Season of the Bike

[Guest tx2sturgis]

I thought maybe with us being in mid-winter, someone might enjoy this little motorcycle story. I didnt write this, Dave Karlotski did. Its posted on my myspace, but I'm posting it here for members to enjoy.

 

---Brian

 

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The Season of the Bike by Dave Karlotski

 

There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is

like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a

bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and

whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don't even feel like

water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock

my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood,

but that's just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for

highway speeds.

 

Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to

get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are

common among motorcyclists. 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 height as if "motorcycle" was just another of your

physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.

 

But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and

rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price.

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 languidly 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 sunlight that fall through

them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around,

wider than PanaVision and higher than 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 an 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.

 

I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I've had a

handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of

bridges. I wouldn't trade one second of either the good times or the misery.

Learning to ride was one of the best things I've done.

 

Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The

air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep, sleep."

Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and

probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no reason not to enjoy

every minute of the ride.

[AKRefugee]

Thanks Brian

[Guest BluesLover]

Thanks for sharing Brian ... and very well written Dave (wherever you are ...)

 

Cheers,

[mraf]

A good read! Thanks:D

[Orrin]

Thanks to Brian and David. It was fun to read.

[cowpuc]

Brother,,,, finer, truer, and closer to my heart words have never been spoken..

Thanks...

'Puc

[Lone Eagle]

That was a good read - thanks for sharing.

[Yammer Dan]

Sounds like he has been there. A good one.

[James Ardrey]

Really spells out the whole spirit of riding. Thanks!

[Marcarl]

I could say it more poetically and give more insight, but I'll have to ride some more first,,,,,,,, well,,,,,,,,maybe a lot more,,,,,,,,,,and become more picturesque in my speech.