Why a bike and not a car

In a car you are isolated from the elements, the road, and for that matter the car itself, sure you can feel the wheel turn but you don't feel the road wheel interaction the way you do with a bike.


Riding a bike you are more conscience of everything, from the view of scenery going by, to the pavement moving beneath you, from the smells of nature to the smell of exhaust. A motorcyclist becomes one with the bike in a manner a person driving a car can never know. You talk to a bike and it talks back, you can hear the engine running, you know when it's working and when it's just cruising along. You can hear the tires gripping the pavement and occasionally not gripping it. You listen to every sound the bike makes, you feel every motion it makes, and you respond in kind. The bike listens to your movements and it reacts in kind. The simple act of moving your leg outward, leaning, or just shifting your upper body talks to the bike and it reacts. You become one entity moving along the nations roads.
The adult human legs weigh roughly 40% of your total body weight. For example if you weigh 200lbs (200 x .40 = 80) so your legs together weigh 80lbs or each leg weighs 40lbs. The act of moving your leg out away from the bike shifts that weight, the bike being balanced on two wheels feels this shift and leans a little in that direction, meaning to or not you have told the bike you want to turn.

The human body tends to go where it looks, when you look to one side the body shifts slightly in that direction anticipating heading that way. This has probably happened to everyone, you are riding along on the highway, you look left to see something and when you look back you find the bikes line has changed in the lane, you have drifted slightly in the direction you were looking. Experienced motorcyclists are aware of this and counter for it. They look without allowing the weight shift.

Every movement you make translates to an action which the bike reads. The next time you are out riding and coming up to a curve, without moving your lower body or changing the way you are sitting just move from the waist up in the direction of the turn keeping your shoulders parallel with the handlebars, you will find the bike begins the lean for a corner, now push on the opposing bar and the bike with roll into the turn, a touch of front brake on a sharp corner will compress the front end and help you through the turn.
All these little nuances are things a car driver will never know, they sit behind the wheel, radio on, coffee in hand and just point and shoot the car. A biker becomes the bike, a biker becomes the ride.


klay