The Real Freedom in Riding a Motorcycle

Freedom is a big word. We express it everyday, and here specifically in the United States, we mention the word a lot.

Motorcyclists use the word "freedom" to describe the feeling they get when they ride, associating it with the open road, the wind in their hair, escaping into the grandeur of the mountains and canyons.

Freedom is of course relative to another man's freedom. Where I might consider myself free, another man claims I'm limited and bound. It's dependent on natural conditions like stopping a ride to answer the call of Nature. There are social conditions as well; if my thoughts and opinions were influenced by the society I grew up in, am I truly making choices all my own?

As I sit here this morning trying to decide on where I plan to ride my motorcycle, I can choose from a wide variety of roads to take. But as banal as it seems, I can only choose the roads I know about. The roads I know about are those I've ridden before, or that which I can see on a map.

And that bring us to the ultimate expression of freedom: motivation.

If I wasn't motivated to investigate all the roads around Southern California, and if I wasn't motivated to study a map, then I would have limited myself to just the handful of roads I know of in my immediate area. That limits my freedom.

When we elect presidents, we start out feeling hopeful that we made the right choice, and then a year later feel disappointed. How many of us were motivated to learn enough about a candidate to know the consequences of electing that person?

Not knowing the consequences of our actions and inactions is perhaps the opposite of freedom. Apathy is when you're satisfied to remain bound.

Here in California, I can choose to ride a motorcycle without a helmet even though there is a law requiring me to wear one. I can ride well above the speed limit, and make my exhaust pipes as loud as I want. But all of that comes at the risk of punishment. Yet within the confines of the law, it is still within my abilities to do them if I feel so motivated.

Dissidents in China are perhaps some of the freest people on Earth, choosing to stand up to their government despite the risk of imprisonment or death, doing and saying what they please to the point of mockery.

True freedom is not just being without constraints, but being motivated to shed those constraints despite the risks.

You might feel free riding your motorcycle, but what is more free, riding a motorcycle when your wife said it was OK, or riding a motorcycle when she said it was not OK?

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What We Need is a Better Odometer

Looking back through this blog I found that there are 205 articles published, and 161 articles in draft. The ones in draft are articles that I wrote, but decided I didn't want to publish.

Even the articles I've published went through a process of editing and rewriting. Some of my closest riding buddies know that when I write an article, I actually don't publish it right away, opting to put myself into a "cooling down" period, and rereading it to make sure I really want to say that.

If I were to jump on my motorcycle and go for a ride, and no one was able to read about it, then did the ride ever happen?

Our journeys are always recorded in the odometer, though without any detail. The court system makes a small paper trail of your ride if you get cited by a cop. If you used your credit card to buy gas or food, another tiny paper trail is made. Or you may have documented your ride with some digital photos.

This blog has documented many rides I've taken, and it was only after going back through it did I remember some rides I had all but forgotten about.

When I write about a ride I try not to go through a dry recap of where I rode to...

"We left the gas station at 10:00am, then we headed down Hwy 79, and when we got to Hwy 78, we turned right and headed to Julian. We had lunch at Rongbranch Saloon. I had a cheeseburger."

Instead, I try to find something else in the ride that lets me share my feelings, opinions, or go into something philosophical.

But over so many rides, sometimes I can't think of what to say. Sometimes I just didn't take any photos. I even paid for my lunch with cash. Maybe just the gas was charged to my credit card, yet I don't keep my credit card receipts. And because of that there are many rides I'll never remember.

Only the odometer is keeping track, and yet even that won't show me each ride I did.

I guess it's about time someone designed an odometer with more features.

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Safe Riding Versus Unsafe Riding

When I left on my motorcycle ride to Alaska a month ago, my wife uttered the same words she says to me every time I take off for a ride, "Be safe!", and to which I always reply, "Yeah, ok."

Even I have found myself mentioning those same words to fellow riders. It's not that I think they're likely to get themselves killed, but just that I want them to think about safety. And their response to me is always, "Yeah, ok."

The fact is that we all try to ride safe. Or perhaps more correctly, we never intend to get ourselves killed. We all know that riding a motorcycle is inherently dangerous, and therefore we tend to ride at a level where we feel comfortable and in control.

So if we never intend to hurt ourselves, why must we ask each other to "ride safe"?

Well it's because we all know that we're human and can make mistakes, or have lapses in judgement. We hope that by muttering those words, we did all we can do short of imposing our will on someone.

Not even the Motorcycle Safety Foundation says anything in its materials that it will teach someone how to ride safely. If we're all prone to making mistakes and having lapses in judgement, then the MSF suggesting it will teach you how to ride safely would expose them to litigation.

Safe riding is not anything that can be defined, except for simply that if you return home without incident, then you obviously rode safely.

If you somehow managed to ride your motorcycle down the freeway at 100mph, weaving in and out of cars, and returned home without an incident, then you could point that you rode within your means and was in full control. Yet it just seems logical that if you ride with the flow of traffic, and always use your turn signals, then you're "riding safely".

But obviously we know that isn't true. We know that even the most safety-minded rider can still make a mistake, or will still wake up with wild hair up his ass and give that throttle a good crank. Lapses in judgement is part of what makes us human.

Yet isn't it true we have a tendency to judge people based on that one mistake they made? We never pay attention to the hundreds of times someone made the right decisions and kept their minds focused. We only take notice when they take a fall, and then go on to question their abilities.

I continue to shake my head in bewilderment over the phrase, "Never ride faster than your angel can fly". I'm still not really sure what that means, aside from the obvious that one should ride safely. But specifically, how fast is too fast? If an accident can happen at any speed, and if we can err at any moment, what exactly are we supposed to do?

As it turns out, safety, as well as the lack of, can be found in any activity whether it's shooting a gun, chopping wood, or walking down a flight of stairs. Any of these things can result in serious injury.

Perhaps because of the attention that motorcycling gets as a dangerous activity, it might actually be one of the most safest, if you consider the lengths we go through to ensure our safety. I'd venture to say that more people are killed by heart attacks than by motorcycle accidents. Yet do we ever require someone to obtain an endorsement before ordering a three-piece meal at Kentucky Fried Chicken?

The bottom line is that you can't differentiate unsafe riding from safe riding. All you can do is compare the number of times you returned home safely with the number of times you've been hurt, and then decide if you need to make changes.

So when you mention the words "ride safe", what exactly is someone supposed to do?

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