Hilarious Yammie Noob
I'm not offended by Yammie Noob's delivery about 'so called mid life motorcycles'. If you can't laugh at yourself, then you shouldn't be laughing at other people, but that said, there's a lot of nuance related to the delivery of what is stated.

I've been riding motorbikes since almost before I could ride a bicycle without stabilizers and i've been completely into them ever since my first experience on one.
The bikes i'm riding today are ones that I want for 'myself', not to own for any imaginary social status. I have always been fortunate to enjoy what ever bike i've owned.

I like what I like......and if I just happen to choose a bike that some folks think is a symbol of getting old or perhaps some sort of social weakness, then I have to live with it and just continue riding my ride, like i've pretty much always done.

If I could have afforded any one of the bikes in his monologue when I was in my 20's I would have probably own one or all of them if I liked them at that time.
Same goes for convertible cars........i've always liked them, and i've nearly always owned one when I could use one for the purpose I enjoy using them for.

The fact that many of these 'icons' of the 'mid life male' are bikes/boats/cars etc... is that those things are not always possible to own and enjoy when you're starting out in life, paying bills, raising kids etc... They are mainly a treat we allow ourselves when we finally get to that point in life where we can finally afford to enjoy things we like doing after the work tasks are done. I think most folks know that, so it's ok to have a bit of a laugh.

You don't have to be old to enjoy riding a complicated, over-powered, heavy & expensive bike.....just a bit crazy
 
That's his thing amongst others to rip on different biker groups and types. We shall not take things too seriously and not lose our sense of humor.
 
Hey Jagster,
Rocket is my first bike which I bought at the age of 25. Thanks for the last line, I felt a bit weird when he said it's a bike for "mid-life crisis".
Either I hit my mid-life pretty soon or I'm just crazy.

Just like you, I bought the just for the fun of riding it. Not for any status. No delivery photos posted anywhere. I tried to keep it a secret for as long as I could. ( I'm not on social media so that part was easy)
 
I think I bought one because I wanted a big engine challenge, tame another dragon, so to speak. Plus, I didn't know how to ride a manual transmission (car or motorcycle) before I got my Rocket, seemed like a worthy combined personal challenge. My first bike is DCT.
 
All the "mid-life crisis" bikes I've owned in the last ten years - Gen 1 1290 Superduke, breathed on (at great expense..) 1098 Streetfighter, Harley LRS, Rocket 3, Ducati 1260 Diavel (and three or four "normal" ones) - I'd have owned when I was 21 if I'd had the money.

It's probably as well that I didn't because I know I didn't have the skills back then either. Like most youngsters, I just thought I did. 30 years of riding experience, hundreds of thousands of miles under my tyres and a more mature brain count for a lot. Doesn't mean I ride slower. I'm without doubt faster now than I was 30 years ago, even allowing for the fact that my bikes now are much faster than the bikes I had then, but I also ride smarter because with age has come at least a smidgen of wisdom. Which is precisely why insurers make it relatively affordable for 58 year olds to ride these bikes and very expensive for 21 year olds.

None of those bikes were bought for posing potential or bar stool bragging rights. Possibly the Superduke because of the claimed numbers, but only on the strength of the two big KTMs I'd owned previously - and what I knew about the spirit of the KTM brand from experience made it a proposition too enticing to trun down.
All the other supposedly OTT bikes were considered purchases made for a particular purpose. The Diavel the most considered of all since I want to slim my garage down to one bike while retaining elements of the three bikes it was bought to replace in a package that would work for me on multiple levels. It was very much a decision of the head over the heart or putatively dwindling hormones. The obverse to mid-life crisis syndrome is the juvenile wannabe. Arguably the more deluded of the two and the more likely to lead to disaster.

One thing I have learned over the years is that a love of biking can apply to multiple apparently opposing genres simultaneously. If I could I'd have kept every bike I've ever owned and added yet more oddities, such as a 1930's Aerial Red Hunter, a '70's Jap stroker (Suzuki T500 would be my smoker of choice), a Greeves scarmbler with lights on, a KTM RC8R and a Goldwing (just out of curiosity), and about a dozen pipe-dream custom builds....
 
Neither. You've probably just followed your instincts. Where that will lead as the years pass, who knows. Welcome to the journey that is biking.
 
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