One Down… Four Up…

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One of the most basic things you’ll learn taking a motorcycle riding course is how to put your bike in gear.  One down, four up is a phrase motorcyclists use to explain how to shift a motorcycle.  By stomping downward on the shifter, you’ll find yourself in first gear.  By lifting under the shifter with your toe, you’ve made it to 2nd gear.  Click up again and you’re in 3rd gear… keep doing this until you hit your top speed in the highest gear.

iStockphoto.com

Look closely at the photo in this post and you may or may not notice something missing from the gauges… there is no R.  It escaped me until I read a chapter from Sonny Barger’s book, Freedom – Credos From The Road.  Motorcycles do not have a reverse gear.  Huh…

Bikers are destination-minded people by nature.  We focus on the road before us, the scenery around us, and keep moving forward to our destination.  When we stop, it’s to refuel in order to get right back on the road pushing onward to our journey’s end.  Rarely do we look in our rear-view mirrors to see what’s behind us for those are the miles we’ve already covered.  We were already there…

Do you know people who dwell on the past?  Are they stuck reliving their failures over and over again?  Do they continually beat themselves up for a decision they did or didn’t make?  The man they should have married… the real estate deal they should have made… the perfect job they didn’t take… the investment deal that went south… These people are living in reverse.  They are dwelling on the past instead of learning from it and moving on.

Are you living in the past?  Is there something you’re losing sleep over?  It’s time to think like a biker and keep looking forward.  Lock your eyes on the horizon… look instead to your destination and the vision you have for your life.  Living in reverse is living with regret.  And living with regret is no way to live life at Full Throttle.   

Sonny summed it up by saying “Don’t even consider going into reverse.  Rather than brooding and letting your self-esteem go down the tubes, be on to your next job, caper, scam, brainstorm, or idea.  Forget the past, get back on that motorcycle in your mind, and move out on the road and into high gear as quickly as possible.  Move forward.”  You can’t see where you’re going if you’re constantly looking in the rear-view mirror.

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International Motorcycle Show

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There’s a time and a place for one kind of motivation and inspiration when it comes to living life a full throttle.  And then again there is another kind… the kind where you can put your butt in the seat of the newest, hottest motorcycle model and dream that you’re on the open road going full throttle!

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How to Pick Up a Motorcycle…

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Lucky for me, I’ve never had to pick up my motorcycle <knock on wood>.  They always say that it’s not IF you will lay it down, it’s WHEN.  Well… I hope that WHEN never happens to anybody.

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2012 – The Year of the Sunsets

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Are you so busy… running frantically…  that you don’t even notice the little, magnificent things that are right under your nose?

Here’s a typical drive home for me – sitting bumper to bumper in traffic… frustrated by the guy that just cut me off… thinking about what to make for supper… remembering that there is nothing in the cupboards…  checking my texts while at a way-too-long stop light… trying to remember what I forgot to do today… and I completely miss the fiery sunset God has painted in the sky for me!

Sunset #1

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The Call that Changed my Life…

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A couple years ago I was sitting on an airplane coming home from just having lunch with Ken Davis and came up with the BEST list of my life.  Yes… I flew all the way to Nashville, TN to have lunch with someone I’d never met before and he had NO idea who I was. Let me tell you the story…

Ken Davis and Lisa

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