Born to be mild

A long-time friend had a short, blunt response when he read here that Amy and I had bought motorcycles.

"You're crazy," he said.

His concern that a 60-year-old man with bum knees, a questionable hip and pins holding his ankles together should be tooling around the roads on a motorized two-wheeler is understandable. Conventional wisdom says we shouldn't do it.

But Amy and I have never been conventional and I've always been an adrenaline junkie. It's a shame to waste one of the best motorcycle venues in the country -- The Blue Ridge Parkway.

The other day I met a 67-year-old woman with two plastic knees and a spinal cord stimulator in her back. She and her husband were riding their twin Harley Electra-Glides on the Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway from Front Royal to Asheville and back. She started riding bikes just two years ago -- after surgery to replace her knees and insertion of the spinal cord stimulator.

At 55 and 60, Amy and I live every day to the fullest. We've both had wonderful lives and we came here to enjoy the years we have left. Once Amy gets her motocycle certification we plan a number of trips on the bikes.

Crazy? Perhaps but life itself is a little crazy. Might as well enjoy it.