on motorcycles
Sometimes the only reasonable response to the modern world is a large-displacement death machine pointed toward the horizon.
There is no freedom quite like a motorcycle.
Not the sanitized freedom advertised between pickup trucks and erectile-dysfunction pills. Real freedom. Loud, impractical, dangerous freedom. The kind that rattles your teeth, burns gasoline, and demands your full attention because a moment’s carelessness might send you tumbling into the weeds.
There is no better therapy, either.
A motorcycle leaves no room for tomorrow’s deadlines, unpaid bills, unanswered messages, office politics, or the thousand other petty indignities of modern life. There is only the engine beneath you, the road ahead, and the next corner arriving with alarming speed.
The machine does not care about your job title. It does not ask how productive you have been. It does not want a status update. It asks only that you hold on, pay attention, and keep feeding it gasoline.
That is an honest relationship.
Twist the throttle until the noise in my head is drowned out by the noise between my knees.
For a little while, the world can chase me.