The Devil and Harley-Davidson

So admittedly this post is not exactly in keeping with the theme of the blog... but every once in a while it is nice to comment on excellent experiences, and riding through the back roads of Maui on a Harley Davidson definitely qualifies by my reckoning!

A few weeks ago my wife and I were able to take a trip to the island of Maui with our relatives, and while we were there we rented a motorcycle to tour the northern coast. There was a light, warm rain the whole trip (which was actually quite pleasant), and we wound through the lush tropical scenery around cliffs and through valleys on the narrowest, one-lane, semi-paved country road that I would care to navigate on a street bike. Experiencing the countryside in this way was probably the greatest touring experience that I can imagine. It was an excellent ride on the most gratifying vehicle made by man in the most delightful atmosphere thinkable. The thrill of skillfully navigating a well-crafted, elegant, powerful machine around back-country roads in the relative solitude of North Coast Maui by means of a mode of transportation that makes the connection of the rider to his or her environment (as well as to the power of the vehicle) truly "hath no brother".

A friend of mine once bemoaned to me (in a conversation about poets and poetry) the way in which the introduction of the motor-vehicle was a detriment to the healthy living of mankind and the production of poetry. Motor-vehicles, he argued, only encouraged modern man's frantic pace of life and helped to disconnect him from the natural rythm of an agricultural lifestyle... and in one way, I agree with him. The crowded freeways of L.A. could not be conducive to a proper peace of the soul, and the desire to travel quickly from one place to another in an isolated container that is equipped with increasingly complex methods of distraction from the tediousness of whatever short journey we do still have to endure does, in fact, seem to carry with it a long list of painful consequences for the average human, not least of which include disconnection from the outside world, a fostered pathological impatience, lack of meaningful time for reflection, lack of investment of personal effort in progress, compartmentalization of reality and experience, etc.

But I don't think my friend is completely right. There is an element of the human experience that the radical dismisal of all vehicular innovation seems not to account for - and I don't think that this element is a particularly bad one. There is something compelling to me about the fascination that humankind has always seemed to have with machinery and harnessing great powers. There is some pure kind of joy that we have always had in the wonder of a well-designed machine that goes beyond considerations of simple functionality. It was not for expediency's sake that we went to the moon, and it is certainly not for expediency's sake that we make Harley-Davidsons! There is something more to it...

For some reason, humans enjoy experiencing powers greater than their own. Anyone who loves riding Harleys will tell you that a great part of the enjoyment comes from the loud noise coming from the roaring engine that is right below your seat when you're riding... and the fact that it has a LOT of horsepower. There is something interesting to me about that particular enjoyment and the fact that it is so ubiquitous in humankind. We like brilliance of careful design when we find it in machines, and we feel a great fondness for methods of exceding our normal, physical contraints. Whether this is a symptom of the fall in man (a desire for power beyond reasonable limits) or an indication of a pure, childlike enjoyment (a desire to create that comes from the image of our creator and a comical, humble acceptance of our relative weakness compared to the great forces present in nature that allows us to appreciate a taste of something more), it is an interesing human phenomenon... and until I have reason to believe otherwise, I will continue to have feelings of great gratitute and wonder toward the Harley-Davidson motor company.