The Wind: In Accordance with Two Wheels and Harley Davidson

There are any number of things that can lure me from passivity and a life of calm controlled existence. None does so like a Harley Davidson motorcycle. While I was growing up I rode about every form, make, and model of motorcycle there was, some of them mine and some of them simply loaned to me for varying periods of time ranging from a few minutes to a weekend. In that time, I never rode a Harley Davidson until I bought my own. It became clear to me why people don't loan them after I became a proud owner of one of the most treasured icons of the motoring world. A Harley Davidson is not a thing in the customary sense of the word. When I bought a Lincoln Mark VIII back when Ford Motors put one of those out for the first time I thought I had something and I loved it. What, with it's zippy techno advanced 289 CI old to me new to all the kids out there high output V-8 and the traction control go fast quick kind of not-so-old man's luxury car. It was very cool and it made a wee comment about who drove it too. Even with all those rosy words and expressions of cool acknowledgement for its attributes, it was still just a car, albeit a neat one with splashes of cool, it was only a car none-the-less. It was insured and if it became wrecked I would get a new one. No big deal, no deep emotional attachment and no real sense of personal hands on identity could be identified.

Now, in stark contrast, my Harley Davidson is anything but a semi-characterizing icon with which I identify with up to a point, after-which it is only a mode of transportation with which I experience no real commitment. With a harnessed and restrained zeal I report that nothing could be more distinctly important to me that doesn't live, breath, look back at me (which I swear it does) and sit to eat dinner with me. There is a pride of ownership in that Harley-Davidson motorcycle that I had only morsel size tidbits of with my Hondas, and Yamahas and Kawasakis. It was fun to clean them and customize them, play with the different techniques of riding and so forth, but admittedly the experience was limited to that which one can experience with a mere mass of configured metal.