Getting there

Discomfort is irrelevant when you are in the right mindset.

I know this for a fact. But no, I am not a steroid junkie aching to break into professional wrestling. That kind of I-love-pain-it-gives-me-such-a-high mantra is best left to bodybuilders, SWAT trainees, Sly Stallone, and neophyte politicians.

Admittedly, I love physical challenges as much as the next guy. I grew up years before PSP and online gaming spawned a generation of bleary-eyed youths reeking of Internet shop musk and stale air-conditioning. As a grade-schooler I came home every afternoon during summer vacation panting and caked with a mixture of dust and baked sweat—the aftermath of hours of  patintero, basketball,  siatong,  sipa  and other games my friends and I concocted. Schooldays were no different—I could run better in shoes—and my mother spent countless hours sewing back buttons on my shirts, cooking batch upon batch of hotdogs and corned beef to keep my appetite appeased, and pouring antiseptic over the cuts and scrapes I accumulated as the days wore on.

Make no mistake: For a time I was addicted to Super Mario, and my crimson-dotted report cards are a testament to that. But you never get to feel the wind in your face in ExciteBike, and soon the novelty of pouncing on multicolored pixelated monsters wears off. While away an afternoon by blasting at digital alien invaders and zombie kittens? At the end of the day you’re still just sitting there soaking up radiation from your laptop.

Of course, I can still appreciate your formulaic garden-variety getaway: plush rooms, fancy dinners, etc. But what is a getaway if you don’t really “get away”? That air-conditioned room might as well be your office/apartment, and not everyone relishes getting strapped on a couch to be ferried from point A to point B.

To have fun, sometimes you have to throw comfort out the window. Better yet, get rid of the window, the walls, and the roof as well. You have a rebel, in one form or another.

Speaking of rebellion, I detest cages. Cages (SUVs, sedans, the lowly Beetle, etc.) don’t lean; hence, they can only go fast on corners up to a certain point regardless of driver skill. No, don’t tell me about the corner speed of a Formula 1 racer because nobody drives F1 cars on public streets. Beyond their corner speed threshold, four-wheelers turn turtle, and I have seen an SUV turn turtle…ON A STRAIGHT ROAD. But they do protect you with a steel shell, laminated glass, and an assortment of airbags and seatbelts in case your expectations get the better of your driving prowess. Heck, a 12-year-old girl can drive even the most testosterone-fueled hotrod.

Cages also keep you refrigerated and cuddled during the inevitable traffic jams. Cages take care of you. They are like good babysitters: Sure, you can have a little fun, but throughout even the longest trips you are only a spectator—a very comfortable, protected and pampered spectator.

On the other side of the spectrum—the broken-femur, shattered-glass-littered side—are motorcycles. For starters, upon switching to a bike you lose the automobile’s four huge contact patches: You now have to make do with two spots where your tires meet asphalt, and they are no larger than a credit card. No, you can’t just sit there as well; you have to balance. On flowing curves and chicanes you’ll be hanging from side to side of the bike, keeping it as vertical as possible while fighting centrifugal force (this will be a good time to renew that gym membership).

Seatbelt and airbags? Forget it. With the absence of a windshield, you’ll be buffeted like a kite at speeds above 80 kilometers per hour, not to mention taking in everything the highway has to offer: smoke, heat, flying pebbles and grit, and the occasional thunderstorm. You are no longer a spectator; like it or not, you are now part of the scenery.

Now, there are cagers and there are riders, and there are valid reasons to be sitting on either side of the fence. Infirmities are one. Try riding a bike with a back injury and you’ll know why it’s a futile exercise. And then there are people who prefer to travel in large groups. Or they don’t want to worry about the weather, balancing, or the wind ruining their freshly set hair. The automobile offers mobility—without preferences to age, build, or health—as long as you can shift gears and steer. In the case of automatics, you don’t even need to know the difference between first and fifth gear. Faithful electronics keeps your tires from locking up during panic braking and keeps the children from falling out of the rear doors. You can even watch a movie in the confines of your personalized little world.

Cars are a reflection of life as we want it to be—stable, predictable, healthy, and safe. Riding is as much about the challenge of the trip as the importance of the destination. You straddle a machine that will as quickly buck you off into the center of the road as it will take you where you want to go. Bikes can bite the unskilled and the unwary. Sure, there are excellent electronics now—most of them better than on any car—but you are still on two wheels. Your mount will not balance or compensate for your sloppy steering, and you better be paying attention even on an open road as a bike will not protect you in the event of a crash.

What do you get in return for all of these? Apart from the compactness and agility, the core of the experience is intangible. Some say they experience freedom; others just relish the risk and the rebel image. It’s dying a little to live a whole lot more. I say you have to experience it for yourself, get out of your shell, and find out what you have been missing all this time.

Hannibal Mercado, 29, took up creative writing at the University of the Philippines Diliman.