Wild Will
03-09-2006, 07:30 PM
When does it all break loose? When does havoc reign? When does hell surface through the cracks in the earth and throw your bike down, slamming you onto your unbelieving ass? Sliding the rear has a special appeal for the road, for those willing to explore the limits of traction with your new 208’s. Foolish? Of course it’s foolish. There’s oncoming traffic! Illegal? Hell yes. 90% of what’s most fun on a motorcycle is illegal, although not unsafe! It’s between me and my karma. Sometimes I’m caught, though rarely, and I step up to take the lash fearlessly.
We are a focused minority. There are those among us not so focused, they’re just in it for the ride. The commute. The nouveau thrill. We are envenomed by the spirit of the immortals, riding through the canyons on pristine, paved paths. The flame that lights us from within burns brighter at full tilt on a curvy road than the dude riding his couch, filling his large tank with cholesterol while he watches someone else play. The Nation of Voyeurs. Already partly dead. Maybe there’s nothing kindling inside these electric image addicts, and so they seek the light burning in the television tube. Not so we.
Laughter! Nothing lights you up like it. A hearty bellowing from the diaphragm that vacuums the water from the eye sockets. The kind of laughter that makes one appear as a sodden drunk, but it’s just laughter, and if only they could feel what you feel! That’s what motorcycling is all about. A feeling that strips the enigma from your shell, opens the cerebral cortex to the impossibility of flying through the canyons, running the asphalt
gauntlet. A place one goes in the world on a machine impossibly fine, and it’s all mine! Riding along on the laws of physics and the adhesion of your rubber. Your miniscule contact patch.
O, ye of great wealth, talent and skill, your contact patch is so small, and you only have two. Impossible on one, three or four; only two gives you the gyro feel of placing machine anywhere in the lane at will at a chosen speed, with great skill and mouth breathing fear, as you tilt from side to side. You ride the immutable science of your contact patch. Sometimes mastering, sometimes learning a lesson, the point is to go sanely enough so that you can do it again and again.
Do you really think there will be gas, or room on the road forever? No! Ply your freedom to ride while it’s here, because nothing else gives you this feeling, this prolonged feeling. Hurtling your soft body along the cheese grater road in an expensive protective layer of gear. Putting your stuff in a bag and strapping it onto a bike. Riding into the unknown for days at a time! Look at what we have!
Age brings fleeting feelings of sheer mortality that youth can’t quite grasp, yet. Remember the cheese grater road will wipe your vermillion ass if you’re not exactly where you must be. When in the apex we’re naked, figuratively, stripped of tattoos, Rolexes and the affectations of wealth and society. They’re only costumes we assume like a city cowboy, like a metal pierced nihilist minimalist Nighthawk-straddling highway denizen. We’re all the same inside, somewhere. Some are more enlightened than others. Some are more deluded. Some don’t grasp the difference or even the meaning of either word.
Pretend that you’re enlightened, even if you don’t really know shit about the pure, evasive Zen of chain maintenance
We are a focused minority. There are those among us not so focused, they’re just in it for the ride. The commute. The nouveau thrill. We are envenomed by the spirit of the immortals, riding through the canyons on pristine, paved paths. The flame that lights us from within burns brighter at full tilt on a curvy road than the dude riding his couch, filling his large tank with cholesterol while he watches someone else play. The Nation of Voyeurs. Already partly dead. Maybe there’s nothing kindling inside these electric image addicts, and so they seek the light burning in the television tube. Not so we.
Laughter! Nothing lights you up like it. A hearty bellowing from the diaphragm that vacuums the water from the eye sockets. The kind of laughter that makes one appear as a sodden drunk, but it’s just laughter, and if only they could feel what you feel! That’s what motorcycling is all about. A feeling that strips the enigma from your shell, opens the cerebral cortex to the impossibility of flying through the canyons, running the asphalt
gauntlet. A place one goes in the world on a machine impossibly fine, and it’s all mine! Riding along on the laws of physics and the adhesion of your rubber. Your miniscule contact patch.
O, ye of great wealth, talent and skill, your contact patch is so small, and you only have two. Impossible on one, three or four; only two gives you the gyro feel of placing machine anywhere in the lane at will at a chosen speed, with great skill and mouth breathing fear, as you tilt from side to side. You ride the immutable science of your contact patch. Sometimes mastering, sometimes learning a lesson, the point is to go sanely enough so that you can do it again and again.
Do you really think there will be gas, or room on the road forever? No! Ply your freedom to ride while it’s here, because nothing else gives you this feeling, this prolonged feeling. Hurtling your soft body along the cheese grater road in an expensive protective layer of gear. Putting your stuff in a bag and strapping it onto a bike. Riding into the unknown for days at a time! Look at what we have!
Age brings fleeting feelings of sheer mortality that youth can’t quite grasp, yet. Remember the cheese grater road will wipe your vermillion ass if you’re not exactly where you must be. When in the apex we’re naked, figuratively, stripped of tattoos, Rolexes and the affectations of wealth and society. They’re only costumes we assume like a city cowboy, like a metal pierced nihilist minimalist Nighthawk-straddling highway denizen. We’re all the same inside, somewhere. Some are more enlightened than others. Some are more deluded. Some don’t grasp the difference or even the meaning of either word.
Pretend that you’re enlightened, even if you don’t really know shit about the pure, evasive Zen of chain maintenance