Title: Motivation
Date: February 22, 2008 12:44 PM
Category: My Riding
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It’s still February, just, but it’s sunny outside today and the sunshine always makes me think of going for a ride. However, the amount of snow and ice still on the roads here in Toronto precludes it, at least unless you are suicidal and while I ride a sportsbike in a major city, I don’t class myself as such.

When I think back to last year though, I had ample opportunity to actually get out and do more riding. I was basically taking a sabbatical from work, as were at least one of my regular riding buddies, and yet we didn’t do as much riding as we would have liked. Why? I can’t speak for anyone else but I personally have a stack of excuses. These include, but are not limited to

1. I live in the city – it takes me 45 minutes minimum to get anywhere interesting.

2. It so damn hot in the summer, especially when you factor in point 1

3. There’s usually no-one else around

This year, my response to all these things must be “so what?“. That’s partly why we built this site. We hope to deal with points 1 and 3 by asking you to show us the routes you like, the urban GP courses and backroads that make things fun, even for city riders and we hope to meet many of your doing the same.

Point two is somewhat harder to resolve. Yes, it is hot in Toronto in the summer, often well into the 30’s (that’s the 90’s for you Americans) and there’s not a lot I or anyone else can do about that. Further out the city it is often cooler, though not by much. Typically getting there mean sitting on the highway or at traffic lights, which in full leathers is no fun – oh to be in California where lane splitting is legal. But if I put it in perspective, the time I spend in traffic is soon eclipsed by the sheer exhilaration of being on a twisty road with nary a car in sight for a few hours. What I need is the motivation to realize this.

But I think I found my solution whilst playing on my xbox last night. For those of you not familiar with Microsoft’s latest game console, most of the games contain something called achievements. Basically, you do something in the game such as kill a few bad guys in a row or make a particular jump and you get some points. I want to bring that to my biking.

Just to be clear, I am not expecting to upgrade to Microsoft Fireblade 08 to achieve this. No, instead I plan on setting myself a number of goals for this years biking. I haven’t really figured out everything I want to do yet, but here’s a few

1. In my street riding, I want to be able to get my knee down as and when the circumstances permit

2. I want to go on at least two long road trips

3. In my dirt riding, I want to get at least 20 hours on each of my bikes. Due to various disasters/vacations last year, I managed only about ten on each.

So, there’s nothing particularly lofty there: nothing out of the ordinary, but I also need to plan on how to achieve them and that’s going to keep me busy until it’s time to get the bikes out, so perhaps this winter lark isn’t all bad. I’m already planning a road trip and there’ll be more than a few weekend run outs to look forward to as we search out new undiscovered roads to share with you. Who knows, we might even find a way to work achievements into the site…

So now that I shared my goals with you, what are your goals for this years biking?

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