This summer I discovered motorcycle riding. It’s so much fun! I’m not really sure why I waited so long to get a bike. I love it.
Last week I was at a party chatting with someone who asked me what’s becoming a recurring question of late: “Why do you ride a motorcycle, oh isn’t that dangerous?”
“Sure, it can be”, I say.
“I suppose if you’re not aware of what’s going on around you, namely the absent-minded drivers who’ll mercilessly cut you off because they’re too distracted texting or chatting away on their phones, in which case you’re in a heap of trouble.
Sometimes you feel like you’re invisible. People are generally oblivious to cyclists —motorized or otherwise— rolling around in their Napa leather appointed SUV living rooms.”
But here’s a better reason taken from the pages of Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance:
“You see things on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.”
—Robert M. Pirsig
Riding a motorcycle is such fun I almost can’t even put into words the whole experience and what it feels like to find a twisty road and open up the throttle and just go! Pure exhilaration. If you ride a bike you know exactly what I’m talking about.