Thursday, December 18, 2008

Riding


Riding a motorcycle is something akin to flying in an open cockpit biplane that is powered by a jet engine. You feel everything. Every crack, every raindrop, even dip, bump, gust of wind or bug death against your helmet. You can smell the smoker in the truck two cars ahead of you. You can smell the ocean's saltiness, the grease and fries as you past the restaurants, the exhaust, the lush valleys, the trees, the world around you. There's something exhilarating about it. You are a part of it.

In a strange way, you are more connected with the road on two tires than you ever will be on four.

The road effects you more, it influences your moves and decisions. There's something emotional about it. Your feelings effect your experience, and sometimes you use the experience to effect your feelings.

The road gives nothing freely. Your machine she may forgive you, the road never will. The road may give you and your machine the ride of your life, but she may also give you the ride of your death.

Your machine is your only ally, along with your wits, your wisdom, and your skill. They call riders “Road Warriors”, and it is true. They do battle every time they ride. Not a bludgeoning, clumsy brawl or match, but a graceful combat likened unto a martial art where every move is graceful, beautiful, and lovely in a dark and sinister meaning. It is in this fluidity of movement, physics, speed, and grace that we find the reason we ride. It is the experience that we crave. It is the moving of our souls. It's something man has longed for as long as man has existed, and that is freedom. One might ask why the underlying philosophy and political nature of the motorcyclist genre tends to be bent towards a conservative mindset, and the answer is the understanding of freedom. Freedom from worry, oppression, and restriction. Freedom just to be.

Two wheels move our souls. Four wheels can move the soul, but it takes so much more on the part of the machine. No one's soul is moved in an ordinary car; it takes something of magnificent power and grace to move us while we are enclosed in the frame of an automobile. It takes so much less on the alloy horses of our motorcycles. Even the smaller bikes can and do move our souls to the point where when we put the kickstand down the very thing we long to do is put the stand back up, and let the roar of our machine fill our ears, a grandiose cacophony of a machine working in perfect harmony, performing it's tune like an orchestra of renown, and we the conductor by the will and grace of Providence. For this reason we strive to be better conductors and feel the power of the engine beneath us, it's roar in our ears, the bars in our hands, the curves ahead in our eyes and the freedom that resonates in our souls.

For this we count ourselves fortunate to own the machines we do, and enjoy each day and each road as a grace to us from the hand of Providence. To thank Almighty God for this freedom, perhaps this last freedom we do have to enjoy and make the road our stage, our medium as a means of self-expression of who we are and the freedom that our souls enjoy.