motorcyclemeditation.com

Just as you’re starting to think about Spring, along comes a harsh little reminder not to take liberties. Easter weekend, snowflakes drifting sideways, the air icy. On the motorcycle, feeling about the same as all the plants with their premature buds, ooohh, better stay huddled up a bit longer.

Yet the conditions lacking winter’s most implacable burden, the cruelly short days. Sure, it may be cold but the light is good. Five in the evening, the motorcycle zipping briskly along, still an hour to go before end of day. Sun occasionally peeping out, everything then bathed in soft yellow glow, thawing the mind.

Riding along, feeling and seeing all of this, remembering the early decision to take up motorcycling. Stuck in stuffy overheated indoors, staring out of closed windows, too much of a hermetic seal against the outside. Trying to find a remedy. Windsurfing, microlighting, suchlike, fine, but too much effort if you live in London, difficult to make them just a normal part of everyday life. Then motorcycling. A perfect way to get outdoors, plus it doesn’t add effort, it lifts it.

So now, many years later, relishing the exposure. The passing moment between seasons. In England, not passing very swiftly, more a protracted delivery, troublesome but interesting, plenty of false starts. No year like any other, the fine distinctions a perennial excitement. Now savored, where before motorcycling they went unnoticed or else served merely as irritants.

And the cold, also worth savoring. Early years on the motorcycle, cold an enemy, something to avoid or shield yourself from. Then realizing, sure, it needs managing, once you manage it, it has a sharp cleansing frigidity, it’s your friend, bestowing relief from bland uniformity of heated interiors or relentless warmth of summer.

Today, feeling the cold on the motorcycle, in a few weeks it’ll be hard to remember, just as now it’s hard to remember being fed up with summer heat. Whilst the cold’s here, relish it.