Maelochs

RMoutadir;

It comes to this: Do it or do something else. Choose.

First, you know it is all in your mind. You say you are scared by individual vehicles, but not by steady traffic? Steady traffic is a stream of .... wait for it ... Individual Vehicles. One startles you, the other does not, but the other is exactly as more deadly as the number of vehicles in the stream.

Second, whether you want to admit it or not, you don't have to ride. You can get another job---people change jobs all the time. Maybe this is the job you want ... but that is a choice. Accept the choice, or make a different one. All this waffling serves only harmful purpose.

You have decided to ride on those roads. No one is holding a gun to your head. And maybe deciding to do something else would be a huge and complicated decision, a life-changing decision. But if you get hit and crippled, that is life-changing too.

Equally, choosing to accept the choices you have already made and to accept the life you have chosen, would be equally life-changing.

We all have moments when a vehicle comes too close and we get a little scared ... but then, we don't get hit.

Some of us have been hit, too. But then, some folks have been hit by lightning. Some folks have fought in wars and been killed after they got home safely. The only certainty is that we all leave here, one way or another, at some time or another. What we do here is what matters.

I know this sound harsh, but ... it is a matter of growing up. Accept your life and its risks and rewards, or change your life and its risks and rewards. People have told you everything you need to hear. Now it is a matter of you changing your mind and changing your life, one way or another.

I have ridden on the road for fifty years. I have tasted fender, eaten windshield, and sampled pavement more times than I like to remember. I still love riding. But only you are you. Choose honestly, because whatever you choose, there will be both costs and rewards.