Why 2 Wheels Instead of 4?
I read this quote from Robert Pirsig in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" in another book I'm reading ... Kirk Woodward's "Motorcycle Guide to Route 66". Having been asked the question many times before ... why do the trips on a motorcycle rather than in a car, and usually not being able to find the right words to describe the difference ... this quote to me pretty well captures the essence:
"You see things vacationing 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 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 send 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 Pirsig, 1974
With another trip to the east coast coming up in less than a week's time, and another round of introductions to co-workers who ask in amazement ... or maybe it's disbelief ... why do the trips that I do, reading the above quote just struck a cord.
For all the travel that takes place due to work, there's a certain comfort there. The people change; their accents, maybe the way they dress or the style of their eye glasses. The scenery changes too; architectures, geographical features, even little things like the type of grass ... the kinds of trees, flowers, and insects. But that travel is very predictable; very consistent. It goes from the airport to the hotel. The hotel to the meetings. From inside one building to another, with the in between usually inside another structure. So isolated from the outside, that the where is just the scenery, just another background, and could be any of a thousand different places.
When traveling on the motorcycle, each trip is unique. Whether hitting that favorite stretch of roads four states away, or riding through new territory not seen before, it's right there surrounding you. The smells, the sights, maybe the only sense at all dulled is that of sound as it's damped by the ear plugs under my helmet. There is no escaping the landscape, you're a part of the landscape. You sweat with the heat and freeze in the cold. You get wet in the rain, and wet some more in the heat again ... because there's no A/C to isolate you. Your allergies fire up yet again as you see the changing scene of flowers as you ride from desert southwest through the swamps of the southeast, and finally into the coastal areas along the east coast. You see all these changes, and yet they are even more real because you smell them, you react specifically to them. The bugs you hit that would cloud your windshield on the car, they cause you slight pain when they hit you in the elbow, leg, or neck. That hail storm on I-10 west of Kerrville TX last May ... rather than just being a painful noise under the roof of a car, painful because of the thought of damage to the car, was more realistic as it plunked upon the helmet, hit on the tops of hands and elbows, and melted as cold water running down the back of the neck and into the riding suit.
Traveling by motorcycle isn't always comfortable, but then neither is nature. Being uncomfortable isn't always a bad thing either. For me, riding is a way to reconnect with the outside ... with the world outside the comfortable office buildings, rental cars, and hotels that take up so much of life. It's a reminder that things aren't always the nice, comfortable, orchestrated 30/60 minute sitcoms on TV. Not all rides are uncomfortable of filled with hardship. Most aren't. But even the most intense, most uncomfortable, most ... unplanned ... rides, I wouldn't trade for the normal comfort of the daily grind, and the memories last a lifetime.
"You see things vacationing 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 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 send 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 Pirsig, 1974
With another trip to the east coast coming up in less than a week's time, and another round of introductions to co-workers who ask in amazement ... or maybe it's disbelief ... why do the trips that I do, reading the above quote just struck a cord.
For all the travel that takes place due to work, there's a certain comfort there. The people change; their accents, maybe the way they dress or the style of their eye glasses. The scenery changes too; architectures, geographical features, even little things like the type of grass ... the kinds of trees, flowers, and insects. But that travel is very predictable; very consistent. It goes from the airport to the hotel. The hotel to the meetings. From inside one building to another, with the in between usually inside another structure. So isolated from the outside, that the where is just the scenery, just another background, and could be any of a thousand different places.
When traveling on the motorcycle, each trip is unique. Whether hitting that favorite stretch of roads four states away, or riding through new territory not seen before, it's right there surrounding you. The smells, the sights, maybe the only sense at all dulled is that of sound as it's damped by the ear plugs under my helmet. There is no escaping the landscape, you're a part of the landscape. You sweat with the heat and freeze in the cold. You get wet in the rain, and wet some more in the heat again ... because there's no A/C to isolate you. Your allergies fire up yet again as you see the changing scene of flowers as you ride from desert southwest through the swamps of the southeast, and finally into the coastal areas along the east coast. You see all these changes, and yet they are even more real because you smell them, you react specifically to them. The bugs you hit that would cloud your windshield on the car, they cause you slight pain when they hit you in the elbow, leg, or neck. That hail storm on I-10 west of Kerrville TX last May ... rather than just being a painful noise under the roof of a car, painful because of the thought of damage to the car, was more realistic as it plunked upon the helmet, hit on the tops of hands and elbows, and melted as cold water running down the back of the neck and into the riding suit.
Traveling by motorcycle isn't always comfortable, but then neither is nature. Being uncomfortable isn't always a bad thing either. For me, riding is a way to reconnect with the outside ... with the world outside the comfortable office buildings, rental cars, and hotels that take up so much of life. It's a reminder that things aren't always the nice, comfortable, orchestrated 30/60 minute sitcoms on TV. Not all rides are uncomfortable of filled with hardship. Most aren't. But even the most intense, most uncomfortable, most ... unplanned ... rides, I wouldn't trade for the normal comfort of the daily grind, and the memories last a lifetime.
posted by Charlie at
1:33 PM
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