Category: Philosophy

Giddy Yerevan <3

It looks as though the ice is melting in Yerevan — slowly but very firmly. And how could it be otherwise when the weather is so hot and so are the girls!

Season ’09 has started to prove my old claims that Armenians in their essence are people of two wheels, not willing to give up any freedom for any security. I can spot and hear more and more motorbikes in the streets of Yerevan and that makes me excited! I remember how different everything was back in the day, how riding a motorbike was considered outlandish and how criticized the very idea of riding a motorcycle was.

An SUV has stopped me 10 minutes ago as I was approaching the restaurant where I’m posting this from and a charismatic guy in his early thirties asked me how to get into motorcycling. Earlier in the day I was discussing the same with a colleague from my company during a coffee break… And everywhere seems to be this cool atmosphere of people who are tired of watching more TV in their car cages.

This gives me a profound feeling of responsibility. I’m going to do my best, making sure that their starting experience with getting on two wheels is most pleasant and smooth. It freaks me out to think that maybe I had my unbelievably small contribution in making these people want to ride. That perhaps it was my motorcycle they saw in the street that got them thinking. That perhaps it was me entering a curve that thrilled them. These very thoughts get me into this groovy mood! Every time I pass by a child in a car who looks at me with these specific burning eyes and dropped chin, I smile and think that perhaps —  just perhaps — I will remain a vivid memory in his small neural network and as years pass — one day, after an intense conversation night with parents, he will open the local dealer’s door with that distinct determined look. I hope his chin drops again, with that same childish amusement he used to have over the motorcycle he gets!

Thank you everyone who has been riding. Thank you all who will be riding. Thank you. Everything will be fucking awesome.

Just hit the fucking road.

Reaping the Dragon



Yerevan – Sisian – Shushi – Stepanakert – Gandzasar – Yeghegnadzor – Selim – Martuni – Sevan – Yerevan: more than 900km in only two days on the Armenian roads and in the Armenian weather! A terriblefic journey, I officially dub it the ‘Quest of the Dragon Reaper’ (Վիշապաքաղ) for myself, as a tribute to the old Armenian deity Vahagn and an acknowledgement of the draconic toughness of the ride. Sure Vishapaqagh is no 50cc, but the Armenian roads are no USA!

I never had a more special ride in my life (maybe except the first ride ever) and I will happily post about this challenge in a great detail with following posts.

Stay tuned!

The Perfect Vehicle

Traditionally, an excerpt from the book The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles:

…Riding on a motorcycle can make you feel joyous, powerful, peaceful, frightened, vulnerable, and back out to happy again, perhaps in the same ten miles. It is life compressed, its own answer to the question “Why?”
Why? they ask, those who don’t ride. Those tho do ride are incapable of understanding the question. Riding feels good, they say – it feels damn good. But I think there is more, just as there is always more underneath the obvious, and a little more underneath that. The great layered mysteries of human motivation are oddly both variegated and amazingly uniform. And they are revealed in the many reasons, as well as the one simple one, why people ride.
Motorcycles are what they feel like (profoundly sensual – vroom, vroom – and perhaps a bit primordial) and also what they look like (fearsome with a strange deep beauty). Look at that engine, out for anyone to see, and those two simple wheels: what else announces its intent so brazenly?…
What bikes feel like is an extension of the self – a better you, a perfectible, fixable you, an ominously powerful you.

Welcome

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