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I am reading an amazing book right now (actually, I’m reading about four books right now, but that’s typical). “The Original Wild Ones: Tales of the Boozefighters Motorcycle Club” by Bill Hayes. It is an amazing history of one of the oldest motorcycle clubs in the world. While I find some of the book is repetitive, it certainly gives the reader a terrific picture of what it once meant to call a fellow biker, Brother. I strongly recommend it to everyone who rides.

In Chapter Seven, the author talks about a subject that every biker understands – or should understand: there is a risk you take every time you get on your machine. Anyone who has ridden for more than a few years has experienced an accident, or knows someone who has gone down on their ride.

I want to quote a portion of that chapter simply because I love how it’s worded. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Don’t rush through these words, but hear them as the leap off the screen.

The Boozefighters are definitely not saints, but neither have they lost the spiritual roots that were as important to the founding of this country as were the bloody, in-the-trench sacrifices of their Word War II ancestors. The spirit of this crew dawned in the generation of Dagwood and Blondie, bathtub gin, and Harry James, not Ron Jeremy, Cristy Cannon, ecstasy, and Eminem, and it shows. The line between Saturday night at the clubhouse and Sunday morning may be pretty thin, but it does exist nonetheless. It’s just up to the street-pious men like Irish Ed to fill it in now and then, and to be there when things go wrong.

Bikers adorn themselves with things like skulls, dice, booze bottles, and shooting flames for a reason. A gamble with death occurs every time that bike is kicked over. We know that. That’s just how it is. Coin collectors don’t face much of a risk of hitting the asphalt at 70 miles per hour. Fly fishermen seldom get T-boned by ignorant left turners in the trout stream. Oil slicks in the road don’t mean much to folks who sit around the house painting still-life watercolors of bowls of pears.

Bikers, on the other hand, shun the Muzak version of life. Most also shun the me generation, point-headed intellectualism of today’s cyber-society, which has replaced a healthy fear and respect of “the man upstairs” with an enlightened reliance on stuff like maximum gigabyte hard drives and stock portfolios. The closer you travel with death, the closer you are to your chosen maker. That has something to do with it. And it’s probably true that there are no real atheists when the deal finally goes down, when the walls close in, when you realize that the last of the sand is about to drop. That’s when it becomes brutally apparent that we (and our computers and things) really don’t have all the answers.

And that’s when most of us really need some.

When you live much of your life on two fast wheels, just inches above the pavement, questions about mortality – and the eventual answers – are always very close. And that tends to activate the adrenaline.

Later in the chapter, this quote is offered: “Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: ‘Wow, what a ride!’”

While I would probably tweak my view of life a little differently than the author does, in a sense, he is simply saying what Jesus said a few thousand years ago: “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.” (John 10:10)

So, get out there and enjoy your ride. And your life.