Motorcycling – Why? An attempt at an answer

Motorcycling – how can you explain it to someone who doesn’t know it? Trying to sort out my thoughts, my memories and my reasons for taking up this hobby.

Before you read, please note: this post was translated with the help of Deepl.
If you find any errors – please have fun first and then give me a hint.

6 degrees below zero, a cold morning at the end of November 2000. The icy road below me. Last shreds of leaves, trapped in a frozen shell. At seven in the morning, a red Triumph Daytona roars from Bolzano in the direction of Sluderno, I still have 80 km to go, at 08.30 I am expected at the office. The coffee that was made for me rumbles in my stomach … In bed it was pleasant, warm, soft and much more user-friendly. The Triumph draws a mighty plume of steam behind it, the sun at my back casts my shadow in front of me. Thickly wrapped up, I fight my way up the Venosta Valley – the cold nevertheless eats through gloves, boots, into my helmet. At 8.15 a.m. I peel myself out of the clammy leather.

Riding a motorcycle
 in the freezing cold

12 degrees below zero, early December 1993. The road is dry, the sky steel blue. Blue smoke also comes out of the two exhaust pipes of the Suzuki RGV 250 as I roll past the Carabinieri patrol. I’m on my way to Malles, to work. 200 metres after the patrol, a German shepherd runs into my motorcycle. I grab the brake lever, the RGV rolls over, lands on my knee, and I slide across the road into the crash barriers – 20 metres behind a southbound truck …

Riding a motorcycle
 in severe heat

30 degrees in the shade, but there is no shade. On the way back from Lago di Caldonazzo, the Triumph Daytona T595 heats me up extremely. I look for cool air in the black leather – the sweat runs down my arms, is dried by the hot wind that enters the open sleeves. I have opened the zips on my legs and boots. Shortly before collapse, a cry into the helmet: Goddamn… sh… !! Unimpressed, the Triumph does its best to convert petrol into heat. I’ve been sick to my stomach for a long time, my abdomen hurts, I don’t want to go on, but I’m still over a hundred kilometres from home. The Daytona will stay with me for another week, then it will be sold.

Midsummer 1997. A black, rumbling motorcycle presses its way up the steep road. Turn after turn, hard braking, hard shifting, hard acceleration. The Yamaha TRX has conquered another serpentine on the way to the Stelvio. Gas goes into the cylinders, the clutch whines. Conclusion after about 20 minutes: an optimal ride – even if Buell-Buddy Johann has been standing on the top of the pass for a while, has already taken off his helmet. My balaclava is wet, my wrists hurt, my face is tense. From grinning.

Motorcycling
 in the rain

Autumn 2000. Again on the MeBo between Merano and Bolzano, and it’s raining cats and dogs. Toes, fingers, shoulders – everything gets soaked, shrivels up into pale body parts. The cold creeps down my back, rainwater follows. I push my Ducati through the wet at 140 km/h, amazed at how safe the motorcycle makes me feel even in this water. The chain rattles, the brake no longer decelerates, but only spreads the water on the rotors. At the stopover at the petrol station, the bike stinks, I can’t take off my wet gloves, the water is standing in my boots.

Easter 1995. I reach Lake Garda with my girlfriend and the mighty Yamaha FZR 1000. With aching muscles in my arms due to the unaccustomed weight of the machine, I pull my helmet off my head in Peschiera. My eyeglasses fall off, one glass shatters. Easter in Peschiera, and the only optician is still open at eight in the evening. Lucky, very lucky …

On the way home, the bike dies. Something prevents it from breathing, it revs not higher than 6,000 rpm, a jerking and grinding goes through the aluminium frame. The reason: probably bad or dirty petrol. After 200 agonising kilometres and a fresh tank of petrol, the Yamaha recollects its old virtues and pushes through the Venosta Valley with an angry snarl.

Motorcycling
 in a foreign country

September 2000. Late in the evening on the motorway between Bamberg and Munich. I’m freezing like never before, literally freezing my ass off. My teeth are chattering, my arms are shaking, I can’t go straight anymore. I see things that don’t belong on the motorway at night. I pull out at a petrol station, put on all possible and available clothes, warm myself a bit on the exhaust pipes, dream of a tiled stove in a wood-panelled farmhouse parlour. The longest, coldest night of my life – around 10.30 pm I finally arrive in Bergen and meet a lot of nice MOFers. It get’s warmer again …

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So why
 ride a motorcycle?

My father didn’t, my grandfather didn’t either. My mother certainly didn’t, nor my kindergarten aunt. It was probably the fault of a guy from my home village who thought to have 90 hp in his 650 Africa Twin – that’s what I wanted, that’s what I had to check: I bought the first motorcycle magazine: „Motorrad, Reisen und Sport“. The initial spark in distant years – since then, the motorcycle world has never let me go.

I need to live life,
 like some people never will

• Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Drive where I want and stop where I want. Drive on when I want. Turn around when I feel like it.
• Collect impressions, always and at any time. Draw on them, perhaps for a lifetime. Live a life like many people never will.
• Seeing the world from above. Seeing the world from other angles, sometimes tilted by 40 degrees. Racing through the world, gritting your teeth at 200 km/h, tensing your body, bracing yourself against the wind.
• Marking the world. Painting black lines that are my mark for a long time. Pressing tyre tread in winter mud and slush. Leaving oil stains in the garage. Carrying black hands around, and being proud of it. Injuring myself wrenching and still working on the bike with bloody fingers. Smelling of petrol, watching wounds heal, bearing scars.
• Have fun. Smoke on. Where to today? There today!! Risk a little and win it all.
• Becoming one with yourself, the machine, the road. Seeing the world fall apart at the seams when it’s crazy around the bends.
• Experience heat, cold, fear, pain, incredible dynamics, risk, happiness, uniqueness.
• Getting to know people dear to me. Friends for life, think alike, do alike, feel alike. Being a motorcyclist, nothing else.

That’s why I ride –
 I don’t want anything else.

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