So Close Yet So Far – Life's Way of Laughing at You

Currently, most of the country is under a blanket of snow, ice and freezing temperatures. Not Southern California, though – this past weekend saw temperatures north of 80 – I had to bust out my flip-flops and work on my foot tan!

Just kidding. I’m not originally from here, and don’t have tan feet. I grew up with the cold, and frankly, along with the seasons, it’s the one thing I miss most about home (besides my family of course). But having the ability to ride motorcycles year round is something I just can’t take for granted, even given my previous statement, which would probably be deemed sacrilegious by many Californians. Excalifornicate me then!

Please don’t, I like it here.

Growing up, when it got cold enough and the lakes and ponds froze over, that’s where you could often find my friends, family and me. We would ice-fish (read: drink beer), go skating, and take our dirtbikes/quads/snowmobiles/Jeeps and trucks out, carving mini racetracks into the ice. We’d go round and round with our studded tires until the ice got too thin and started turning to slush. Believe it or not, we actually even built fires out there – it got that cold sometimes. Man, those were the days…

The video below depicts a scene that isn’t that different from all the dumb and funny shit I used to get into out on the frozen lakes. The best part is watching how close, yet so far, they came to catching the runaway bike. And many of us probably know the feeling too, of running on the ice, knowing you can run faster but, because of all your layers, heavy boots, burning lungs and lack of traction, it just wasn’t meant to be… That’s life’s way of laughing at you, I guess.

Like dangling a carrot before the horse, take a moment and enjoy this group’s funny misfortune as they try to catch the runaway bike. Hopefully it will bring you some laughter and warmth in these cold times.