Why Do You Ride ?
Outstanding HDF Member
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,512
Likes: 293
From: Too close, Pa
I prefer to ride because you just can't get the same enjoyment being in a truck/car. I ride to my cabin about 245 miles one way several times a year and only stay one night. Have never did that in my truck. Ain't nothing like being on two wheels.
4 wheels move the body 2 wheels move the soul.
4 wheels move the body 2 wheels move the soul.
Outstanding HDF Member
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 2,971
Likes: 840
From: In front of the computer for now.
I'll share with you something I found a few years back and it still applies today as it did when I first found it:
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 winds big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops dont 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 thats just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.
Despite this, its 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 youre changed forever. The letters MC are stamped on your drivers 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 Im 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. Its 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 winds roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock n roll, dark orchestras, womens 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 its 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. Its a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. Its light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; its a conduit of grace, its a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.
I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now Ive had a handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldnt trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride was one of the best things Ive done.
Cars lie to us and tell us were 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 thats no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.
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 winds big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops dont 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 thats just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.
Despite this, its 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 youre changed forever. The letters MC are stamped on your drivers 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 Im 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. Its 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 winds roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock n roll, dark orchestras, womens 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 its 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. Its a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. Its light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; its a conduit of grace, its a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.
I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now Ive had a handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldnt trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride was one of the best things Ive done.
Cars lie to us and tell us were 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 thats no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.
Road Captain
Joined: Dec 2012
Posts: 575
Likes: 0
From: Twin Cities
For me it's the thrill, adventure, fun people, and scenic places. It's like taking a mini-vacation on your own personal roller coaster.
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I'm not sure I have an answer. I think about riding a lot. Sometimes when I'm out all I can think is "damn, my *** is sore and it's too effin' cold". Other times I'm just lost in the joy of the moment. Rolling through long lazy sweepers at 85, blowing by some a-hole that don't know how to share the lanes, warm air and a leaning against my woman. Good stuff. Maybe because other people look at you with that "I just don't get it" look. I like that I do.
Novice
Joined: Aug 2012
Posts: 24
Likes: 0
From: Los Angeles
I've always known I like riding. I read something the other day that sums it all up. It read:
"If you are depressed you live in the past.
If you are anxious you live in the future.
If you are a peace you are living in the present."
When I ride is keeps me in the present.
"If you are depressed you live in the past.
If you are anxious you live in the future.
If you are a peace you are living in the present."
When I ride is keeps me in the present.