Intensity: that's what we don't get any more

Today, I realize that we have steadily been anesthetized. That we've buried the wealth of experiences that we had gathered. And never returned to the grave. We've forgotten the joy of unbridled acceleration. We've lost the feeling of treading on the very edge, just about in control. We no longer recall the smell of motorcycles. And we've lost our ability to hear them as well. And not just because they've lost their voices.

I rode home on a Honda Shine today - I didn't feel a thing. With me, a colleague rode an RD350 exactly halfway. Sometimes he was ahead, and sometimes, out of politeness (or respect for my seniority), he'd let me pass. Sometimes I'd feel the warm scent of freshly burnt premix wafting deliciously around me, sometimes I'd hear two pistons hammering away just a few feet away. All the time unlocking unused, dusty chests of memories. Of hard rides. Of near misses. Of adrenaline. Of fear. And of unwavering intensity.

It wasn't a light ride. There was traffic and we were both making time through it. While the Shine slipped through traffic like an assassin's blade, the RD350 attacked it full and frontal. Like it feared no one. Like an absolute. Like it held no fear of what it was and what people and their laws thought of it. Naked and proud.

It's voice jabbing this way and that. The tearing wave of sound that leapt over buses, screamed under them, wrapped itself around air-conditioned cars... it was everywhere. And then, in a flash, gone. Leaving behind only a sepia contrail of nostalgia. Curling in the shocked wind for a moment.

Many heads that turned wondered what memory awoke fleetingly in their minds. But they forgot the smell before they could remember. The source, by then, a shrieking fury disappearing rapidly in the distance. A meaningless smoky shape spearing towards a dark horizon that lies just beyond the last streetlight. A flash of daylight in the gathering night, already gone.

We've gotten used to congratulating ourselves on our little toys. We've forgotten the time when bikes would literally wrench your arms out of their little sockets. When we feared our steeds. When eye-opening performance was dearer than fuel. But today I smelt it again. I tasted it. I bathed in it. I felt it.

Here's the only other RD350 post I've ever put up.
Image from bsmotoring.com