That's all good advice. These people know what they're talking about.
......how do we justify the risk. This is a very difficult and philosophical question to answer to be honest. Riding a motorcycle is completely different to driving a car. Part of it for me is a pleasure thing - when was the last time you just went out for a drive in your car? I can't remember when I last did it, but I went out on my bike yesterday, with no destination in mind and pure enjoyment the goal. The inherent impracticality of bikes means you spend less time
using them, and more time
enjoying them, whereas driving the car is fundamentally associated with going to the supermarket, picking up the kids, etc. Cars are mundane.
One of the nicest explanations I know comes from Robert Persig's 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance':
Robert Persig wrote:
"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."
In short, and I'm pretty sure I speak for 99% of the motorcycling community here, we ride bikes because we're in love with them. The risk is not only justifiable, it's necessary, in the same way as the risk involved in crossing the road is justifiable and necessary, and it changes our lives from being ordinary, prosaic existences to being exciting and wonderful. Without our bikes we would be incomplete.
Hope that helps,
Fozberry
Yeah all that ........ and so much more
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