Life, as a Leaking Motorcycle

Those of us who find our fun on motorcycles, riding briskly along twisty roads any given weekend (and every other day we can break free of the grind), can't imagine truly living life without the experience.

This comes as a shock to non-riders, who think we must be anti-social, suicidal, or demented. To them, the image of bikes racing through country curves only elicits images of sudden, gory death. Or maybe, even decades beyond Brando's 'The Wild Ones' and the Angel's Mayhem at Altamont, the image raises fears of beer-bellied, hairy, alcoholics wielding knives and pool cues and pillaging villages. That's not who we riders are, although we perhaps relish the risk-taking, dangerous aura the image grants us from time to time.

Even so, non-riders who dismiss us and our hobby as Huns on Iron Horses are missing other life lessons motorcycling can teach, like persistence and infinite, Zen-like patience. Outside of farming or perhaps being Prince Charles, nothing else teaches those virtues quite as well as caring for your ride.

Take a modern-era Triumph Bonneville for example. Unlike its ancient brethren (up to 1976 or so), this bike doesn't leak fluids as a normal mode of operation. It is thoroughly new millennium in its oil tightness. So when this paragon of petroleum retention begins to ooze the precious stuff out from where it belongs to where it most definitely does not belong, like hot exhaust headers or rear tires, action by the owner must commence forthwith:

You begin by dismounting the smoking machine and walking around it, as if you can stare the problem away. Then you ride it some more in case the problem was a figment of your imagination. (Did I not mention the other life lessons, hopefulness and self-delusion?).

When the smoking inevitably returns you ride home, park the bike, and walk around it some more looking for the leak. When, after an hour or so, you see one single drop of oil on the pavement, you simultaneously rejoice (Aha!) and despair (Oh, No!). Composure recovered, you ride over to your most trusted mechanic and point and whine until he agrees to work on the problem right away (lesson: the art of effective persuasion).

As you wait anxiously at his side, your trusty Wrench decides that tightening all of the case bolts that were loose (even modern Trumpets vibrate a little) will do the trick. After running the engine until it's hot enough to sublimate lead, no leak appears and you are released to run free (after a modest fee). Twenty miles later, and the smoking reappears (double lesson: you get what you pay for, and life's a bitch).

You park the bike in your garage and make plans for further leak detection and redaction, beginning as soon as you can bear to face it, like the next free weekend in June - this being May (lesson: time management).

Meanwhile, you mount your other bike - your sole remaining fully-functional two-wheeled steed, a Ducati, and roar up the canyons, carefree and feeling very Zen, contemplating the delicious irony of such a famously maintenance-intensive Italian being your reliable ride.

And that's the final and best lesson motorcycling, in the form of a leaking Triumph, can teach you: always have a backup.