I grabbed a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance today – a book I haven’t read for maybe 20 years, and that I was too young and inexperienced to understand the first time around.
I’m a page in, and it completely nails what I love about being on the back of a bike (and maybe one day on the front):
You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. 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.
I love driving – I have an Alfa that just eats up the highway. But it is like TV. It just doesn’t compare to the openness that is the brilliance of being on a bike.
