Think back to when you were a kid and you were given a coloring book and a box of crayons. You grabbed your favorite color from the box and you began to scribble. Sure, there were lines there, but you didn't care. You scribbled in red, then you scribbled in blue, then you scribbled in green on top of all of that. And that's when your mom looked at your masterpiece and said it was wonderful, and she was so proud of you. It made you smile. Then, fast forward to when it's time to start school. This time you're given a paint by numbers book. Your art teacher tells you that this class is about following instructions and using the appropriate colors as the guidance in the book tells you. You'll be graded on how well you follow instructions. So you do that. And yes, the painting is not exactly how you wanted it to be, but some people say it looks nice. Now the teacher makes it clear, you'll be graded on how well you follow the instructions and yeah, how well you can form, and how well you're just like everybody else. So you are, and life goes on and you get older, and you continue to follow the directions as instructed for your job. You set your schedule as to when you should get up in order to get to work on time, and you set a schedule when you should get to bed so that you can get enough rest for their job the next day. The abstract artist in you is all but forgotten due to the responsibilities of life. And then one day you get a motorcycle. And then conformity, being like everybody else, collaring inside the lines? Yeah, right. All that's tossed out the window. Today, we're talking about the abstract art of riding a motorcycle for no other reason than it makes you smile. Stay tuned. Recorded in beautiful, lovely Colorado, welcome to Peace Love Moto, the podcast for motorcyclists seeking that peaceful, easy feeling as we cruise through this life together. Are you ready? Let's go. We learn the math of the commute, like determining when we need to leave, to go to work, to get there in plenty of time, what time we need to leave home, for example. We think, well, if I leave at 7.15 and it's a Monday, I'll get to the office at 8. But due to traffic, if I leave at 7.30, I won't get there until 8.30. Unless it's a Friday, then traffic will usually be lighter, so I can adjust those times by about 10 minutes either way. Yeah, unless it's raining, then I need to add 10 minutes. Yeah, we learned the physics and the timing of getting from from point A to point B efficiently and hopefully in comfort if possible. Yeah, getting from point A to point B, then doing the same thing tomorrow. But then comes the weekend. We open the garage. Ah, all that fantastic logic, that all falls apart. Or I should say we just toss it out the window. And why? Because today, on this day, we don't care. Because you see, when you and I open that garage door, there's an object there. A machine, a thing of beauty that we love that literally carries us into our our abstract, unstructured happy place. You put on your riding gear and suddenly you're out there. Efficiency, structure, coloring between the lines, who cares about all that? We've got a motorcycle to ride. And where will we go? We don't know. We don't care. So if a driving if driving a car is like math class, maybe, for getting around, it's very necessary, it's very logical, it's structured. Then motorcycling? Motorcycling's like art class. An art class with a hippie instructor who attended Woodstock, or at least his friends tell him that he was there. Riding a motorcycle, it's it's this place of freedom where you're encouraged to paint outside the lines, to sculpt an object that only makes sense to you. A class where letting your mind go free is completely okay. It's what it's all about. Think back to when you were in high school. You had a your core classes, right? You had English composition, history, science, math. They were all about absorbing facts, following formulas, and getting to the right answer, right, as in quotes, right? Fast forward to now. When you get into your modern car entering a controlled environment, there's specific ways of doing things. I'll never forget my first experience when I rented a Tesla for the very first time. I sat there for several minutes trying to figure out how to get the thing to move. I had no idea. I literally had to use my phone to go to Google for instructions on how to get the car to move out of the rental parking lot. Climate control set to 72 degrees. Lane assist to keep you within the lines, GPS to tell you exactly where the turns are, and even if there's traffic ahead, live, of course, and it will adjust your arrival time based on that. It's a formula, it's efficiency, it's educational. You do the things in one way. Follow the process and it will get the job done. It's conformity, no need to think, certainly no need to express yourself. Just be be like everybody else, and you'll be just fine, right? Well, I really went off on a tangent there, but let me circle back to something. Back to when we talked about English composition class and history and math and science class. Do you remember art class when you were back in school? I already kind of described this already, right? But there was a time when the rules changed, at least for you. You realize that, you know, my art is my art. It's the way I feel. And some people may get it, a lot of people may not, but it still makes me happy. It makes me smile for what I've done. This came from my mind and it came from my heart. This piece of art, whatever it was, that's part of me. I think this is the same thing that happens when we sling our leg over a motorcycle. The road stops being this math problem to resolve. It starts becoming a canvas. Because you see, in math class, you engage your brain, but in art class, you engage your senses, just like your senses are engaged when you ride a motorcycle. When we ride a motorcycle, we leave that protective bubble. Because in a car, you're it's like you're watching this documentary of this whirl passing by your window. But on a motorcycle, you're part of the documentary. You're in that scene. You see clearly, you feel the wind, you sense the temperature, you smell the fresh cut grass. You smell the rain before it hits you. You feel the temperature drop when you ride through a canyon with a rushing cold river off to your left. You feel that. You feel the texture of the road change, you feel it in the handlebars when you transition from a small country road to an open highway. It just feels different, doesn't it? And this is why we ride, my friends. We don't ride because it's the most logical thing to do. Certainly not the safest. But we do because it gets us where we want to go in our heart and in our mind, more so than a car can. If we were to be purely logical and safe, we would all drive a brown Prius. Now I don't mean to I don't mean to pick on the Prius, but they're fantastic cars, super efficient, well made, very smart, efficient, and reliable and easy to drive. Gentle acceleration, safe. But face it, would you take a Toyota Prius on an adventure drive? Probably not. We ride motorcycles because, as artists, we have a need to express ourselves. I think that's what makes those conversations with your buddies or with a total stranger or another motorcycle rider at a cafe, that's what makes that conversation just so unique and interesting. This is someone who in many ways thinks and acts just like you. I can picture it in my mind right now. It's one of my favorite dirt roads in this area called Cherokee Park. It's north of where I live. It's a steep portion of the road with a very flat curve. That's what I'm picturing in my mind right now. Always covered with loose rock. I used to dread it. It's like someone comes out every night and pours marbles all over it. But I have ridden it now, maybe hundreds of times. And when it comes to that corner, I see in my mind right now, I look forward to adjusting my riding position, keeping my speed up, adjusting the acceleration or the deceleration, depending on whether I'm going up or down the road, where my goal is to ride over that rough piece of ground and make it look as smooth and easy as possible, like riding over glass in complete control. It's like all the stars lining up just right to make it a perfect turn. Just like art, I think motorcycling in challenging areas, it requires vulnerability and acceptance of that. Because otherwise you're too tight. You're holding on too tight. It's hard to explain. You can't hide on a motorcycle. You and I were fully exposed. We're exposed as much, much more than anything around us, right? Other cars for sure, but even trees or cliffs, things like that. And that's the message we keep telling these new riders. But I think we should also tell them, these new riders, that with that exposure comes this beautiful freedom. A freedom to express yourself to others who see you out riding. They see the bike that you've chosen to ride, the way you ride it, and the things that you can make that bike do with practice, all under complete control. Looking cool. Sometimes I compare my goals for motorcycle riding to my golf game. I just want to look good and find the ball after I've hit it. But as for riding, yeah, I want to look good, but I most definitely want to feel good out there, and nine times out of ten, I feel great. Sometimes you and I need to find ourselves out there in a flow state where mindfulness kicks in, where all is right with the world. Just like an abstract painter loses track of time in front of the easel, a rider loses track of the whole world from the saddle, sometimes. That flow, that mindful state, that's where healing happens. That's where recovery happens. Sometimes that's where peace of mind can be found. You, my friend, are an artist expressing yourself by doing something that you love. It doesn't matter what you ride or where you go. The art, your art, is an act of going for a ride and loving what you're doing. And if you're lucky, you'll find someone who's experiencing exactly the same thing. So go out there, color outside the lines a little bit, make some art. And until we visit again, I wish you peace and I wish you love it.