Life on the Line
by   Bill "Biker Billy" Hufnagle
as taken from Cycle Magazine's BLVD. Magazine, September/October 1997

 We fly down the asphalt like birds on the wing.  Over the hills and through the valleys we swoop, diving into corners and climbing up straight-aways.  We are freedom and we are alive.  Nature rushes past us.  We are truly one with the road and know the joys of the birds in the sky.

  Our machines are prime and we are the best.  No cages hold us in check as we soar.  We are limited only by our skills and our fear of the hunter.  The hunter may lay in wait over the next rise or hidden just around the bend.  Listening for our cries of power and freedom as we rush into his lair.   The hunter never rests in his crusade to check our speed and clip our wings.  We become his trophies and our speed is proof of our danger and need to be tamed.

  As we push at the envelope harder we expand our horizons and thus we become hunters of a different sort.  Raptors of the open road - seeking an unobstructed path clear to the horizon.  We chase the elusive freedom to chose our own line and set our own pace unhindered by the slow, the feeble and the meek.  They have chosen to live life in the glass and steel restraints of a cage.  They bow to the rules of the hunter, who is their master and keeper.  And they resent us for our freedom and courage as we fly where they merely crawl.

  Plodding to and from their nests they seem to slow as we roar up behind them.  It seems almost as if they wish to hold us back lest we pass and show them for what they are - pets on the treadmill of society.

  They impede our progress and thus become our prey.  We move from prey to prey rapidly approaching our next conquest, slowing for the kill, waiting for the moment to strike.  We watch for the signs and the marks that indicate the perfect moment to overtake the prey.  Trained in the art of overtaking, we know that we can rapidly be transformed from the soaring raptor into a burst of feathers with we strike with imprudence.  The dance seems to sometimes extend for an eternity while we wait for the perfect moment.  The combination of a clear line of sight, the magic passing marks and the absence of caged ones approaching from the opposite direction is often rare.  As we swoop down upon a slow moving cage and wait for the moment to strike, we feel the frustration of being cooped.

  Sometimes the road or the fever of flying with the pack possesses us and clouds our vision.  We know the rules but we feel our prowess; are we not faster and more agile?  Is it not our right to soar on past the slow, the feeble and the meek?  In the heat of passion, we sometimes push the limits and strike the first moment we can, forsaking the holy trinity.  More often than not we are successful in our conquest and return to our roosts to sing our song of daring do.  Oh, what a rush to successfully tempt the fates and puff up our feathers with pride.  Back at the roost we can reassure ourselves of our skills and daring, even if we have a brush with the darkside.

  But sometimes we are not so lucky.  Maybe we rattled the cagers so badly we convinced them of their need to control us.  Occasionally we are captured by the hunter and our wings are clipped to teach us to be tame.  But sometimes we fly with reckless abandon, swooping down on every caged prey with a vengeance, taking them without regard for the rules.  We grow cocky in our perception of our own power and skill.  And that is when it happens, the flock has consumed the slow-poke in front of us and is soaring away over the next ridge.

  Although the double stripe of death marks the path ahead we are full of the fever and make our move.  Out we go across the solid lines, roaring brazenly past the cage, up and over the ridge and round the bend into the waiting arms of eternity.  In an explosion of feathers we abruptly trade our machine for another set of wings.  Tonight, back at the roost, the flock will sing sad songs of our passing and our skill and bravery, but we will not hear them or sing with them again.

  Hopefully, the fledglings will learn from our mistake.  But how many will secretly believe that they possess more skill and power than we did?  What is sure is that we will be held up as proof of the need to preemptively clip the wings of all who dare to soar!