While reading this you should bear in mind that I am a small female rider who didn’t start riding until fairly late in life so that colors what I value in a riding buddy.<\/p>\n
I like riding with guys. Why guys? Less drama, better riders who I can learn from, in the long run I think they’re more fun. To be honest I need my motorcycle moved occassionally because I park in a poorly selected locations (anything that requires backing up even the slightest incline) and sometimes I need my motorcycle picked up since I’ve been known to go down on gravel and simply drop it when I’m tired.<\/p>\n
Ideally I’d like my riding buddy to have a decent level of first aid and CPR because I want to know the person I ride with can take care of me or anyone else if something goes wrong. This is something I provide the people I ride with — I want to get it in return.<\/p>\n
I also want my riding buddy to have mechanical ability so if one of our motorcycles stops running his first thought will not be to call for towing. The ability to fix a flat tire, repair things that may break when a bike drops, diagnose why a motorcycle won’t run are all basic skills I would like to see. One of the reasons I prefer riding with males is because there are times when I work on my motorcycle that I’m not strong enough to break bolts loose — I need someone who can.<\/p>\n
A basic attitude that we’re in it together and to share all chores when camping, take care of each other, and always help each other with bike problems is definitely required.<\/p>\n
For a guy to ride with me he has to have the ability to dial back his testosterone induced need for high speeds so that I am able to ride with him on my 650. He also has to have a pretty decent sense of humor to get him through the times when I’m scared, over tired, or starved since I tend to get a little cranky at those times. I rally quickly, but I do have my cranky moments. He also needs to be able to handle the rare meltdown — I’ve had days when I’ve been so scared for so long that I have ended up in tears. An important point here is that I am not fearless like some people are — I do things even though I’m scared. It catches up with me at times.<\/p>\n
Speaking of sharing the work of camping — it’s a lot more fun to ride with someone who has good camping experience and skills. When it comes to other accomodations someone has to be comfortable in luxury hotels and also tolerant when less than stellar motels are all the available. I’ve had to spend the night in some near hovels because I was too tired to go farther. Not my favorite thing, but not the end of the world either.<\/p>\n
There are some motorcyclists that ride only for the ride — if it can’t be seen from the motorcycle it doesn’t need to be seen. Take pictures? Forget it. This approach doesn’t work for me.<\/p>\n
I love the ride but I ride to see the world so I like to stop to see things and even take time to get photographs. I research the trips before I go and know what I want to see along the way. One reason I don’t like ridiculously high speeds is that I really believe the experience should be savored. I don’t have the ability to savor at 90 MPH.<\/p>\n
That’s a pretty good start — I’ll post more ideas as I come up with them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While reading this you should bear in mind that I am a small female rider who didn’t start riding until fairly late in life so that colors what I value in a riding buddy. I like riding with guys. Why guys? Less drama, better riders who I can learn from, in the long run I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=870"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":956,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions\/956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}