I thought some of you might enjoy reading this:

Season of the Bike
There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle
is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold
boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out
of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops
don't even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from
the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks
and forehead streaked with blood, but that's just an illusion, just
the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.

Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I
rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like
this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into
your life you’re changed forever. The letters "MC" are stamped on your
driver’s license right next to your sex and weight as if "motorcycle"
was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental
condition. But when warm weather finally does come around all those
cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a summer is worth
any price.

A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between
driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between
watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time
sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us
from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time,
entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and
smelling of carpets.

On a motorcycle I know I'm alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems
strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push
through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel
the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of
that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360
degrees, up, down and around, wider than Pana-Vision and than IMAX and
unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard. Sometimes I even hear music.
It's like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells
when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the
noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind's roar. But on a
motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock 'n roll, dark orchestras, women's
voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed. At 30 miles per
hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-
smells and flower- smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes
in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so
strongly that it’s as though the past hangs invisible in the air
around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to
unlock it. A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous.
The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous
system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my
soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed,
apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles
flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a
decompressing plane.

Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy
machine. It's a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized
prosthetic. It's light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold
lapping over each other; it's a conduit of grace, it's a catalyst for
bonding the gritty and the holy. I still think of myself as a
motorcycle amateur, but by now I've had a handful of bikes over half a
dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn't trade one
second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride one of
the best things I've done.

Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The
air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep,
sleep." Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and
exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no
reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.

- Dave Karlotski.

Good read. Think about it - Cruising on a motorcycle does stimulate all 5 senses - See the sights, hear the rumble, smell the smells (newly mown hay is my favorite), feel the wind and warmth (or cold!), taste the morning dew. Can't beat it.