On a bicycle built for two…

Posted on | November 21, 2009 |

I’ve up-loaded several videos to Youtube (drallanhunter is the name of my ‘channel’) of me on my 78 year old motorcycle. Some of you may have wondered what that has to do with Memoir writing, archetypes, or anything of that sort.

Matchless
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcEUgtKfQaQ

So I shall explain. There are many ways to travel. One can slip into a steel box with heat and air-conditioning, and become instantly divorced from the rest of humanity as one zooms down the road. One can get aboard a shiny aluminum tube to be whisked to France in a mere 7 hours.

These methods of transportation may get one from place to place but they do so in ways that cause the time we spend to be devalued, debased, and empty. If riding in a car were really a soul-enhancing action then why do so many people seem to want to yak on their phones as they glide along, neither fully alert as drivers nor fully attentive to the conversation? Car travel and airplane travel is now ‘lost’ time, time to be endured, wasted, got through, somehow. Airline movies are always fairly dull, and the advent of the airport novel, to be devoured during a flight and then thrown aside and forgotten - that shows us how we get through those hours.

Aging motorcycles require to be coaxed along; they need to be attended to so they can run at all. The rider is invited to become part of a process, rather than a passive zombie.

So I ride my old bike, and I suppose some people think I’m eccentric, or posing, or something. I prefer to think that I’m reclaiming an experience. Why vote for ditchwater-dull, when one can have something else?

This is the bike

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