The Road

The road has a special allure when riding a motorcycle.  From my perspective, taking a trip across the country in a car sounds like torture; whereas, the same trip on a bike is an instant adventure!  There are innumerable elements to this and it starts with throwing your leg across the bike.  Straddling the machine in your driveway is instantly more appealing than climbing into the "cabin" of an automobile (or less affectionately referred to by motorcyclists as the "cage").  There is freedom on a bike!  The wind in your face, the openness of the ride and the complexity of sensory inputs and responses translates what, in a car is a nondescript drive into an experience.

Interstate 70 - Wyandot County, KS

The road can be beautiful, scenic, twisty, with long sweeping curves and breath-taking vistas or straight barren stretches of God-forsaken lunar-landscape.  But the hum of the motor, the vibration in your feet and hands, the automatic (almost mindless) inputs that constantly correct for caster while controlling your speed, angle of lean, counter-steering, turning, accelerating, slowing, engine braking, and stopping all sum to create a kinetic experience that is perhaps more like flying that driving!

Colorado Rockies

Getting from "point A" to "point B" should not be this much fun!  But that's the beauty of the ride.  It permits a near-sensory overload of stimulation that if smoked would, without a doubt, be illegal in most states - certainly Kansas!  I guess you could say "the ride is why we ride".  It's our drug of choice, our soma, our escape from the complexities of world, if not for just a moment in time.  Given all of the focus and attention required to ride safely and skillfully, there is little remaining room in the cerebral compartment for those troubling thoughts, the stresses of the day, and those chronic worries that keep us up at night.  During the ride, they vanish.  Even after dismounting, the lingering afterglow keeps you smiling for some time to come. 

US 36 Northeast CO near the KS border

 

 

Is there any wonder why that we ride or that we ride? Is there any wonder that is becomes a part of who we are?  Is there any doubt that at this very moment I am dreaming of the next trip, or at least the next ride no matter how seemingly insignificant.  - LD