Why do you love motorcycles?

Lostride said:

I came across this question on www.quora.com and here is the (very poetic) answer (not mine), worth a read and a bit different from the usual "I can beat some punks ass on a lesser bike" answer from the mouth-breathers:

The other night I was sitting on my bike under an overpass on the highway. Even though I was wearing good rain gear, the rain coming down buckets, made riding literally impossible, and unsafe. With spray form passing cars coming at me from all directions I felt as if I was inside a car wash. It was time. When I saw the overpass up ahead I pulled off beside the highway and found a relatively dry spot pout of the rain under the bridge. Sitting there, on the bike, rivulets of water dripping down inside of my rain jacket and inside the visor of my helmet I probably looked as miserable as I felt. I asked myself the question that I have been asked by so many others, Why am I riding a motorcycle?

When you let a motorcycle into your life you’re changed forever. The letters “MC” are stamped on your driver’s license right next to your sex and weight as if “motorcycle” was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.

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 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 I’m 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 sun that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than Pana-Vision and IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard. Sometimes I even hear music. It’s 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 wind’s roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock ‘n roll, dark orchestras, women’s voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed. At 30 miles per 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 it’s 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. It’s a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It’s light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it’s a conduit of grace, it’s a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy. It’s flying three feet off the ground.

Any poets among us to add some thoughts?

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Jag said:

Little bit to much for me!! Maybe his wife wrote that for him or maybe he rides a pink BMW!!

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Lostride said:

Surely you are kidding! Are you implying that because a piece of writing is descriptive then it is not masculine? Can words be "pink" or "feminine"?
I started this thread for people to be able to write about their experiences and why they love motorcycles. I don't think it is relevant to criticize the writing as "too much for you". Better to say nothing and move on if it is not for you.

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DJ said:

Good write up.

For me -Now don't burn me... Riding a bike is my second favorite mode of "transportation". Flying airplanes really does it for me. As I walk up to a plane I can feel all of life's' issues, deadlines, past arguments, nasty meetings, and background noises disappearing. Getting into a plane and just burning holes in the sky while listening to your favorite music is the best therapy.
While riding a bike is as close to flying without leaving the ground as you can get!

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Lostride said:

I came across this question on www.quora.com and here is the (very poetic) answer (not mine), worth a read and a bit different from the usual "I can beat some punks ass on a lesser bike" answer from the mouth-breathers:

The other night I was sitting on my bike under an overpass on the highway. Even though I was wearing good rain gear, the rain coming down buckets, made riding literally impossible, and unsafe. With spray form passing cars coming at me from all directions I felt as if I was inside a car wash. It was time. When I saw the overpass up ahead I pulled off beside the highway and found a relatively dry spot pout of the rain under the bridge. Sitting there, on the bike, rivulets of water dripping down inside of my rain jacket and inside the visor of my helmet I probably looked as miserable as I felt. I asked myself the question that I have been asked by so many others, Why am I riding a motorcycle?

When you let a motorcycle into your life you’re changed forever. The letters “MC” are stamped on your driver’s license right next to your sex and weight as if “motorcycle” was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.

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 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 I’m 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 sun that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than Pana-Vision and IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard. Sometimes I even hear music. It’s 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 wind’s roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock ‘n roll, dark orchestras, women’s voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed. At 30 miles per 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 it’s 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. It’s a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It’s light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it’s a conduit of grace, it’s a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy. It’s flying three feet off the ground.

Any poets among us to add some thoughts?

Click to expand...