixed 65 years ago?
Dude, hats off to you, I hope I’m still doing all those things when I turn 82.
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