Last September, I rode my 2003 Road King from Milwaukee to Sturgis for the twenty-third consecutive year. The interstate had changed. Platoons of autonomous freight haulers hummed in perfect formation along I-90, their sensor arrays blinking blue where chrome bumpers used to catch the Dakota sun. I took the exit at Chamberlain and kept to the two-lane highways—the ones the routing algorithms haven’t optimized yet.
The Machine Doesn’t Pretend
A motorcycle is the most honest vehicle ever built. It does exactly what you tell it, nothing more. There is no lane-assist, no collision avoidance, no gentle electronic nudge back toward compliance. The road delivers consequence in real time, and every rider accepts that contract the moment they twist the throttle on the on-ramp west of town.
“The road delivers consequence in real time, and every rider accepts that contract.”
That contract is vanishing from modern life. We have built systems that insulate us from the weight of our own choices—algorithms that predict our preferences before we feel them, roads that drive themselves, cities optimized for efficiency over experience. The motorcycle refuses all of it. Two wheels, one engine, and the rider’s nerve.