The Motorcycle presents you a challenge to master the machine, a challenge to adventure. You ride through the wind, linked to the road by a vehicle that responds to your commands as no other does. Unlike an automobile, there is no metal cage around you. Like an airplane, a pre-ride inspection and regular maintenance are essential to your safety. Your reward is freedom.
Pleasant riding, and thank you for choosing a Honda!
–Honda CBF500/A Owner’s Manual
Ah, I didn’t know there are manuals written in such a poetic manner nowadays. Lovely.
Ride safe 🙂
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.
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. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Yeah, that part was definitely one of the good parts in that book, certainly one to remember. Thanks for your comments!
Well, one can’t even start to compare the iron-feathered birds with, duh, cars. Cars are named after train wagons, you know.
Bike is a vehicle.
Car is a motorized suitcase with fancy additions.
Period.
Grats on the new birdie. =)