Buying ability is not what pensioners like me, on a fixed income, have a lot of, but, surprisingly, that is not the topic of my blog article today. Let me explain.
Today was the first dry day for some time and even though I guessed the roads would be a bit sketchy, I wheeled TWK out of the garage with the intention of putting some ks on the clock, blowing out some cobwebs of my own and familiarising my self even more with the new steed. I planned to stay on the backroads and my time was a little limited since my wife was at the hairdresser and wouldn’t be there for overly long.
So it was out to the highway via the Marshall Mount road where I stopped for some spectacular pics of the magnificent view from the top of the mountain,
I did decide not to hurry and to take plenty of photos, the cloud formations were spectacular. So then it was up Macquarie Pass, a nice clear run, thank you very much, and time to stop and get some photos since I wasn’t being hassled by traffic.
By far my favourite is this one with the massive cliffs in the background.
I know that it’s naughty but I was also able to stop at the hairpin and get a couple of shots of the waterfalls that are always a feature after we’ve had a lot of rain.
From there it was the Pie Shop for a cuppa and a chinwag with a couple of riders, both of whom I recognised but I couldn’t put a name to (getting old) and it is here that the title of my blog will start to make some sense (hopefully). As, what shall we say, mature riders, it didn’t take long for us to start chatting about how great modern bikes were with all the safety gear that they have. It didn’t take long, however, for us to start exploring what WASN’T great about modern bikes (the three of us were all riding modern bikes).
At the forefront of the discussion was the fact that modern bikes have so many electronic gimmicks (all of which can make your riding easier and even save your life) that riders comes to rely overly much on them, almost to the point of expecting that they will compensate for poor riding and bad training. And it is then that my mate dropped the phrase “buying ability” And there, right then, summed up in two little words is the problem with our modern electronically-loaded bikes. I so wish I had thought of this phrase. Riders, much in line with the rest of our society, expect that they can BUY the ability that they need to ride well by buying bikes that have all these electronic “aids”.
We have been brainwashed into believing that anything we want can be bought and we transfer this belief into our riding and our driving.
But riding skill CANNOT be bought. Ability cannot be bought; they can only be earned, experienced, normally over many years of on-road experience. And the moment we start believing that all of that experience can be bought by buying the bike that has electronic-everything, we are on a slippery slope towards danger and disaster, no matter HOW good the riding aids are. Yes, ABS, lean angle sensors and the other fripperies, CAN save your life, but reliance upon them instead of what you have LEARNED is nonsense.
Bottom line, you can’t BUY ability, you can only develop it.
So, I headed home, the ride part of my ride much briefer than what I had planned but the storehouse had been added to and that can’t be over-estimated.
I paused at Jamberoo Lookout for the great view over the coastal plain and moseyed on into Kiama for my traditional photo shoot on the helipad near the rock pool.
When I got home I was a little surprised to note that I’d been gone for over 3 hours and yet had only covered 109kms. Sometimes your day just goes like that, doesn’t it? The extra hour chatting with good friends made it all the more worthwhile.
Here’s how Relive saw my ride. Oh, the title is really a misnomer since the ride was from the sea to the mountains, but, somehow that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
