Bandit Alley
GENERAL MOTORCYCLE FORUMS => GENERAL MOTORCYCLE => Topic started by: scooter trash on November 22, 2005, 08:44:16 AM
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A friend sent this to me and I thought I'd share it with all of you........
There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is
like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a
bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and
whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don't even feel like
water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face.
I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood,
but that's just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.
Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to
get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are
common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you're
changed forever. The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver's license right
next to your sex and height as if "motorcycle" was just another of your
physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.
But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and
rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price.
A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a
car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and
actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars
are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to
work-box to store-box and back, the whole time entombed in stale air,
temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.
On a motorcycle I know I'm alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems
strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it
and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of
air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through
them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around,
wider than PanaVision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard.
Sometimes I even hear music. It's like hearing phantom telephones in the
shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking
signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind's roar. But on
a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock 'n roll, dark orchestras, women's
voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed.
At 30 miles an hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the
individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like
chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke
memories so strongly that it's as though the past hangs invisible in the air
around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it.
A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume
and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical
massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of
me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two
wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face,
billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane. Transportation is
only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It's a machine of
wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It's light and dark and shiny
and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it's a conduit of
grace, it's a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.
I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I've had a
handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of
bridges. I wouldn't trade one second of either the good times or the misery.
Learning to ride was one of the best things I've done.
Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The
air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep, sleep."
Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and
probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no reason not to enjoy
every minute of the ride.
:motorsmile: :motorsmile: :motorsmile: :motorsmile: :motorsmile: :motorsmile: :motorsmile: :motorsmile: :motorsmile:
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That's pretty cool.
It's a little over the top though.
I ride because, as a man, it's genetically implanted in me that I should ride something.
It's been going on since time began.
-Moondog
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That's pretty cool.
It's a little over the top though.
I ride because, as a man, it's genetically implanted in me that I should ride something.
It's been going on since time began.
-Moondog
:lol: If it would just purr or winnie, or something when you pet it! :lol:
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Frankly, he wrote the first part of that because he was to cheap to invest in winter riding gear! :stickpoke:
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Purr or winnie? Mine talks to me every time I walk near. "C'mon, climb on,lets go for a ride" it says to me. " Tell her we'll be back in a few minutes...just a few". "A quick couple of miles and we'll be right back". "Besides, the dog house isn't really that bad is it?"
Brian
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I liked it.
It did seem the author hadn't experienced an full-faced helmet.
Or heated gear.
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I liked it.
It did seem the author hadn't experienced an full-faced helmet.
Or heated gear.
Its the only way to ride!!!! :grin:
I agree with Red I like it too.
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yeah but if you get to many comforts it's not like ride'n! i kinda like when i go ride'n and get a chill, reminds me that a cold ride is still better than a warm car! maybe cuz i learned bikes from my gramps, bikes are more than just a fun way to get where your go'n, it's the adventure of getting there! it's the big bug you took in the chest that now feels like you have been shot! it's the differnt folks you ride with, the unplaned side trip to see where this road goes, or the lil hamburger joint in that small town 250 miles outta the way but it's the best buger in the state!it's the story you get to tell years latter to you new ride'n buddies about your old ride'n buddies! you know the ones that start "hear we are, go to such n such on the so and so's ride and larrys bike did such n such again for the 100 time" and everybody gets a goood laugh cuz larrys current bike just hapen to have the same problem today!
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I didn't have a problem when I rode in this morning ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?