It was a great book. It taught me how do housework with the proper zenlike attitude.
 |
  |
| Visit the FMH Swag Store & support FR! | |
| Send FReepmail if you want on/off FMH list | |
| The List of Ping Lists | |
BMW is excellent for touring.
Prince Charles looks so young in those photos.
That looks pretty cold.
Brrrr.
The Cliff Notes version of the book:
Man buys Japanese motorcycle, rides it across country and ultimately realizes he'd previously gone insane trying to determine the meaning of the term "quality" as referenced from previous Japanese motorcycle.
Or maybe it was the numerous toxins in my body that prevented me from understanding English.
In either case, I tried to read it and just didn't get it.
Sadly, I believe the author's son, who figured quite prominently in the book, was murdered during a robbery when he was in his early 20's.
Read it about thirty years ago and it was a 'one-gulper' at the time; I might see it differently now... or maybe not. At the most elementary level, I was struck that he noted the way you can smell things and feel tiny temperature changes on a bike, and how a car carries with it a cage of the familiar that keeps you from being entirely where you are, the way bike touring lets you be.
I thought it was very good - probably among my top 10 best reads. I still remember the quote, "Gumption is the psychic gasoline that keeps the whole thing going."
The book's worth a read. There is a sad part--the boy was killed in a mugging shortly after he achieved adulthood.
ping
Thanks for the post. I read the book, and was heavily influenced by it as a youngster. Upon rereading it later in life, I was far less impressed. The cracks in his philosophy, and sanity, were far more obvious to my older and more experienced self than to my younger self.