The Adventure
You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.
—Robert M. Pirsig (Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., New York)
All morning Pirsig’s words have been rolling through my thoughts as Pennsylvania’s early August winds blow over my body. The air is still crisp with the past evening’s rain, and at these speeds my denim jacket keeps me comfortable enough through the shade of the Valley Forge forest lines. I’ve never been one for highways, but inevitably the trees will subside and I’ll need to find a bridge out of this state. The Blue Route is a pleasant enough experience, but just as August is known as prime beach weather it’s also known as prime construction season. If only this was California and lane-splitting was legal, then the next two hours wouldn’t have to happen this way.
My left hand feels numb with the grab and release of the clutch, and my legs feel the weight of hovering inches above the pavement. The noon sun is now overhead and any chill that was left in the air has long since subsided to the heat. Two men in a beat up green pickup in the next lane start some superficial conversation. Their windows are down, and I hear old country music coming from the radio. Somehow I feel more of a connection to them than to the temperature controlled coffins full of people on cell phones.
In time the traffic subsides and rush of the New Jersey air is on my face and in my lungs again. The road it weather worn and I can feel the buckle of the pavement every few yards, and soon I can taste the salty bay breeze on my lips. There isn’t much to say about these roads that can be understood with reading. Everything feels different on the back of a motorcycle. I could stumble around to find the right words, but none would do justice to the actual experience.
The evening is spent Oceanside, but my mind remains on the road. When I’m not on the highway my thoughts are of the next adventure, and when I’m on the highway my thoughts are on the rest of the world. I have a sense of peace when all I have is time to think without the distraction of radios or conversation.
The morning sky looks ominous, but the trip home has to be made eventually. Within the first few minutes of the trip the sky starts spitting intermittent drops of rain, and within the hour the sky has opened wide. The next three hours become a blur of cold rain. Every bend in the road felt like the last, and my mind was too numb to think of anything more than the last 5 miles of the trip. Over and over again I play what the last leg of the trip would look like. I can feel myself getting out of these drenched clothes and into a warm shower. These thoughts play over thousands of times and seem to be all that keeps me going.
I can’t describe what those last 5 miles actually felt like – they were more euphoric than I ever could have imagined, and that warm shower…I don’t think anything ever felt so beautiful.
posted by Joshua at
10:49 AM
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