My "Tour de Garages" begins - Post 1: What, you might ask, does collecting shoes have to do with motorcycles?

 

If you’d asked me a couple of years ago, “what do you collect?” I’d have told you, “Nothing!” But, being older allows me to be more honest and honestly, when I look around I have to admit I could be accused of collecting a few things; one of them might be shoes. (People who know me would also say I collect pens, but that little fetish is closer to hoarding than collecting.) Now I’m not an unreasonable collector. I have a rule … a new pair in and an old pair out. So I bend the rule a bit as I set the new pair on the floor while I decide (in a week or maybe three) what pair I must part with...

And what, you might ask, does collecting shoes have to do with motorcycles? Nothing, except for the fact that I have multiple pair of shoes and only one motorcycle. I do not collect motorcycles, probably because most motorcycles cost way more than the most shoes and I wouldn’t have any place to put more than one motorcycle anyway (unless, of course, I moved the shoes out then I might fit a small scooter in the closet.) However, lucky for me, I do know a couple of people who are collectors though some refuse to admit it.

My friend Ken is one of those ‘not collector’ collectors. According to Ken, he’s an accumulator. By definition; a collector is a person that collects things of a specified type, professionally or as a hobby; a hoarder is someone who accumulates things and hides them away for future use - is he by definition a motorcycle hoarder then? (Oh crap, does that mean I am a shoe hoarder? Shoes and pens, I need more motorcycles please!)

Accumulator, collector or hoarder, doesn’t really matter, what does matter is that I asked if he’d let me wander around his garage and share some of his ‘anti-collection’ and he said yes … opening the way for a series of seriously motorcycle related blogs to begin. We're Canadian eh! If we can’t ride we might as well spend the cold months talking about riding motorcycles so I’m going to poke around a few garages over the next bit … my Tour de Garages begins (you never know, I might learn something along the way.) I don't know how many posts there will be in this series, guess it just depends on how many garages I get to poke about in.

Coming next - Here’s the pick of the litter – not the newest or the oldest, not the best ride or even the first ride – just his personal favorite.

Upcoming posts will have more pictures - less talk (unless it's garage talk), promise!