I need some serious help from my moto friends.

[ThumperX]

There’s a bike meet every Wednesday in Marin. It’s a great group of folks that can use some young blood. I drive since the BARF bike remains in the shop but no one judges.

 

[augustiron]

Life changes...

2004: Single, in SF, commute to work on moto, side hustle flipping motos, 12+ motos in the garage, working on other people's motos, restoring old Honda's, no kids, joyride for pleasure every weekend, sumo track days...etc.
Full Moto life

2014: SF, wife and kids, high level corporate career working long hours, leftover time is for family. Couple of bikes and projects to tinker with.

2024: Tahoe, "retired", full family life, kids ride dirt, 6 month winter = no riding without travel, so many other outdoor activities to find time for, still have a few bikes and projects, more quick dirt riding than anything. Work on friends' bikes.

Still love bikes, still love BARF, but I was never the type to do ride reports, take pictures during rides, be social in meat space, etc.

Life changes.

Remember getting wild with friends in your younger years?
Still think you can/would want to do that the same now 25 years later?

 

[ratpick]

for awhile now I’ve been feeling crappy for not riding enough, putting others first or just being lazy weather is bad etc then guilty for not getting out.I also think the passing of my best friend and brother from another mother Johndicezx9, my only close friend who gets bikes put me in a riding funk.
These last few weeks I have gotten some nice rides in and wondering why I didn’t get out of the funk earlier.I’m gonna ride a lot more and post more about it ,try and make my small contribution here.

 

[budman]

Pretty sweet post Patrick

I just hugged my best friend good bye and shed a tear. He is moving out of state.

Miss John too.
My loss will find a smile at some point. Yours are harder to find.
I think he would approve of your "On location" postings.

Hang in there.

 

[Lonster]

Suck it up buttercup!
I have gone from riding weekly with a group of up to 14 men and women, to riding solo by default. All of my riding pals have either moved away/moved on or stopped riding altogether. A couple only do track days and one is a lone wolf.
So to fuel my passion and maintain my meditation I ride by myself. (Except when I ride with Reama or at the HoHo Rally! )
I really miss the group experience, but I love riding so much, that I try not to think about being abandoned.
I too have seen much less Moto energy being posted on Barf, but I still come here at least once a day to get my fix and see what's happening.
Gotta get my fix and keep track of some real friends.

 

[CDONA]

My easy fix, pix on location, me @ the park's dumpster, I make the run 3 + times a week?

But I'm too old for the demographic,
I did get some serious side eye from an E-biker, that may have had a thought of going bigger.

 

[two wheel tramp]

Suck it up buttercup!
I have gone from riding weekly with a group of up to 14 men and women, to riding solo by default. All of my riding pals have either moved away/moved on or stopped riding altogether. A couple only do track days and one is a lone wolf.
So to fuel my passion and maintain my meditation I ride by myself. (Except when I ride with Reama or at the HoHo Rally! )
I really miss the group experience, but I love riding so much, that I try not to think about being abandoned.
I too have seen much less Moto energy being posted on Barf, but I still come here at least once a day to get my fix and see what's happening.
Gotta get my fix and keep track of some real friends.

i’m hoping i'm healed by the time greyback opens so we can go ride like girls.

 

[Sharxfan]

Budman! I was thinking about BARF the other day. I don't live in California any longer (I live in the Great State of Texas) but with social media, honestly, I enjoy the quick fix of Instagram. The looooooong form of BARF (or Facebook, which I don't have) is simply a thing of the past, but some of us still can enjoy it.

As an addition to what you referred to above, is that I could post something benign, like what I said above: "I live in the Great State of Texas" and somebody will say some crap like "yOu eNjoyIng deNying wOmEn thE riGht tO chooSE??" or something like that - and I just grew tired of that kinda stuff.

The social aspect of BARF is something I reminisce about from time to time. It's just a different world now. One of the things I really enjoy are ratbikes - and I there are endless photos of those on Instagram. On here? Not so much. Also, again, I would say something like that and somebody would make some snarky comment like "why would you ruin a perfectly good bike" or something irritating.

It's that kind of stuff that just turned me off to BARF over time - hence why I stopped frequenting the site. I have so much love for this site, but the snarky comments - I'm just too old for it now and got better things to do than flame around with somebody I don't know.

FWIW, I still ride out here in Texas - I live near the Hill Country. NOTHING like the Bay Area, but it's still something, and very enjoyable. There's a track nearby (Harris Raceway), and riding will always be something I do. There will always be a soft spot in my heart for BARF and it brings me so many fond memories when it was in its infant stages.

I didn't know you moved! Welcome neighbor. I had wondered what happened to you as you dropped out of the Get Fit Thread. Glad to hear you are okay.

 

[WFO]

I believe mental health comes from within. It often requires exercise. FInd a way to release the toxins. Good reason to go for a ride. Embrace the solitude.

Why bother shelling out dough to a shrink unless she's hot (like Jennifer Melfi hot) and it's free.

I used to ask if anyone wanted to go on group rides. I'm not that charismatic so nobody ever shows up. I invited a buncha people to do this Alp/Adriatic thing a bit over two years ago and the only guy who showed up was my cousin. It was a great fuggin trip.

If nobody shows that's okay too. Some of my best rides have been solo.

If you can video them, it's even more better.

Some guys from San Jose BMW do really good group rides every other Wednesday evening during the summer months.

I did this Ducati Travel Experience, Edelweiss trip in 2011. It was pretty kick-ass. That's called Five Grand of good psychotherapy.

When you get to where everything is flowing and you feel like you're mastering gravity, everything is right in the world at that particular moment.

 

[Escape pod]

A family of nine rides together/future bad ass bikers.​

 

[littlebeast]

I would say so. It is fading. I am interested in seeing the AFM races this year to see how many younger adults are participating in that. The kids are still out there but access to dirt is way more limited than when I was a kid. In most areas you need a parent to get you there vs just rolling out.

I could see an urban E-Dirt bike facility making a big difference in parents willingness to let their kids engage.
Lots of other things for kids to do these days and the danger is still real to most parents.

There is no doubt that the avg age of riders continues to climb.

not up here. a ton of the kids ride back and forth to school (and terrorize the vicinity in the process). the local sheriff even told everyone to quit calling about it. they know what’s going on, and they’ve intervened to extent they intend to (in other words - not much, lol). saw a group ride on one of the trails a couple of weeks ago. an adult in front, and another sweeping. a pack of little kids in between. cute as hell. also met a kindergartener who schooled me on how to hill climb on a dirt bike. including throttle control. little fucker gives me this super serious look and says ‘if you do it any different, you’ll loop ‘er fer sure’.

 

[WFO]

I have a cousin who lives near Wiesbaden. The Taunus Mountains are nearby. (They're similar to the Santa Cruz Mountains 'cept it smells better since it rains all the time.)

Anyway, he and his buddies would all meet up on Saturday mornings for group rides. What they would do is have a potluck, continental breakfast at one of they're homes before the ride. I thought this was really cool. The roads in the area are superb and there aren't too many tourists to clog the arteries. They would stop at a local pub for lunch and have kick-ass, non-alcoholic beers. Then in the afternoon they would stop at a ice cream/coffee shop for a quick break.

It would be cool to do something like that around here during the warmer months.

 

[budman]

That is cool to hear littlebeast and WFO.

I get that there is still a strong vibe where access can be had. I have seen that access diminish in the Bay Area over the last 5 decades. Makes it hard for kiddos to get out when they have to depend on a parent to get them to a spot they can ride. I was lucky to be able to push my bike a mile and go ride and had a friends Dad that rode and would take his son and I to the local spots and Holister or Carnegie. Losing the PAL tracks and then Fremont Raceway put a huge dent in racing activities IMO.

Still the facts show that the age of the average licensed motorcyclist continues to rise and registrations at least in CA continue to decline. I have stated in our CMSP meetings part of that was the drastic rise in registration cost. I used myself as an example where I had 4 moto's registered an insured and then non-opped 3 of those.

Sure glad to be in the mix of still riding.

 

[gixxerjeff]

There’s a bike meet every Wednesday in Marin. It’s a great group of folks that can use some young blood.

Tell me more about this, G

 

[cheez]

This looks fun, too bad I'll be out of office.




Same for this.

 

[ThumperX]

It began as a Facebook Group I never cross posted but it’s at Maya Palenque in San Rafael

 

[cheez]

There’s a bike meet every Wednesday in Marin. It’s a great group of folks that can use some young blood. I drive since the BARF bike remains in the shop but no one judges.

The SFBAM one hosted by Tony at Maya Palenque in Novato? Sweeeet. I haven't made it yet but he's been trying to get me up there for years.

 

[littlebeast]

That is cool to hear littlebeast and WFO.

I get that there is still a strong vibe where access can be had. I have seen that access diminish in the Bay Area over the last 5 decades. Makes it hard for kiddos to get out when they have to depend on a parent to get them to a spot they can ride. I was lucky to be able to push my bike a mile and go ride and had a friends Dad that rode and would take his son and I to the local spots and Holister or Carnegie. Losing the PAL tracks and then Fremont Raceway put a huge dent in racing activities IMO.

Still the facts show that the age of the average licensed motorcyclist continues to rise and registrations at least in CA continue to decline. I have stated in our CMSP meetings part of that was the drastic rise in registration cost. I used myself as an example where I had 4 moto's registered an insured and then non-opped 3 of those.

Sure glad to be in the mix of still riding.

road-wise, we are in the middle of moto heaven up here (turn left out of our property, and it’s 9 miles of twisties to get to civilization; turn right, and it’s twisties as far as you wanna go - the only limiting factor is fuel range). wrt the locals, dirt is even bigger - trails everywhere. or you just make ‘em as you go, which is what people bitch about the kids doing (they have zero respect for the concept of ‘private property’ lol).

 

[anytwowilldo]

I love riding and do it as often as I can. I ride the RT out to the coast on a regular basis. I'm fortunate that my SO loves to ride pillion and often initiates the ride. A group of us ride a 1,000 to 1,400 mile ADV ride -with a bunch of dirt - annually. Camping off the bike with your good friends for 8 days is awesome. We ride the Sheetiron, Lost Coast, Mojave/Barstow area and other rides as often as possible annually. We just got back from an Adventure ride in Colombia. I feel that I ride quite a bit, but just don't post about it very often on any SM. I'll try to be better.

 

[ThumperX]

The SFBAM one hosted by Tony at Maya Palenque in Novato? Sweeeet. I haven't made it yet but he's been trying to get me up there for years.

That’s the one. I’ll see how he feels about cross posting.