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Well-known member
This originally appeared at www.midliferider.com
Ted Bishop wrote one of my new favorite books, a wonderful contemplation on riding and more called Riding with Rilke (I reviewed it here).
He and I started up a fun correspondence and I persuaded him to opine on some of my own musings about the metaphysics of riding. In the end, it's more me than him musing, but you might find it interesting if you have an interest in this sort of thing.
You are a professor of . . .
I’m a professor of English. I started out working on the British modernists – James Joyce, Virginia Woolf – got interested in small presses, book production, dust jackets, advertising, and now ink.
Do you remember your first bicycle? Is there a good story about it?
My first bicycle had training wheels and solid tires and I remember it was harsh as I hit cracks in the sidewalk. I guess this was good preparation for riding a Ducati Monster on bad roads.
What do you think about when you ride?
In traffic and early in the season I’m completely focussed on the riding. As I get back into riding mode, reacquiring not just motor skills but the motorcycle mindfulness that allows you to monitor everything, I think about all kinds of stuff, often mentally writing the impressions of the trip. I never listen to music.
How do you think about the “danger” part? In your book you relate a pretty horrific crash. Do you think differently about riding as a result?
I do think differently about riding – in fact I can’t daydream about riding the same way I used to, and when walking toward the motorcycle I’m always a little bit afraid. That stays with me as I start the bike, even as I click it into gear, but as soon as I’m moving and my feet lift onto the pegs the fear disappears.
First thoughts that come to mind . . . why do you ride? Transportation? Zen? Freedom?
“Freedom” has always seemed too abstract a concept to me. I never think about being free, but my friend Steve Alford (who with his wife Suzanne Ferris has written a book about motorcycle culture) talks about “flow” and I think that’s what attracts me. I don’t attack the road; I like rides that are as smooth as those Dairy Queen soft-ice cream cones that curve seamlessly out of the machine.
I’ve asked a lot of people the “why do you ride question.” Lord knows it’s been written about from every possible angle. I have some themes bubbling in my head that I would love you to comment on. They relate particularly to riders in mid-life. The themes aren’t as well developed as I would like and tend to fold back on each other. They have no relevance to the Vietnamese city dweller who rides a scooter as transportation. So it’s riders by choice, not by necessity.
Personal philosophy? No. In high school I came up with, “In the muddy road of life there are many potholes,” but that hasn’t applied. I’ve come to believe very much in luck, and that for no good reason I seem to be lucky.
1. Connecting to Lost Childhood and First Magic
Men particularly have powerful memories of their first bicycle. In many cases, the story involves their dad at his best. He is some combination of Prometheus or perhaps Jason and the Fleece, bearing an impossibly fabulous gift of mobility beyond imagination and measure. The young boy or girl’s personal horizon suddenly expands beyond the house and yard to the neighborhood and beyond. Sometimes way beyond. It is one of the early, and maybe first, real feelings of freedom. You can just get on it and go.
For many, there is also a story involving putting the thing together, or perhaps taking apart a beater and transforming and transmuting it into something new and wonderful: Father as Alchemist; the boy’s first exposure to the philosopher’s stone.
Years later, this same man or woman finds himself living a life without magic, a life without freedom as it was first experienced all those years ago. A motorcycle holds the echoes of all those wonderful memories and feelings. Buying it and riding it resonates the lost boy. It connects the rider across time to a version of himself that years later seems locked in a state of bliss, at least while on that bike.
I know this is a story arc that’s explored in literature. You say what about this?
I hadn’t thought about the dad, but I think you’re right. I do remember getting a bike with real tires after the training wheel one, and how it took me so quickly away from the sight of the house. Then there were bike hikes with friends to the edge of town, where the city met the treed parkland and there was a creek, so yes expanded horizons.
2. The Heroic Journey
Joseph Campbell famously amplified the core elements of the mono-myth. I’m sure you’re familiar with it: the call; separation; first encounter with the extraordinary; the ultimate challenge; receipt of the boon; the return. Every civilization has these stories. They are meant to transmit what it means to be a member of the tribe; what it means to be an adult. They are also meant to signal the ultimate inward journey; Luke Skywalker entering the cave in Return of the Jedi, there to meet himself in the guise of Darth Vader.
You can barely walk by a motorcycle, much less own one, without dreaming about riding across some far horizon. You felt this tug; you did it. Owning a car has the same effect for some people under some conditions. Owning a bike lights the wick for everyone.
So the bike is both the call to journey and the means. The journey could literally take the form of a long ride, or it could just be a brief, attention riveting encounter with danger.
So the mid-life reader feels a tugging to go, to get away, to find something he/she doesn’t even know or understand. The important part is to ride out and see.
You say what?
I think the short riveting ride is completely different from the long ride. My long rides have always been solo and I always wind up packing up some stuff and sending it back home, so for me it’s about paring down, and it takes me three days to really feel that I’m out there.
In the 1930s my father and some friends made a 2-week trek through the mountains between Banff and Jasper, before the road went through. That became part of the family mythology, and though he didn’t talk about it a lot I had this sense when I was a child of my father perpetually trekking through the mountains. It was the thing that defined him. So, though I didn’t set out consciously to emulate him with my motorcycle trip I’m sure his “heroic journey” was at the back of it. But he’d always wanted to write, and hadn’t, and so my heroic journey, and one that I did think of as taking on a family tradition and extending it, was the writing of the book.
3. If Not Now, When?
My grandfather was a professor of modern languages at Cornell. He wrote his thesis somewhat late in his life about Cervantes and Don Quixote. In the introduction, he wrote . . .
“El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha is many things: a novel to delight the young, to instruct the mature, to solace the old. Above everything it is a call to live the good life because that life is worth leading; it is the only one possible for the magnanimous. When Cervantes wrote the Quijote he affirmed that a noble life can be lived only in terms of noble endeavor and that the worth of that life can only be measured by the ideals which guide it and not by the criteria of failure or success in attaining the ideals.
Intuitively we recognize that heroism is measured by what is attempted. The success or failure of the heroic action neither brightens nor dims the shining moment . . .
Don Quixote’s dreams of knight errantry are an extension of his vision of a world ruled by justice. He becomes a knight because he feels it is incumbent on him to give reality to his dream. When he realizes that the time to act has come, he acts. He does not delude himself into thinking that he can become a knight by proxy.”
To put this in historical context, Cervantes wrote towards the end of the time of the Inquisition: Spain’s counter reformation before there was a reformation. Many have interpreted the novel through the lens of the Cervantes’ relationship to the One True Church, regarding it as some sort of commentary on faith and reason (pro or anti Erasmus for example).
My grandfather, and you’d have to have known him, roundly rejects the then prevailing interpretations, arguing instead that Cervantes was a man who prized verisimilitude above all else, and that his masterpiece was not a commentary one way or another about the Church other than to poke at people who persisted in sitting on the sidelines making up rules and criticisms, whoever and wherever they were.
To some extent this references the previous theme, but there’s a different idea going on here. I see it as the imperative to take stock of your life and do what you mean to do while you still have the vigor.
A man spends the second season of life trying to find and make a place in the world: man as householder. He’s occupied with career, family, possessions, and power. There’s not much left over to contemplate purpose and meaning. And then one day he wakes up and wonders what he’s doing. Another version of this is waking up and feeling the burden of carrying all these big loads and now it’s time to do something for him. If not now, when?
So in the moments when the rider is alone in his helmet, jacket, and boots, riding with or without destination, he is the knight errant. He is a man who has put aside the desk and the rules of the world. He is leading the life of action.
By other means and passions might the man experience these same feelings. But there’s something unique about the bike. It’s the fact that his mother forbade him to ride, so he didn’t. And then his wife. And then his feeling of responsibility towards his children. And, and, and. And now at this balance point in life, with perhaps as much history behind as story ahead, the man says “enough.”
You say what?
From one DQ to another: Dairy Queen to Don Quixote. Absolutely. Yes, now.
Ted didn’t get around to addressing two final themes, but here they are for the record.
4. Facing Dragons
We all have different appetites for danger and excitement. This point is surely not exclusive to riding bikes. But it’s there. We tell ourselves all sorts of stories about uncertainties and risks, about preparation, gear, and training. But down inside, we want to face the dragon and see if we are up to it.
5. Living in your body
Men in particular grow up separating themselves from their bodies, from their intuition. That isn’t to say that we don’t do things, that we’re not physical, just that we don’t do a good job of integrating our heads and our hearts. We prize our thinking and thoughts. We tough it out when we hurt. We denigrate intuition to the point that we no longer feel its presence in ourselves. We think but we don’t feel.
This point isn’t exclusive to riding a bike, but it’s true about it . . . you can’t think your way around on a bike. When I ask riders what they think about when they ride, nearly all of them say nothing. That’s not true of course, but it’s what we want to be true. Yes I know, at times we write the great Canadian novel or work out complex dialogs with people that don’t exist while we ride, but we are always aware that it would be best to just be in that Zen state of mindful awareness. And at times we are and it is bliss.
In the same vein, every rider I’ve ever talked to has experiences with suddenly knowing something: don’t go down that road; slow down now; look over there; move over. Sometimes the intuition is headed; sometimes it isn’t. But everyone has these experiences. For some, it’s the only time they can remember this happening.
People who ride on a track, or ski, or doing activities requiring extended periods of linked actions report of “being in the zone.” Everything comes together in fluid harmony. The vision sharpens. Actions come without conscious thought. Breathing slows. Everything slows down. It is to brush up against the gods. And then it’s gone. But having felt it once, the body and soul are forever changed. We want it to happen again.
Ted Bishop wrote one of my new favorite books, a wonderful contemplation on riding and more called Riding with Rilke (I reviewed it here).
He and I started up a fun correspondence and I persuaded him to opine on some of my own musings about the metaphysics of riding. In the end, it's more me than him musing, but you might find it interesting if you have an interest in this sort of thing.
You are a professor of . . .
I’m a professor of English. I started out working on the British modernists – James Joyce, Virginia Woolf – got interested in small presses, book production, dust jackets, advertising, and now ink.
Do you remember your first bicycle? Is there a good story about it?
My first bicycle had training wheels and solid tires and I remember it was harsh as I hit cracks in the sidewalk. I guess this was good preparation for riding a Ducati Monster on bad roads.
What do you think about when you ride?
In traffic and early in the season I’m completely focussed on the riding. As I get back into riding mode, reacquiring not just motor skills but the motorcycle mindfulness that allows you to monitor everything, I think about all kinds of stuff, often mentally writing the impressions of the trip. I never listen to music.
How do you think about the “danger” part? In your book you relate a pretty horrific crash. Do you think differently about riding as a result?
I do think differently about riding – in fact I can’t daydream about riding the same way I used to, and when walking toward the motorcycle I’m always a little bit afraid. That stays with me as I start the bike, even as I click it into gear, but as soon as I’m moving and my feet lift onto the pegs the fear disappears.
First thoughts that come to mind . . . why do you ride? Transportation? Zen? Freedom?
“Freedom” has always seemed too abstract a concept to me. I never think about being free, but my friend Steve Alford (who with his wife Suzanne Ferris has written a book about motorcycle culture) talks about “flow” and I think that’s what attracts me. I don’t attack the road; I like rides that are as smooth as those Dairy Queen soft-ice cream cones that curve seamlessly out of the machine.
I’ve asked a lot of people the “why do you ride question.” Lord knows it’s been written about from every possible angle. I have some themes bubbling in my head that I would love you to comment on. They relate particularly to riders in mid-life. The themes aren’t as well developed as I would like and tend to fold back on each other. They have no relevance to the Vietnamese city dweller who rides a scooter as transportation. So it’s riders by choice, not by necessity.
Personal philosophy? No. In high school I came up with, “In the muddy road of life there are many potholes,” but that hasn’t applied. I’ve come to believe very much in luck, and that for no good reason I seem to be lucky.
1. Connecting to Lost Childhood and First Magic
Men particularly have powerful memories of their first bicycle. In many cases, the story involves their dad at his best. He is some combination of Prometheus or perhaps Jason and the Fleece, bearing an impossibly fabulous gift of mobility beyond imagination and measure. The young boy or girl’s personal horizon suddenly expands beyond the house and yard to the neighborhood and beyond. Sometimes way beyond. It is one of the early, and maybe first, real feelings of freedom. You can just get on it and go.
For many, there is also a story involving putting the thing together, or perhaps taking apart a beater and transforming and transmuting it into something new and wonderful: Father as Alchemist; the boy’s first exposure to the philosopher’s stone.
Years later, this same man or woman finds himself living a life without magic, a life without freedom as it was first experienced all those years ago. A motorcycle holds the echoes of all those wonderful memories and feelings. Buying it and riding it resonates the lost boy. It connects the rider across time to a version of himself that years later seems locked in a state of bliss, at least while on that bike.
I know this is a story arc that’s explored in literature. You say what about this?
I hadn’t thought about the dad, but I think you’re right. I do remember getting a bike with real tires after the training wheel one, and how it took me so quickly away from the sight of the house. Then there were bike hikes with friends to the edge of town, where the city met the treed parkland and there was a creek, so yes expanded horizons.
2. The Heroic Journey
Joseph Campbell famously amplified the core elements of the mono-myth. I’m sure you’re familiar with it: the call; separation; first encounter with the extraordinary; the ultimate challenge; receipt of the boon; the return. Every civilization has these stories. They are meant to transmit what it means to be a member of the tribe; what it means to be an adult. They are also meant to signal the ultimate inward journey; Luke Skywalker entering the cave in Return of the Jedi, there to meet himself in the guise of Darth Vader.
You can barely walk by a motorcycle, much less own one, without dreaming about riding across some far horizon. You felt this tug; you did it. Owning a car has the same effect for some people under some conditions. Owning a bike lights the wick for everyone.
So the bike is both the call to journey and the means. The journey could literally take the form of a long ride, or it could just be a brief, attention riveting encounter with danger.
So the mid-life reader feels a tugging to go, to get away, to find something he/she doesn’t even know or understand. The important part is to ride out and see.
You say what?
I think the short riveting ride is completely different from the long ride. My long rides have always been solo and I always wind up packing up some stuff and sending it back home, so for me it’s about paring down, and it takes me three days to really feel that I’m out there.
In the 1930s my father and some friends made a 2-week trek through the mountains between Banff and Jasper, before the road went through. That became part of the family mythology, and though he didn’t talk about it a lot I had this sense when I was a child of my father perpetually trekking through the mountains. It was the thing that defined him. So, though I didn’t set out consciously to emulate him with my motorcycle trip I’m sure his “heroic journey” was at the back of it. But he’d always wanted to write, and hadn’t, and so my heroic journey, and one that I did think of as taking on a family tradition and extending it, was the writing of the book.
3. If Not Now, When?
My grandfather was a professor of modern languages at Cornell. He wrote his thesis somewhat late in his life about Cervantes and Don Quixote. In the introduction, he wrote . . .
“El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha is many things: a novel to delight the young, to instruct the mature, to solace the old. Above everything it is a call to live the good life because that life is worth leading; it is the only one possible for the magnanimous. When Cervantes wrote the Quijote he affirmed that a noble life can be lived only in terms of noble endeavor and that the worth of that life can only be measured by the ideals which guide it and not by the criteria of failure or success in attaining the ideals.
Intuitively we recognize that heroism is measured by what is attempted. The success or failure of the heroic action neither brightens nor dims the shining moment . . .
Don Quixote’s dreams of knight errantry are an extension of his vision of a world ruled by justice. He becomes a knight because he feels it is incumbent on him to give reality to his dream. When he realizes that the time to act has come, he acts. He does not delude himself into thinking that he can become a knight by proxy.”
To put this in historical context, Cervantes wrote towards the end of the time of the Inquisition: Spain’s counter reformation before there was a reformation. Many have interpreted the novel through the lens of the Cervantes’ relationship to the One True Church, regarding it as some sort of commentary on faith and reason (pro or anti Erasmus for example).
My grandfather, and you’d have to have known him, roundly rejects the then prevailing interpretations, arguing instead that Cervantes was a man who prized verisimilitude above all else, and that his masterpiece was not a commentary one way or another about the Church other than to poke at people who persisted in sitting on the sidelines making up rules and criticisms, whoever and wherever they were.
To some extent this references the previous theme, but there’s a different idea going on here. I see it as the imperative to take stock of your life and do what you mean to do while you still have the vigor.
A man spends the second season of life trying to find and make a place in the world: man as householder. He’s occupied with career, family, possessions, and power. There’s not much left over to contemplate purpose and meaning. And then one day he wakes up and wonders what he’s doing. Another version of this is waking up and feeling the burden of carrying all these big loads and now it’s time to do something for him. If not now, when?
So in the moments when the rider is alone in his helmet, jacket, and boots, riding with or without destination, he is the knight errant. He is a man who has put aside the desk and the rules of the world. He is leading the life of action.
By other means and passions might the man experience these same feelings. But there’s something unique about the bike. It’s the fact that his mother forbade him to ride, so he didn’t. And then his wife. And then his feeling of responsibility towards his children. And, and, and. And now at this balance point in life, with perhaps as much history behind as story ahead, the man says “enough.”
You say what?
From one DQ to another: Dairy Queen to Don Quixote. Absolutely. Yes, now.
Ted didn’t get around to addressing two final themes, but here they are for the record.
4. Facing Dragons
We all have different appetites for danger and excitement. This point is surely not exclusive to riding bikes. But it’s there. We tell ourselves all sorts of stories about uncertainties and risks, about preparation, gear, and training. But down inside, we want to face the dragon and see if we are up to it.
5. Living in your body
Men in particular grow up separating themselves from their bodies, from their intuition. That isn’t to say that we don’t do things, that we’re not physical, just that we don’t do a good job of integrating our heads and our hearts. We prize our thinking and thoughts. We tough it out when we hurt. We denigrate intuition to the point that we no longer feel its presence in ourselves. We think but we don’t feel.
This point isn’t exclusive to riding a bike, but it’s true about it . . . you can’t think your way around on a bike. When I ask riders what they think about when they ride, nearly all of them say nothing. That’s not true of course, but it’s what we want to be true. Yes I know, at times we write the great Canadian novel or work out complex dialogs with people that don’t exist while we ride, but we are always aware that it would be best to just be in that Zen state of mindful awareness. And at times we are and it is bliss.
In the same vein, every rider I’ve ever talked to has experiences with suddenly knowing something: don’t go down that road; slow down now; look over there; move over. Sometimes the intuition is headed; sometimes it isn’t. But everyone has these experiences. For some, it’s the only time they can remember this happening.
People who ride on a track, or ski, or doing activities requiring extended periods of linked actions report of “being in the zone.” Everything comes together in fluid harmony. The vision sharpens. Actions come without conscious thought. Breathing slows. Everything slows down. It is to brush up against the gods. And then it’s gone. But having felt it once, the body and soul are forever changed. We want it to happen again.
