For the same reason a person wears a descriptive shirt with say like a slogan or image on it – it’s a message – and the viewer is reading it, digesting it, etc, etc. That’s what I do. If you’re shirt has a message on it then there’s a chance I’ll take time to read that message.

Currently I don’t have any tattoos but I used to shave my hair off my back and everywhere else but that was back when I was super concerned about body image so much so that I was a gym rat for many years including one year where I used steroids cause I didn’t have confidence and because I had / have muscle dysmorphia which is reverse anorexia. A famous trainer who trained movies stars at his gym once said that without naming names almost all his famous clients have low self esteem and a bad image of their body and if they didn’t he’d be out of business that’s what he said. I’ve made love with women sans hair and with hair and have found that many women don’t give a rats ass about body hair on a man especially hot foreign women from Mexico, Italy, etc, I live in San Diego near the beach where there are tourists aplenty. When I was a hardened gym rat of course I heard the saying ‘It’s a persons personality that counts most’ but that didn’t really sink in until I got older and now my inner game is stronger, stronger than my physicality come to think of it though I’m still strong on the outside. The amount of weight that I could bench press used to mean the world to me now it means nothing which for me is a fantastic accomplishment for someone who grew up thinking negatively about their body.

I would tell a n00b to take not one but several rider safety courses before they think about hitting the street. One safety course is not enough when talking rider safety. For something like this you want to engage ‘layered learning’ as we’re talking a life and death issue. And then when you get a little experience on the street you should go to a racers school. That’s right, take your Harley with extended forks and ape hanger bars and go to a school that teaches racers how to be a better racer. A school like that will be held at a race course. And before you hit the street a prospective street rider has to know what the number one contributing factor that causes a rider to crash. They need to know the answer to that question or they need to research it and if they don’t know the answer then they shouldn’t be on the street. And you should spend your time in Cyberspace with other like minded riders who discuss safety, talk safety, analyze safety and share their experiences because once you start to ride on the street you automatically assume that you’re taking a much greater risk in life, a risk that can or will kill you or seriously injure you, so it would behoove a n00b to pretend their a parent and do what any decent parent would want their son or daughter to do should their child decide to take up street riding. I’ll post two links to a couple of forums where you’ll find excellent info that might prevent a new rider from getting killed or seriously hurt, forums where they talk safety and emphasize safety, especially link #1. Bookmark ’em to your favorite web browser (especially link #1, worth repeating as that site is geared 100% towards safety talk). This is not spam: I’m more interested in preventing a fellow rider from going down and getting hurt or killed AND I want to read what other experienced riders have to write about safety, wisdom that’ll keep me alive and injury free.
Now where are you at this point in your riding career ArniVidar, did you take the leap and are you riding in the street here in April 2010? How’s it going out there? And have you gone down yet if so, what happened? How’s your experience been? I bet your first time out on the street was a little like the first time you had sex: one part confusing, one part exhilerating, all of it a MAJOR head rush.

1) http://www.msgroup.org/forums/mtt/default.asp
2) http://london.craigslist.org/forums/?forumID=1947