meeting deadlines or being foggy in my brain, or sud-
denly sick. They were used to Julie being active, upbeat
and extremely fit and healthy.
Between my health and Jim’s death, I decided to take a
hiatus from riding for about six months to gather myself.
During this time I let myself grieve, sold my motorcy-
cle, found a therapist and a hypnotherapist, sought out
spiritual counselling, and watched a lot of comedy. I also
watched motorcycling movies, continued to follow my
friends’ adventures and wondered if I was becoming one
of the many injured, traumatized athletes who switched
roles from participants to spectators. I now understand
why someone would make such a decision and I judge no
one for walking away from the arena.
Meanwhile ... I’m stubborn ...
I longed for the freedom of riding. It became clear
that I needed to take action to get out of this dark period.
So, in February 2017 I bought a 2016 BMW G650GS and
began riding again with a few close friends. I started out
slowly, so that I could ride without shaking like a leaf or
shitting my pants. I still felt conflicted about riding.
Over time, I steeled my resolve and committed to be-
coming a rider, not just as I had been, but a better rider,
knowing my limitations and not being timid to state
them.
I needed better gear: preferably a full suit of armour
straight out of the Middle Ages. I reached out to Klim
and briefly told them my story. Since they didn’t have
any steel armour in stock, I was gifted a Klim-Gortex
adventure jacket and pants.
I wanted to come to grips with my physical fears.
While in the process of deciding whether to directly
face my leg-breaking failure at RawHyde, I went to their
Castaic site and eyed the trails cautiously.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to go off-road but also envious of
other riders who seemed to be having no difficulty at all.
There was a tug of war in my brain. On the one hand, I
didn’t want to fail, fall, and get hurt; on the other hand,
needle-pointing was out of the question.
Jim Hyde, the owner, was encouraging and more than
happy to let me have another go. So I took the plunge
and I signed up for my “do-over” for the Intro to Adven-
ture course slated for February 2017. I planned on rent-
ing one of their motorcycles since my newly acquired
G650GS was all stock with street tyres, no crash bars and
no bash plate.
The date of the do-over kept changing for a number
of reasons. The new creative director of the magazine
I wrote for thought I was such a jerk. Despite his angry
outbursts, my pride wouldn’t let me tell him about my
many setbacks.
In hindsight, the delay turned out to be just fine. It
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