If you want my bike that bad, got get it! I have put money -some- and time -very much- on it, but at the end of the day, it is just a thing, I can always get another one.
I see your point, Raul, but as you say here, you put time and money (and money is time unless it is given to you) into whatever you have. Guess what? You can't get that time back, you only get so much on this earth. To replace what some douchebag steals from you, you have to spend more of your irreplaceable time. That is what they are really stealing from you. Of course, only you can determine the value of your time. Personally, I place a lot of value on mine, and it gets more valuable as I run out of it.
I have thought about this subject many many times. I restored my CB350 when I took a year off from work. If I put things in perspective, with the money I would have earned in my daily job, I would have had money to buy three bikes, and still keep money to spend.
So, if my CB350 gets stolen, would I lose the time I spent? The time is already gone. If it gets stolen, crashed, burnt to ashes, it will be just some metal and plastic being gone. I learnt a lot about mechanics and about myself along the restoration. The finished bike was a target, a goal, and I stuck to it and was able to have the will to achieve the goal. The goal was just the excuse. What I achieved is still inside of me, it is not a restored bike. If the bike is gone, I can always restore another one, or buy one new. Nobody will steal that from me, they can just steal the product of what I learnt.
If you buy a bike and it gets stolen, you lose your property. If you build a bike and it gets stolen, you lose the product of your craftmanship, but you still posess that craftmanship. Obviously, you lose some property too, that's undeniable, but when you put more value in your craftmanship than in your money, the money lost becomes something not that relevant after all.
You can lose all your posessions in a tornado, but unless you die during the storm, a tornado won't take away from you what you have lived, what you have enjoyed, and what you are able to do. That's my point of looking at these things.
Why do I enjoy building bikes? Because it is something you can't buy. You can buy a custom bike, but you can't buy the skill to build it. You have to conquer that skill. Like finishing a marathon, no money will make you finishing one, unless you put your sneakers on and start training! That's the feeling of acomplishment! No money can buy that! Once you have rebuilt your bike, you can show it off, but the day it is gone, the feeling of acomplishment won't go away, will remain inside of you for ever.
Obviously, the less of a thing you have, the more valuable it gets. I'm 40, I guess that if I get to 60, I will stop doing some things in favour of others. Getting a bike, or a sidecover, stolen will definitely piss me off, but if you put things in perspective, nobody will care in 40 years time. My point is: if you have something so valuable that using it gives you more headache than pleasure, sell it and get something simpler. Not trying to convince anybody. I myself spend sometimes minutes and minutes staring at my bikes from every angle, but I don't do it for aesthetic purposes, but for thinking what I've done, what it's left, and thinking how will it turn out, not for the feeling of possession if you catch my drift.
One day my sister in law was at home and, when she saw my library -I don't think she has more than 10 books at home-, asked me whether I had read them all. I replied I had read just a few, so she asked me what did I want them for, so I replied: "obviously, to read them. I buy them when I think a book may be interesting to read, and then I put it in my library until it is its turn." Some books wait 10 years until it is their turn. It doesn't make much difference to Charles Dickens to be read 10 years up or down.... and when a book is read, if it is a classic, I give it away. If I don't like it, I simply throw it away or give it away, and some of them I keep them for my children.
It is pointless to keep a book you can always buy. The cost of keeping "A tale of two cities" is higher than buying it again in 20 years time. If the book is stolen, I don't mind, I can always buy another one. And once you have read it, the book is inside you, you have made it your own, and then the physical book is just the product of your work. You have worked it through the pages, but once you read it, you own it. I'm not talking about the paper; you own the content, and then, the physical book is just an inanimate object.
I hope the analogy works to explain how I feel about bikes.
