Sketching out her ride, adding extra details with a flourish, in a few sentences she captures the essence of motorcycling.įor anyone who has ever ridden a motorcycle, picking up the book will strike a chord. Just going for a ride with Pierson–to Laconia, New Hampshire, for the annual races, to the bayous of the Deep South, or through the cobbled stones of ancient Italian towns is entrancing. But ought one really to draw a conclusion from this? Should one expose oneself the less to danger and to chance? A life spent in constant anxiety over losing it would be no life at all.”
With a Harley owner? That's the kind of stuff that might have given this tale a jump-start.When I did see the book–you can’t miss it, it’s got a picture of a Moto Guzzi V-8 on the cover–I was quite prepared to give it a wide berth, after reading on page one: “There are only two kinds of bikers: those that have been down and those that are going down.” What has that crashing cliche, grammatical errors and all, to do with the attraction of motorcycles? Pierson quotes deep sea diver Hans Hass, “I became very conscious of how anyone who defies danger in any form is at the mercy of chance. Could Pierson, who rides a Moto Guzzi, have a meaningful friendship
''The Perfect Vehicle'' gives some sense of the community of bikers, of their loyalty to their bikes and to one another, but not much about who they are.
Motorcycle races, motorcycle statistics, famous cyclists (George Bernard Shaw, Charles Lindbergh, Elvis Presley and Ann Richards, the former Governor of Texas, among them) and Pierson's cyclist boyfriends who didn't work out. She cites, as well, the ''appealing athleticism of the endeavor,'' and goes on to recount journeys, rallies, maintenance lessons and lots of not very spellbinding history: of motorcycles themselves, women on motorcycles, they want a way to feel fully engaged with and even vulnerable to their surroundings.'' Of certain bikes'' can ''wring the emotions dry.'' People ''make epic journeys on two wheels because. Vehicle.'' What exactly, on a quiet country road with birds twittering and cows mooing, does a noisy motor bring to the party? ''Like an aria,'' Melissa Holbrook Pierson says, ''the exhaust note F you want to know what's so great about riding motorcycles (without actually having to do it), read the first chapter and the postscript of ''The Perfect
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