It's not just your love for bike and things associated that takes a dwindle, it's like almost everything that you believed in as a teenager changes. Two-and-a-half years after passing from the college, the life that we dreamt of is no longer interesting. I often sit wondering how I got caught in this mundane form of existence which is supposedly life. Even a few months ago, I had the enthusiasm to take a spin on the CBZ, go for an offroad back-breaker, do a small hill climb, sweep a corner...and all this during my lunch hour! And not to forget the routine wheelie I did when entering the empty parking lot in the morning. Ever since I lost the bike, I feel distanced from all that bikes are about. The Bullet is seated firmly in the parking lot as I type, yet I hardly feel an urge to go to that riverside drive that would hardly take half an hour of my oh-so-lazy schedule. I no longer have my broken helmet for my longer rides, but I miss the air rushing into my eyes and making life pass in a blur, a quarter-mile at a time. I wonder if I am living my own life of a life that others expect me to live. A life being wasted bickering and bitc*ing about what could have been.
That being said, the soul of the tourer has not died down. A little subdued maybe, but not buried. Some days, I still feel like a college boy waking up and not wanting to do what I am supposed to, then spend the day going for lunch a hundred-something kilometers away from home, or finding bike parts in another city and then ride away to an unplanned destination. I enjoy parking my bike by the highway, sitting on the railing and eating anything on offer, observing the living and breathing road that would take me to places afar. I might no longer rise before the sun to go on a ride, but I am no longer afraid of driving in the dark. Its not the phase in life I am in; I have graduated to the next stage of a biker's life, someone more level-headed than a year ago.
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