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A long time back, I used to wonder what riding a bike would feel like. Now I know. It feels just as natural as walking. Put on your boots, gloves and the crash helmet. Twist the key in the ignition switch, kick-start the bike and feel the engine come alive under you. Pull in the clutch, shift into first gear, twist that throttle a tiny bit and release the clutch. Gain speed and keep shifting gears until you get in top. The speedometer tells you how fast you are going and the tachometer tells you how fast the engine is turning. Just as natural as walking, right?
Over the years, my motorcycle and I have gotten to know each other rather well. She comes alive under my touch. And in return for her life, she gives me the response and performance that is her love. If I want to ride fast, in a roar, a flash and like a windswept blur riding a wild banshee howl from the engine, we streak across miles and miles of tarmac. Pulling our own little hurricane of turbulence and noise behind that tells the world, we are going fast. The landscape around is a sheet-blur in the helmet visor with one fixed point, straight ahead. If I want to ride slow, the engine whispers softly as we barely rustle the dry autumn leaves scattered on that quiet tree-lined boulevard. We can even dance together on those curvaceous mountain back-roads as we gently follow the rhythmic twists of the tarmac. A rhythm in symphony with Nature herself as the road follows the inborn contours of the mountain. We enjoy our life together.
Every once in a while, as an idle hour catches me thinking of the life I lead, I wonder why the passion for speed and long distance travel. It can be said that anything you do on the motorcycle is safe as long as it is not moving. Then why do I ride fast or lean it way over in turns that have a hard unforgiving mountain face on one side and a deep gorge on the other. Why is every twisty piece of tarmac a silent patient dare, challenging me to conquer it the fastest that I can and come away alive?
I enjoy the colour and the taste of life a great deal. Although death is an interesting sort of a thing on the path ahead, I am content to let it find me where it will rather than hastening to meet it or willfully go searching for it. So I ask myself, why the speed and those brutally long hours on the saddle? Because it is fun. There. No rider would deny that. But then something urges me to explore further. Why is it fun? Because I like to show-off. The answer slips past nearly unseen. But why on earth would I like to show-off? What makes an ordinary motorcycle rider so special? The answer hits me like a bolt from the blue. Because I am free. Because my soul, my spirit is not shackled by an 90 kilogram body. Because I have powers, when I am on my bike, that only the truly unfettered have. Because I do not have to read about 100kmph or see it in a movie or imagine what it would feel like. In my freedom, I can live at a 100 kilometers per hour. The blur of the trees along the road’s edge, the brief flash of the center line markings beneath me, the throttle in my right hand and the tank between my knees. Because every ride, seen from behind the helmet visor, reveals itself as a truth. Because I can tell those standing by the roadside that my bike and I discovered this truth a long time ago. That we are not confined just to walk on the Earth and be subject to the limits imposed by our physiology. That we are free creatures, with command over our surroundings, over the limitations imposed by fear and fatigue. And this freedom, in its immense intensity, goads even the most mature and impassive of faces to break into a smile. Freedom is fun.
And I love my bike for the freedom it gets me. But that love is not born of beauty. It is born of a respect for quality of performance. A beauty born out of precision, of tiny clearances within the engine and the synchronous dynamics of its components that take me flying across the countryside. She respects me as I bring her to life. And continues to do so till I also respect her limitations. But if I forcibly ride her as she was not meant to be ridden, over speed and overheat her with sudden bursts of the throttle, with hard instant changes of direction, she will one day, coldly and unemotionally, kill me.
Sometimes I stand a step away from my bike to look at it and wonder how it is possible for me to become, so unconsciously, a part of it. To straddle the saddle, go through all the procedures and do all the alert thinking that is necessary to ride it. The complexity of the decisions involved along with the quantum of risk in riding a motorcycle is overwhelming when thought about. The tiny voice somewhere within urges me to withdraw into myself and forget about the responsibility of riding a motorcycle long distance. But one of the strange features of this game is that as soon as the bike starts underneath me, the doubts vanish. Those wheels become my wheels that I feel beneath me, the fuel in the tank is my fuel that I drink and through which I, the rider, live. I am no longer man. I am man/motorcycle. The two are one and the ‘one’ is the ‘I’. I am alert and thinking about what has to be done and know just how it is to be done. I am ready for whatever the ride will require. I take the ride as an organic fusion of successive steps, one step at a time, and each step gets taken surely, firmly and correctly. The feeling of trying to accomplish the impossible disappears with the throb of the engine. And does not reappear until I am again off-guard, un-alert and resting before my next long ride.
Divorced from my motorcycle, I am an ordinary man. A teacher without a student. A sculptor without stone. A priest without religion. I become a lonely consumer of numerous meals, a money earner, a shopper buying fruit from a roadside vendor, someone who struggles to wake up early from a late night. But this ordinariness succumbs to the persistent striving of the inner man when he strives for the materiel thing that he loves. Which, for me, is a 150 kilogram contrivance of metal and plastic, built to precision, as dictated by the hallowed laws of physics. Others call it a motorcycle.
Read this on the Hard Torque blog
Over the years, my motorcycle and I have gotten to know each other rather well. She comes alive under my touch. And in return for her life, she gives me the response and performance that is her love. If I want to ride fast, in a roar, a flash and like a windswept blur riding a wild banshee howl from the engine, we streak across miles and miles of tarmac. Pulling our own little hurricane of turbulence and noise behind that tells the world, we are going fast. The landscape around is a sheet-blur in the helmet visor with one fixed point, straight ahead. If I want to ride slow, the engine whispers softly as we barely rustle the dry autumn leaves scattered on that quiet tree-lined boulevard. We can even dance together on those curvaceous mountain back-roads as we gently follow the rhythmic twists of the tarmac. A rhythm in symphony with Nature herself as the road follows the inborn contours of the mountain. We enjoy our life together.
Every once in a while, as an idle hour catches me thinking of the life I lead, I wonder why the passion for speed and long distance travel. It can be said that anything you do on the motorcycle is safe as long as it is not moving. Then why do I ride fast or lean it way over in turns that have a hard unforgiving mountain face on one side and a deep gorge on the other. Why is every twisty piece of tarmac a silent patient dare, challenging me to conquer it the fastest that I can and come away alive?
I enjoy the colour and the taste of life a great deal. Although death is an interesting sort of a thing on the path ahead, I am content to let it find me where it will rather than hastening to meet it or willfully go searching for it. So I ask myself, why the speed and those brutally long hours on the saddle? Because it is fun. There. No rider would deny that. But then something urges me to explore further. Why is it fun? Because I like to show-off. The answer slips past nearly unseen. But why on earth would I like to show-off? What makes an ordinary motorcycle rider so special? The answer hits me like a bolt from the blue. Because I am free. Because my soul, my spirit is not shackled by an 90 kilogram body. Because I have powers, when I am on my bike, that only the truly unfettered have. Because I do not have to read about 100kmph or see it in a movie or imagine what it would feel like. In my freedom, I can live at a 100 kilometers per hour. The blur of the trees along the road’s edge, the brief flash of the center line markings beneath me, the throttle in my right hand and the tank between my knees. Because every ride, seen from behind the helmet visor, reveals itself as a truth. Because I can tell those standing by the roadside that my bike and I discovered this truth a long time ago. That we are not confined just to walk on the Earth and be subject to the limits imposed by our physiology. That we are free creatures, with command over our surroundings, over the limitations imposed by fear and fatigue. And this freedom, in its immense intensity, goads even the most mature and impassive of faces to break into a smile. Freedom is fun.
And I love my bike for the freedom it gets me. But that love is not born of beauty. It is born of a respect for quality of performance. A beauty born out of precision, of tiny clearances within the engine and the synchronous dynamics of its components that take me flying across the countryside. She respects me as I bring her to life. And continues to do so till I also respect her limitations. But if I forcibly ride her as she was not meant to be ridden, over speed and overheat her with sudden bursts of the throttle, with hard instant changes of direction, she will one day, coldly and unemotionally, kill me.
Sometimes I stand a step away from my bike to look at it and wonder how it is possible for me to become, so unconsciously, a part of it. To straddle the saddle, go through all the procedures and do all the alert thinking that is necessary to ride it. The complexity of the decisions involved along with the quantum of risk in riding a motorcycle is overwhelming when thought about. The tiny voice somewhere within urges me to withdraw into myself and forget about the responsibility of riding a motorcycle long distance. But one of the strange features of this game is that as soon as the bike starts underneath me, the doubts vanish. Those wheels become my wheels that I feel beneath me, the fuel in the tank is my fuel that I drink and through which I, the rider, live. I am no longer man. I am man/motorcycle. The two are one and the ‘one’ is the ‘I’. I am alert and thinking about what has to be done and know just how it is to be done. I am ready for whatever the ride will require. I take the ride as an organic fusion of successive steps, one step at a time, and each step gets taken surely, firmly and correctly. The feeling of trying to accomplish the impossible disappears with the throb of the engine. And does not reappear until I am again off-guard, un-alert and resting before my next long ride.
Divorced from my motorcycle, I am an ordinary man. A teacher without a student. A sculptor without stone. A priest without religion. I become a lonely consumer of numerous meals, a money earner, a shopper buying fruit from a roadside vendor, someone who struggles to wake up early from a late night. But this ordinariness succumbs to the persistent striving of the inner man when he strives for the materiel thing that he loves. Which, for me, is a 150 kilogram contrivance of metal and plastic, built to precision, as dictated by the hallowed laws of physics. Others call it a motorcycle.
Read this on the Hard Torque blog
..
) feels Great!
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