Are motorcycles worth the risk?

eru000

New member
https://www.youtube.com/v/fSdybMhoqW4?start=0&end=178

Is riding a motorcycle really worth it? This question often weighs heavy on the minds of riders because motorcycling is so unsafe. Fatalities and injuries do happen, and the loss of a downed rider can affect us deeply. Is it really worth it?

Yes, because in that singular flash before our souls depart the flesh, we will find one of two things: contentment or regret. We find regret when we feel there should have been more. Regret is born of unmet expectations, unfulfilled dreams, wrongs that should have been righted. We find contentment when we have loved and truly lived every minute of our lives and are taken from this life only left wanting for more of what made it so dear.

And that is the paradox: to fully experience life, we must live it in a way that sometimes defies survival logic. Our lives are forged by contrast: sunshine and rain, light and dark, courage and fear, pleasure and pain. Riding a motorcycle fosters an intimate perception with each end of that spectrum.

Our perceptions are formed with a series of troughs and peaks, and the greater our struggle from the valley of despair to the summit of joy the more we give thanks to each precious breath. But like life, a journey by motorcycle has very little to do with the beginning or the end, but rather the infinite points, possibilities, and experiences in between.

To join gravity as it ebbs and flows over each crest, around each turn. To breathe inertia-like oxygen. To live acceleration not in a cocoon, but as an active participant, hurtling our bodies forward into the elements above the machine, not inside it. To engage each and every sense while we roar ahead with the keen awareness that at any moment, it could be over.

And that is the wonderment of contrast: the finality of it. The terrifying, yet glorious possibilities. The very sharp and intimate interplay with our own finite mortality reminds us that each waking breath, each sunrise, each loving embrace, is not to be wasted by the extremes of reckless abandon or overcautious paranoia, but cradled by the sincere appreciation of the infinite now and the contrast that makes our paradigm so rare and precious.

As riders, we are mistaken as seekers of danger or death, but it's the opposite that's true. We seek to embrace the whole of life's contrast for as long as we are allowed. But when death finally greets us, it will be as a familiar road we have yet to travel; another beautiful contrast: life and death.

So as you stare into this screen with your diminishing fortune of remaining minutes and weigh your life on the brutally candid scales of regret and contentment, as you ask yourself of motorcycling or any other choice in this life: is it worth it?

Remember, a life worth living is measured not by the number of years, but by the awesome contrast of experience.
 

Bagman

Member
...and while contemplating the amazing contrast in experience of a glorious day of riding - it hits you... a left-turner, and a brilliant soar through the air.

I may not have the words to put what I am trying to say into eloquence as the OP, but I do not leave my justification of riding a motorbike to philosophy. I certainly enjoy my time on the bike, but it comes with significant realities of choice and consequence where philosophy really has no place.

Perhaps the OPs words are best suited to those that run the TT or Wingsuit Basejump.

Off-topic, but kinda related.... those that label motorcycling a 'sport.' *facepalm*
 

Rotaryknight

New member
...and while contemplating the amazing contrast in experience of a glorious day of riding - it hits you... a left-turner, and a brilliant soar through the air.

I may not have the words to put what I am trying to say into eloquence as the OP, but I do not leave my justification of riding a motorbike to philosophy. I certainly enjoy my time on the bike, but it comes with significant realities of choice and consequence where philosophy really has no place.

Perhaps the OPs words are best suited to those that run the TT or Wingsuit Basejump.

Off-topic, but kinda related.... those that label motorcycling a 'sport.' *facepalm*


well, if you only ride weekends hot dogging it, I guess its a sport lol
 

stormin1

New member
Worth it definately.

Someone once said "do your worst for today I have lived!"this is how I try to live as I'd rather get old and know I have done things ,other than wish I had.
I have always been around bikes and hope to till I am no longer able to ride then in my shed I will tinker and remember.
 
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