Not Everybody Lives

Most teenage boys have an intuitive grasp of the value of danger and excitement, especially when it comes to scoring with the girls. Take her to the carnival, ride the rides, and you're practically guaranteed a holding of hands, and a kiss at the end of the night. Slalom through a few turns with her beside you in your car, going fast enough to make her wide-eyed, or take her out to shoot a deadly black assault rifle, and blam, you're a shoo-in for some heavy petting later.

The reason, of course, is that the body can't differentiate well between the physiological effects of danger-induced and sexually-induced excitement. Arousal is arousal, chemically speaking. Danger is sex, and fear is excitement.

This doesn't work the same for everybody; there's a continuum. At one end are the timid, risk-adverse, "I keep my kitchen knife dull for safety" types. At the other are speed free climbers and squirrel suit BASE jumpers.

I'm somewhere in between. I recognize the fleeting nature of my life, and want to do everything that I can to preserve it. But I also recognize the value of my life, and want to do everything that I can to increase that value, to make my life vivid, and remarkable, and well-lived.

For me, the meaning of life is fairly simple; I'm not quite sure why philosophers and pundits call it The Meaning Of Life, with capital letters, and treat it that way. There ought not be anything mysterious about it. The meaning of life is to live it, well and thoroughly, without regret, so that all your current moments are worthwhile, and so that all your memories are vivid. Simple.

Vivid. Bright, real, immediate, close-up, in-your-face. It's interesting to think about how a motorcycle factors in to that. One the one hand, there's the obvious danger-excitement-sex factor. They're all that, if you want them to be. There's the persona of the biker, the rebel, the outlaw, the independent, solitary cowboy. But there's a more mundane way in which motorcycles are...vivid.

With a car, you're insulated. From the road, from the mechanical workings of the car, from the weather, from other drivers. You're cocooned, safe, traveling around with your own mobile environment, maybe talking on a cell phone, maybe just a passenger, maybe sleeping, maybe watching Teletubbies on the in-car DVD player.

With a motorcycle, that's all changed.

You actually see and feel the road for what it is. Right there, right there, is pavement rushing past your feet. Lane position matters. Road condition matters. Tiny potholes or bits of gravel, that you'd never notice in a car, swell in importance when you're on a bike. Whether the road curves, or suddenly opens up straight, takes on new relevance. Interstates are boring. You consciously seek out alternate, less efficient, more interesting paths. You find yourself traveling to travel, to experience the road, and not just to get somewhere.

You feel the bike as a mechanical thing, and (when you're really comfortable with it) as a part of you. You're aware of tires, of engine sound, of the gearing and clutch and brakes, of steering and seat position and lean, of engine temperature. Even off the bike, there's an increased mechanical awareness, that insinuates itself into your thinking, and that makes someone (like me) who really doesn't care at all about car maintenance, suddenly, oddly want to change motorcycle spark plugs. It's accessible, but more than that, it's prominent. Every time you look at it, the motorcycle has its miniskirt hiked up around its waist, showing off the gnarly bits. Of course you tend to spend more time looking, wondering whether to get your fingers dirty.

The environment and weather takes on a new importance. You're a part of the environment, in ways both obvious (temperatures, bugs, rain), and more subtle (smells, sounds). It took me a good while to get past the obvious differences, and to realize, with a shock, that I could see above me. You don't think about it, but in a car you can't see the tree-tops near you, or look straight up at the cliffs you're passing. You know that sense of wonder when you stop a car at a picturesque location, get out, feel the heat of the sun, fill your lungs with a deep breath, and look around and up?  Motorcyclists get that 24/7.

In a car, it's easy to ignore other drivers, and to treat them and their vehicles as simple obstacles between you and your destination. There's no connection. On a motorcycle, that's different in two big ways.

First, a safe motorcyclist puts considerable effort into understanding and anticipating other drivers' actions, whether moving or parked. That effort of defensive driving, of assuming that every other driver is blissfully unaware of you, or aware of you but trying to kill you, breeds an odd sense of connection. As you try to think like the other driver, you start to look at their faces, where they're looking, their expression, what they're thinking.

Second, the motorcyclist wave. If you've never ridden, you might think that this is a gang sign, or friends waving as they just happen to pass each other unexpectedly on the same road. Nope. Weirder than that. It's complete strangers, greeting each other and waving, purely because the other person is on a bike. And not even the same sort of bike or the same sort of person. Cruisers, sport bikes, tourers, choppers, you name it, bikers wave to each other. Why? Because if you ride a bike, you understand, on some level, the last 9 paragraphs. And that means that you have something in common with me, worth a wave to acknowledge.

So, then, back to danger-excitement-sex, and the teenage boys. They're awfully alive, those teens, aren't they? Wringing the most out of every moment, not because they realize that that's the reason for living, but rather because they don't know any better. It's a shame that, as we grow older, and come to realize that everybody dies, that life is fleeting, we focus on the preservation, and forget about the quality, the intensity, the vivid. Everybody dies. But not everybody lives.