I can’t understand the "kung fu" of motorcycle riding, not because it is a boy thing and I am not a boy but because it’s a stupid thing and I am not stupid.

How can you write an entire piece on how you almost died and then close it with encouragement to continue the same behavior?  I mean, I appreciate irony, but this isn’t really intentionally ironic like the drug piece.  You seem almost unaware of this irony.  You don’t support your thesis.  It’s not quality writing.  It’s macho bullshit.  Maybe real men don’t need crotch rockets.  

Also, I want to point out how this contradicts your minivan piece.  I thought you were cool without the motorcycle.  I thought you were so cool that you made minivans cool.  Why do you need this motorcycle to make you cool now?  

I’ve not entirely missed the point which is probably what you’re thinking.  I understand that you’re trying to convey the feeling of riding a motorcycle and how that feeling represents something you need in your life, but you don’t address what need this behavior is filling.  You don’t even seem to question it, which is not like you, which is not kung fu.    

Hopefully, when I die, I will be able to look over my life and think about how I always (usually) made the wise decisions.  I plan to die old and comfortable and having done what I want to do with my life, not sliding across concrete into an oncoming vehicle hearing my bones breaking, confused and in pain.  Do you want to be the half-crushed insect kitten dragging it’s limp body out of the street, leaving me, the owner frantically trying to scoop you up and save you?  

Take chances on love and passion and your dreams, not on your life.  You don’t need to face death to feel life.  Only take chances when there is a reward beyond survival.  

You’ve rented the Deerhunter and I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but I think you probably have due to the roulette reference in you piece.  I mean, if you want to make that analogy, follow it through.  In the film, roulette is a metaphor for Vietnam, which I know we probably have conflicting opinions about, but I think that everyone can agree that no one in Vietnam wanted to die, but that, like Christopher Walken, they were forced to take that chance.  Don’t spin the barrel, don’t pull the trigger, because you could very easily end up the Vietnamese red light district fucking stinking hookers instead of a nice girl like me (using that analogy).