Five Hundred Miles...

A Rogue Wanderer Traveling The River of Life.. Travel, Motorcycles, and Growing Old Against My Will

Saturday, December 08, 2007

A NEW YORK CITY RIDE

I cut my motorycle-riding teeth on the streets of New York, and after a twenty year hiatus, returned. Nothing had changed except the size and speed of the bikes.
The MSF course was a neat tidy world, and the proficient riding guides and books paint pictures of clearly delineated lanes, cute stick figures moving at predictable times and set piece scenarios. It just ain't that way This is the way it is.




There are constants. Everybody messes with you if you ride a motorcycle. To stay alive is to be alive, to reach a Zen-like state of heightened awareness, senses finely tuned; every nerve alive, feeling, hearing, seeing every nuance of every movement, every grain of road, registering an instant analysis of every other car on the road, every threat, every breath of danger, and becoming almost pathologically paranoid. You will come to know that truck drivers won’t see you, car drivers will see you as a nuisance at best, a threat at worst, cab drivers who will use you for a target; coffin sized potholes, construction sites and steel decked streets. Out there, in the Real World, you are alone, all alone.

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1 Comments:

  • At 10:28 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I'm getting older too and I can't read the light green letters on the dark green background. rh

     

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