I heard recently, a piece on the BBC about a pilgrimage taking place annually in Norway, honoring St. Olaf. A local guide opined that in these times of great troubles all over the world, people need the focus and solitude of a pilgrimage. It brings life down to just the quest, as he put it, the getting up each morning, the food to acquire, the travel toward the destination, a place to sleep each night…nothing else intrudes into the small world such a journey creates for oneself.
I can see the pull for this type of trip, the inner need it satisfies. It is, at its core, what I am doing with motorcycles and have often done for six decades in the past, either alone or in the company of one or two companions. Unlike a pilgrimage, though, I travel for its own sake, not the end point.
The urge to travel is strong in some of us, nearly absent in others, probably spread across the population on the traditional “bell-shaped curve” that describes the distribution of nearly all animal characteristics within species. I’m in the right-hand side of the median, probably nearer to where the curve starts dropping down to the small percentage numbers, but certainly not out there where it almost touches the horizontal line. Those people out there start on a trip and just keep going, without end.
“The Journey is the Destination” is a popular meme, and t-shirt slogan and unlike many of those, it is the truth. Many times on the road, people ask me where I’m going, wanting to fit my experience into a common idea of a trip being going to get to a place. I travel on these trips to travel, to move, and if I have a destination it is often more of a parameter than a fixed location. How far can I get with the time and resources I have available ?
I want to be in the moment, experiencing the sensations offered by a motorcycle moving through space with the kind of motion only that vehicle can offer when one is tethered to the ground. The banking turns, the thousand decisions per mile on a curvy road, the smells, the feeling of the air, the humidity, the heat and cold and always, at some point, the rain. Even that event has its pleasures. The reduced visibility, the slipperiness of wet pavement, the heightened attention one must pay to every variable, all bring a satisfaction when completed successfully.
I am a believer in the concept that one should be uncomfortable sometimes to know what a wonderful thing it is to not be.
I am in some ways like a dog I once had, a mix of border collie and probably lab, who when confronted with a pond or creek had to jump in the water and then immediately was horrified at being wet. I want to be constantly on a motorcycle trip, one without end, but I also like being home with family in my familiar comfortable surroundings.
I have traveled by motorcycles, far and wide in my home country and across a fair bit of the world, for much of my long life and in all of those trips I have never found myself wanting one to end. But at the same time, I know it must end and there must be a return to family and home, so there is the point when the pull that way becomes strong, like that dog being drawn to the water in a way she couldn’t resist. And, of course when I’m home, I want to be on a trip. I am able to understand that feeling in ways the dog probably could not, so I know I have to co-exist with the irreconcilable dichotomy inside. Even an endless journey would have compromises to be made, like everything else in the reality of life. Experiences, of all sorts, are what matters, with all the complicated feelings they contain.
Coddiwomple 
👍
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