The Road 1

I have a motorcycle license. Yes, it is true that I don't have a motorcycle at the moment; but I have a motorcycle license. I have a love of the motorcycle that I'm sure only other motorcyclists could understand, but I'm going to try and explain it to you. My love of the motorcycle comes from a deeper and more basic love. It's an old cliche and an overused one, but it's true none the less.


I love the road.


I love every road, street, way, avenue, lane, and highway. I think there's a beauty in every street. It really defines a place, whatever that is. You can learn a lot about a culture, large or small, from their streetscapes (shut up Chrome, that's a word). Look at a few examples I hastily collected using a simple image search.



Call me a romantic, but I find a certain art in any road at any time. Of course, nothing compares to the open road, no other cars to hinder or distract, just you and the path, be it strait, winding, sweeping, or any mix of those. For this reason I have a love of cars, or to  be more precise, a love of driving.

If you haven't before, I highly suggest going for a drive one day. Drive for driving's sake. Don't set a destination, and if you do, don't constrict and stress yourself with time restraints. Just drive and take in your surroundings. If it means sitting it traffic for an hour, let it happen, you don't have anywhere to be anytime soon, really take it in. Take detours on whim, find open roads, it's all beautiful. After you do this once or twice, you'll surely start to notice two major problems, as I did.

1. The cost.
2. The lack of connection.

I found first and foremost that driving for drivings sake tends to eat up gas, and that becomes fairly expensive fairly quickly. But the problem that disturbed me more was the lack of a connection to the road. In a modern automatic car I'm three or four degrees of connection away from the road. I'm pressing levers and moving a wheel, but those things are taken by a computer that then puts it to the road. I'm isolated from the world around me. I have no REAL control over what's going on, it's all done for me by the car.

By my fourth or fifth drive I was seriously contemplating getting my hands on a stick shift convertible. That's not me though, it's not my personality and it would just be me compensating for something I was lacking. After another month or two, I had made up my mind, I was going to learn how to ride a motorcycle.

I don't regret it in the slightest and I highly recommend that everyone go learn. It teaches you safety that no driving school could, and when you get moving on that little standard cruiser, you feel like you're on top of the world. You might fall, it might take you a long time to get the hang of things, you might fail the class and it might not even be for you, but I still suggest that you try. Go take a motorcycle class, get the experience. If you felt the control that I felt then you'll surely be in love. On a motorcycle it becomes you, the bike, and the road. Every little action of that motorcycle relies heavily on you.

I'd imagine that the best riders on earth push the threshold and become nearly one with the bike, a single machine. That's what I was looking for. On a motorcycle you are the closest to being one with the machine than with anything else I could imagine. I wish everyone would and could feel that. So go drive for drivings sake, drive on every type of road you can reasonably reach, and then go take a motorcycle class. It's a hefty investment but it's a worthy one. I promise.