Decades ago I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig).
I was young but my mind wasn’t completely goo. I certainly wasn’t as clueless as many young woke dipshits of today. But I was definitely inexperienced. I have proof. At the time, I was tiptoeing into a career that would be a lifelong DEI minefield. I thought “I’m sure that’ll blow over“. I don’t think a man could have been more wrong than I was. I’d like to go back in time, say “bless your heart”, and smack my young self with a tire iron.
As for the book, I remember not “getting it”.
I had two theories. Theory 1: The book is deep and I’m too dumb to comprehend its lofty concepts. Theory 2: The book is bullshit and I’m too dumb to suss out that it’s crap.
I planned to “learn some shit and get smarter… then read it again.” I never did. But recently I thought about the book. Why? Because I was doing actual motorcycle maintenance, despite the certain knowledge I’m not a good mechanic. What would become of me?
It’s not the ideas, it’s the lack of hands on experience. I can usually conceptualize what needs to be done (not always). But it’s easy for the inexperienced to screw up implementation of even the simplest ideas. Experience matters. I know that of myself. That’s why I prefer to tinker with things that are cheap and/or won’t get me killed. Motorcycles? They’re my version of “the big leagues”. They can expensively beat you to death.
On the other hand, it’s incumbent on us all to avoid life too deeply bound to theory. It’s better to cautiously risk a blown real world implementation if one can “learn from it”. After all, a monkey can understand what a lug nut does, but a professor will cross thread, whip out the impact wrench, and nuke the wheel stud. (Some dudes at tire shops do the same.)
In my defense, I can at least change a car tire. This includes absurdly heavy duals on my 1 ton truck. It’s not something I was born with. Nor did anyone teach me. The good Lord saw fit to train me up with many flats. Um… thanks?
So this would be a step away from the purgatory of overconfident theorist. Every politician, CEO, commie economist, woke protester, or influencer has all sorts of theoretical knowledge but nothing practical. They’re a menace. Have you witnessed them driving the world into the ground? They try to force reality to match their theories. There should be a word for that; how about “Krugmaning”?
When the rubber meets the road you have to be right.
I began the week looking at my bike; pondering the vast gulf between “I get this in theory” and “I fixed the thing in real life”. I’m in good company. Socrates pondered the difference between knowledge and false certainty.
“I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either.”
Noted fictional philosopher Dirty Harry, demonstrated a similar thought. “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
Knowing that I know nothing, I picked up a huge service manual and a wrench. I was about to learn things…
More to come.
I’ve always done my own motorcycle (and auto) maintenance…for the most part. I don’t delve into the alchemy of automatic transmissions and I’ve really only learned enough about fuel injection systems lately to feel I might be able to figure that out…but otherwise…
I’ve got a big one coming up. Already have the parts, just trying to get some other stuff out of the way before starting this task.
I had some medical stuff going on over the past couple of years that has meant my bikes have spent a lot of time…um…resting. My daily driver (2000 Honda Valkyrie Interstate) has started running pretty rough. I tried running some B12 through it, but it didn’t help.
So…off with the carbs. I’ve cleaned and rebuilt carbs before. It’s fiddly, but not rocket science. What makes this task so daunting is that the mighty Valkyrie doesn’t have “a carb”. It doesn’t even have two carbs like many bikes. It has six. One for each cylinder.
Sigh.
Valks are awesome bikes. The perfect hybrid of a cruiser and a goldwing. I’m sure it’ll run great once you manage to synchronize six carbs, but I’m sure that six is a handful.
I had a Valk. The most complicated thing I did to it was replace an air filter, which was contained in a box that looked like a spider with one leg going to each of those six carbs and which had to come off to do the job. Yeah, it was a great bike. Now “tiptoeing into a lifelong DEI minefield” ? Good Lord man, you were a teacher ?
Ha ha ha… I wasn’t a school teacher. The only teaching I did was in college level and only a brief time. College students drove me nuts, high school kids would’ve given me an aneurism. Besides, “lifelong DEI minefield” has been all encompassing the last few decades; it applies to a lot of jobs.
I’m retired now. I’m glad to be out of it. 🙂
Take good care of that Valk, they’re sweet machines.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is not about motorcycle maintenance. It’s a long rambling story about identifying or quantifying quality. Which is a tricky thing in itself.
As Pirsig himself says in the forward, it’s not very authoritative about Zen, either.
I used to reread Zen and the Art every few years, just to reorient myself. That probably says more about me than intended.
On the other hand, though a novice, I do have one oddball bike; I have a CX500. It’s in the middle of some stage of restoration, as are 5 of my other 6 bikes. I know, I know, the first step to recovery is admitting that I have an addiction….