Motorcycle Friendships in Your 40s

It’s early April, the weather finally cooperated, and I’ve got the 2022 Yamaha MT-09 SP warming up in the driveway. I’m heading out to meet my buddy Goofy for our first group ride of the year. No big plans, no destination picked weeks in advance. Just two guys who like to ride, picking a day and making it happen.

That got me thinking about motorcycle friendships in your 40s and how they work a little differently than you might expect.

First, a Quick Stop at the Harley Dealership

Before we could ride together, Goofy had a quick errand to run. He’s signed up for Harley-Davidson’s Let’s Ride Challenge, which is actually a pretty cool program and open to all makes and models, not just Harleys.

Here’s how it works: you head to a participating Harley dealership, have someone log your odometer reading, and then just ride like you normally would throughout the year. At the end, your total mileage gets tied to a charitable contribution to a charity of your choice. Harley partners with several of them.

On top of the charitable angle, there are also mileage tiers with prizes. From what Goofy told me, there are five tiers. The lower end gets your name entered to win something like a Nightster, and the grand prize at the top tier is something in the range of a CVO Road Glide. Not bad.

The original plan was for both of us to ride out to Hannam’s Harley-Davidson out in Westchester, Pennsylvania, so Goofy could get his odometer read and I could sign up too. I didn’t make it out of the house in time, so Goofy went ahead, got it done, and we met up at the usual spot: Ludwigs Corner Wawa. If you’ve done group rides around this area, you know that Wawa parking lot has seen a lot of bikes.

I was actually seriously considering signing up for the Let’s Ride Challenge. Probably would have been one of the only people there on a Japanese bike. But it seemed like a good cause, and honestly the prize thing doesn’t factor in much for me. I never win anyway.

Motorcycle Friendships in Your 40s Are a Little Weird (In a Good Way)

Here’s the thing about being a guy in your 40s. You’ve got friends you genuinely care about that you haven’t spoken to in a year or two. Maybe longer. And somehow, that’s just… fine?

I’ve got a buddy named John. We worked together at a cabinet shop out in the Spring City area years back. We’d grab lunch, hang out after work, get the wives together. Solid friendship. Then he left, I moved, and we started seeing each other less and less until eventually it was down to once a year at best.

And every single time we got together, it didn’t matter how long it had been. We’d pick right back up, busting each other’s chops, catching up on kids and work and life. No awkwardness, no “so what have you been up to” small talk. Just right back into it.

A couple years passed and then one night, around 10 PM, my phone rings. It’s John. Calling from his garage, having a cigar, just thought of me and figured he’d call. Turns out he’d moved to Delaware, got a new house with a garage, life had kept moving. We talked for an hour and a half.

That’s the last time we spoke. He’s got an open invitation for me to come down, and I’ve got a standing excuse to make it happen since I’ve been wanting to redo the ferry boat ride we did a few years back – ride down through Delaware, hop the ferry to Cape May. I could stop at his place, spend the night, ride back the next day. The plan is basically there. I just haven’t pulled the trigger, which is a me problem.

That’s how a lot of male friendships go. You drift, life happens, and then someone’s sitting in their garage at 10 o’clock on a random Tuesday and thinks to pick up the phone.

How Motorcycles Help Keep These Friendships Alive

I’ve gotten deep into a few hobbies over the years. Competitive shooting was a big one for a while. Spent nearly every weekend at ranges, built some good friendships, had a lot of fun at local matches. Then life got busy, I stepped back from shooting, and I lost touch with most of those guys. That’s just kind of how it goes when the shared activity disappears.

Motorcycles have been different for me, and I think a big part of why is Discord.

A few years back I started a Discord server around the WaltInPA blog and YouTube channel. Some local riders joined up, it turned into a community, and now it’s genuinely how we stay connected. We plan group rides in the spring and summer, and even in the winter a handful of us will meet up for lunch just to stay in the loop. When the riding season kicks back in, it’s like nothing skipped. Everyone’s back at it.

YouTube is how I met Goofy. Six years ago, roughly. He was watching my videos, I was watching his, and eventually we figured out we were close enough geographically to make a ride happen. The conversation with my wife when I was trying to explain it was a little rough. “I’m going to meet this guy from the internet for a motorcycle ride.” She asked his name. I told her I only knew his handle. That did not land well. But six years later, Goofy and I have ridden together more times than I can count.

We’ve done the Road Apple Ride together – started at Valley Forge, rode down to Shady Maple Smorgasbord, hit a bunch of covered bridges along the way. We’ve done the ferry boat ride. We’ve done dual vlogs, group ride moto vlogs, and a lot of miles in between.

At 43, with young kids at home and work pulling in every direction, having people to ride with matters more than I usually say out loud. It’s not just about the ride. It’s about having something that’s yours, and people to share it with.

Get Out There

If you made it this far, thanks for riding along on this one — even if it got a little more philosophical than a typical Saturday morning ride usually calls for.

Subscribe to the WaltInPA YouTube channel if you want to follow along on rides like this one. New videos go up regularly through the season.

Share this post with a riding buddy — especially one you haven’t talked to in a while. Maybe it’ll nudge one of you to finally make that ride happen.

And if you’re not already in the WaltInPA Discord, come hang out. It’s where the group rides get planned and where the conversation keeps going between videos. Link is in the nav.