Well, to me anyway. I guess I’ve always preferred ‘different’; I can’t stand the whine of IL4s and don’t really care much for bikes without ‘character’.
There is something special about the bond you end up forging with a bike. It takes you places but it also gifts you memories, perhaps more so than a car because you might find yourself more purposefully going out for ‘pleasure’ than anything else.
Today my Buell left home. Fair enough I hadn’t ridden it for years and it had its challenges, but it’s the best bike I’ve ever ridden and I will miss it immensely. I feel sad
For the most part they're just metal and plastic to me, hardly surprising given the nature of my job. The only exceptions being my Speed Triple and my FiL's Bonneville. They're both bikes that have been in teh family for decades, so they mean something. I don't think it's so much the bikes themselves, it's just the fact they've been around for a long time.
I like all bikes that are well maintained. Small ones, big ones, two, three, four cylinders - so long as they go and stop when I want. I trade old bikes in for new ones so I'm normally too excited about the new one to miss the new one.
The only bike I've missed is the CB1000r. I traded it and a Street Triple R in for my new Street Triple RS because it needed improved front suspension. It would have been an easy fix and now I wish I'd kept it as it was handy for longer runs (like Spain) despite doing little over 100 miles per tank. I don't like the new version but there are plenty of the old versions about for a reasonable cost so I may get one one day. A friend turned up on one a few weeks ago, black and gold with all the trimmings - I have to admit, I was a little jealous.
I get more out of bikes I put more into. Buy a perfect bike and just ride it and its soulless to me. Buy a bike and work on it and you invest yourself into the bike and it becomes more attached!
Objects themselves aren't necessarily going to be something that a person would logically form an emotional bond with.
But objects that inspired the generation of great memories and experiences, will then inspire the recollection of those memories and thus the emotional bond is formed with the object being the 'middleman' or 'proxy'.
To analysis it in such a way though is a very cold-hearted thing, better to just accept that we will form emotional bonds with certain inanimate objects, without wondering too much why it is.
Docca wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 11:51 am
Well, to me anyway. I guess I’ve always preferred ‘different’; I can’t stand the whine of IL4s and don’t really care much for bikes without ‘character’.
There is something special about the bond you end up forging with a bike. It takes you places but it also gifts you memories, perhaps more so than a car because you might find yourself more purposefully going out for ‘pleasure’ than anything else.
Today my Buell left home. Fair enough I hadn’t ridden it for years and it had its challenges, but it’s the best bike I’ve ever ridden and I will miss it immensely. I feel sad
I have to ask, why did you get rid then?
weeksy wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 11:57 am
Nope, not in the slightest.
I enjoy bikes but only so much emotional attachmentas I enjoy any other object I own.
Sometimes I regret a sale, but if it's that right, I'd just buy another.
That's sort of my feeling too- yes, there are bikes I've had and sold that sometimes I wish I still had, but I can't say I miss any of them if I'm being completely honest- they really are just plastic and metal, no matter how much of my time I've put into them, or whatever experiences they've given me, and as such don't figure in the real top end of my emotional attachments
I've sold bikes that I hoped had gone to a good home and some that I never thought about again or was glad to see the back of. All or most of them had similar memories of trips, times and places so there must be something about the ones I actually cared about rather than the other things associated with them. It's irrational, I know I could buy another of the same type, but there's one particular bike I want back. (He's called Rommel and is big and yellow ).
Doubt is not a pleasant condition.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Voltaire
In my heart I am strongly attached. I keep them a long time as a rule, without exception I do all the fettling and servicing.
In my head I am dead-inside. I've honestly not given any of them more than a backwards glance - normally there's a "new" one in the wings isn't there?
I actually had to stop and think whether I had ever really considered "what happened to them?"
Having said all that, there's nothing much sadder than a bike sat, gathering rust and not getting used. I even don't like to see them (or cars) in museums knowing that they'll never get fired up never mind used again as they were intended. It seems a real waste.
Hopefully Docca's Buell is going to get primped and polished and ridden again and make someone else grin.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Voltaire
Count Steer wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 4:01 pm
Having said all that, there's nothing much sadder than a bike sat, gathering rust and not getting used. I even don't like to see them (or cars) in museums knowing that they'll never get fired up never mind used again as they were intended. It seems a real waste.
Hopefully Docca's Buell is going to get primped and polished and ridden again and make someone else grin.
Count Steer wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 4:01 pm
Having said all that, there's nothing much sadder than a bike sat, gathering rust and not getting used. I even don't like to see them (or cars) in museums knowing that they'll never get fired up never mind used again as they were intended. It seems a real waste.
Hopefully Docca's Buell is going to get primped and polished and ridden again and make someone else grin.
Nope, just assemblies of various materials, and that's even after I've spent much time modifying them. There's nothing I own that I wouldn't sell for the right price.
I'm no more emotional about pets, look after them and treat them well, but at the end it's only a cat and there's not exactly a shortage of them.
I do get attached to my bikes in some ways and have been saddened a little to see some go. Having said that,I've never again bought any of the same bikes I've sold.
The timescale will vary from person to person,but when something else catches my eye,the old bike is gone.
I've never owned an bike that I could look back on and say it was the best bike I've ever ridden,everything new is better by default,otherwise I'd have kept or rebought the one which was the best ever. Best ever in it's day,perhaps.
