For My Friends and Family Who Ask Me Why I Ride...

You're on vacation in an incredibly beautiful place - for me it's the mountains, or maybe an ocean/tropical island panorama....you are moved to take pictures - maybe a LOT of pictures. You think you've never seen anything so gorgeous and you want to take it home and keep this moment forever. Then, when you get home and look at all those pictures, something important is missing and you have to rely on memory to recall what it is. The essence of the experience, the part that touched your soul, simply cannot be described or captured in a photograph.

Riding a motorcycle is like that. I'm a relatively new rider (~7k miles in ~17 months) and am asked often by family and friends who don't ride - what is the fascination? Why do you love this so much? and now, after totaling your motorcycle last weekend (I'm fine, btw), why must you ride again? All I can really tell them is that it's part of me, and I don't expect them to understand. Describing the essence of what it's like to ride really is impossible...but I'm going to try.  Here goes.

First, what riding is not: It is NOT about bad boys, bad girls, mid-life crisis or attitude. Well okay, yes, there IS an attitude - a certain confidence, that comes uniquely from the riding experience. Riders don't look down on non-riders, we simply understand that they don't understand, and we gravitate to other riders because they do. Most of us have loving family, spouses and/or friends who don't ride and we're great with that. The bad boy/girl stereotypes really need to die. Most bikers are the best people, family oriented, true friends, professionals, veterans, housewives, people who support their communities and charities of choice regularly...and as for mid-life 'crises', well mid life is not a crisis. Middle school is a crisis. Age is only a number and riders come in all ages. Besides, my thought is this: isn't mid life about the time you've actually learned enough to know how you want to spend the rest of your life?

Riding is about spirit. It's about living life and the freedom of the road stretching out in front of you; it's the curiosity for what is around the next curve or over the next hill or in the next town. It is working hard and playing hard and feeling strong and at peace with the universe. It is 'getting' what you can change and what you can't, accepting people as they are and choosing friends and battles carefully. Reality is always present. It is about experiencing the elements and focusing on the moment. It honors the independent spirit and teaches us to live life to the fullest. Maybe most importantly, it shows us that even with all of our differences, as bikers, because we share this, we are brothers and sisters. Overall, it may be the single most spiritual activity you can participate in with your clothes on.

Anyone who has experienced success in life knows that anything of value involves risk. In riding, an error in judgement, a mechanical failure, a lapse of focus at the wrong moment or a tangle with another vehicle - even a minor one, can be catastrophic. In life, it's the same, just on a different stage. All accidents/failures are a learning experience of some kind, and any accident or failure that you can walk away from is a gift. If you don't learn something from your accidents/failures, you definitely shouldn't be riding.

So, like those somewhat disappointing vacation pictures, I've been moved to make the attempt to capture something beautiful. The essence of riding lives in the soul, and if I've left anything out, this is my own experience only - I welcome any comments or insights. Some of you might have noticed that I don't mention any specific brand of bike. As individual riders, our choice of bike is as unique as we are and is part of each rider's experience. For myself, I'd be over the moon right now just to have one to ride, and I WILL figure out a way to get back on two wheels.