Are they really much different than e.g. motorcyclists? (FX: thinks fondly back to the days of cracking 4 throttles wide open on a 1200cc bike and making the horizon turn into a point, and everything else a blur... sigh. To be young again...)
... yeah, those were the days of Golden Earring: ... another radar lover gone, and the good die young.
Why are we still alive ? Was our mere lifestyle too boring sheepish and ordinary - We need to re-evaluate ourselves.
Speak for yourself... I've been shot, stabbed, burned up, blowed up, and in a truck that flipped over sixteen times. I've fought, fucked and farted on 3 different continents... I never expected to see 30, much less fifty-somethin'.
The bitch part now is I have to pay out all those checks I wrote on my poor abused body as a youth...
mnem
"A misspent youth is better by far... than a wise and productive old age..."
All the sweet memories of old age are made of the sins you committed when you were young, not the times you have been exceptionally nice.
Amen brutha... I think a lot of what excites you as a youth (which defines your adult tastes to a large degree) is directly related to locus and availability. I grew up poor in a rural area which hometown happened to be home to a circuit dirt-oval racetrack, and neighbors owned a Yamaha dealership. I got into dirt bikes and stock car racing simply because I could kibbutz with wealthier neighbors for free, and glommed me some serviceable hand-me down. These experiences formed my taste for ground-based speed-junky-ing at a young age, which later evolved into street bikes and ponycars as an adult with discretionary income. I still miss the adrenaline rush of carving corners on my GPZ1100 and hunting 'vette's on my H1/H2 Kawasakis (500/750cc 2-stroke triples that would literally accelerate out from under you if you didn't grip them with your knees like a riding a bucking bronco); I lived for the grin.
Not that I didn't dream of flying and flight-related sports; I did, I still do, and that lifetime dream is what still fuels my FPV model aviation hobby. The bottom line was always the cost of entry; there simply was not enough discretionary money at any time in my life that I could ever seriously consider any kind of personal aircraft hobby, even as a member of a coop.
I learned in my 30s how quickly the reflexes dull if you don't use them every day; after only a few years away from the clip-on handlebars life, I bought a 900 Ninja. I returned it to the dealership in less than a week because I found that it simply was more bike than I could handle; I knew I'd just keep pushing
the my own personal envelope trying to get that rush again, and I wouldn't live long enough to pay the thing off. I'd lost my edge.
I've had me a few boulevard cruisers since then; of course it's not the same. You can't just take the motorcyclist out of the equation;
Conservation of Energy refuses to allow the psychic force of such a driving passion to simply evaporate. But since we had the kids, those toys are long ago packed away until both of them have grown up and developed some common sense; I know viscerally that it was sheer dumb luck I survived those raging-hormone years of being 10 feet tall & bulletproof.
mnem
*sigh*