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• There is freedom in riding a motorcycle. We've all heard and said that, and it's true, but it's not completely true. The complete truth is that riding offers many freedoms, not just one.
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• There's something about the Missouri River that arouses a deep yearning in me, and whenever I hear it referred to as The Big Muddy, I go to a different time.
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• I stop at a gas station in Rich Hill and a smiling fellow walks on over. He looks at my license plate and asks, "California?" "Yep," I say. And then he asks the question that bikers get asked more often than any other. "Bet your butt hurts, don't it?" I answer, "Damn right!" but honestly, that's not the truth. The truth is that my butt never hurts when I'm riding. Never. That is, until I'm ten miles from my next stop. Evidently, there's something about ten-miles-away that wakes up this Pavlovian Dog Gene I have. It's odd. I'll be riding along just as butt-comfy as can be, but as soon as I'm ten-miles-away, my butt starts screaming in agony like it's being ripped to shreds by a bloodthirsty Rottweiler.
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• This is one of those awkward moments when you realize you didn't do the obvious. Why does this only happen when I'm talking with a pretty woman?
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• Find beauty in all things; the grand and the minute, the sublime and the vulgar.
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• Truly, the dead and the dying give us many gifts.
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• A few seconds later, my front end drops down about two inches and I'm riding on nothing but the front rim while the tire is wiggling all over the place. It feels like I'm riding a pogo stick on a rockslide. I finally get to the shoulder and stop. When my heart rate dips below 150, I calmly take a full analysis of the situation and discover two things: I'm still upright and the front tire is, indeed, flat.
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• The moment you adopt the philosophy of "good enough" you're on that
dusty road to a mediocre deadend.