(Note: I normally prefer not to use quotations, but the following is, so far, one of the best descriptions of the experience of riding a bike that I have come across.)
The Road, the Writer
-Mark C. Taylor and Jose Marquez
The motorcyclist encounters the road as a writer encounters the page. There is no proper approach, no correct path, no true line. The page is never blank but is always littered with tracks and debris left by those who have gone before. Lines cross and crisscross to create intersections without warning signs. The road twists and turns, banks and slopes, becomes straight and narrows down, develops a new surface, throws up gravel, sand, oil, water. To ride is to write and to write is to read and rewrite a text that has already been written.
Neither writing nor riding is possible without a certain violence. As the writer inscribes paper with ink and words, so the motorcyclist cuts a line through sheer space using angles and velocity as letters and punctuation. Whether ink or rubber, the trace is never direct even when the course seems to be straight. Far from a passive medium, the road is a site of resistance that solicits the imagination of the rider. The body of the road forces the body of the rider/bike to negotiate a high-speed balancing act. A right curve in the road leads the rider to drift to the left before carving out a long, deliberate line to the right. Though the road is the pretext, the rider's lines can never be written in advance. Where rubber meets the road, improvisation is unavoidable. Since curves unexpectedly appear and disappear, the rider can never know what's around the next bend. The rider must become fully aware of the road by reading signs that are never completely legible. Nothing is secure—readiness is all.
The inscription of the line is the mark of style. Though the road seems fixed, no two ride it the same way. It's not the words but their inflection, their rhythm, their balance, their spacing that creates style. Slight changes have important consequences; the turn of a phrase, like the turn of the wheel, can change everything in the twinkling of an eye. Never lightweight, seemingly minor adjustments might be matters of life and death. Riding and writing are deadly serious endeavors. Mistakes, which can never be erased, are sometimes fatal. The curve, which may last only a split second, can become a death sentence.
The bike joins rider and road at the hip. No longer two but not yet one, the trail of the road is the tale of the rider. The bike is a pen, the road, the rider's unfinished autobiography.
