“Why do you ride”? A question asked of me many times and one that is difficult to answer in words that the uninitiated would understand. One can talk about freedom, being close to nature, feeling as one with the bike, excitement and these are all true, but words alone can’t convey the feelings that one experiences when one is a rider. To some, a motorcycle is just a form of transport. Something that riders use to get from one place to another. Those who don’t know just can’t understand how we can be so emotionally connected to a machine. However, we are.
For me, and I paraphrase the great Anatoli Boukreev here, Motorcycles are not mere tools that satisfy the mundane requirements to go from one place to another, they are the means with which I practice my religion, my belief in the greatness of life. They enable me to be my real self, to break free from the shackles of normalcy with which we bind ourselves.
They allow me to push the boundaries of what is considered sensible and acceptable. To risk the very life I value so much but having done so I am filled with renewed enthusiasm to face the tedium of everyday existence.
When I ride, I am a free spirit, a rebel, a warrior, where the constraints of an ever increasingly risk adverse culture are ignored. Where the responsibility for a wrong decision is mine and mine alone. I know the price of misjudgment. A price I am willing to risk having to pay.
Why do I ride? Because I can, because I am alive.
Michael Cannon