When The Huffington Post first went on-line in 2005, it was a pretty big deal, at least to me. It was in the midst of the divisive Iraq War debate - a conservative 'regime' in the White House pitted against anti-war masses mobilized to a degree not seen since the 1960s. The idea seemed to be to take the model for The Drudge Report, of which I had been a fan for years, a step further. Rather than merely compiling news stories, there was to be a more active involvement in The Huffington Post; there would be original content and a multitude of contributors, all picking up on the new phenomenon known as the blogging, and it was no secret that most if not all of them would write from a liberal point of view.
I have some very conservative views, and I have some very liberal views. I like to think I'd be welcome at both Rachel Maddow's and Ted Nugent's dinner tables, at least through appetizers, and I really don't believe I'm unique to that end. I think most plugged-in Americans live just to the right, or just to the left of center, and I was excited for what seemed to be Arianna Huffington's answer to a strong conservative presence on-line, because I like dialogue, I want debate, I demand two sides. I immediately added The Huffington Post to my 'favorites' menu, and just about every single morning since has included a brief visit, at the very least.
As a news organization, it was never rock solid. Every once in a while there'd be a slip up, something that either allowed its liberal bias to get in the way of accurate reporting, or worse, revealed an intrinsic amateurishness: In April 2009, when news broke that Somali pirates had hijacked the Maersk Alabama (a serious turn of events that put a lot of lives in danger and picked at the already frayed edges of our sense of security), the headline on the front page of The Huffington Post read (in huge, 90-point type): ARRRRR!
It stayed that way for at least an hour before being promptly switched to something more subdued, something that matched the gravity of the situation. It was doubtless an honest faux pas, perhaps unavoidable in what I'd wager is an egalitarian environment, where the chain of command is forsaken for a more communal forum, but an unequivocal sign nevertheless that the bullpen at The Huffington Post might not be populated by experienced, crackerjack reporters so much as young intern-types, barely in their twenties and already jaded and lazy, fancying themselves super clever, yet sadly lacking the tightly sewn, comprehensive worldview we all assume is a job requirement.
Either that, or some now-ex employee hacked in and sabotaged the front page. I'm guessing not.
But in any case, in spite of this and other minor gaffes over time, The Huffington Post managed to keep my interest, keep me coming back and reading, which in the end is all that matters: eyeballs on the page, and all that.
Then in 2011, it was purchased by AOL amidst much fanfare, lining Arianna's pockets prettily and leaving her editor-in-chief. Good for her; I like and admire Arianna Huffington, actually. But I wonder how much editorial control she really has, because in the ensuing two years, the on-line publication bearing her name and reputation has dissolved into little more than a mushy outlet for tabloid fodder.
It has become utterly obsessed with celebrity skin and scandal (the brilliant Jon Stewart was not digging too deep into his brilliance referring to HuffPost as, The Sideboob Gazette), and gotten really skilled (or not so...) at churning out poorly written news stories about things that do not warrant a news story. Attempting to be all things to all readers, it seems to revel in the simplistic, the juvenile, the gossipy, and specialize in asinine photo-ops; a nonstop exhibit of angry babies, happy babies, puppies, kittens and other assorted furry animals, gets copy-and-pasted off Reddit and slapped up on the front page with a screaming headline like, 'This will make your heart EXPLODE!' or 'You'll never GUESS what's got this cute kid so UPSET!', as though since the buyout, HuffPost's staff of 24-year-old interns has been replaced with an army of 12-year-old girls. Most of their headlines are hyperbolic at best, hysterical on a really bad day (think: that 12-year-old girl capitalizing everything or using multiple exclamation points in order to drive her point home), and each and every hollow news story that accompanies them - whether it's someone's glimpse of sideboob, a celebrity feud, or a bad tip some Applebee's waitress received in Punta Gorda, Florida or Kansas City, Missouri last Saturday night - saps the Huffpost's legitimacy in a slow but steady leak.
Can a HuffPost 'Page 3 Girl' be far off?
Well, probably not, actually; there'd be no point. Every day there's two or three girls on Page 1 - a slew of bikini clad celebrities, either a paparazzi long shot on a beach somewhere or a Tweeted selfie, taking up precious front page real estate, in either case The Huffington Post declaring their bikini bods 'STUNNING!' or 'MIND BLOWING!'
Do I think there's anything wrong with bikini girls? Absolutely not. Or puppies and kittens for that matter, or any 'lighter side' news. Sometimes we need the lighter side. Sometimes the lighter side is all that enables us to keep plugging on. But again, 'sideboob' isn't any kind of news at all, not worth anyone's time or effort - to write or read about. Trolling Reddit does not qualify as news compiling, and is certainly not worthy of The Huffington Post's original editorial intent.
The fact that it has felt a need to pander shamelessly to short attention spans, puerile interests and pop culture, and/or attempt to give that mess equal time with the legitimate news stories it follows, or its contributors still trying to make their worthy points heard, is definitely a reason to seek out a nebulous life.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Friday, May 24, 2013
Reason #2 to Live Nebulously: The Kardashians
If you really sit and consider the nature of the times we live in, the oddly disparate state of loveliness and vulgarity, euphoria and despair, that informs our day-to-day life, it should come as no surprise that the Kardashians qualify as 'celebrities'. But these poster children for opulence and entitlement, famous merely for being famous, better hope the bottom doesn't fall out of the economy in one cataclysmic lurch. If it's true what my dad has been telling me since I was seven, that money is only 'worth' something because the government tells us it is (and all that that implies), the Kardashian clan better hope our money isn't suddenly rendered worthless in a chain of events that others much more in the know than my father have repeatedly suggested we are only one or two major bank runs away from at any given moment.
Is it likely? Probably not. At least being throttled into some Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome scenario isn't all that likely. Or so I choose to believe, anyway. While every once in a while I take a peek out the window and am left not a little relieved to see another quiet, uneventful day passing - people going about their business, birds in the trees, clouds in the sky - I try not to be overly cynical about the stability of our culture and our government, or about people in general. I have found when bad things happen, people tend to act better, not worse. They step up. They come together.
Here's hoping...
But what if it happened, and in a worst case way? What if by 2030, this tightly-woven grid of finance, infrastructure, food supply, electrical power and land ownership, which more and more lately seems held together and/or acknowledged by just one thing - the Internet - suddenly collapsed? Those of wealth and privilege, who know only wealth and privilege, might find themselves in dire circumstances, 'with no direction home', as Bob Dylan sang.
The truth is, we're all a little too comfortable in our American way of life, too quick to assume that the way we've known things to be in our lifetime is not only how they've always been, but will always be. The only ones who might actually survive an attitude adjustment on a national or global scale are the ones taking it really seriously now, the Doomsday Preppers crowd gathering nuts for winter, and I'll be the first to admit I'm simply not that. I think about this stuff sometimes; everyone does. But I am by no means an outdoorsman or survivalist. If I got a summer afternoon to spare, it's gonna be spent on the couch watching a Braves game if at all possible, not digging an underground bunker and stockpiling bulk cans of navy beans.
That being said, I'm confident I possess the basic skills to at least make a go at surviving a post-Apocalyptic world. Merely by virtue of the life I've led, I'm conditioned to adapt, accustomed to acquiring and interpreting knowledge as a tool for improving my circumstances, and thus believe I would respond reliably. I would immediately prioritize my needs, pare them down to a short list of must-haves and must-dos. I would loot a gun shop, library and grocery store/pharmacy, in that order. I'd head north along a waterway, avoiding cities and making use of what I know already - about weather, about the night sky, about wild edible plants. I'd learn to accept spartan conditions, cope with an existence that would never again be anything more than uncomfortable, but probably have a new appreciation for what will have become the privilege of seeing each new sunrise.
No revelation in any of this, surely; all very basic stuff for people having lived ordinary lives.
But the Kardashian children have not lived ordinary lives. They and others like them came out of the womb straight into a womb, and their only defense against anything, really, is their wealth and privilege, which they did not have to work or sacrifice for. If that were taken away in one fell swoop, I get the sense they would be absolutely lost, totally helpless. I could be wrong, certainly. I don't know them personally, and I never will. I only know how they come across on television, occasionally catching an episode on E!, but mostly bits that wind up on the Soup, or interviews, particularly the one a few years back where Barbara Walters, with her mouth twisted up in a 'what are we doing here, ladies...seriously?' sneer, told them to their faces that they have no talent.
Babs took a little heat for that, but it's painfully true (painfully obvious) and she's to be admired for her candor. While various incarnations of their shows - namely Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami and Kourtney and Kim Take New York - try to pass them off as shrewd businesswomen...er, something...I'm not buying it. They're not 'taking' anything, a section of it is merely being given to them, in a carefully managed prescription, and what they do with it is always kind of boring and bored. At best, their accomplishments, the businesses they purportedly establish and run, can only hope to survive under the vacuously sterile conditions of celebrity. And judging from how they are portrayed (or allow themselves to be...keeping up with, indeed...), I am left taking Walters' assertion a step further: the Kardashians are not only talentless, they are so tiredly one-dimensional in their thinking, so intellectually lazy and isolated from reality, they'd struggle terribly were the crap to hit the fan, really hit the fan. Worse, they'd fight the sudden disintegration of their entitlement with every fiber of their being, rather than trying to (or being able to) adapt.
If I could ask Kim Kardashian just one question, it would be: how do you find the north star?
I'd be willing to bet she couldn't.
Does she need to know how to find the north star? Well, let's take a peek out the window ... ... as of right now, no. Neighbor's got his motorcycle out for the year. School bus just cruised passed. Lilacs are starting to bloom. Birds in the trees...all's copacetic.
For now.
Maybe I shouldn't pick on the Kardashians. They're hardly the first to achieve fame merely on looks and/or wealth, and (truly) shouldn't be maligned merely because they were fortunate enough to be born into the family they were. I guess it's not really the Kardashians themselves, so much as the fandom, the superstardom, the influence we as a society award them for not really being of much use for anything or to anyone, for (indeed) having no talent, that is the real reason to seek out a nebulous life.
Or at the very least disconnect the cable.
Is it likely? Probably not. At least being throttled into some Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome scenario isn't all that likely. Or so I choose to believe, anyway. While every once in a while I take a peek out the window and am left not a little relieved to see another quiet, uneventful day passing - people going about their business, birds in the trees, clouds in the sky - I try not to be overly cynical about the stability of our culture and our government, or about people in general. I have found when bad things happen, people tend to act better, not worse. They step up. They come together.
Here's hoping...
But what if it happened, and in a worst case way? What if by 2030, this tightly-woven grid of finance, infrastructure, food supply, electrical power and land ownership, which more and more lately seems held together and/or acknowledged by just one thing - the Internet - suddenly collapsed? Those of wealth and privilege, who know only wealth and privilege, might find themselves in dire circumstances, 'with no direction home', as Bob Dylan sang.
The truth is, we're all a little too comfortable in our American way of life, too quick to assume that the way we've known things to be in our lifetime is not only how they've always been, but will always be. The only ones who might actually survive an attitude adjustment on a national or global scale are the ones taking it really seriously now, the Doomsday Preppers crowd gathering nuts for winter, and I'll be the first to admit I'm simply not that. I think about this stuff sometimes; everyone does. But I am by no means an outdoorsman or survivalist. If I got a summer afternoon to spare, it's gonna be spent on the couch watching a Braves game if at all possible, not digging an underground bunker and stockpiling bulk cans of navy beans.
That being said, I'm confident I possess the basic skills to at least make a go at surviving a post-Apocalyptic world. Merely by virtue of the life I've led, I'm conditioned to adapt, accustomed to acquiring and interpreting knowledge as a tool for improving my circumstances, and thus believe I would respond reliably. I would immediately prioritize my needs, pare them down to a short list of must-haves and must-dos. I would loot a gun shop, library and grocery store/pharmacy, in that order. I'd head north along a waterway, avoiding cities and making use of what I know already - about weather, about the night sky, about wild edible plants. I'd learn to accept spartan conditions, cope with an existence that would never again be anything more than uncomfortable, but probably have a new appreciation for what will have become the privilege of seeing each new sunrise.
No revelation in any of this, surely; all very basic stuff for people having lived ordinary lives.
But the Kardashian children have not lived ordinary lives. They and others like them came out of the womb straight into a womb, and their only defense against anything, really, is their wealth and privilege, which they did not have to work or sacrifice for. If that were taken away in one fell swoop, I get the sense they would be absolutely lost, totally helpless. I could be wrong, certainly. I don't know them personally, and I never will. I only know how they come across on television, occasionally catching an episode on E!, but mostly bits that wind up on the Soup, or interviews, particularly the one a few years back where Barbara Walters, with her mouth twisted up in a 'what are we doing here, ladies...seriously?' sneer, told them to their faces that they have no talent.
Babs took a little heat for that, but it's painfully true (painfully obvious) and she's to be admired for her candor. While various incarnations of their shows - namely Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami and Kourtney and Kim Take New York - try to pass them off as shrewd businesswomen...er, something...I'm not buying it. They're not 'taking' anything, a section of it is merely being given to them, in a carefully managed prescription, and what they do with it is always kind of boring and bored. At best, their accomplishments, the businesses they purportedly establish and run, can only hope to survive under the vacuously sterile conditions of celebrity. And judging from how they are portrayed (or allow themselves to be...keeping up with, indeed...), I am left taking Walters' assertion a step further: the Kardashians are not only talentless, they are so tiredly one-dimensional in their thinking, so intellectually lazy and isolated from reality, they'd struggle terribly were the crap to hit the fan, really hit the fan. Worse, they'd fight the sudden disintegration of their entitlement with every fiber of their being, rather than trying to (or being able to) adapt.
If I could ask Kim Kardashian just one question, it would be: how do you find the north star?
I'd be willing to bet she couldn't.
Does she need to know how to find the north star? Well, let's take a peek out the window ... ... as of right now, no. Neighbor's got his motorcycle out for the year. School bus just cruised passed. Lilacs are starting to bloom. Birds in the trees...all's copacetic.
For now.
Maybe I shouldn't pick on the Kardashians. They're hardly the first to achieve fame merely on looks and/or wealth, and (truly) shouldn't be maligned merely because they were fortunate enough to be born into the family they were. I guess it's not really the Kardashians themselves, so much as the fandom, the superstardom, the influence we as a society award them for not really being of much use for anything or to anyone, for (indeed) having no talent, that is the real reason to seek out a nebulous life.
Or at the very least disconnect the cable.
Friday, May 17, 2013
What does, or will, it mean to 'live nebulously'?
"We keep passing unseen through
little moments of other people's lives."
- Robert Pirsig
I've been asked what living nebulously means, at least as it pertains to my or any road trip, and though it makes perfect sense in my mind - a mental monolith constructed one brick at a time over many years - putting the answer into words is not all that easy. The sensuous sense of anonymity implicit in this quote from Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has resonated with me for a long time, and probably comes closest to capturing the spirit of 1/48/50, what I always pictured a cross-country road trip would be like. I'm an avid people-watcher and have always liked the thought of being that fly on the wall. Maybe it's the writer in me. There is a meditative quality to watching life being led, the universe unfolding, from a comfortably removed vantage point. In younger days, whole nights would be spent in a corner booth at a 24-hour restaurant in my hometown, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, listening to conversations, or better yet trying to figure out what was going on by reading faces and body language. Others like me will surely understand that stories are constantly being told without a word spoken. With every move we make, we risk betraying ourselves.
From Dictionary.com: 'NEBULOUS: hazy, vague, indistinct, or confused'
I don't know about confused, but the other three hit the nail on the head squarely. Life on the road, in my mind, engenders a pleasant state of half-existence, watching, observing, listening, while phasing out of the old and into the new, the unknown, the future...
But there are other reasons to live nebulously, external reasons. Most of us feel a need, at least once in a while, to escape this modern world, which at best has a way of distracting us from 'little moments', the stuff happening that actually matters, and at worst can be ugly, invasive and downright depressing. I could fill up a few years worth of weekly posts devoted to specific reasons to seek out a nebulous (read: hazy, indistinct) life.
And why not? Right now, I got nothing but time. I'll shoot for ten good reasons, at least, to disengage from the modern world whenever possible:
Reason #1 to Live Nebulously: Google Glass
One of my many unfinished novels predicted the advent of Google Glass ten years ago. In my futuristic tale, people can permanently link into the Internet by inserting a chip into their brain stem, and have all the splendor and horror of the 'online community' appear as a heads-up display right in front of their eyes. They control navigation - their clicks and downloads and uploads and whatnot - with their eyes or voice commands. Thus, a true collective consciousness is born.
Facebook and Twitter were the first steps toward that collective consciousness (think: the Borg from Star Trek), but Google Glass would seem to be a more precipitous leap toward the dystopia I thought (and think) that collective consciousness could lead to. It is, by my estimation, one giant smack for mankind, right across the puss. As if it weren't already true that too many people have cameras, shoving them into faces and places they shouldn't and sharing the results with a world-wide audience that doesn't need to see any of it but tells itself (or is told) that it does, now they are set to begin wearing them, not just on their person, but as part of their physical presence.
Google Glass is still in the klutzy, awkward and expensive stage, but that's going to change. Wait until the technology gets smaller and cheaper, as all technology does. Wait until competitor knock-offs come out sans a readily apparent recording light, and don't look any different than ordinary glasses, or sunglasses. Wait until a completely discreet prescription option becomes available, and we no longer have any idea whatsoever who is wearing them, and whether our 'little moments' at any given moment are being recorded.
It will never be me. Never. And I will always try to preserve what I believe is a marked difference between the sentiment of the Pirsig quote (as I interpret it) and the function of Google Glass. Yes, I sit and watch people's little moments, occasionally write about them, for all intents and purposes I eavesdrop (publicly, mind you) as a part of a process, but I don't use names, or take pictures, or video, and there is a completely different discipline (operative word being discipline) between what I do, what many writers do, and the witless and uninspired task of wearing Google Glass and recording everything you turn your head toward.
The more I think about it, the more the advent of Google Glass might just drive me into hermitdom eventually. If I had to choose what was worse, Google Glass or 3-D printed guns...it's a tough choice, but I'd have to go with what threatens to lead to the complete disintegration of our privacy.
Yes, a nebulous life on the road beckons...'passing unseen' has become a kind of siren song. I can only hope this trip happens before 'living nebulously' makes that abruptly precarious leap from a preference into a necessity.
Friday, May 3, 2013
Thoughts on zubaz, Zema, and something so ridiculous as me riding a motorcycle across the country
Last week, I discussed my options when it comes to what I should drive on 1/48/50, and came to the conclusion that I will likely go the RV route. All things considered, an RV - a small one - makes the most sense, and I'm sticking by the decision. But arriving at it has left me thinking back on a mysterious and fairly bizarre time in my life when I actually pictured myself taking this trip on a motorcycle.
Meat Loaf's album Bat Out of Hell had a lot to do with this, initially. The motorcycle as a mighty means of escape has been lauded in many a story and song, but Bat Out of Hell is on the short list of things that got me through the tumultuous teenage years, and so had the most impact. Life and love gone wrong, the Gods and odds stacked against me, I felt I had every reason to be skipping town in a hyperbolic (and egomaniacal) flourish back then, very much in the market for a 'silver black phantom bike' to propel me to a better world, and the over-wrought nature of the music on that album aptly mirrored the denseness of my restlessness (and egomania). Yes, for better or worse, Bat Out of Hell was the official soundtrack of my teenage years, inspiring videos (of homage), short stories (revolving around a similarly tortured soul) and my own stab at composing a rock opera (one part hubris, two parts acne). I even grew my hair long, just like the big singer. I got to admit, I had one gorgeous flowing mane of red hair my junior year, though I looked a lot more like Jim Steinman than Meat Loaf.
I still think Bat Out of Hell is a great album musically and vocally, a standard bearer for rock opera, a true original, and to this day Heaven Can Wait scores pretty high on my Top 10 list of all-time loveliest ballads, but I've outgrown Meat Loaf for the most part, long moved on to other musical heroes. Enough time goes by, things stop being overwrought, the peaks and valleys thin out, and most of us find a place in the ancient mountain range that's left to build our estate.
But my interest in motorcycles outlasted Bat Out of Hell. I never actually got around to acquiring my license to ride, but a buddy taught me how on some back roads one summer, I grew comfortable with it, and in a move that may or may not have been related, wore a leather biker jacket for many years. I don't know how or why this happened, exactly. It did not matter that I absolutely was not a 'biker' by any conceivable interpretation of the word, I saw that sucker at a Wilsons in a Des Moines, Iowa shopping mall and, for reasons I could hardly explain then, much less now, had to have it. The person I was with told me it made me look 'like a bad ass', and I bought it, and bought the jacket, and thus, there was a period in my early twenties when I - a red-blooded, heterosexual male, whose geographic and socio-economic background should have discovered him swilling Zema in his zubaz at that age - would leave the house for a night out dressed in skin tight black jeans, a green button-down silk shirt, black steel-toed boots and this jacket, and wonder why men hit on me at bars. I blame all my friends at the time, and my parents too, for failing to recognize someone in desperate, desperate need of a little straight eye for the straight guy.
You don't have to be an actual biker to ride, of course, you just need to know how, but you also have to really love it, and the truth is, what once intrigued me about riding holds little or no appeal these days. Being out in the open as you cruise along, your senses alive and tuned in to your surroundings, doesn't hold water the way it used to. It just looks uncomfortable, and my life is all about comfort from here on out. Whenever I'm driving on the highway and someone on a motorcycle passes in a one-second explosion of engine noise, I think of the wind ripping their hair out, bugs slamming into their face like comets into planets, blistering heat setting off sweat storms, their burnt skin, their sore back, sore ass, and cannot imagine how this translates into something invigorating. 1/48/50 is a 14,000 mile road trip, during which I'm simply not going to want to have to tap all that deeply into skill sets. I will not want to have to sit up straight and keep my balance and concentrate on the road unduly for four or five hours at a time, put on sun screen, wear a helmet.
That's not living nebulously.
I could get a Can-Am Spyder, I guess, if I'm worried about balance: the Zema of motorcycles. But then I might as well just don the old biker jacket, silk shirt and skin tight jeans, light up an e-cig, take a swig of a wine cooler and be done with it.
What do I mean, exactly, by living nebulously...?
Meat Loaf's album Bat Out of Hell had a lot to do with this, initially. The motorcycle as a mighty means of escape has been lauded in many a story and song, but Bat Out of Hell is on the short list of things that got me through the tumultuous teenage years, and so had the most impact. Life and love gone wrong, the Gods and odds stacked against me, I felt I had every reason to be skipping town in a hyperbolic (and egomaniacal) flourish back then, very much in the market for a 'silver black phantom bike' to propel me to a better world, and the over-wrought nature of the music on that album aptly mirrored the denseness of my restlessness (and egomania). Yes, for better or worse, Bat Out of Hell was the official soundtrack of my teenage years, inspiring videos (of homage), short stories (revolving around a similarly tortured soul) and my own stab at composing a rock opera (one part hubris, two parts acne). I even grew my hair long, just like the big singer. I got to admit, I had one gorgeous flowing mane of red hair my junior year, though I looked a lot more like Jim Steinman than Meat Loaf.
I still think Bat Out of Hell is a great album musically and vocally, a standard bearer for rock opera, a true original, and to this day Heaven Can Wait scores pretty high on my Top 10 list of all-time loveliest ballads, but I've outgrown Meat Loaf for the most part, long moved on to other musical heroes. Enough time goes by, things stop being overwrought, the peaks and valleys thin out, and most of us find a place in the ancient mountain range that's left to build our estate.
But my interest in motorcycles outlasted Bat Out of Hell. I never actually got around to acquiring my license to ride, but a buddy taught me how on some back roads one summer, I grew comfortable with it, and in a move that may or may not have been related, wore a leather biker jacket for many years. I don't know how or why this happened, exactly. It did not matter that I absolutely was not a 'biker' by any conceivable interpretation of the word, I saw that sucker at a Wilsons in a Des Moines, Iowa shopping mall and, for reasons I could hardly explain then, much less now, had to have it. The person I was with told me it made me look 'like a bad ass', and I bought it, and bought the jacket, and thus, there was a period in my early twenties when I - a red-blooded, heterosexual male, whose geographic and socio-economic background should have discovered him swilling Zema in his zubaz at that age - would leave the house for a night out dressed in skin tight black jeans, a green button-down silk shirt, black steel-toed boots and this jacket, and wonder why men hit on me at bars. I blame all my friends at the time, and my parents too, for failing to recognize someone in desperate, desperate need of a little straight eye for the straight guy.
 |
JUST PLAIN WRONG - For the likes of me anyway, daring to step out of the house in this 'biker' jacket, having never owned a motorcycle, nor reflected even marginally the slightest portion of the lifestyle it's intended to represent. (Er, no, actually, I don't know why I still have it...)
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You don't have to be an actual biker to ride, of course, you just need to know how, but you also have to really love it, and the truth is, what once intrigued me about riding holds little or no appeal these days. Being out in the open as you cruise along, your senses alive and tuned in to your surroundings, doesn't hold water the way it used to. It just looks uncomfortable, and my life is all about comfort from here on out. Whenever I'm driving on the highway and someone on a motorcycle passes in a one-second explosion of engine noise, I think of the wind ripping their hair out, bugs slamming into their face like comets into planets, blistering heat setting off sweat storms, their burnt skin, their sore back, sore ass, and cannot imagine how this translates into something invigorating. 1/48/50 is a 14,000 mile road trip, during which I'm simply not going to want to have to tap all that deeply into skill sets. I will not want to have to sit up straight and keep my balance and concentrate on the road unduly for four or five hours at a time, put on sun screen, wear a helmet.
That's not living nebulously.
I could get a Can-Am Spyder, I guess, if I'm worried about balance: the Zema of motorcycles. But then I might as well just don the old biker jacket, silk shirt and skin tight jeans, light up an e-cig, take a swig of a wine cooler and be done with it.
What do I mean, exactly, by living nebulously...?
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