#Obsolescence

If you stick around long enough it is hard not to be increasingly reminded of one’s own obsolescence. I have stickers on a clipboard I carry to riders meetings at the track that are older than a good many of the racers there. I will admit a preference for those things that demonstrably work rather than those things that are demonstrably new – I was late to the dawn of the replaceable knee puck era in the early ‘80s, I slept through the neon ‘90s never fully appreciating all the pink wheels and leathers, and the Y2K speed hump leathers craze left me flat. But the last thing I was expecting late last year was to be laid bare by an Art Linkletter quote proffered by none other than MO’s esteemed moto-Jarhead, Gabe.

The four stages of man are infancy, childhood, adolescence, and obsolescence.