The Motorcyclist

When you have crossed the most rugged and daunting peaks in utter darkness, while the heavens pour out their fury upon you and you grapple for control, the feeble ray of light before you barely visible;
When you have traversed the endless tracks of blistering deserts, the sands a roaring furnace all around, and the sun a burning torch above;
When you have prevailed upon the tortuous traces left by those who came before you, seeking to tame a wild land and forge a better life;
When you have stood alone in the vast and terrible chasms hewn and rent from living rock by the immutable forces of nature, and felt yourself so small as to disappear;
When you have merged in perfect union with a stunning, cloudless sky fueled by the fragrant wind alone, to follow the sinuous course of a thundering river to the mighty cataracts that form its source;
When you have felt the sublime and awesome hand of God in your every move, and in your soul a communion with the ineffable;
When you have clasped in desperation the hand of a comrade who has fallen, his machine a twisted, steaming wreck, as the very life flows from his bosom and he becomes still in your arms, never again to draw breath;
When you have done all this, not once but again, and still again, and can yet gaze with wonder in the quiescence of deepest night upon the machine that was your accompalice, partner, and associate in all this;
When you have come to regard it in your inmost reflections as sinister and seductive, soulless and transcendant, ordinary and ennobled;
When you have done this, and yet thrill to the promise of the unrisen sun that will soon shine upon the hook and crook of a gnarled mountain trace, fully apprehending the machines propensity to deal death or exalt life -

THEN WILL YOU HAVE BECOME A MOTORCYCLIST.


"When you have done all these things, and can yet stand unmoved in the shallow, weltering storm of words which issue from small minds, with the quiet humility and certitude borne of hard-won experience, while those about you crow and caw of their accompalishments and credentials, then you will not only have become a motorcyclist, YOU WILL HAVE BECOME A MAN