Written by Bobby Haas
As you first set foot in ?The Race Track? at the Haas Moto Museum, an oblong-shaped chamber dedicated to speed merchants that span over a century from a 1904 Peugeot to a 2017 Grand Prix Suter, you are greeted by a panel that reads in part: ?In a moving tribute to the world-renowned free-diver Nicholas Mevoli on the occasion of his death in a competition at Dean?s Blue Hole in the Bahamas, acclaimed author Tim Winton lauded the need of certain people to test their physical limits.  Winton wrote: ?In domesticated societies so bereft of wildness, [we] need to register the cold scorch of fear now and then in order to feel truly alive. And it?s good for people to find and exceed their limits. Humans have long survived through the willed suppression of panic.? ? I?ve often said of my thrilling decade as a Nat Geo aerial photographer leaning out of open helicopters?and now of my days as a hopelessly addicted biker?that anyone who tells you that the risk is not part-and-parcel of the thrill is not telling you the truth. To borrow a key phrase from Tim Winton?s piece, we bikers gladly barter the cold scorch of fear as the price we pay for indulging our passion.
But as the years pass and uneventful miles pile up, the cold scorch grows ever more tepid?that is, until you lay your bike down (such a curious phrase) amid the stench of burnt rubber and the ugliness of twisted metal. Or you learn of someone who has ?transferred to Thunder Chapter? (another euphemism...