Map of Trip in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

"In a machine you lot're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that automobile window everything you see is just more Goggle box. Yous're a passive observer, and it is all moving by you lot boringly in a frame.

On a bicycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, non just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming." ~ Robert Yard. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

There'south this book that'due south had more of an impact on me than anything else I've read in the last ten years. It's not the Bible or the Book of Mormon or the Quran. It's a petty volume that starts by telling what appears to exist a simple story, but 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 information technology off the shelf and open it randomly simply to read a few pages. I almost always find something useful or at least worth thinking about.

Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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

Zen had a profound effect on me. Before reading it, I used to become impatient with the unfamiliar processes of fixing things around the business firm. Replacing a damaged window screen or fixing a leaky faucet used to make me crazy. This would happen because I viewed every repair in terms of what I didn't know rather than what I could learn. That usually set upwardly self-fulfilling prophecies in which mistakes multiplied to the point where I just didn't want to endeavour to prepare things around the business firm. "I'll screw information technology up fifty-fifty worse. Merely call a repairman," became my response to problems.

But so I read Zen and my outlook completely changed. Pirsig taught me that no repairman will ever intendance as much about a repair equally I will; therefore I should be the one to do the repair. He likewise taught me that experience builds upon itself. For instance, fixing that window screen last year means that I know how to supercede the door screen today. Most importantly, Pirsig taught me about the deep condolement you achieve when you know something is washed with quality. The book helped me realize that I own the creation and maintenance of quality in my life.

Occasionally, I slip dorsum into being that frustrated, impatient homeowner when I'one thousand looking at an educational activity manual and realizing the complication of a repair I'chiliad almost to endeavour. It's at those dark moments when my wife gently says, "Go to your Zen place." It works on me every time. I calm down and slowly read the instructions while gathering tools. Then I'm able to advisedly footstep my way through the repair. So, in my mind there is a fairly meaningful connection between Robert Pirsig and my wife, Kristi.

I'm doing many things to become ready for The Ride. At this bespeak I'm doing a lot of applied list-making and reading. Part of my reading includes books most similar journeys. Zen is on my list of required reading, merely today I'm reading Marking Richardson's Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It's virtually the writer'due south retracing of the original Zen route from Minneapolis to San Francisco. Similar other 'Pirsig Pilgrims', Richardson is interested in how things accept changed since Pirsig'southward ride.

Pirsig'due south route across the western United 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 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 right through my wife's hometown during the Zen ride. Richardson even stopped at the gas station my Father-in-Law's one time managed during his "Zen and Now" ride. Richardson writes…

"It's as hot as it'southward ever been, just over 100 degrees on the gas station thermometer here in McLaughlin… Inside the gas station the chat'south about the heat.

The air conditioning 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'due south wearing a jacket. His BMW is parked exterior, and he wants ice cream. He'due south an older guy, and we greet each other similar erstwhile friends."

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

Chief Street in McLaughlin S.D.

My wife's parents moved to McLaughlin in 1968. They located in that location because the land forgave the student debt of higher graduates who were willing to teach in public schools in rural Southward Dakota towns. So, Jim Hannigan moved his young family unit into an former subcontract house on the border of town about a quarter mile from the intersection of US Road 12 and Highway 63. His oldest daughter, Kristi was one-year-old.

At the same time, Robert Pirsig was rolling westward through Southward Dakota along US Route 12. This is what he said about the landscape between Mobridge and Lemmon.

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

In my mind, a moment exists in which the young Hannigan family is taking a walk. They desire to escape the estrus of the house and maybe come across some of the people of their new town. They exit their front porch and walk downwardly the gentle slope into the north end of boondocks. The husband, wife and baby are about to cross the highway to purchase sodas at the gas station (the same gas station Jim Hannigan would eventually run once he was through with teaching, the same gas station Mark Richardson would potable Gatorade in a few years later). That's when they hear the Honda Superhawk's engine. It sounds out of place in the farm land of 1968.

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

Pirsig slows and shifts downwardly as he approaches the crossroad. A young family is standing at the intersection. He stops and waits for them to cross, and that's when the baby does what all kids practice when they cantankerous paths with a motorbike. She looks upwards to see the loud, shiny thing. Older kids almost always smile broadly and moving ridge at motorcyclists. Boys lucky plenty to be on their bicycles commonly flash a casual thumbs-up of two-wheel brotherhood. Babies just stare, and so does this one. She makes eye-contact with the homo astride the noisy affair. The rider and the babe watch each other as the young mother quickens her pace to get off the road.

With the family now safely in the gas station parking lot, Pirsig begins letting get of the clutch. He feels the bike brainstorm to move, and his feet come up onto the pegs. He an Chris yet have considerable ground to cover between here and Lemmon, where they'll army camp for the night.

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

On i mitt, it reminds me of how continued we all can exist. I'yard non talking about being Cyberspace continued. I'm talking virtually a deep, generally unseen, unknown connection that we commonly aren't aware of, but it's ever there — stitching our globe together with invisible thread.

Or maybe something else is happening.  Peradventure we search for things to connect to. Maybe our drastic need to make sense of a horribly random existence causes our hidden to reach into the raw material of chaos and grasp the things it needs to gather the illusion of society.

I feel one, peradventure both, of these forces at work equally the realization hits me that I'll likewise become a 'Pirsig Pilgrim' during The Ride. Either by accident or by fate, I'll begin post-obit Pirsig's tire-tracks every bit I cross from Oregon into northern California. I'll follow his path downwards the coast to where the Zen trip ended in San Francisco. In one case I get there, I'll look for a place to stop and contemplate Persig'due south ride. It might even happen while I watch a immature family that's waiting to cross the road.

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

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