![]() ![]() 9 of the Rider Magazine Insider PodcastĪ quarter of a century is a long time. ![]() ![]() The meaning of the ride is never-ending, which is why we ride: to taste immortality in the form of the resounding now. I wrote articles and poems and another book about bikes. But no amount one can say about something that’s essentially infinite can comprise “everything.” Even I would go on to find more things, and more things, to say. So I attempted to say in my book every last thing I could think of to say about these machines that both capture and express the human imagination. I had been to the shop before, and my then-girlfriend was friends with the proprietor. When I read Pierson’s account of buying a Moto Guzzi Lario from a small European bike shop called The Spare Parts Company tucked away on a narrow street in the Old City section of Philadelphia, an area I explored regularly on late-night pub crawls and weekend wanderings, I felt an even stronger connection to her book. Not only did Pierson artfully articulate the full spectrum of emotions, sensations, and experiences that are familiar to any motorcyclist and evoke the “ride to live, live to ride” credo, she educated me about the exciting new world I had come to inhabit. Within the first year of my own love affair with motorcycling, I read – no, I devoured – The Perfect Vehicle. In 1998, while struggling my way through graduate school in Philadelphia, I bought a motorcycle and learned to ride. In 1997, Melissa Holbrook Pierson published The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles, a delightful book that chronicles her love affair with motorcycles as well as the unique cultural and historical landscape of the two-wheeled world. ![]() Melissa Holbrook Pierson, author of “The Perfect Vehicle” and other books. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |