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GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – As we approach New Year’s Eve 2012/New Year’s Day 2013, I find myself preparing for the bitter-sweet send-off of motorcycle number 13 in my catalogue of bikes and maybe not coincidentally, singing odes to another dreamer and fan of new beginnings, John Lennon, “Another year over, and a new one just begun…”

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Lucky 13. That’s the number of motorcycles I have owned, ridden and sold, counting my current bike – a ’91 VFR 750, now up for sale.

There is a particular satisfaction to letting go of this favourite bike at the close of a particularly hard year.

Why? Because this bike has been so good to me – and is such a great bike altogether.

“Instant karma’s gonna get you…“  Letting her go amounts to an act of faith on my part; that 2013 will be an auspicious year, that stalled personal and professional aspirations will be rekindled, that I will be just fine without this counterbalance in my life – for a few months anyhow.

Getting ready to part with a loved bike inevitably follows the seven stages of separation:

• Anxiety at the thought of being without two-wheels.

• You picture yourself on a new bike on a high road with tangerine trees and marmalade skies.

• Disdain, for your faithful but tired horse.

• Betrayal, when your bike refuses to start for a prospective buyer, or suddenly develops a phantom short in the headlight wiring.

• Shame and repentance, for having thought less of an old friend.

• Amends made, starter and headlight miraculously fixed.

• And again anxiety at the thought of being without wheels. “It feels just like starting over…“

I am at stage two right now – though my wife is trying to disabuse me of the future bike “Double Fantasy“.

For me, the world of owning and trading used bikes is a “Walter Mitty” affair, a chance to live out alternate realities with each unique machine enriching and adding depth to the life experience (it is also less expensive than serial marriage/divorce).

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one, perhaps one day you’ll join us,” and the world will ride as one.

Here’s to happy and safe motoring in 2013!

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