How This Older Motorcycle Rider Reinvented Himself (Again)

What exactly does it mean to reinvent yourself? Is that just a fancy way of saying you can't make up your mind? I don't know. I recently celebrated my birthday in the high desert of central Oregon. It's becoming one of my favorite places. I rented this cabin. It was, how do you say, remote? I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get water out of the kitchen faucet before I realized it was powered by a foot pump. So I had that going for me. The cabin itself sits at the end of a four-mile gravel road, uphill both ways. Now I have exactly one day of adventure rider training under my belt, so I'm no expert in riding on anything that's not paved. Anyway, Wheeler County, Oregon sits about 200 miles away from my home in Portland. So all in all, adding the round trip and the riding I did while I was out there, I think I racked up about 600 miles. It's not something I would have done three or four years ago, but I kind of, sort of reinvented myself. And motorcycling is a big part of that. See, about three years ago, I had what some refer to as a wake-up call. It made me step back and take stock. Made me reevaluate what I was doing and what I wanted to do. Now, this isn't the first time I've so-called reinvented myself. I've been through four or five different careers, three or four dozen hobbies, including leather working, sewing, bushcrafting, mountain biking, regular biking, hiking, all the ings. I'm not sure there's a hobby I haven't obsessed on. With each iteration of me, someone always says, that's just Dan being Dan. He reinvents himself all the time. Fair enough. I've come to embrace that part of me. It's just something you got to deal with if you're going to hang out with me. Who knows what I'll be into next month. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I've got some pretty great friends. One of whom, also named Dan, wrote this little passage on my Facebook thingy on my birthday. It said, happiest of birthdays to the man who continually reinvents himself by being himself. You're an inspiration, a great friend, and if you gathered your posts and newspaper clippings in one book, you'd have one hell of an account of the world of this past half century. That's a lot to live up to. See, I'm not the brightest spark plug on the tree. I almost didn't graduate college because I sucked at basic jock level math. We didn't even have jocks where I went to college. I don't know. It's odd, really. But I also sucked at Spanish. I was a good writer though, and I devoted myself totally to journalism. That was back in the day when newspapers still existed, people read things that weren't on phones. And when that started changing, I found myself in a dilemma. Stick with it and become a dinosaur, or evolve into this new digital world. I evolved. Or did I? I changed anyway. I reinvented myself and went headlong into technology. First on the editorial side, then in digital content production, and finally into the nerdiest thing I could come up with. Programming. Side note, at one point in my life I was an EMT. If you ever get the chance to drive an ambulance down the freeway with lights and sirens going, do it. It's the absolute tits. I digress. Anyway, all of this is to say I've accepted the part of me that morphs from thing to thing, and I've come to terms with the idea that sometimes things aren't going to stick. You know what though? Riding a motorcycle is a little different. Or is that just Dan being Dan? When I got back into riding after years away, I knew pretty quick that this was something I was gonna go all in on. I allowed myself to change. I shed some of the hobbies and other commitments that weren't working for me, and I went nuts to the wall with the idea of being a rider first and foremost. I mean, I'm a web developer above all, but something has to pay the motorcycle bills. What are you gonna do? But the point is, when I accepted that this was who I was, or at least who I was going to become, I no longer worried about what people would think of me. Some probably doubted I'd stick with it for more than a week, but for once in my life, I didn't have many doubts at all. Because I let myself accept it, and I decided this was the thing, or at least one of the big things, that was going to define me going forward. I also got over mostly my imposter syndrome. At first, coming back to riding after so many years, and especially as an older guy, putting on the riding gear made me feel a bit goofy, to be honest. It almost felt like I was trying to be someone I'm not, playing dress-up like one of those Harley guys. Just kidding. Don't hurt me. I've made some really great friends through riding, and not at the expense of my existing friends, family, and so on. Somehow, I hope, I've found some balance here. Maybe my endless blathering on about motorcycles, riding gear, the high desert, the low temperatures, and all the stuff in the middle isn't painfully boring to the folks I love. It probably is, though. Well, that's enough about me. What about you, you ask? If you're older and want to become a rider, take my advice. And if you're a younger rider, learn from my mistakes. My advice, if you want to become an older rider, is simply this. No one is going to give you permission to reinvent yourself if you don't give yourself that permission in the first place. And it's not too late to give yourself that permission. Listen, I'm not here to puff smoke up your tailpipe. I'm here to be brutally honest. I don't care how old you are, where you live, what or who you're into, or what you look like. If you want to be a motorcyclist, if you want to reinvent yourself as a rider, you're the only one who can tell you not to do just that. Once you've given yourself that permission, and of course, once you have the beans to get into this clusterfuck of a money pit we call motorcycles, then there's nothing to do but do it. And if you think into yourself, yeah, that's easy for him to say. No, it isn't. It took me years upon years and a near-death experience to get to where I am. I'm not saying any of this is easy. I'm just saying it's possible. And you hold the keys. If you're a younger rider, don't make the same mistake I did. I let things have power over me instead of taking control. Enough said about that for now. I'll come back to it someday. If you're a younger rider, do yourself a favor and read through some of the comments on this channel. You'll find a lot of older riders like myself who wish they did what they really wanted to do earlier in life. And you'll also find a lot of older folks who are just now saying, screw it. I'm gonna go chase that dream of mine. Me? I'm just Dan being Dan. Finally.