"Looking for adventure/And whatever comes our way..."

So long as I'm recalling Zen and the artlessness of youthful errors in judgement and enthusiasms, here's a shot from my motorcycle trip in '86, taken just as we've exited the northern perimeter of Yellowstone National Park. To my mind it almost perfectly encapsulates the trip as well as the pleasures and displeasures of riding a motorcycle.

If you meet the adventure on the road ... whatever.

That's my travelling buddy. We'd come from Salt Lake City that morning, and had a late lunch in the Old Faithful Dining Room. After lunch we moseyed over to the legendary geyser. While we waited we speculated what it might look like if you dumped a bunch of garbage into the hole. It spouted at roughly the appointed hour. Then we consulted the Yellowstone brochure.

"Any other geysers you want to see?"

Rhetorical question.

Back to Robert Pirsig, and Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

“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.”

What a load.

Take a look at that picture again.

Motorcycles.

Nobody talks about what an annoyance it is to get in and out of your rain gear, or to clear bugs off your helmet visor, or how a helmet visor makes you feel like your head is trapped inside a really small car -- thus removing the "thrill" of being out in the elements, "in contact with it all." Even if you take the staggeringly-less-safe option and wear a mixing-bowl with goggles, you're still getting bugs smeared across your visual plane and you're still looking through a screen.

You're still sitting -- passively consuming.

You're just doing it on a slightly less-comfortable, and more vulnerable perch.

What a feeling.