When one talks to folks who are interested but don’t ride motorcycles, it’s hard to communicate how different it is from driving. Very different. 

Lots of folks who don’t ride much have ridden some, usually in their youth before they found a way to come to their better senses. I rode a friend’s mini-bike, and a Honda 90 a couple of times on Kelton Court at 12 or so and it was clear how powerful that adrenaline-thing is. [Credit Ron Songer for the analogy], the throttle provides a rush shot straight into your jugular. BOOM! Exciting doesn’t begin to describe it. But like any drug, it’s clear that this is not a healthy thing to do, especially long term. That is…, riding for the rush. In my 20’s, a crazy friend of a friend brought dirt bikes to Lake Tahoe and we flew off a couple of dirt roads until we flew off. That ended THAT brush with the adrena-rush. It turns out, though, that there is another way to ride, that I didn’t learn or try until about 58. It’s much less dangerous, by developing the skill to ride as if everything you confront might try to kill you. We’ll get to that.

Moving past the “rush phase,” when one rides for awhile, one begins to notice the difference in the experience itself. THAT’S the magic.

The major difference is that when you are driving, even a convertible, you are driving your environment through the world. We drive so much, so automatically, that we miss much of what we are driving through. Our environment has our radio playing our music in our space. We even use that phrase – “when I was driving through Winslow, Arizona….”

Riding a bike leaves you in the world, not driving your space through it. You HAVE to experience it differently, because you are in it. And, to ride responsibly, you have to concentrate on more, see more, identify in advance what could challenge your safety. 

And then there’s the bonus. Every slight temperature change, every change of the scent in the same air you are in, whether it be fresh cut grass, mountain pines, the recent passage of a garbage truck, a bakery…, those change in an instant because you’re in it. Scents and senses assault you — you can’t help but be hyper-aware – it’s all so obvious. 

It’s a completely different thing, at least for me. The rush is gone…, I don’t want it, because it comes with danger. When I can see for miles on a two lane highway, the pavement is predictable and other vehicles can’t be found, 85 isn’t a rush, it’s a profound investment in traveling inside, and within that place. It’s just too much to simply go through.

There is some zen to it, and there is that magic of the new smell, the cool of a river, the beauty of a butte that I’m somehow more in touch with. It makes the long, lonely highway come alive.

It is much more dangerous than driving a car – no suggestion here that this is the safest way to travel. But, done with care…, I like the word “investment…,” mentally investing in seeing more of what must be calculated against to stay safe, great moments come along for free — are these scents and senses of the world that would otherwise be missed. 

It’s a little like how I feel about a great songwriter. We all can pick up an instrument and bang on it – even become pretty good at it. But to master an instrument AND to be able to write poetry AND pair melody…. These different disciplines collide, morph and become something much greater, literally unimagineable MAGIC to me. So is the well-invested ride through the countryside. It is WAY more than the sum of its parts, it rejects specific definition, it’s simply another kind of magic.