Speed of thought vs Zen of riding

[Voni]

Where do you stand?

http://moonrider.journalspace.com/

Voni
sMiling

[kreinke]

I first read this (http://www.pashnittours.com/thepace.html) about two riding seasons ago but this past riding season I've adopted it as my "official" riding style. I think you get a much better feeling of "zen", by riding "The Pace" than any other. I've taught myself near perfect (and brake-less) entry speeds and it really makes for a more relaxing (fewer Oh Crap! moments) smoother ride. It almost seems more like flying than riding.

To me, this riding method is kind of a "motorcycle Tai Chi"

[BeemoKat]

Wendy always has something interesting to say. What does TOMS in one of the following articles refer to?

[lenrt1200st]

In a recent Cycle World, Peter Egan said that riding the Ural w/ side hack was...not about making time, but about making time stand still. I like that thought!

BTW - I'd really like to sign on w/ the BMW (riding skills) group if they're in this neck of the woods. That being said, it's a little less scary to think in terms of a Zen style or attitude of riding than the idea of disappearing. You know, "If they can't see me then I'm gonna get hit!" So, I don't ride w/ Camo.

However, I think the two styles; Zen and Disappearing mean nearly the same thing. It's not about riding w/ the fast, faster, fastest attitude or crowd, but rather it's about riding for recreation, a re-connection of one's soul w/ itself and the immediate environment throughwhich one is motoring.

To be so involved w/ the process; body, mind and spirit riding as one, that you take yourself out of the process.

Does that make sense?

Len
2006 R1200 ST

[hlothery]

Where do you stand?

http://moonrider.journalspace.com/

Voni
sMiling

Nice article....thanks for sharing. Have often thought, as I have aged, of how near the edge I was in my youth when driving or riding over or near the limits of speed of thought. I first realized when, having grown up in the Blue Ridge of Western NC, I returned for a visit in my new Nissan 300ZX, but could not approach the entry speeds on curves on my favorite roads that I used to do in my old '54 Ford sedan. Now I definitely lean toward the Zen side, choosing to consider the rammifications of what might be around the corner. I don't recall enjoying driving in the Blue Ridge any more when I was younger than I did recently on my RT, at near the speed limit, with my wife on back, as we smoothly maneuverd down the Cherohala Skyway. Slowing down not only allows time for more thought, but, I believe, more enjoyment. I've done so in my professional life, as well, choosing to go back to a more satisfying mode of employment which is fulfilling by providing time for communication and caring, rather than driven accomplishment. Definitely prefer the Zen. :heart

[hlothery]

Sorry Voni......looks like I retain my title as the best thread-killer in the MOA.

The new me..........:lurk

[20774]

Wendy always has something interesting to say. What does TOMS in one of the following articles refer to?

Looks like it stands for Team Oregon Motorcycle Safety Program. Seems that Oregon State University has a safety program and there may be some infringement on the MSF program...at least there is/was a lawsuit along those lines.

http://www.mrf.org/articles/2007/07NR1msfvsoregon.htm

Kurt in S.A.

[flash412]

Nice article....thanks for sharing. Have often thought, as I have aged, of how near the edge I was in my youth when driving or riding over or near the limits of speed of thought. I first realized when, having grown up in the Blue Ridge of Western NC, I returned for a visit in my new Nissan 300ZX, but could not approach the entry speeds on curves on my favorite roads that I used to do in my old '54 Ford sedan. "The older I get, the faster I was."

[jwhite518]

I like to go fast.

There's a "Zen" about going fast. Don't let anybody tell you that the only way to become one with the universe is to observe the speeds on the yellow signs. When your mind is right, when you're looking ahead and getting prepared for the turns before you reach them, when you're concentrating on smoothness in your right hand and the way your body shifts, when you're flowing -- time stands still.

I don't have to wring ever last millisecond out of my performance. It's not about that (unless on on the racetrack and I have a stopwatch.) It's just about going my own pace - which is fast.

I'm experienced enough to know my limits, to know how fast is fast enough for a blind curve, to leave myself an out. I'm not a hooligan. But I like to go fast. Too fast for group riding, which is why I usually ride alone.

:bliss

[Catman]

In speed we hurl ourselves beyond the body.
Our bodies cannot scale the heavens except in a fume of petrol.
Bones. Blood. Flesh. All pressed inward together.

:cat -T.E. Lawrence

[flash412]

In speed we hurl ourselves beyond the body.
Our bodies cannot scale the heavens except in a fume of petrol.
Bones. Blood. Flesh. All pressed inward together. -T.E. LawrenceT.E. Lawrence later joined the Air Force as a non-com under an assumed name.
He wrote a book about his experiences. This is from that book,
_The Mint_ by 352087 A/c Ross. (without permission)


"16: The Road


The extravagance in which my surplus emotion expressed itself lay on the
road. So long as roads were tarred blue and straight; not hedged; and empty
and dry, so long I was rich. Nightly I'd run up from the hanger, upon the
last stroke of work, spurring my tired feet to be nimble. The very movement
refreshed them, after the day-long restraint of service. In five minutes,
my bed would be down, ready for the night: in four more I was in breeches
and puttees, pulling on my gauntlets as I walked over to my bike, which
lived in a garage-hut, opposite. Its tyres never wanted air, its engine had
a habit of starting at second kick: a good habit, for only by frantic
plunges upon the starting pedal could my puny weight force the engine over
the seven atmospheres of its compression.


Boanerges' first glad roar at being alive again nightly jarred the huts of
Cadet College into life. 'There he goes, the noisy @#$%#$,' someone would
say enviously in every flight. It is part of an airman's profession to be
knowing with engines: and a thoroughbred engine is our undying satisfaction.
The camp wore the virtue of my Brough Superior like a flower in its cap.
Tonight Tug and Dusty came to the step of our hut to see me off. 'Running
down to Smoke, perhaps?' jeered Dusty; hitting at my regular game of London
and back for tea on fine Wednesday afternoons.


Boa is a top-gear machine, as sweet in that as most single-cylinders in
middle. I chug lordily past the guard-room and through the speed limit at
no more than sixteen. Round the bend, past the farm, and the way
straightens. Now for it. The engine's final development is fifty-two
horsepower. A miracle for this docile strength waits behind one tiny lever
for the pleasure of my hand.


Another bend: and I have the honour of one of England's straightest and
fastest roads. The burble of my exhaust unwound like a long cord behind me.
Soon my speed snapped it, and I heard only the cry of the wind which my
battering ram head split and fended aside. The cry rose with my speed to a
shriek: while the air's coldness streamed like two jets of iced water into
my dissolving eyes. I screwed them to slits, and focused my sight two
hundred yards ahead of me on the empty mosaic of the tar's gravelled
undulations.


Like arrows the tiny flies pricked my cheeks; and sometimes a heavier body,
some house-fly or beetle, would crash into face or lips like a spent bullet.
A glance at the speedometer: seventy-eight. Boanerges is warming up. I
pull the throttle right open, on the top of the slope, and we swoop flying
across the dip, and up-down up-down the switchback beyond: the weighty
machine launching itself like a projectile with a whirr of wheels into the
air at the take-off of each rise, to land lurchingly with such a snatch of
the driving chain as jerks my spine like a rictus.


Once we so fled across the evening light, with the yellow sun on my left,
when a huge shadow roared just overhead. A Bristol Fighter, from Whitewash
Villas, our neighbour aerodrome, was banking sharply round. I checked speed
at an instant to wave: and the slipstream of my impetus snapped my arm and
elbow astern, like a raised flail. The pilot pointed down the road towards
Lincoln. I sat hard in the saddle, folded back my ears and went away after
him, like a dog after a hare. Quickly we drew abreast, as the impulse of
his dive to my level exhausted itself.


The next mile of road was rough. I braced my feet into the rests, thrust
with my arms, and clenched my knees on the tank till its rubber grips
goggled under my thighs. Over the first pot-hole Boanerges screamed in
surprise, its mud-guard bottoming with a yawp upon the rear tyre. Through


the plunges of the next ten seconds I clung on, wedging my gloved hand in
the throttle lever so that no bump should close it and spoil our speed.
Then the bicycle wrenched sideways into three long ruts: it swayed dizzily,
wagging its tail for thirty awful yards. Out came the clutch, the engine
raced freely: Boa checked and straightened his head with a shake, as a
Brough should.


The bad ground was passed and on the new road our flight became birdlike.
My head was blown out with air so that my ears had failed and we seemed to
whirl soundlessly between the sun-gilt stubble fields. I dared, on a rise,
to slow imperceptibly and glance sideways into the sky. There the Bif was,
two hundred yards and more back. Play with the fellow? Why not? I slowed
to ninety: signalled with my hand for him to overtake. Slowed ten more:
sat up. Over he rattled. His passenger, a helmeted and goggled grin, hung
out of the cock-pit to pass me the 'Up yer' Raf randy greeting.


They were hoping I was a flash in the pan, giving them best. Open went my
throttle again. Boa crept level, fifty feet below: held them: sailed ahead
into the clean and level country. An approaching car pulled nearly into its
ditch at the sight of our race. The Bif was zooming among the trees and
telegraph poles, with my scurrying spot only eighty yards ahead. I gained
though, gained steadily: was perhaps five miles an hour the faster. Down
went my left hand to give the engine two extra dollops of oil, for fear that
something was running hot: but the overhead JAP twin, super-tuned like this
one, would carry on to the moon and back, unfaltering.


We drew near the settlement. A long mile before the first houses I closed
down the and coasted to the cross-roads by the hospital. Bif caught up,
banked, climbed and turned for home, waving to me as long as he was in
sight. Fourteen miles from camp, we are, here: and fifteen minutes since I
left Tug and Dusty at the hut door.


I let in the clutch again, and eased Boanerges down the hill, along the tram
lines through the dirty streets and up-hill to the aloof cathedral, where it
stood in frigid perfection above the cowering close. No message of mercy in
Lincoln. Our God is a jealous God: and man's very best offering will fall
disdainfully short of worthiness, in the sight of Saint Hugh and his angels.


Remigius, earthy old Remigius, looks with more charity on me and Boanerges.
I stabled the steel magnificence of strength and speed at his west door and
went in: to find the organist practising something slow and rythmical, like
a multiplication table in notes, on the organ. The fretted, unsatisfying
and unsatisfied lace-work of choir screen and spandrels drank in the main
sound. Its surplus spilled thoughtfully into my ears.


By them my belly had forgotten its lunch, my eyes smarted and steamed. Out
again, to sluice my head under White Hart's yard-pump. A cup of real
chocolate and a muffin at the teashop: and Boa and I took the Newark road
for the last hour of daylight. He ambles at forty-five and when roaring his
utmost, surpasses the hundred. A skittish motor-bike with a touch of blood
in it is better than all the riding animals on earth, because of its logical
extension of our faculties, and the hint, the provocation, to excess
conferred by its honeyed untiring smoothness. Because Boa loves me, he
gives me five more miles of speed than a stranger would get from him.


At Nottingham I added sausages from my wholesaler to the bacon which I'd
bought at Lincoln: bacon so nicely sliced that each rasher meant a penny.
The solid pannier-bags behind the saddle took all this and at my next stop
(a farm) took also a felt-hammocked box of fifteen eggs. Home by Sleaford,
our squalid, purse-proud, local village. Its butcher had six penn'orth of
dripping ready for me. For months I have been making my evening round a
marketing, twice a week, riding a hundred miles for the joy of it and
picking up the best food cheapest, over half the country side."
--


BACON!