[adouglas]

Non-motorcycle-related:

Cook. I mean really cook, not make mac and cheese from a box or slap together a PB&J. Take real food (that your great-grandmother would recognize as food), a knife, a pan or pot and a stove, and create something incredible.

It's an incredibly rewarding, useful and valuable life skill. It doesn't take a lot of equipment (quality trumps quantity), doesn't cost much compared to most of the things we entertain ourselves with and you can do amazing things once you master the basics.

Motorcycle-related:

Work up a planned course of off-season education. Treat it as if you were taking a class and do something every day. To do this, consider one or more of the following.....

Read/re-read the standard library of books: Proficient Motorcycling, TOTW II, Riding in the Zone, Total Control, etc. You will find that you pick up new and different things when you revisit this material, because you now have actual experience to inform your learning.

Follow your nose through the world of YouTube. SO MANY riding technique videos out there. Don't waste your time with stupid human trick/fail videos. Search out useful information.

Read blogs: Riding in the Zone is really good especially for street riding.

Observe expert riders: If you're looking at a track career in the future, find race videos and instead of watching the race, go to school. Watch for the fine points of technique... body position, on/off throttle, braking, sight lines.

Visualization exercises: You see Olympic athletes do this all the time. Run laps in your head (or run a favorite route in your head). Close your eyes and imagine it in detail. Visualize yourself choosing lines, braking, accelerating. I do this all winter, running laps of the tracks I ride in my mind's eye.

Wrench: Nothing is better on a dark, cold February night than working on the bike and doing related activities. IIRC you have no garage/workshop space but you can still do stuff like organize tools, look up maintenance procedures that you'll need to do, etc. Right now my shop is a disaster because my knee surgery basically meant that I just threw stuff in there, but by next spring everything will be inventoried, organized and totally squared away, ready for next season.

Plan rides and destinations for next season: Get paper maps of your area and do some virtual exploring. It's a different experience than looking stuff up online. The latter is very useful but there's nothing quite like the tactile experience of spreading a map out and taking in the big picture.

Over the years I've accumulated several "pilgrimage" destinations that I like to visit. When I get a chance for a weekend ride I always have somewhere to go as a result. You can make a game of it... make it a mission to find the best hot fudge sundae in the state, for example.


And one other thing you can do to pass the time:

Hunt for the awesome cat picture that will win you the next MOTM for which you qualify.