Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/09/20/why-ride-a-motorcycle.html
…
2 Likes
Jit wanh tsan lei, gao wanh teng
2 Likes
The, uh, light balance is off, too bright, made my eyes water. 
9 Likes
Because you want to die young, but not leave a pretty corpse?
I keeed! I keeeed!
what a great saying… like, the lackluster english equivalent is some mawkish lemons/lemonade bullshit.
2 Likes
Been riding for 50 plus years, still can’t tell you why I do it, I just do.
7 Likes
I expect you’re riding now… 
3 Likes
Not that it matters much, but I’m pretty sure this is not an ad for motorcycles. The logo at the end seems to be from a Taiwan bank (TC Bank). Maybe they help you finance the motorcycle you buy.
1 Like
Getting old sucks. But it beats the hell out of the alternative.
5 Likes
Roger That!
Damn. That made me cry. Stay young everyone.
3 Likes
And if you can’t stay young, stay foolish. It helps.
3 Likes
the ad campaign WAS for Taiwan Bank, but it went very viral, and the ad team went on to make it into more of a documentary
Taiwan’s Grand Riders - - there is a lovely article abuot them, and a second tour they did in Motorcyclist - http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/taiwans-grand-riders
and yes - as a rider? this clip STILL inspires the F out of me.
3 Likes
Some day soon I will not live in a spawling city where anything on two wheels has the life expectancy of a mayfly. On that day, I will dust off my leathers, buy a new helmet, pick myself out another modest motorcycle and start riding again.
2 Likes
Sort of - Old age, sickness, and death, is a little bit hard to get behind as a meme. If old age was a terrorist or some despot he would make Hitler look like a kitten with a bad attitude.
“I am going to take your vision, your hearing, your mental acuity, your mobility, et. al. And I’ll start with your grandparents, your parents, your friends, you, and then your kids, and there is not fuck-all you can do about it…”
Time makes God look like an ass…
2 Likes
because even on a crappy wet seattle day in the stop and go on the way home it make me feel alive.
2 Likes
My father told me “Getting old isn’t for the weak. That’s why they leave it to the experienced.”
He has a dry sense of humor. It took me a few years to realize just how bone-dry that statement was.
Between witnessing his struggles and having read Susan Jacoby’s Never Say Die, I remain unresolved on whether old age is good fortune.
3 Likes
LOL my dad used to say “getting old is not for pussies” A hell of a thing to say to your daughter - LOL.
Jacoby’s book is worth reading… If you can gain some serenity from breathing in and out, and living till you are doing nothing but that, there is value in staying here as long as you can. Otherwise… well there is a bike driveway until my luck runs out. I guess when I cannot kick it to life I’ll give it up.
2 Likes
See also the Canadian film “One Week” 2008 (don’t read up on it, just watch it)
I kinda love that by accident/occident/coincident I, 20 years younger, found, rebuilt, and rode a Suzuki T200/X5 as my first bike… which, despite the enmity between China / Taiwan / Japan looks a lot like the bikes these guys were riding. I got mine in Traverse City in 1980, when I was working stage crew at Interlochen – tore it down to the bearings, built it back up to working, despite my lack of training or ability, relying a lot on the attitudes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance… rode it as my primary vehicle for about 3 years until kids at the Tulip Tree married housing unit at Indiana University vandalized it beyond my desire/ability to re-repair…
“Why ride a motorcycle”
Because it would be harder to eat one.
2 Likes
