I think you guys are partially right
You're right about one thing. I am the reason I have been getting injured and crashing a lot lately. My recent quest to continually go faster and faster has caused me a lot of pain. My feeling has always been that in order to improve you have to push your limits. I started riding dirt bikes when I was four years old and rode nearly every day until I was about 19 or so. I injured my back at work and kind of got away from riding for about 11 years. In all of the time I rode as a kid, the worst injury I had was a twisted ankle. I rode a lot of tough terrain, but I didn't ever ride over my head. After I started riding again, I joined a riding park and soon felt like I had to push myself to keep up with all of the young racers. I didn't have any serious accidents the first year and half of trying to keep up while riding my WR400, but I didn't like the bike after I started racing. Mainly because of the weight factor and the fact that I'm only 5'8" and 165 pounds.
Many times I have said that my 200exc is the perfect woods bike and for some one wanting to race or ride hard all of the time, I still think it is. Which brings me to my point. I'm ready to go back to the old days when I didn't care if I was the fastest guy out there. Right now I could care less about racing. I still love to ride, but I haven't been having as much fun as I used too. Thirty minutes of fun for several weeks of misery isn't worth it any more. I truly think that if I wanted to I could some day become a competitive "A" harescrambler, but right now my career is more important to me than being the fastest guy on the block. If this recently injury would have taken place in September instead of now, my career would be in great jeopardy. I can't risk that any more. I'm not 17 any more, I have too many responsibilities.
I am going to slow down and take it easy. I find that on my 200 exc, I can't ride slow. In order to make the bike shine and feel smooth, I feel like I have to push it. Granted I don't have to ride over my head, but it seems like I always do, because I look at every ride as a training session. About the only time I don't get hurt is when I go on a nice trail ride with some close friends. That's when I just ride and I'm not really training, but we don't exactly put it on cruise control either.
Again I don't feel like I can really ride my 200 slow and that's what I want to do now. Keep in mind, there will be times when I want to open it up, but my main focus is going to be on fun now. I think the first step to achieve this will be to get a bike with more controllable power, alla four stroke. I grew up riding four strokes and almost all of my injuries have been on this two stroke. Someone is trying to tell me something.
I asked my local dealer, who I have rode with, about the KLX. He said that based on what I have been riding, I would not be satisfied with it. He suggested the drz400. If I get something like the drz, I will probably make it street legal. I used to love taking my dirt bikes out on the rode and cruize to some little trails or dirt rodes. That was before the cops gave a crap and before I even had my license.
Keep them coming guys.
Neal