What do you tell them

[Geezer]

I can't remember the last time I was asked why I ride. Mostly I get questions about why I wear the gear on a hot day or other questions about the particular bike (Why not a Harley?) or what some of the farkles are for.

I plugged a flat tire in the parking lot during lunch one day and some people were watching in an interested fashion. I don't know if they though it was cool that I was able to solve the problem myself, or if they thought I was crazy. I'll assume cool.

One woman at the office wonders why my bike is always dirty, and some of the guys are curious about long distance riding.

I have been riding long enough that my family and close friends know that it's just a part of who I am.

 

[rushes]

Mostly I get questions about why I wear the gear on a hot day

That's when I like to reply something I read by a motojournalist a few years ago.

"Because I'd rather sweat than bleed."

 

[Bounce]

So what do you say when they find out you ride a motorcycle?

i ask them why they drive a car.

 

[06FJRider]

Could not have said it better than this... Kudos to Dave Karlotski for keeping me sane through winter.

******************************

Season of the Bike

There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don't even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that's just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.

Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you're changed forever. The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver's license right next to your sex and weight as if "motorcycle" was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition. But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a summer is worth any price.

A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time, entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.

On a motorcycle I know I'm alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than Pana-Vision and than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard. Sometimes I even hear music. It's like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind's roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock 'n roll, dark orchestras, women's voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed. At 30 miles per 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. I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I've had a handful of bikes over half a dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn't trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride one of the best things I've done.

Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep, sleep." Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.

- Dave Karlotski <https://the751.tri-pixel.com/>.

 

[user 6393]

...it's how I get some joy

 

[FJR919]

"It's my two wheel therapy"

 

[RTSR1/FJR]

...it's how I get some joy

Hi! My name is Joy, Mike Joy! lol

 

[Art FJR]

Riding a motorcycle decreases your carbon footprint. Al Gore rides a motorcycle. I've replace all my lights in my home to flourescents, added all the insulation I can, bought high efficiency heat pumps and T'stats that control each zone independently and my utility bills are lower then everyone else I know. I reuse or recycle all I can. I don't water the lawn nor use fertilizer. I reclaim rain water to water the garden. I grow enough veggys to give them away at the office.

In an effort to decrease my carbon footprint even further, I bought a motorcycle. It might mean more risk for me, but less risk for someone in the military in Iraq laying down his life for cheap oil back in the states. So YOU can ride in a big Cage. I don't want to be responsible for someone's son or daughter dieing so I can use more gas then I really need. It is a risk I am willing to take because I strongly believe that a parent shouldn't have to bury their kids.

And my motorcycle gets 70 mpg. What gas mileage do you get?

-----

Needless to say, this is mostly bullshit. But then again, you are talking to an idiot. And if the idiot is a hot chick, you might get laid for being so "green".

Personally, I would ride a bicycle. It is quiet and you are even more aware of your surroundings. But pedaling sucks after a while. And it is sweet to be able to go uphill at speeds great then 10 mph.

The right twisty thing is the shit.

Art

 

[krashdragon]

answers...

"Why do people climb mountains?"

"Why do people jump out of perfectly good airplanes?"

"Why do people race cars?"

"43 mpg and I get to ride in the HOV lanes."



Mary

 

[CRMH Eagle]

There is something intwined in human nature to be free of society's matrix and influences. If truth be known man would rather ride a horse exploring the world than stuck in a Ford Taurus going to the grocery store. The motorcycle offers a the opportunity to escape the trappings of this world, however so briefly. Stand in front of young people and ask two questions, "Who wants to ride in my Accord?", and, "who wants to ride on my motorcycle?" Obviously, without question or doubt, the latter question always provokes a more enthusiastic response.

Though the majority of man cannot afford the luxury of riding a horse daily, he can fulfill this innate desire by riding a motorcycle. If I could choose I'd prefer a beautiful appalachian stallion trekking off in backcountry of the West with my closest friends living off the land and taking in the fulness of nature without any sight or sound of contemporary society. But I am not given such availability by heaven. Nevertheless, I can stil ride.

This is why I ride... to keep alive the youngness and to allow me to travel amongst civility and yet be unchained from its rules and over-inflated ego-centered lifestyle. I ride for me and no one else. Therefore no one else dictates me not to ride. I ride, simply, because I can.

 

[luvtoride]

Mostly I get questions about why I wear the gear on a hot day

That's when I like to reply something I read by a motojournalist a few years ago.

"Because I'd rather sweat than bleed."

Or my favorite... because sweat washes off & road rash doesn't.

 

[timalan]

I tell them that it's because it's what I want to do, I enjoy it, I am old enough to both pay for it, I know the consequences of screwing up, and that's all there is to it.
The down side is that even without my 'Stitch on, people around the office call me "Power Ranger."

I rode into work oneday with my gear on of course. A guy pulled up and dropped off his SO. I work with her. I saw him point at me and "Mouth".... "Gay Power Ranger" I just laughed. Then Later I asked about it..... Seems I don't read lips that well.

"Gray Power Ranger" My Jacket Is Gray Helmet was Gray etc. But since I said "oh i thought he said Gay" Guess what stuck?

Love to ride, Always have. If someone asks me about the danger. I simply Ask back. How many people have you known who have died for reasons other than a Motorcycle Accident. Most don't even personally Know someone. It's "US" Who are more likely to know someone.

 

[Bounce]

the real bottom line is that, no matter how much some may wish it otherwise, this is still enough of a free society that we don't have to justify or rantionalize every choice we make to someone else. it truly is none of their business.

i'm current reading a book called, "Nanny State" and the opening 2 quotes distill what many of us see as wrong with some people's perception of today's world.

"The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog." - C. K. Chesterton

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims must be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some time be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with approval of their own conscience." - C. S. Lewis

 

[Ric in Sac]

I say -- Because its fun! Then ask: How can you go through life not knowing what it is like to ride a motorcycle?

 

[daviddowns2000]

I don't think anyone has actually ever asked me why I ride. Usually, when they find out I ride they either volunteer something positive like "I love motorcycles" or something negative like "they're too dangerous...my cousin got killed on one" or sometimes a combination of the two, like "I've always wanted one but I'm afraid I'd get killed." I usually just affirm what they have said.

If anyone ever does ask why, I think I'll just say "I have a small penis."

Oh yeah, I think my ex mother-in-law once asked "why do you have to ride those things?", but I don't remember what I answered, probably something like "I love it."

 

[Fred W]

Oh yeah, I think my ex mother-in-law once asked "why do you have to ride those things?", but I don't remember what I answered, probably something like "I love it."

My response would have been: "I don't "have to". I want to.

 

[Checkswrecks]

There are probably 150 people in the office, where I work in DC. We have a person responsible for the web-site, publications, graphics, and the weekly newsletter. She thought another guy and I were unique, in that we rode motorcycles, so she wanted to do some fluff human interest piece for the newsletter. She was floored when she asked if anybody else rode and off the tops of our heads we rattled off about 15-20 people. It was funny that her first response, was:

"No, not people with bicycles, I want people who ride motorcycles."

Haven't heard from her since, but I'll bet tht her newsletter article will have some of the same stuff that's been in this thread.

 

[Ari Rankum]

So what do you say when they find out you ride a motorcycle?Most no-riders can't seem to understand how we can put ourselves at such "elevated" risk.

I haven't got a quick response other than "you wouldn't understand".

I say I don't ride.

Then, when they point to the helmet I'm carrying, I say, "Oh this? I'm just an exceptionally bad driver."

 

[FJRMGM]

It's just what I do, have always done, and hopefully always will.

 

[Honzo]

Why do I ride a motorcycle?

This is along the lines of what I should say to my ultra-"liberal" freedom-grabbing sister-in-law and her ilk that wants to ban all the "things that can hurt you".

It is instinctual.

Because, alas, not everyone is created equal. Sorry to break it to you, but don't kid yourself that you didn't already know this otherwise you wouldn't segregate your cozy life from certain "undesirables".

Now this doesn't go for all motorcycle riders out there, because there is a difference between a motorcycle rider and a "biker". A biker, at some point in his or her life, by nurture or nature, realizes that their reaction times are faster, their common sense is greater, their reflexes and instincts are sharper, their respect and courtesy are more plentiful, and their realization of authority over the arena they travel in is an earned privilage, not a right (Nobody faults the falcon for being faster or more maneuverable than other birds). In essence, "bikers" are farther up the helix than most. They also tend to stick together whether they know each other or not. Remember how everyone banded together on 911? Thats how they roll all the time. Harley or Honda, likes or dislikes, friendly or mean dispositions, we are the first to honor the codes of our fraternity. That's why we wave at each other. That's why when we drive cars, we exorcise the same enhanced abilities realized via motorcycles. The level of human dexterity and cognition required to do what we do is phenomenal and on par with that of a pro gymnast or a master musician. Now imagine that there are those of us even better than that, the racers. If you were more like us, your commutes would be shorter, your productivity would be greater, your depressions would lessen, ultimately so would you insurance rates, and your families would appreciate it all. Learn to ride and you'll be a happier person.