I got an email from my mother the other day. She said that she’d put my name into Google search and the whole bunch of motorcycle links came up. “I did not know you were into motorcycles” - she said. Now my mother does not know a lot of things about me. However she’s generally aware of my hobbies and my lifestyle. And the fact the we live in different countries for the last 9 years does not mean she is completely disconnected from what is going on in my life. I was busted!

My mother even though a very liberal and some what modern person is not exactly that tech savvy or computer literate. Her extent of knowledge spans mostly over the email usage and MS Word like word processors. Anything beyond that seems to be an enduro type adventure for her if you know what I mean. With all this said imagine my surprise when:

• she actually searched Google
• she used Google search to find references on me
• dug deep enough to find out that I had sold a bike in 2 days

I had to do damage control. I decided the best way to do that would be over the phone. Email is too impersonal. To my surprise my mom was really cool about the whole thing. Apparently my grand mother, her mother, belonged to some sort of a motorcycle club in 1930s. And also to my surprise and relief according to my mom scuba diving is more dangerous than motorcycle riding (go figure). So by her making peace with the fact that I am a diver it made it real easy for her to make peace with the fact that I ride bikes. Great! Go Mom.

It’s been a couple of days since I got busted. Per my Mom’s request I’d sent her a bunch of motorcycle pictures including my new Futura and my old SV. She loved them both.

Even though this story did absolutely no harm to either me, my mother or our relationship it is a good lesson to everyone how careful should one be with information the put out there on various websites. I was under the impression that it was not that transparent for anyone who puts my name into a search to have a lot of motorbike related links come up as I blog under the name of Sideout. I was wrong. Good thing I do not blog about my personal life, nor do I post pictures of me partying and stuff. By the way these pictures do not exist, so do not even try searching for them :).

Have a good Friday.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 3:54 pm and is filed under Motorcycles, Street, Riding, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.