Personal Narrative: Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance
Ah, adventure! I ride this graveled Ozark ridge on my SR 500 Yamaha motorcycle with a tent and a sleeping bag strapped behind me. Goodbye, Antweiler farm, three miles from Jefferson City in central Missouri. In four days, hello Black Hills, in western South Dakota.
Washboard bumps bounce the bike, jarring my muscles and joints. I shift from third gear to second. The road smoothes out. I shift back to third. I congratulate myself—deciding to take a long motorcycle ride again was a blinking-on-light-bulb idea. It came at 3:15 AM.
I work as a night watchman. My shift starts at midnight. I make security rounds, answer phones, deal with visitors, and do minor cleaning. Between rounds, I have free time—then I read or write.
One night last winter at 2:30 in the morning, I was fighting sleep. I stared at the wall clock. The second hand clicked forward like slow drips from a faucet. I was reading Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. My eyes kept losing focus. The book lay open in front of me—Pirsig on a motorcycle trip. Troubled thoughts bubbled. …show more content…
Ten years earlier, I had taken a long motorcycle trip.
An appealing, expansive viewpoint surfaced on that two-month ride. I started the 7500 miles staring at the show of my life through a TV screen. Trip experiences changed my perception. A tiny TV image transformed into a theater screen image. This was super 3D. I reached out for oncoming objects. My brain cells sparked wildly. My synapses
smiled.
The trip textured my view. It shifted my priorities. After I returned, I planned to keep that view. Reading Zen and the Art, I realized that the motorcycle view was a memory now.
I kept reading that night. At different places, Pirsig’s words emitted energy bits. These bits accumulated in me like tiny charges in a capacitor. Finally, the posts of that capacitor flashed a spark. I shut the book hard. It was time to act again—time to do something. That’s when I planned this cycle trip.
And now I’m riding again!
Washboard bumps bounce the bike, jarring my muscles and joints. I shift from third gear to second. The road smoothes out. I shift back to third. I congratulate myself—deciding to take a long motorcycle ride again was a blinking-on-light-bulb idea. It came at 3:15 AM.
I work as a night watchman. My shift starts at midnight. I make security rounds, answer phones, deal with visitors, and do minor cleaning. Between rounds, I have free time—then I read or write.
One night last winter at 2:30 in the morning, I was fighting sleep. I stared at the wall clock. The second hand clicked forward like slow drips from a faucet. I was reading Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. My eyes kept losing focus. The book lay open in front of me—Pirsig on a motorcycle trip. Troubled thoughts bubbled. …show more content…
Ten years earlier, I had taken a long motorcycle trip.
An appealing, expansive viewpoint surfaced on that two-month ride. I started the 7500 miles staring at the show of my life through a TV screen. Trip experiences changed my perception. A tiny TV image transformed into a theater screen image. This was super 3D. I reached out for oncoming objects. My brain cells sparked wildly. My synapses
smiled.
The trip textured my view. It shifted my priorities. After I returned, I planned to keep that view. Reading Zen and the Art, I realized that the motorcycle view was a memory now.
I kept reading that night. At different places, Pirsig’s words emitted energy bits. These bits accumulated in me like tiny charges in a capacitor. Finally, the posts of that capacitor flashed a spark. I shut the book hard. It was time to act again—time to do something. That’s when I planned this cycle trip.
And now I’m riding again!