motorcyclemeditation.com

More thinking to do on emergency braking, after the weekend’s motorcycle adventure my mind won’t leave it alone. Specifically, danger suddenly materializing, the quiver of adrenaline, the sudden detachment, everything happening in slow motion.

The striking realisation, how pleasant the feeling is, just at the point of where you may be about to lose your life. You’re suddenly in a zone, time suspending, everyday worries sloughing off, the world’s spatial organization vortexed into your own floating peace. You and the danger, and a slither of time for salvation, and all else irrelevant.

This zone so desirable as to be actively sought, as in extreme sports. Yet the true attraction lying in its obliquity, it won’t come to order. Like inadvertently walking past a fragrant plant, a lavender bush perhaps, ambushed by its scent, swept off your feet, a different thing entire from seeking it out. So too the thrill of danger, the whole point is that it comes from nowhere, you’re engulfed in something you didn’t expect.

The moment passed, the zone having a more enduring aftermath. The newborn wonder of being alive. Like a thunderstorm on a sultry day, then the calm, the world washed clean. Then, slowly, humdrum cares reasserting, but in new perspective.

On a motorcycle, over a year, you encounter maybe half a dozen situations like that, where suddenly it’s, whoa, whoa, what do I do now. Times when you need your riding disciplines to be working for you. The adrenaline kick, to activate your self reliance, as intended by nature.

It’s the balance, the exposure to an elemental perilous world, but also the means to manage the perils, that’s what makes the motorcycle such a wonderful machine.