Motorbiking
There’s something very different about doing a long-distance motorbike trip. From doing it in a car. In a car, you are sitting in a padded throne, sealed off from the passing environment, with music and temperature control and the ability to talk to your passengers.
On a bike, there is no throne. There’s a narrow little strip of seat which eats into your backside after a couple of hours, even if you stop each hour to relieve the pain. Temperature regulation is controlled only by what you wear, and there is no music or conversation. On a recent trip to Swaziland from Joburg the only way I could communicate with my loved one was to squeeze her left knee – my right hand was holding the throttle open at all times. I learned to put a lot of affection into those knee squeezes. In return, she would squeeze me with her thighs.
The only sound is that of the wind wooshing past your helmet and the drone of the motor between your legs. So why put yourself through all that, the uninitiated might ask. It’s not so easy to explain: perhaps it’s because there is nothing between yourself and the elements? Because the horizon is huge, unbroken by windshields, it just stretches out in front of you? Because without music or words, there are only your thoughts, which sometimes disappear for a few blessed seconds . . . and you become one with the road, and the place you are passing through.
Your concentration has to be absolute – there is no room for error – if you come off at high speed you are dead meat. So you have to be completely focused . . . and still be relaxed enough to enjoy it all.
I guess, like most things in this life, you have to experience it … to know that feeling of complete freedom. To know how it cleanses, as if the wind steadily whips away the cobwebs that have gathered in the corners of your soul …
September 4th, 2009 at 8:01 am
I get the same feeling from swimming
September 6th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
and you don’t have to swallow flies …