What Cagers Don’t Know
Stopping can be one of the nicest things about riding.
Reach back in your memory to those blissful times driving along on that hot summer day smelling the fresh cut hay, enjoying the dips into the ravines for the coolness they bring, and . . . Stop! You don’t remember those things? No, of course not, what was I thinking? You were in a car. You don’t have those experiences in a car; those are motorcycle experiences.
People who spend their lives riding in cars have no idea of how very “in the world” motorcyclists are, or how much “out of the world” they are in their metal, glass, and plastic cages. Especially now that nearly every car has air conditioning, motorists are closed up in their containers and inhabit their own controlled environments, largely oblivious to whatever is outside.
So what is outside? Oh, just the entire world.
There are smells outside the cage. Sure, sometimes those smells are diesel fumes and the like, but there are also smells of food coming from restaurants, newly mown grass, lilacs in bloom, sagebrush in the wide-open West, and the salt and seaweed smell of the ocean.
Temperatures change outside the cage. Of course the temperature will drop as you go up over a mountain pass, but it’s startling for first-time riders how, over just a tenth of a mile, even dropping into a wash to cross a creek, how much cooler it is in that dip.
There are sounds both inside and outside the cage, but some sounds are better than others. You’ll never hear the cry of a hawk with your windows rolled up and the CD player blaring. And you’ll never see a biker going down the road with screaming kids arguing in the back seat.
The whole world is outside the cage. If the sun is shining, it shines on you. If it’s raining, it rains on you. You feel the heat, you feel the cold, and you feel the delicious, balmy breath of Spring. You don’t have just a rectangle view of the world around you, your view in every direction is completely unobstructed.
And very few bikers ever fill the tank and ride until it needs filling again. Wide spots in the road are made for stretching the legs. View points are perfect for taking breaks. If you didn’t have time to make these sorts of stops you probably wouldn’t be on a bike in the first place. And at every stop you have time to really see, and smell, and hear, and feel the world around you just that much more.
The word is “sensuous.†The biker is in the environment and his senses are attuned to that environment. The motorist is in his cage, locked away from all but his unchanging pre-programmed environment. That’s why they’re called cagers.
Biker Quote for Today
Addicted? Possessed is a better word.
Tags: cagers
