Smith
Jun 18th, 2006, 7:11 pm
All of us who ride motorcycles are young men in our hearts regardless of the numbers on our driver’s licenses. One of my literary heroes of was Marco Polo. I suppose there is a little Marco Polo in all of us who crave the adventure of traveling new roads to places we haven’t been. A touring bike suits riders like us for that reason and it’s only personal preference if the bike is an LT or Gold Wing or Ultra Classic. I seldom see very young riders on these bikes. Perhaps because they haven’t the time or resources to indulge an extravagant wanderlust. Or maybe when a man is no longer on the sunny side of 50, he is more acutely aware of the ravages of time on his body and seeks to pamper and comfort himself while adventuring. Many years ago, I read a biography of Marco Polo and I quote here a passage about the age of that adventurer. The message has stuck with me over the years.
“A man stays always the same age somewhere down inside himself. Only the outside of him grows older – his wrapping of body, and it’s integument, which is the whole world. Inwardly he attains to a certain age, and stays there throughout his whole remaining life. Perhaps that inner age may vary with different individuals. But in general it gets fixed at early maturity, when the mind has reached adult awareness and acuity, but has not been calloused by habit and disillusion; when the body is newly full-grown and feeling the fires of life, but not yet any of life ashes. The calendar and his mirror and the solicitude of his juniors may tell a man that he is old, and he can see for himself that the world and all around him have aged, but secretly he knows he is still a youth of eighteen or twenty.”
I know from my own experience and knowledge of myself and I am 64; when I light up my LT – I too am secretly a youth of eighteen or twenty.
Bob Smith
’05 Dark Graphite
“A man stays always the same age somewhere down inside himself. Only the outside of him grows older – his wrapping of body, and it’s integument, which is the whole world. Inwardly he attains to a certain age, and stays there throughout his whole remaining life. Perhaps that inner age may vary with different individuals. But in general it gets fixed at early maturity, when the mind has reached adult awareness and acuity, but has not been calloused by habit and disillusion; when the body is newly full-grown and feeling the fires of life, but not yet any of life ashes. The calendar and his mirror and the solicitude of his juniors may tell a man that he is old, and he can see for himself that the world and all around him have aged, but secretly he knows he is still a youth of eighteen or twenty.”
I know from my own experience and knowledge of myself and I am 64; when I light up my LT – I too am secretly a youth of eighteen or twenty.
Bob Smith
’05 Dark Graphite