Zen…in cc’s

I want to be fully transparent concerning the subject matter and inspiration for this blog. The title above comes from this precious work of fiction:

Pirsig’s book was published in 1974 and I read it – digested it – the following year. A concise description of the book’s content and focus of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance can be found at the online encyclopedia of information, Wikipedia at this link. The lure to me at the time stemmed from my penchant for motorcycle riding combined with a passion for reading and a deep curiosity regarding such an intriguing title. In 1966, at 16 years of age, I purchased my first motorcycle, a black Yamaha 80cc very similar in style and structure to this photo of the bike model (not my actual bike):

The bike featured is 100 cc but the model is exactly like my 80cc and the closest image I can find of the model. My best friend’s brother sold me the bike when he upgraded to a 250cc – I think – twin carburetor, dual exhaust, a much more powerful machine. If I asked my father for permission to purchase it, I don’t remember. I do recall that, as a pilot, he regarded motorcycles as “two-wheeled kiddy-karts” without any apparent concerns for their safety or mine. In fact, at the time, licensing was a simple matter of paper-work application with the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (you only needed a beginner’s permit – G1 now, I think – to drive a bike); insurance on bikes was very cheap; there was no rider-training required for owners; and most stunning of all, helmets were not mandatory in our province until the summer of 1967. In the latter regard, although I owned a white, sort of bucket-style helmet, I only wore it for highway driving before ’67, never for in-city commuting which comprised 95% of my bike use.

My fascination with and love for riding my Yamaha were very deep. I parked it at the side of our duplex at 730 Sevilla Park Place, London, and covered the machine with form-fitting tarp at night (no garage). For almost 3 years, it remained my main mode of transport – most certainly my preferred means of driving. Mostly, in grades 12 and 13, I drove it forth-and-back to my high school, Beck Collegiate, perhaps a 5 km, one-way commute via backstreets from the south to the east parts of the city. Once at the school, there was a designated parking spot for bikes – though not many students owned motorcycles – at the northwest side of the building near the playing fields. I wore a sort of oil-skinned rain coat for wet and cold weather protection though I vividly recollect arriving home or school with soaked shoes and pants. And I remember insurance covered bikes from May 1st to October 31st, regardless of weather; driving outside those dates was not permitted and everyone just seemed to comply. Certainly, as the son of a then insurance salesman, I was aware of the law and lack of coverage should an accident happen in the non-covered 6 months of each year.

I learned my riding skills and respect for my own vulnerability as a bike rider from my friend’s brother; Gary took me for riding lessons when I bought the bike from him, carefully instructing me how to ‘steer and weight and lean’ the bike from my hips. The handlebars literally turned the vehicle but balance and control came from subtle centre-of-gravity shifts at the hips. It is an indescribable feel of and for the bike when I learned the subtleties of hip control. I could sway the bike ever so slightly right and left while moving in a straight line. When making turns, riders always lean into the turning direction with your whole torso, something it often took considerable effort to teach first-time passengers. I was never into trail bike riding; for city road driving, I was taught never to take my foot off the toe support when leaning into a turn. Should that foot touch the pavement and any torque be applied at foot placement, the results could be broken bones. One of my colleague’s sons had to have his lower leg amputated because his foot and leg were so mangled from using his foot as a turning pivot and losing control of his bike. By far the Number One lesson I retained throughout my almost 50 years of motorcycle-riding is summed up in 3 words, trust no one. When that advice was shared with me, it felt on the surface as though it were such a negative way of thinking while enjoying the feeling of unfettered freedom that bike-riding engendered for me. And yet what it came to mean as a perpetual defensive driving mantra was, for example, looking in all directions at 2-way, 4-way, traffic light stops/intersections. Even with the right-of-way or green light in my favour, what if one car missed the stop sign or ran a red light with me in the intersection? If that accident were to happen, I might be the most mangled or dead person who was ‘in the right’ or not at fault. In the same vein, it became so habitual to check my side-view mirrors constantly and always to look behind me, not merely in the mirror, when changing lanes.

When riding, I was so aware of anticipating what was happening 4 or 5 or more car-lengths ahead of me, mindful, almost peripherally, of the vehicle and its behaviour immediately ahead of me. I was constantly panning my driving horizon, subconsciously collecting and sorting traffic information. Bikes, even small ones like my 80cc can accelerate very quickly; stopping, using both the handlebar, front wheel hand-brake and the foot-pedal rear brake worked well and needed lots of lead-time to reduce speed or stop when required. For decelerating with lots of lead-time, I often down-shifted, gradually going from higher to lower gears to let the engine do the work of braking the bike. Rain, leaves in autumn-riding, oil- and mud-slicks were all enemies of stopping. Only twice in all my years of riding different bikes did I have to “put the bike down.” That expression and its meaning were taught to me when I first learned to ride but it’s not a skill easily practised. It refers to the split-second decision a bike rider makes when s/he realizes it will be impossible to stop the motorcycle in time to avoid a collision.

It happened to me within a year of owning my first bike. I was riding on highway # 3, coming from Simcoe, Ontario into Delhi in light-rain conditions, mid- or late-July, very light traffic flow. It was dusk and as I entered the little, tobacco-industry-dominated town of Delhi, reducing my speed, the transport truck in front of me either swerved and/or applied the brakes very suddenly. It was two-lanes coming into Delhi and my reaction was to change lanes while gently applying both brakes; however, there was a vehicle in the other lane. With what seemed like no other thought, I applied my front brake and used my hips to bring the back end of the bike around to my side until it was perpendicular to my direction of travel. At the same time as the back pivoted, I over-leaned away from the direction of travel to let the whole bike land on its side while I simultaneously let go of the handlebars and foot-rests to land and slide on my left side on the road while the bike skidded toward the truck. It all happened in an instant. Luckily, there was no vehicle behind me or if there were, it managed to circumvent me and the bike; neither I or the bike came close to hitting the truck. My sense was I would not have been able to brake well enough to avoid collision and in putting the bike down at this relatively slow speed – maybe 15 miles per hour (we hadn’t converted to metric in 1967) – the only impact on me was mild shock and a slightly-torn sleeve at the shoulder of my rain jacket. My Yamaha, I later discovered, had one small scratch on each of the tool-pouch cover and gas tank; however, the immediate bike issue was a bent and mangled, unusable gear-shift handle, very likely the point of impact when the bike landed on the pavement. The latter issue seemed to occupy my thoughts – repair with a new handle was essential but how would I get to the only bike shop I knew, in Simcoe about 10 km distant? Turns out, I was able to use two fingers to pull the little metal tab on the end of the wire normally attached to the clutch-engaging-handle. There were no stoplights or stop signs until I got back into Simcoe so once the bike was in highway gear, I didn’t have to shift gears very much.

As I think back on it, the whole incident seemed so surreal – axiomatic in my mind and body. It didn’t deter me in any way from riding; instead, it seemed to confirm my bike-acquired slogan, trust no one. It was as though learning to ride the motorcycle safely and skilfully grounded me such that I was able to delight in the sheer joy of riding. Like most things in life that have brought me enjoyment, motorcycle riding just is, now was, fun. Odd as it may seem, I always felt very earth-bound, connected to the pavement beneath my wheels, my feet mere inches from that surface. I remember watching the Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper 1969 now-classic, if not iconic movie, Easy Rider. In the film, Wyatt and Billy, their personae, travel across the US astride their “choppers,” extended handlebars and all, in a kind of counterculture, spiritual quest…

Dennis Hopper is on the left, Peter Fonda on the right. As I recall, they did their own riding.

What attracted and continues to attract me to the movie is the titular adjective, “Easy.” It is the perfect, bike-riding/feeling descriptor. Riding feels in flow, in sync, just so easy. Though always so mindful of my environment and traffic, I was so aware of the freedom of riding and that feeling, to me, oozed from the cinematic screen in the bike scenes from Easy Rider. Shifting gears with left hand on the handlebar handle, left foot on the clutch lever (1st gear, one push down, the other 4 gears required the top of my shoe-toe to pull back), foot and body so softly and deftly aware of whether I need to up- or down-shift. From a full stop, even the smallest of bikes, like my 80cc, have stunning pickup and accelerative potential and I confess to smiling often as I sped away from vehicles after a traffic stand-still. And, I cannot leave this section that began with the mention of Easy Rider without a visual and auditory reminder of its fabulous theme song, Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild: