In 1969 I became captivated by the movie "Easy Rider." I attended the premiere in Washington, D.C. It's a story about two social outcasts discovering America on chopped Harleys. Captain America (played by Peter Fonda) and his partner Billy (Dennis Hopper) defined the social ills of the '60s, experiencing the counterculture's involvement in drugs, free love and communal living.
However, the hook of the movie was the image of traveling the endless highways to the music of The Band, The Byrds and Bob Dylan.
When I served in Vietnam, my radio call sign was "Easy Rider." Throughout the jungles and over the radio waves, one could hear, "This is Easy Rider…over!"
In 1974, Robert Pirsig's book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," captured the imagination of four million readers. Within the context of a father/son motorcycle trip across America, Pirsig reflected on the attitude we bring to motorcycle maintenance as a metaphor for the contemplation of life, values and philosophy. A motorcycle is a systematic assemblage of concepts. So is life.
I devoured his book and must have underlined every other sentence. I've read it four times and I have to tell you, I'm as confused as ever.
"A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself," Pirsig wrote.
He just kills me!
Last Saturday was the first time I ever road on a motorcycle. I can't believe it too this long, either! Something always got in the way. College, the Corps, the war, graduate school, climbing, work, family — they were all excuses from following my inclination toward motorcycles. Last week that all changed.
