I’m going out with a biker. A new biker – she’s just bought her first bike, a 2021 Honda CMX500. Aka the “Rebel”.

It’s a wonderful thing to share your passion with someone, even if – as in the case of motorbikes – that passion comes with a hefty price tag and a more-than-marginal chance of injury. She’s made me promise not to carry the responsibility for that – for being the gateway drug into this expensive and dangerous lifestyle – but that’s an impossible ask. Of course I do. Yet however nagging the anxiety is; the lurking guilt and incessant glancing in the mirror to check she’s still there, rumbling along in the Dublin traffic with her glaring neon tabard and growling aftermarket exhaust; the anxiety I feel is superseded by an overriding sense of pride. Pride at the sight of a nascent biker clocking their first heart-pounding miles on this special journey – the beginning of life on two wheels – and the nostalgia that comes with it. Pride in seeing her meet the fear and challenges of taming a machine that delivers 50 horsepower behind two fingers and a gentle easing of the wrist. And above all, there is the respect that is commanded by anyone mad, romantic, or single-minded enough to attempt this journey in the first place.

And it is a mad thing to do; to send yourself hurtling along at speed a few inches from the ground when half a dozen saner alternatives exist to get from A to B. But then again it’s not just about getting from here to there. Yes that’s part of it, but if that’s all that mattered, we’d all be taking the bus.
“Then what is it?”, I ask – demand even. “Why the bike?”.
She talks straight, in that most American of manner – considered, laid bare; never brash but also making it very clear that this is how it’s going to be, and this is how it is.
“Independence”, she says, anticipating my follow-up, “And a car isn’t it. I want to be able to go anywhere in the world and be able to get around, to go wherever I want and not be reliant on others. I think being able to ride a bike is the way. Also I’m fed up with Dublin bus”. 

A car isn’t it. Nothing else is quite it. And although it’s been difficult at times, witnessing her practical and utilitarian approach towards machines that for me are borderline spiritual entities, I can’t refute the logic, and the motive is undeniable. In a material sense, motorbikes offer more opportunities for independence than cars: they’re cheaper, more durable, and easier to maintain than those monstrous, unwieldy four-wheeled roadblocks. But I suspect it’s not only about the practicalities. The mind will find ample justifications to rationalise an irrational motive – something that is spontaneous and primitive. A need that must be met. And I suspect she might have it – whether she knows it or not – because what else drives a person to do something that only 2% of the population do, and at significant financial cost at that?

It ought to be noted that in some countries – mostly in Asia – for all the reasons of practicality listed above, two-wheeled transport is the norm. But even there, where mopeds reign supreme, only a comparative few feel the pull towards proper motorcycles – something that can carry them away from the city chaos and out of the flood of buzzing Honda 50’s, spluttering Royal Enfields or humming Yadea’s. Nobody needs 50 horsepower to go to the post office. That’s not the kind of ‘independence’ in question. Rather, it’s exactly how she said it: the ability “to go anywhere”, and crucially, to “not be reliant on others”.

When I heard that, I was at ease. This wasn’t just a fancy or a passion-fuelled phase. No – this was something real, something necessary and something deep within her. I know that, because it’s in me too, and in every biker I know. That’s why riders, though they be strangers, bond so easily. It’s that shared something – whether it’s about going far and wide, or fast and hard, or escaping for just one precious hour on a weekend evening to clock out and check in with oneself – the unspoken understanding is this: I see you, you’re not like the rest, you don’t need to explain, I’m the same. So it is that bikers – and I mean real bikers, not posers or wannabe tough-guys, but real bikers – constitute the most unassuming and mild-mannered bunch of rebels in the 21st century.

The rebel biker is an icon of 20th century pop-culture. Like many things, it’s a wholly manufactured image: created by Hollywood, set-up to succeed the ‘lone-rider’ outlaw of old westerns, and mythologised and commodified to the point of ridicule*. In reality, bikers are the least cartoonish rebels imaginable because their rebellion isn’t an external declaration against some vague notion of ‘society’ or ‘the establishment’. On the surface, there is nothing at all different between them and everyone else. But inside, it’s a different story. The private rebellion that rages inside every biker is one against the nature of routine life. It’s a rebellion against the mundane, the confining, and the amnesia of mortality. They have identified some deep drive inside them, acknowledged it, and found an outlet: the motorbike. It gives them independence – a real, deeply held sense of independence – and it gives them solace to survive the suffocation of control, rules, and demands of modern life. And ultimately, it confronts them with their own mortality on a daily basis – something that is necessary to fuel a full and present life.

I am the first to dissuade people from riding motorbikes. “Unlike drivers,” I tell them, “there is no such thing as a bad rider. There are only good riders, and dead riders”. That usually quells the enthusiasm for a while. If it arises again, I try something else; I constantly complain about how impractical bikes are, about how miserable it can be riding them – particularly in Ireland – and how better spent their money could be. Only if they continue to press on regardless, slogging through the bureaucratic tedium of acquiring their permits and surviving their training – it’s mandatory in the EU, and in Ireland it still is a matter of surviving it (at this point many people realise it’s not for them) – only after all of this will I allow myself to unleash my enthusiasm for their new passion. It’s not like learning to drive. These are not ‘easy’ machines to manage; they’re wholly demanding of one’s determination, resilience, and mental and physical involvement. For a new rider to execute even a simple U-turn, they have to really want it. The learning curve is high, and there will be many lows. And it might not happen straight away, but at some point the heavy reality of the risks involved will hit every rider, whether hypothetically or as a physical reality. At that point, it is probably insane to continue riding. But one person’s madness is another’s passion, and if it’s in you it’s in you – to ignore it would very likely lead to very real madness, or a loss of appetite for anything at all.

My own relationship with these machines arose in the throws of that latter situation. Bikes were always around when I was growing up – both my parents owned one, and so there was nothing ‘rebellious’ about them. My parents weren’t the type to put us on dirt-bikes and have us cleaning carbs before supper – it was scales and arpeggios before super in my family –  bikes were never a focus. They were just a part of life; as normal as it was for other kids’ dads to go to work in a car, or to be dropped off to school in a car, so it was for us and bikes. Fortunately, because they were never a focus, bikes were there to whisk me away from it all when the focus became too much. I was twenty; spiraling under the weight of unmet perceived expectations and unacknowledged dissatisfaction – I could sense I wasn’t happy with where things were going, but was unable to voice it. I also used to think about things far too intensely than is healthy for a twenty year old. As such, I was feeling trapped, stuck, and adrift. And suddenly it was there, the realisation and the means which, thanks to my parents, had been there all along. Patrick’s Day 2018: Dad spins me down to an empty industrial estate, hands me the keys to mum’s VFR, and I just ride it. It was as natural as riding a horse: an understanding and a connection, only instead of a quivering animal, an inanimate machine. Or is it? A month later I bought my Bonnie, and I rode every day. 

Allow me to dwell on the personal a moment longer for the sake of a general conclusion. Riding was a lifeline for me, and I’m forever grateful to have had it so easily on hand. Without it, I imagine the inner rebellion would have become uncontainable, or perhaps it would have fizzled out, suffocated – I’m not sure which is worse. When I say that bikes are spiritual entities for me, I mean they are a conduit of my sense of self; the abstract made physical. A bike both personifies and facilitates my essence. I’m claustrophobic on a macro scale; small physical spaces don’t rattle me, but the sense of being trapped and the feeling of being stuck in one place is something I’m susceptible to.  It’s essential for me to be able to go anywhere, at any time, and at my own pace.
And I’ve a disinterest in competition, despite being highly motivated by it. To be ‘competitive’ is to conceptualise oneself in relation to everyone else – I’ve learned to set my own standards, to run my own race. I have no desire to hustle over parking spaces or seethe away in traffic jams – I ride straight through. Where everybody else is, I am not: I’m already ten miles up the road. Where bollards say no, I say go around. When it rains I get wet, when sun, I get a tan: when you stop insulating yourself from the natural world you become more grounded, less stressed, and more aware of your own body and mind. And as for confronting one’s own mortality, throwing a leg over the saddle every day is a healthy reminder to prioritise ones values in life. Values are the victims of the 9 to 5. When you run on autopilot for so long, you forget where you were even going, or why.

Many riders, I am sure, have experienced some iteration of this; some intrinsic motivation or purpose for this fringe lifestyle. They might call it ‘freedom’, or ‘identity’, or ‘feeling alive’. Some even call it therapy. Regardless, it affrims that private rebellion simmering inside them. And whatever their personal rebellion may be, they’ve found a way to nurture it, to give it an outlet. They have fashioned a tap inside them that can be returned to again and again whenever they need to draw from it. The rebellion is not striving to externally change or provoke anything; it has no goal or destination; it simply is, and therefore demands attendance. In so doing, the biker rebels against the forces in modern society that would have them ignore that calling to self-attendance in spite of common sense and in contempt of subservience to the norm. 

So it’s not as simple as getting from A to B. For that, all one has to do is get in line and go with the flow. Nor is it about disrupting the flow – we’re not interested in that kind of rebellion. For most people the flow is preferable; there’s security in the flow; there’s comfort in conformity. But as someone once said – I forget who – the only thing that goes with the flow is a dead fish. But as riders and rebellious little fish – and very much alive – we’ve figured out a way to navigate the flow with autonomy and independence, because ultimately we’re all just fish heading in the same direction. There’s no stopping the flow. But it’s a choice to either be swept along by it, or to ride it – literally ride it – and see the stream through with intent and vigour. That’s the essence of this rebellion. And to make this ramble loosely resemble a review, a word on the Honda Rebel – it’s grand, it’s fun, it’s a bike: title earned. 

* There is some basis to the stereotypical image of the rebel biker, however it is far from the glamour and surly bad-boy facade of Hollywood. In the US, bikes and biking culture emerged after WWII when scores of young men scarred by their experiences, and struggling to adjust to civilian life, found solace in the clubs and company of fellow vets over a shared passion for American-made machines – abundant after four years of war economy and manufacturing. The generation that came after them, already a dream removed from post-war prosperity and the car, the television and the white picket fence, naturally turned to the open road as a form of escape, expression, and protest.
Meanwhile in the UK, where the motorbike had once been a toy for the self-proclaimed great and good, was now a staple of the working class. Naturally, young men with little else to do realised they could spend their evenings customising and racing the same machines they used to get to work in the morning, giving rise to the ‘cafe-racer’ iteration of rebel biker in Europe. It was short lived however, and never gained the notoriety and enduring iconography as the American biker, despite both Marlin Brando and Steve McQueen riding British bikes.