Trade offs

Sometimes when you want something you have to give up something, that’s just life. A little less pasta at dinner means you can have Tirramisou for desert.

I want a new motorcycle, the wife says sure go ahead, but…you have to get rid of one or two first. Oh, uh..OK, I guess. “ But honey, there aren’t any motorcycles I want to get rid of..I ride them all” Then comes ‘the look’ followed by the “well, something has to go”.

So, I start looking around the barn, well there is that ‘82 Suzuki GS400 I thought I would turn into a Cafe Racer that’s covered in dust and cob webs, a front end off a Honda Hurricane, a couple of GSX-R wheels and a box full of oddball parts that somebody is bound to want that I can put on e-bay or craigslist. But wait, I might need them some day, I can’t get rid of this stuff.

What else do I have laying around? What’s that old saying…one mans trash is another mans treasure…Ok…let’s see…bunch of old magazines…uh, Life Magazine “Man lands on the Moon”, gotta be worth something…old Surfer Magazines from the 60’s….there’s some old surf dude who wants those…and then ‘the epiphany’.

For various reasons I stopped surfing a number of years ago and hanging in the rafters of my barn is the last surfboard I rode, a 10’7” Velzy. A true classic, a work of floating art. The motorcycle I want, a 1976 BMWR90S, is also a true classic, a piece of rolling art. Here is where the trade off comes. I still ride motorcycles but I don’t surf, so do I sell the surfboard, a piece of my history for the past forty years or do I look to the future sell the board and buy the motorcycle?

I bought the BMW.