Formerly an editor for VeloNews and Bicycling magazines, Geoff Drake has been published in plenty of national magazines. He’s clearly a talented writer and it’s worth a moment of your time to check out some of his pieces.
My favorite of his recent work is “The Right Madness“, which is about (among many things) the risk vs. reward of commuting on bikes:
” I derive a sort of masochistic sense of enjoyment from this Darwinian traffic environment. When I swing a leg over the bike in the morning and thumb the starter, I enter a “hyperaware” state. Every possible bit of information is processed: the pavement quality, the car to my right, available traction, lean angle, visibility, rpm, gear and body position. These things fit into a vast mental matrix—one that requires a thousand decisions, both conscious and subconscious, during the course of a ride. A wet spot in the shadows causes me to roll off the throttle ever so slightly; the abrupt driving style of the dot.com exec to my right makes me register the broad median to my left as a possible escape route; the strong presence of the sun on the evening horizon makes me infer poor visibility for oncoming traffic; and so on. The good thing is that this hyperaware state induces a sort of buzz–one that comes from life lived absolutely in the moment. There is pleasure in the cut and thrust of city traffic.”
For more of Geoff’s writing on motorcycles, check out his site. Let it be a reminder to enjoy the little things as you hop on your bike and head home from work today.
As Geoff says, “It’s been a good day. Tomorrow will be another. I am on the motorcycle, heading home from work. How could it be otherwise?“