Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Travel Route

"In a car you're e'er in a compartment, and because y'all're used to it y'all don't realize that through that car window everything you lot run into is just more than TV. You're a passive observer, and it is all moving by you lot boringly in a frame.

On a bike the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. Yous're in the scene, not simply watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming." ~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Fine art of Motorbike Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

There's this book that'southward had more than of an impact on me than annihilation else I've read in the last ten years. It'south non the Bible or the Book of Mormon or the Quran. It's a fiddling volume that starts past telling what appears to be a simple story, merely then morphs into an introspective philosophical study that became something of a touchstone for a generation. I've read it cover-to-cover a couple times, and every now and then I pull it off the shelf and open it randomly just to read a few pages. I almost always notice something useful or at least worth thinking about.

Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorbike Maintenance

Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values isn't about fixing motorcycles, merely that's in information technology. His accounts of motorcycle riding are the most accurate and descriptive I've found, but that'south non what it's nearly. The book has several themes. On a simple level, it's a travel narrative almost a motorcycle trip the author takes with his son across the western U.s.. On another level, it'south a dense philosophical look into the conflict between romantic and classical thinking. Along the fashion the author explains his search for and belief in quality as a unifying force. He uses the trip and the characters in the book as metaphors to discuss philosophy. The little pink book was rejected by publishers 121 times before information technology was finally publish and became the most widely read book on philosophy ever.

Zen had a profound consequence on me. Before reading it, I used to get impatient with the unfamiliar processes of fixing things around the house. Replacing a damaged window screen or fixing a leaky faucet used to make me crazy. This would happen considering I viewed every repair in terms of what I didn't know rather than what I could learn. That usually ready cocky-fulfilling prophecies in which mistakes multiplied to the point where I just didn't desire to attempt to set up things around the house. "I'll screw information technology upwardly fifty-fifty worse. Just call a repairman," became my response to issues.

Simply and then I read Zen and my outlook completely changed. Pirsig taught me that no repairman will ever intendance every bit much about a repair as I volition; therefore I should exist the one to practice the repair. He also taught me that experience builds upon itself. For example, fixing that window screen last year means that I know how to supersede the door screen today. Most importantly, Pirsig taught me virtually the deep comfort you attain when y'all know something is washed with quality. The book helped me realize that I own the cosmos and maintenance of quality in my life.

Occasionally, I sideslip back into being that frustrated, impatient homeowner when I'one thousand looking at an instruction manual and realizing the complication of a repair I'm almost to attempt. Information technology'southward at those dark moments when my wife gently says, "Go to your Zen identify." It works on me every time. I calm downward and slowly read the instructions while gathering tools. And then I'm able to carefully step my manner through the repair. Then, in my mind at that place is a fairly meaningful connection between Robert Pirsig and my wife, Kristi.

I'chiliad doing many things to get prepare for The Ride. At this signal I'thousand doing a lot of practical list-making and reading. Part of my reading includes books about similar journeys. Zen is on my listing of required reading, but today I'm reading Mark Richardson'south Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It's about the author's retracing of the original Zen route from Minneapolis to San Francisco. Like other 'Pirsig Pilgrims', Richardson is interested in how things accept changed since Pirsig'southward ride.

Pirsig'due south road across the western The states

Richardson'southward writing is less philosophical. He describes in detail the people he meets and the things and places he experiences along the way. This morning time I was reading about the towns that both he and Pirsig rode through in northern South Dakota, and that'southward when I made a personally profound discovery. Richardson helped me realize that Pirsig passed correct through my wife'south hometown during the Zen ride. Richardson even stopped at the gas station my Father-in-Law'south in one case managed during his "Zen and At present" ride. Richardson writes…

"It's every bit hot as it's ever been, just over 100 degrees on the gas station thermometer hither in McLaughlin… Within the gas station the chat'southward about the estrus.

The air-workout is welcome, and the Gatorade is cooling me when another motorcyclist walks in. He is the only other person I've seen in days who's wearing a jacket. His BMW is parked exterior, and he wants water ice cream. He'southward an older guy, and we greet each other like old friends."

McLaughlin, Due south Dakota is a tiny speck of a boondocks. Information technology sits in the middle of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, and it had a population of 663 during the 2010 demography. The town grew upwardly at the intersection of The states Route 12 and Highway 63, and that is where the gas station is located.

Main Street in McLaughlin S.D.

My wife's parents moved to McLaughlin in 1968. They located in that location because the state forgave the student debt of higher graduates who were willing to teach in public schools in rural Due south Dakota towns. So, Jim Hannigan moved his young family into an old subcontract house on the edge of town about a quarter mile from the intersection of US Route 12 and Highway 63. His oldest girl, Kristi was one-yr-quondam.

At the same fourth dimension, Robert Pirsig was rolling westward through South Dakota along United states of america Route 12. This is what he said about the mural betwixt Mobridge and Lemmon.

"Nosotros climb a long, long hill (up from the Missouri River) into another country. The fences are really all gone at present. No brush, no copse… In that location'due south no friendly motorcycle mechanic on the other side of those rocks and I'm wondering if we're ready for this. If anything goes wrong now nosotros're in real trouble."

In my mind, a moment exists in which the young Hannigan family unit is taking a walk. They want to escape the heat of the house and maybe come across some of the people of their new town. They leave their front porch and walk down the gentle slope into the north cease of town. The hubby, married woman and babe are nearly to cantankerous the highway to purchase sodas at the gas station (the aforementioned gas station Jim Hannigan would eventually run one time he was through with pedagogy, the aforementioned gas station Mark Richardson would drink Gatorade in a few years afterward). That's when they hear the Honda Superhawk'southward engine. It sounds out of place in the subcontract land of 1968.

Chris and Robert Pirsig on their Honda Superhawk during the Zen ride.

Pirsig slows and shifts down every bit he approaches the crossroad. A young family unit is standing at the intersection. He stops and waits for them to cantankerous, and that'due south when the baby does what all kids practise when they cross paths with a motorbike. She looks up to see the loud, shiny thing. Older kids about always smiling broadly and wave at motorcyclists. Boys lucky enough to be on their bicycles normally wink a casual thumbs-up of ii-wheel brotherhood. Babies just stare, and so does this one. She makes eye-contact with the man astride the noisy thing. The rider and the infant watch each other as the immature female parent quickens her pace to get off the road.

With the family now safely in the gas station parking lot, Pirsig begins letting go of the clutch. He feels the wheel begin to move, and his feet come up upwardly onto the pegs. He an Chris all the same have considerable basis to cover between here and Lemmon, where they'll camp for the nighttime.

Now, that probably didn't happen, but in that location is a chance that information technology or some variation of information technology did. The possibility that Kristi and Pirsig may accept crossed paths during the Zen ride is kind of profound for me.

On ane hand, it reminds me of how connected we all tin exist. I'g not talking virtually being Internet connected. I'm talking most a deep, more often than not unseen, unknown connexion that we unremarkably aren't aware of, but it's always there — stitching our world together with invisible thread.

Or mayhap something else is happening.  Possibly we search for things to connect to. Maybe our desperate demand to make sense of a horribly random being causes our subconscious to attain into the raw material of chaos and grasp the things it needs to gather the illusion of social club.

I experience 1, perchance both, of these forces at work as the realization hits me that I'll as well become a 'Pirsig Pilgrim' during The Ride. Either past accident or by fate, I'll begin following Pirsig'due south tire-tracks as I cross from Oregon into northern California. I'll follow his path down the coast to where the Zen trip ended in San Francisco. Once I go there, I'll look for a place to finish and contemplate Persig's ride. Information technology might even happen while I spotter a young family unit that's waiting to cross the road.

My ride sits on the side of the highway near Duvall, Launder.

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Source: https://roberthoodwheels.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/riding-in-the-tracks-of-pirsigs-zen/

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