Break the Mold

Burns always rides to and from work in any kind of weather. Always has as faras I can tell (and as far as he'll admit to). But I've grown lazy recently andhave spent a number of mornings sitting in traffic, content to leave the bikesin the garage just so I can sit and sip my morning Starbucks bean juicewhile I listen to morning drive-time dee-jays attempt to make people smile onthe way to their ho-hum jobs that make up the majority of their ho-hum lives.But I'm not really like those people. Not me. No sir.

I have a great job. I get to play with motorcycles. The kid in the candy storethought he had it made. But just wait till he grows up. It only gets better.And the terrible thing of it is, I forgot that. I forgot what ridingmotorcycles is about.

Looking back a few weeks, I started driving more because I no longer enjoyedriding. Then I realized why. I was Doing It Wrong. It had become Routine. I wasusing a motorcycle as a tool, which isn't wrong in itself, but I allowedmyself to lose sight of things. Not to be overly dramatic (there was enough ofthat on last night's Oscars), but I lost sight of the most important quality oflife and the thing that got me into riding in the first place: Exploration.

It was Sunday morning and there was a car race out at Willow Springs (I'm abit of a Porsche freak--there's just something I really dig about thoseover-priced Corvairs). I was definately going to check out the scene, butsomehow the morning air made the new R1 sitting in the garage more importantthan a McDonald's drive-through on the way to the track. Besides, there'd beplenty of greasy grub waiting at Willow where the smell of race gas mixedwith camraderie and testosterone combine to make any meal a Complete DiningExperience.

Anywho, it was only a matter of blocks from the house when I realizedsomething: I was already having fun. It was the same bike I rode the daybefore, same streets, same weather, same everything. But I was having fun thistime. So what changed? Only my attitude. Instead of riding to work, I wasGoing For a Ride. On the bike, on the road, I was already at my destination.

But what about those of you who only ride onweekends to get away from work? To that I say Ride to Work. That's right.Break the mold. Do something different. Just as Riding on the weekend got meout of the routine and I rediscovered riding for the sake of riding andexploring, not just for the sake of the job. It works both ways, I think. Ifyou take just one day out of the week to ride to work, you'll arrive in acompletely different mind-set than you would otherwise. Why? Because insteadof being trapped in a car trapped in traffic, you'll feel free. Just likeyou do when you ride on the weekends.

It's a cheap experiment, really, with very little cost and a huge upside. Ifthis was a bet, it'd have incredible odds, but we're not talking money. Youalready have the tools you need to pull it off. And what have you got to losebut pent-up frustration, anyway?

Well, that's my theory, anyway. Go ahead. Prove me wrong.

--Minime