In Celebration of the Motorcycle

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Why I Ride

We enjoy the lonesome and the empty because, unlike our ancestors, we are too familiar with the crowded and the confined. - Joseph Wood Krutch

I bought my first motorcycle in 1970 when I was 19 years old. Since then, I have discovered that, for me at least, riding a motorcycle is a transcendental experience that is necessary to good mental health. I have often been asked why I ride a motorcycle, and I have only been able to respond with the hackneyed cliché that "If I have to explain, then you won't understand." In reality, I am not nearly the philosopher-poet I need to be to do an adequate job of explaining. How do I explain the intoxication I experience when I drink in the aroma as I pass a berry field or a peach orchard on a sunny Spring day? How do I describe the thrill of riding down into a gully and feeling the temperature drop as I do? How do I share the experience of changing humidity when I pass a ripened wheat field or approach a body of water? How can I communicate the surreal sensation I get when riding through a jet black night with the world compressed into just what I can see in the cone of my head light?

Riding a motorcycle means I am riding "in the world," I am a part of the environment through which I pass. I am experiencing the world as it is. Riding in a car means that I am just passing through the world; sealed off from it in my own artificial micro environment. Motorcyclists often refer to cars as "cages," and this is a good metaphor. I feel free on a motorcycle; I feel bound in a car.

Riding a motorcycle is not just a journey through the external world, it is also a journey into the inner world. I can cruise my mind as I cruise the highway. Riding is an opportunity to be alone with my thoughts and the road and wind noise will keep away any intrusions.

Finally, there is the challenge of riding. Riding a motorcycle is not easy and its not safe. I like to ride because it's a little bit hard and a little bit dangerous. This doesn't mean that I am reckless. In fact, I am a very conservative and defensive rider. What it means, however, is that there is still a "rush" with every ride. Riding, for me, is a visceral experience. Perhaps this is the reason that I can provide no rational explanation for why I ride. The real reasons are emotional.

I have created this page so I can share my enthusiasm for motorcycling with others. For me, motorcycling is therapy and that is why I called this page "Cycle Therapy." Those of you who share my passion for motorcycles are welcome to browse these pages for what they are worth. For those of you who still don't get it, what can I say but "If I have to explain, you won't understand!"

Why Others Ride

Apparently, I am not the only one to try to put his motorcycling experience into words. Several others have waxed poetic on chrome and steel.

J. Joshua Placa. (May, 2006). Questing the Grand Canyon, Cruising Rider.

"I think you have to pity the poor citizen who has never known the heightened senses, the three-dimensional total immersion into our environment that motorcyclists experience" (p. 38).

Terry Morris and How His Interest in Motorcycles Was Sparked (posted 29-Nov-04 on About.com)

I was 11 years old, it was a Sunday afternoon, and I was climbing a tree. The tree had grown just off the shoulder of the two-lane blacktop, across the street from the only gas station for miles in either direction. I heard the Harley coming a long way off. It was backfiring and stalling, then restarting. As it came into view, the motor died completely, and it coasted into the station. The rider was followed by a black and white '58 Ford, which also pulled into the station. This was Bubba Ramsey's garage, and it was closed on Sunday. As I sat on a limb, invisible in the tree, I heard the rider tell his friend in the Ford that he would have to leave it there. They both got in the car and drove away.

I climbed down from the tree, and crossed the road to the bike. It was a black Duo-Glide, an everyday driver. No show machine here, this thing was dirty, oily, and had bugs on the headlight. It smelled of old leather and gas and oil and hot engine. And it was big. Man, it was really big. You think a Harley looks big to a grown man, imagine how it looks to an 11 year-old boy getting his first look at one up close. I wish I could say that the chrome gleamed in the sun, but it had been quite a few miles since this thing had gotten a bath. I looked at the wheels, the tires, the tank. And the engine. It looked like the whole thing was engine and exhaust pipes.

I wondered. Was it going to sit here until the garage opened in the morning? Did the rider mean that he had to leave it here for good? If it was broken, could I have it? What would it take to get it running? I was sure that I could fix it, although I might have to get some help from Bobby or Earl. They were 15 years old, and worked on cars and everything. The three of us could fix it for sure. I circled the machine over and over, looking at every greasy bolt. I wanted that bike, and I wanted it bad. After about an hour, I heard a car coming, and ran back across the road and up into the tree.

About that time, the rider and his friend came back. Just as I started down the tree, they opened the trunk of the Ford and got out a gas can. It was just out of gas. They were going to take it with them. Sure enough, when he had it filled up, the rider rose up and came down hard on the kick starter. The engine filled the afternoon air with sound, then settled into an idle. The rider put the gas can back in the trunk of the Ford, hopped on the bike, and took off. His buddy bawled a hide trying to make the Ford keep up. I could hear the Harley go through all the gears, and I could hear him riding my bike somewhere far, far away.

I needed some wheels. Not pedal-driven wheels, but a fire-breathing heart-pounding, gas eating machine. When I was 13, I cut my new bicycle up with a torch and welded in a steel plate for an edger engine. Darn near killed myself when I crashed into a fence. I found out that those little rubber brake pads on bicycles were not up to the task. The kid-quality welds broke when I hit. I dragged it around back and welded it again. For about two weeks, frame repair was a daily thing.

When I was 14, I talked my dad (trying to overcome a lot of my Mom's objections) into letting me buy a used 50cc bike to ride in the orange groves of Florida. Then I rode one to school. I then went up the curve, trading up to larger machines as they came along. They never ran when I got 'em, and they ran good but never looked the same when I got rid of them. Ever seen a Honda 450 chopper? How about a Yamaha 650 Fat Bob? I'm telling you, I was desperate for wheels.

None of them were ever really the bike I wanted. [Thirty-three] years and 13 motorcycles later, I rolled out of the Harley dealership on a Fat Boy. After I put 38K on the odometer, my wife noticed that I was eyeballing Road Kings, and got me one as a Christmas surprise. The shock darn near killed me, but it is a fine machine. It's almost broken in now (47K miles) , and it sounds fine as it tears up the two-lanes.

Eight of us were enjoying a fall ride down a two-lane farm road last week, when I spotted two boys, about 11 years old. They both looked up and waved as we went by, but one of them turned his head to stare directly at my bike. I looked in the rear-view, and he was still staring as I rode around the bend. I wondered if he could still hear me shifting gears, as I rode his bike far, far away.

Captain Meteor, (posted 7-Sep-04 on About.com)

"I have a fever for riding. It is all consuming. I cannot, I will not live without a motorcycle under my butt and between my legs. It is now (beyond) a passion for me it has become part of me. The aroma of my engine's exhaust, the sound of my tires on the pavement, the wind in my face have become... me. I will ride all my days... until I become too feeble to do so or until my number is called. I accept the risks presented to this fleshy creature I am, and I counter the risk with riding well. I (am) the center of my universe... it (is) all about me. You are (the) center of your universe... and it is all about (you)."

Rider interviewed on a TV show

Riding a motorcycle is like flying an earthbound jet fighter.

Dave Karlotski, 2002 Rider Wearhouse catalog

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.

Gregg, Sept 9, 2002, on the About.com Harley-Davidson Forum

I don't often ride at night, tonight was an exception. As the sun set, and gauze grey clouds disappeared, details along the roadside changed to forms of black and blacker. That sense of motion defined by daylight gave way to a feeling of flying down the roadbed with my eyes closed and shrieking with glee at the darkness around the next corner. I backed off the throttle more than once to make sure it was me in control, and with that assurance in hand I eased it back again. September night, air beginning to cool after a hot and humid day, bugs reaching the arc of my high beams and then melting like snow on the windshield.

When I reached the Island and approached my home road, the night was well underway, darkness permeating the oak limbs and basswoods along my garage. I lifted a leg and got off my bike, and stood in the warmth of the headlight.

Ed Whitehead, Sept 9, 2002

Have you ever been driving down the road in your two-ton car/truck/SUV, etc., and break into an uncontrollable grin just for the shear pleasure of being in a car? No? Me neither….but I have, many times, while riding my motorcycle. Thirty years ago, I was riding an old Triumph south on Hwy 1, the Pacific Ocean following me on my right side and I could just hear the exploding breakers as they crashed on the rocks below. The noonday sun made the water below look like a carpet of diamonds, and I was in the groove. Then all of a sudden, I got it again….my face broke out in a big ole grin.

Last year, it was about 7 in the morning, just south of White Sulfur Springs, MT and the sun was just coming over the mountains, bathing the surrounding landscape in a buttercup gold of sun and shadows. The only sound was the deep-throated growl of the boxer's engine and my face felt cool in the early morning air. No one was there, just the Beemer and me and all of a sudden, I felt it again….my face broke out in a big ole grin.

It's hard to explain, but when I'm cruising through California's "Avenue of the Giants," riding deep between redwood trees that tower 250 feet to the sky above, and the trunks of these giants march by me, like sentinels guarding my ride, it's at that point that I can easily slip into another time and space. If you too have the obsession, then you know it's an experience that sets us apart from those who don't ride.

Have you been to Glacier National Park yet? It's one of my favorite places. This summer I was riding the "Road to the Sun" highway, looking down into a canyon 1,000 feet below, with only a foot high rock wall between me and eternity, and ice-cold water from the melting snow went down my neck at the "weeping" wall, and I knew at that moment, I had never seen anything more beautiful in my life. And then, without warning, it happened again….my face broke out in a big ole grin…. uncontrollable, heartfelt, wonderful.

My present motorcycle is truly a "Golden Wing." It has taken my wife and I from the Grand Canyon to the Montana Rockies, from the Pacific coast to the Colorado plains, comfortably, safely, and quietly. On those special roads, that Wing has the power to lift me up and make me think of nothing but the wind, the sun, and the power of 118 horsepower taking me to wherever the sirens beckon. When I find that high-speed mountain road, the bike and I are as two dancers, leaning back and forth, swaying to and fro, in the ballet of the motorcycle ride. And when I die, I will know that I have already tasted a bit of heaven. That's why I ride.

Oh, oh, it's happening again…..

Chain Links

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The 15th Annual
Ride to Work Day
July 18, 2007

American Motorcyclists Association