My name is Bob Daigle and I live in Fredericton. Born in 1970, you can figure out my age from that. I've been riding street bikes ever since I obtained my license in 1986.
This is my bike. It's a 2000 Kawasaki ZX-12R.
They say there are two types of riders... those who've gone down and those who haven't.
This is my old bike, a ZX-11. I bought it new in 1990 and it served me well until September 2000, where it's life ended with an unfortunate incident with a left-turning car. The crash resulted in a broken wrist on my part and considerably more damage to the machine. Protective riding gear is a wise investment.
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For a long time my dream was to own my own trackbike and do some low-level racing. I have a Yamaha YSR 80 that I raced on a go-cart track for 2 seasons and really enjoyed it. During the summer of 2001, I went to the FAST phase II school in Shannonville Ontario. While I had a blast, it made me realize that racing is an expensive sport. You spend a lot of $$$ for very little track time. I guess that's when my dream began fading.
Around the same time I got interested in Endurance Riding and subscribed to the LDRider mail-list and started reading ride and rally stories from the Iron Butt website and other sites on the web. I got hooked. Its challenges are as tough as those of racing, both mentally and physically. Endurance riding also lets me go to places I otherwise wouldn't have the time (or the inclination) to go. Granted I don't get to do much when I get there, mainly turn around and come back, but hey, the fun part is getting there isn't it ? I also enjoy nerding up my motorcycle with various LD riding gizmos. Overall, I feel it's a much better 'bang for the buck'.
I enjoy the fact that endurance riders tend to be more of the 'mature' type as opposed to the testosterone-driven inflated egos that you can meet at the track. Now that wasn't very nice, was it ? Sorry about that, I know several track-oriented people that are very nice, but if you've hung around the track long enough, you've surely seen what I mean...
Anyways, enough rambling. Who even reads this stuff anyways ? The 'Bob Daigle Fan Club' ? I guess the only thing more pathetic than people reading this is me writing it...
'Nuff said ;-)
Should you want to e-mail me, you can at bobbo29@hotmail.com