There’s an ancient Mesopotamian tale, adapted by W. Somerset Maugham, called “An Appointment in Samarra,” the essence of which is: you can try to run from the Angel of Death, but no matter what you do, Death will find you. The same is true of old age.

Flip up any motorcycle helmet these days and you’re likely to find grey hair, saggy skin and wrinkles behind that tinted screen. The fact is, a disproportionately high percentage of riders one sees – at least in North America and the UK – are well beyond their ‘best before’ date and are heading for expiry. How do I know this? I’m one of them.

I’ve been thinking a lot about old age and motorcycling during the last little while, as, whether I like to admit it or not, most of the sand in my personal sand-timer has already dribbled out. If I’m lucky and continue in reasonably robust health, I may have another decade of riding ahead of me before physical weakness, bad eyes and general doddery-ness makes riding impractical or downright dangerous. Some lucky people are able to continue riding into their eighties, but it’s a rare individual indeed who is still riding in their nineties.

对许多人来说,臀部和膝盖关节炎手,穿出来and creeping physical weakness make squeezing clutch levers, throwing a leg over the seat, and safely wheeling a heavy bike out of the garage, difficult, if not downright painful. Almost every day, someone on the Facebook motorcycle forums and old bike discussion groups I inhabit, will be talking about buying a lighter bike because they can no longer manage the weight of their regular steed. No wonder many manufacturers are coming out with smaller capacity, lighter bikes. They see the changing demographic.

Some of the new “retro” bikes push many buttons by providing sturdy, easy to handle, reliable mounts wrapped up in a package that, being devoid of beaks, miniscule cross-eyed headlights and hump-backed plastic faux fuel tanks, resembles something us Boomers might recognize as a motorcycle. Add a little of that sixties “scrambler” flair and I can already sense people parking their old road-couch at the back of the garage and fumbling for their wallets. With their new Triumph Speed 400 and Scrambler 400x, Triumph may be hoping to attract a tsunami of new, younger riders to these machines, but they’re likely to find that many of their sales go to the grey hair set.

Selling sites like Facebook Marketplace and Kijiji are cluttered with low mileage, well-maintained Gold Wings, big cruisers and full-sized sport-touring bikes like Kawasaki’s Concours, Yamaha’s FJR and Honda’s ST1300 as people my age downsize. Getting a leg over these monsters and controlling them at low speed may have become more than their owners can safely handle. Sadly, these bikes don’t seem to have much appeal to a younger generation of riders. They’re perceived as ‘old man’s bikes’ – not sexy or desirable at all. Too bad, because there are some astonishingly good bargains out there. Many of these bikes were originally expensive to buy, were loaded with all manner of comfort and entertainment options, and were built for the long haul. And because they were initially expensive, they were often bought by people who could afford regular and meticulously maintenance. 100,000 kilometers on a used Gold Wing or ST1300? It’s barely broken in.

As an older rider, it is easy to feel the world closing in around you. For years now, I’ve regularly returned to the UK to rent a motorcycle and tour around visiting friends and family. Those days may now be over. My brief perusal of some of UK’s bike-hire sites, suggests that most hire companies won’t entrust their bikes to anyone over seventy. They may make the occasional exception, but seventy seems to be the magic number when you cease to be an attractive proposition as a customer. Similarly, there has been quite a buzz on some of the “old geezer, old bike” forums about motorcycle dealerships refusing to allow riders over seventy to test ride their bikes.

Many of us know perfectly competent riders in their seventies and even their eighties – I like to think I’m still moderately competent myself – yet, statistically, older riders are more likely to have accidents and even be killed than all but the youngest and most inexperienced riders, so perhaps the dealerships and hire companies have a point.

The sad reality is that no matter how young we may feel on the inside, the outside will, inevitably betray us. I just completed an almost 8,000-kilometer loop around northeastern Canada on my fifty-one year old Guzzi without any physical discomfort, yet just today, on a much shorter ride, my right hip was aching. I’m hoping I’ve just slept awkwardly or stretched something, but at my age, it just as likely to be the onset of arthritis.

As I edge towards the middle of my eighth decade, no doubt, eventually, the scale of my riding ambitions will change. Instead of multiple-day cross-country marathons, perhaps I’ll be content with shorter rides. Perhaps I’ll start to avoid gravel roads, becoming fearful of dropping the bike in some lonely spot out of cell range. Maybe sitting with friends to talk about bikes will take precedence over actually riding them. The day may come when staying on the couch in front of the TV seems infinitely preferable to struggling into riding gear, dragging a bike from the garage and draping my weak and aching body across a motorbike. These things may be in the future, but I’m not there yet.

Until then I’ll ride – as often, and as far as time and free cash allow. Somewhere, out there in the future, the Angel of Death awaits. I’d rather find my own, personal Samarra in my bed at the end of a long and fulfilling life, but if it is out on the road somewhere, so be it.