What is the difference between a car trip and a motorcycle trip?

         How many times have you taken a trip in a car, you start thinking of something and before you know it, you are there, or at least a lot further along than you thought you were. This is because, even in the most drive oriented car, the car that makes you feel the road, be at one with the road..you aren't. You sit behind glass and steel, isolated from the world around you. Your mind wanders,you think of work, a girlfriend, troubles at home, or what it would be like to win the lottery. The truth is, for the most part you are thinking of a million things, and driving isn't one of them.

            On a bike it's different, you and the bike become a single entity, you move with it, your various position changes tell the bike what to do next. On a bike you are aware of every hill, every valley, the crown of the road, the way the corners sweep you through, or how that crack in the pavement moved you over a bit. You smell the air as it changes from place to place, sometimes in only a matter of a few feet. The air and the smells surround you, the difference in the temperatures from the top of a hill to the bottom, from one side of a river to the next, from the heat of being in the sun to the cool of a pine shaded stretch. 

          In truth a trip on a motorcycle is much more than a trip in a car, a trip on a bike is a connection with machinery and the world, as if where you start, the bike starts, or the world starts is all fused together, each part of every trip is recorded not only in your mind but in your body, and your soul because each affects the other. 

There is no such thing as a short ride on a bike when you compare it to a trip in a car. The main reason is that you are there for the entire trip, every nuance of the road and the world register with you. In a car...well, you could be anywhere else.

(Here's a test for you, ask a car driver if he knows what "road snakes" are. If he doesn't, don't be surprised, it's because he has never been way over in a turn on a hot humid day and run over a patch of them. In that car it's just a peice of the road he flew over in a second or so. On a bike as we know, the weather effects the road, if you have ever, on a hot Summer day, hit a section of road where it seems as if there are more snakes than tar, you know that for those couple seconds the car was oblivious to, you found the ride got a lot more interesting.)