I realize I haven't bothered writing (on this blog anyways) since I bought my new Ducati in November. But let's be reasonable, I wasn't doing much riding and I was dealing with bad winter depression. I mean I'm still depressed but at least it's warming up outside and I can ride a little more, so that helps. I clocked off the "run in" mileage on my new bike and got it serviced before winter officially started, and got to break the triple digits before I plugged it into the tender and didn't ride for a month.
In December I spent a couple days at an AirBnB with friends. We did a little snowboarding but the weather was viciously cold and the powder so deep that snowboarding wasn't much fun. But being with friends and doing a little drinking was great.
By January I was not having a good time at all. Career burnout, feelings of aimlessness, being trapped, all of that on top of the usual seasonal depression. Working from home has it's benefits, but because of the cultural shifts that happened during pandemic, there's no point to going in to the office at least socially speaking. The damage is done, my co-workers don't want anything to do with other humans. I miss my old company where at least we went to lunch once in a while or talked about Star Wars taking a walk.
I had some ideas bouncing around my head for a while and I started writing. I'll be frank that it's "fanfic" set in the Cyberpunk world, but beyond the world building it was all my own characters and story. It is a noir-detective story. Greed and corruption are the driving factors in the story. The main characters are pawns in the games played by the string-pullers of the world. Just last night I "finished" it, at least I wrapped up the story arcs for the main characters. What started out as an episodic collection of shorts ended as a novel. My girlfriend read it and she liked it, but she's probably biased right? Exercising my creative side helped me get through things although it became a compulsive thing of it's own. Will it see the light of day? No. I did it for me.
It can't rain all the time and a few rides did happen. After the vicious December we had a mild January and February with a few riding days. Some of our favorite roads were remarkably clear although the pavement has degraded a lot over the winter.
Pictured: what happens when you ride near the limit on a road you haven't seen in four months that fell apart over the winter on a bike you've hardly ridden. The rider lived but has some new hardware installed in his body and has become an "I used to ride" person.
Now that it's spring the weather in the Willamette Valley is bipolar: rain, thunder, hail, then sunshine, then repeat. As soon as you get geared up for a ride or decide to go for a walk because the rain stopped, it'll start again. This weekend though it looks like it'll be nice! Everyone is coming out of hibernation at once and I have to pick and choose which fun thing or motorcycle ride to go on. Go cheer on my friends at OMRRA or go riding? Winter-depressed-me is jealous of spring-depressed-but-busy me.
Usually this time of year I'd be figuring out which trackdays to go to and other fun stuff but not this year. I'm going to MotoAmerica at the Ridge in June and going on a long weekend ride into NorCal in May but beyond that no plans. Given the pay cut I took to get employed again and some unexpected expenses, I'm barely in the black, and the track might have to take a back burner. I'll get a few days in, but right now I don't have them planned or paid for.
Giving it thought I realized I really wanted to take some trips and venture further. It feels like my life has been on hold for two years. My cabin fever and valley fever are awful but the amount of fear and momentum keeping me in place is tremendous. Not fear of getting sick mind you, fear of things turning out like my Southwest trip or Washington trip, getting turned away, having to walk through drive throughs, people being afraid of me, bullshit like that. I was talking with my girlfriend about going to Mexico next winter but in the middle of that discussion I found out some acquaintances of mine were stuck there. They went down for their honeymoon and had to stay an additional two weeks because of positive tests, isolating in an AirBnB shack (spoiler alert: they never even felt sick).
Here's a silver lining in the storm cloud. With gas prices going nuts, maybe that'll mean fewer RVs and tourists in my way when I travel? Yeah, not likely. Guessing everyone that has a functioning credit card will be traveling this summer because they feel the same as me.
All that said, at least we're on the upswing of the year. Weather is getting warmer, I'm determined to get out. Life has an expiration date, don't wait to live it.
