Holiday motorcycle tour

Just returned from a brief motorcycle tour through the South (Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia). Outsmarted myself a bit, actually. Ms. X teased me when I returned that it had been warmer in Michigan than where I had been riding. I'm a bit busy today (my lovely daughter is getting married tonight and I have to shave off a week's worth of scraggly beard), but here are some photos. Looking at the morning ice on the bike, I get cold all over again. I'll add some additional text later.

When travel becomes pointless

Whenever I've traveled in the South, I always made it a point to do three things:

1. Drink an RC Cola


2. Drink a Mr. Pibb


3. Eat a Moon Pie

As disgusting as these three tasks might be, I felt obligated to perform them. They meant that I was "in the South." These were things that you couldn't do in the North (unless you managed to find some very specialized stores downriver from Detroit).

On my recent motorcycle tour, I found that these products had disappeared from the stores I stopped at in Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. In the stores I visited I had the choice of Coke products, Pepsi products and Lays products.

We've now reached the point where you can step off a plane anywhere on the planet and have your choice of Coke products, Pepsi products and Lays products. And McDonalds, of course.

At some point the plane ride (or motorcycle ride) ceases to make any sense. You're just experiencing the same thing at different GPS coordinates.

I once wanted to be an anthropologist. Now it would be too depressing. Imagine hacking your way through the jungles of New Guinea and finding a Neolithic village. There at one end of the village is a Pepsi machine. At the other end is a Coke machine. And the headman is negotiating for a McDonalds.

P.S. added later ... After I posted this, the next time I visited Ms. X she reached into her fridge. Like a cold, brown rabbit, out she pulls an RC Cola. "Where did you get that?!," her straight man sputtered. "Down at the store on the corner," she said, with no additional comments. Don't you hate it when they do that?

On motorcycles

Funny you should ask.

Yeah, this motorcycling thing is kinda growing on me. At first I thought it might just be a pale substitute for flying, but it has revealed to me some aspects that are as fine and maybe even -- gasp! -- finer than flying.

It's really not fair to compare the two, but here goes:

• Beauty -- That's a toughie. It's hard to match the beauty of a vista viewed from the air. On the other hand, wildlife, waterfalls, even fields of flowers are surprisingly beautiful from a motorcycle. Nicer than from a car, you ask? Yes, for reasons I'll explain another time. As far as seeing those things from an aircraft, Bambi looks like an ant from 5000 feet.
• Sensation of Speed -- Motorcycle -- with a few rare exceptions -- wins this one hands down. The feeling that you're going fast is to a great extent sensing motion relative to other objects. I remember the first time I went Mach 1. I was really looking forward to it and ... ho hum. I mean you see the Mach meter pass 1, but at 30,000 feet there's really no sense of going fast. I imagine going that speed down on the deck, like in an F-111, would put a little extra curl in your pubes, but it's anti-climactic at altitude. The sense of speed on a motorcycle is amazing (unless you're on a Harley). My bike is just about the slowest one Suzuki makes and it can still do 0-60 in less than 4 seconds. That's faster than a Maserati. The effect is heightened by the fact that your fanny is hanging out in the wind. Oh, and the roar is cool, too!
• Risk -- Hmmmm. This one depends on a lot of factors. It depends on the kind of flying you're doing and it depends on what kind of motorcyclist you are. One motorcycle writer says Jesus speaks to him on every curve. I try to have that same conversation only once in a great while. Suffice it to say that motorcycling is as risky as you want to make it.
• Overall Thrill (See Sensation of Speed and Risk entries) -- This one's been a surprise for me and is why the bike is kinda growing on me. It really is exciting! I thought it would just be a drafty car that's missing two wheels.
• Sense of Accomplishment -- Sorry motorcycle ... here's one place where flying's got you all beat. I've met some motorcyclists who only learned to walk erect this morning. And flying is some pretty complex stuff that requires at least a modicum of brainpower and skill. But I must say so far the motorcyclists I've met seem NICER than most of the pilots I've known, who often tend to have outsize egos (See: Me) and arrogance to match.
• Cost -- Big points for the the motorcycle. I recently rented a Cessna 172SP for $110 an hour. My cost for the motorcycle is about $110 a MONTH! Plus, nearly all your maintenance on an aircraft has to be done by a vampire called an A&P Mechanic, whereas I'm doing the maintenence on the bike myself.
• Convenience -- Another big win for the bike. Preparation for flying is a pain in the ass, quite frankly. You either call Flight Service or comb the web options for the weather and any pilot notifications, then you preflight the aircraft, then you (at some airports) wait in line to take off, etc. The bike is in my attached garage. I check the tire pressure, walk around it to make sure nothing's falling off, fire it up and go. Ahhhh, bliss!
  

I'm really surprised at how many miles I've put on the two bikes this year (I'm on my second one) and how much I look forward to riding.

More updates to come.