That Riding "Thing"

OK, so it's been about 4 months and I've ridden one of my three bikes nearly every day possible since late February, logging nearly 3000 miles since then. It's been a whole lot of city riding but also some longer trips into the countryside and up north and lots of rides along river-tracking twisties near the St. Croix river valley in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

I didn't grow up on a bike - hell, it's always been "out there for me to try someday...", and someday turned out to be age 47. That said, I love it. Love everything about it. For road travel, it really is the only way I ever want to get myself from point A to point B again. And again. Again and again... :-)

Riding a motorcycle has a 'thing' that you can only get once you get competent enough not to worry about managing the motorcycle under you or dealing with the texting teenager driving 90 mph just inches away. You really have to get comfortable knowing that you can handle the bike and the traffic and road hazard thing, and when that finally starts to happen, riding seems to transform from 'a process' to 'an immersive experience'. I'm still getting there, but it's definitely feeling a whole lot less like work and more like... well... flying. Maybe that's the riding 'thing' I'm trying to get at. 

It really feels like the bike somehow straps invisible wings on your body and immerses you fully in the environment around you. The bike kind of disappears, the road and landscape and wind and rain and smells of trees and mud - everything - EVERYTHING becomes part of how you are moving yourself through life for a little while. Other cars begin feeling like stones in a stream, slowly tumbling along while you swim and dart whichever direction you want. Their form of travel feels heavy and labored. My travel feels light and like an expression of free will. Somehow as a rider, you start to become acutely aware of gravity, inertia, tilt angle, and it all just feels both natural and supernatural at the same time. I think this must be something like how a bird feels, able to launch itself into space at will and just go wherever it wants to go while taking whatever line it wants to.

By comparison, I have jumped (a lot) from airplanes and I fly them too, and yet, carving a powerful motorcycle through a curvy road at sunrise across a scenic landscape while the world sleeps exceeds all of that in so many ways. 

Not to take away from skydiving or flying, those are awesome experiences in themselves, and I love doing them, but riding is a whole different thing.

A riding thing...