Sept. 21, 2025
Mastering the Difficult Art of Motorcycling: Embrace the Ride
In this episode of the Throttle and Roast podcast, host Niels Meersschaert delves into the rewarding yet challenging world of motorcycling. He discusses the importance of learning and personal growth, highlighting how the difficult art of motorcycling can lead to a profound sense of achievement and fulfillment. By exploring modern neuroscience, Niels explains how learning stimulates the brain and fosters connections that enhance our riding experience. The episode emphasizes the unique joys of motorcycling as a full-body and mind experience, encouraging listeners to embrace the hard yet exhilarating journey of riding.
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00:00 - Introduction
00:56 - Learning is good for you
03:16 - Sense of achievment
05:06 - Boring and hard or fun and easy
06:27 - Meaning and purpose
08:08 - Cosplay and ego
09:53 - What once was hard becomes easy
13:15 - Wrap up
WEBVTT
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Live as if you were to die tomorrow, learn as if you were to live forever.
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Welcome to the Throttle and Roast podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. Riding a motorcycle is both difficult and it can be dangerous. So why should we embrace Gandhi's quote of, live as if you were to die tomorrow and learn as if you were to live forever? Well, that's kind of the point. Riding a motorcycle is hard, but that's part of what makes it so appealing. When you look at the benefits of riding from multiple perspectives, it becomes clear that it helps exercise your brain, it can bring a sense of achievement, and may even bring meaning and purpose to our lives.
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We'll look at that in this episode.
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So let's start with the premise that learning is actually good for you. what happens is that you're learning with. And this is one of the most intriguing bits of modern neurosciences, is that they've actually been exploring this and seeing what happens for your body and your brain as you are bringing in new things that you're learning. What happens to this synapses? How do you kind generate all of that insight capture it and remember those things that you have learned?
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And the reality is that when you're learning, you're actually having your mind exercise. And I know this sounds like a little bit of a stretch in some ways, but hear me out a little bit onto it. When you actually learn something new, your brain is creating new synapses. So as you sleep, all the things that you've learned through that day are effectively cultivated and grow. And new synapses will grow and create a new level of understanding, a new element that you can then recall and come back onto. So learning is actually something that keeps your mind active. It keeps your mind continuing to grow. It keeps adding in new insights.
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And the really cool thing about the brain is it can connect all of these disparate ideas and bring them together in ways that you may not have previously even recognized.
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And I know this may sound a bit esoteric. It may sound like, what the hell does this have to do with motorcycling? But I'll get to that because the thing is that what I think is remarkable about motorcycling, it is a full body and I would argue a full mind experience in that you're actually bringing all of these constituent parts together. And I think this is why those who ride are in the know. We have just such a complete experience with riding a motorcycle that we don't have in a lot of other activities. And it doesn't mean that there aren't other activities that adding in all the complexities that we enjoy as part of the experience. But motorcycling is a little bit more approachable for a lot of people. It's something that also allows us to travel very easily.
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So it has a couple of other characteristics that are unique, whereas you probably get a very similar thing from let's say mountain climbing, but you're not really traveling to go and see anywhere. So there's not another element that comes in.
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So this is kind of where I it becomes interesting of bringing these together for motorcycling.
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The other thing that I would highlight is when you're learning something and when you finish learning it, when you kind of accomplish that, what you were hoping for, there is a sense of achievement. you know, this is really meant to be sort of a proud feeling of having done something that was both difficult and worthwhile. If you think of it realistically, you're not going to be having a sense of achievement for something that's like trivial and not a big deal. It's like, oh, wow, I got out of bed this morning and I ate breakfast.
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Like, that's cool. We do it every day, but it's not going to really create and offer you a sense of achievement. whereas if you do something that is much more challenging for you, that will be the situation of feeling that special moment for you. You know, Adam Carolla, who was of the, you know, fame from the Man Show, was once asked if it was fun being a parent. And he responded, "No, it's not fun.
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It's better than fun." And this is really an interesting take on it, because being a parent requires so much work, commitment, emotional resources, and it's just, it's not really fun, but it's fulfilling and meaningful and satisfying and worthwhile. But fun doesn't even come close to describing the experience. And there's some aspects of that that I think are relevant for when we think of motorcycling. Because motorcycling is an activity that is difficult, it can be rewarding. But I think there's one little change from, let's say, parenting and the fun aspect that I think Adam was getting into with his comment there, that I think really plays in. So when you think of all the various things that we do in life, You could think of that the things that are boring and hard are probably the ones that we procrastinate. They're the ones that we really just do not want to do at all. So imagine a piece of paper with four sections drawn on it. Maybe in the top left, you have that boring and hard. And in the top right, you have boring and easy.
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And on the bottom right, you have fun and easy. And the bottom left is fun and hard. Now, motorcycling, of course, is going to be in that bottom left.
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It's going to be in that fun and hard. And this is the thing that I think differentiates from what Adam was talking about with that sense of achievement is motorcycling can be fun in itself, but it's also hard. And so it also brings still in that sense of achievement, even though it was a difficult thing to do. Things that are fun and easy take little effort and they're a good pastime, such as watching a movie. But something that's fun and hard takes an effort to do. And it isn't easy.
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But as you get better at it, you not only have the reward of the fun and the activity, but also that sense of achievement at having mastered it. And musicians feel this, too.
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Learning to play the guitar isn't easy. But as you become better at it, there's another enjoyment that comes from the experience of playing.
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Now, related to this sense of achievement is meaning and purpose. And if something takes little effort, it's not typical for it to have a lot of meaning to us. When your grandmother, for example, knitted a sweater for you as a kid, it wasn't easy for them.
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They could have just bought one instead. But that they invested this time into making something for you made the gift far more meaningful than a store-bought garment would have been. And this is the aspect that I'm trying to capture here. It's really about effort actually brings more value and meaning to it. for a lot of us as riders, we get out and we go on for a ride. brings its own meaning to us that is remarkable. on the bike, alone in your thoughts.
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You're thinking of whatever you're digesting from that day.
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it can be part of your purpose.
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It can be a way in which you're able to rectify all the disparate elements of your life and bring them together into a cohesive mean because your brain was able to really understand and analyze it. And this is, I think, really cool about motorcycling. And I think we oftentimes focus so much on the physical aspect of it, the mechanics of, oh, I need to pull on the clutch with my left hand.
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I got flip the gear shift with my left foot. So there's the mechanics of it. Now, of course, it's this whole other element, which is the mind that actually adds so much more comprehensive aspect to how much our enjoyment is recognized as we participate in it.
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Now, of course, another element that we have to be cognizant of is that for some, an activity can feel like cosplay. You know, we want to look the part of the activity that we ascribe some value to.
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And we think that others will think more highly of us if we are associated with that particular activity. And we could think of this as externally focused versus internally focused. And the question we're always asking ourselves is, are we doing this because it makes us feel good or not? . . . because we hope that others will think well of us ." And this happens in motorcycling too. There are certainly a segment of riders who, they love the look of motorcycling. They love to get dressed up in the moment, and maybe they'll ride a couple of miles to go to a local cafe or a pub or whatever it is, and hope that people will notice them, notice their motorcycle, gawk at it in some positive way.
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And that's the extent of their experience. It doesn't mean to belittle it, but that is just, it's another value point of why we want to do it. And because there is a perception, and rightfully so, that motorcycling can be difficult, the people who are observing you in that moment may have a more positive view of you, like, "Wow, look, this person actually rode to wherever place we are." And they ascribe that value to you. So the ego versus the meaning can still be an important part. this is the totality of it. Motorcyclists will have different intentions.
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They will have different reasons for why they embrace such a challenging thing as motorcycling, and it kind of brings these all together.
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But if you're a new rider or a beginner who's even thinking about becoming a motorcyclist, you might be hearing everything that been saying and saying, "Oh my God, this just sounds like insurmountable. It sounds so difficult." But the funny thing about it is that as you continue to hone your craft, as you continue to ride, as you continue to get more experience under your But the key thing is that as you master riding, it won't feel as difficult as it did when you started. And just like a musician, they can play much more easily than when they started. And it doesn't diminish the point that getting to that point of mastery was difficult.
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It's just that it's no longer seeming as difficult as it once was. And the reason is that some of the elements of it are almost put in a little bit of an autopilot, will. So you're riding along and you don't have to think about, oh, well, do I, when I have to change gears because the engine's getting up to a certain rev and I want to switch gears to into the next higher gear. A lot of people, it almost an automated, you don't even really think about it. You don't think about really focusing on how smoothly do I move that clutch in and out and shift the gears because it becomes a second nature to us as we've gathered that mastery. But in some situations, you really need to get it super precise.
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And now your focus will get onto that. This will happen quite often, let's say at the track where you're really trying to focus on it. So it can still be hard. It can still be demanding on you, but for a lot of it, you're not necessarily having to focus on that. And this is what allows you to almost have extra processing capacity to kind of put it into a computer analogy.
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a lot of the stuff is going to be that autopilot that I mentioned, but this allows you then to be spending more of your time focused on, Hey, what are some road hazards that might be coming along? Or maybe that's a beautiful scene that I'm seeing off to the side because you have that extra processing ability to not just be like, Oh man, how do I keep this bike upright and not fall over? And all the other things that you worry about as a beginner, a lot of that other things becomes in that sort of second nature. And as a result, we're able to focus more of our attention towards the next level of mastery that we want to accomplish. So maybe that's being more aware of what's happening around your surroundings. Maybe that's looking out for road hazards.
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Maybe that's enjoying the view.
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All of these things are demanding your attention and you're only able to really focus on them as you've developed that mastery. And if I get and bring it into that sort of musician analogy as a musician is, you know, beginning, they're just trying to hit the notes and not make them sound horrible. Maybe you you're hitting a guitar string and the note is muted a little bit because you didn't have a clean fret. over time that's going to become less of a focus for you and you can actually get it. And now it's about how do I switch between particular chords smoother? And now you get into that and now, okay now how do I add a little bit of flourish? You're adding in the next level of mastery as you continue on and the same thing applies into motorcycling.
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So we discussed how learning is actually good for you. It exercises your mind. We also discussed the sense of achievement because it's its own reinforcement mechanism. And while something easy doesn't lead to as much of a sense of achievement as something hard, we talked about how just because something is hard, it doesn't have to be boring. And we talked about how some things that we do to add meaning and purpose to lives We also discussed how sometimes we learn something or participate in an activity because of ego. We want to look the part and that cosplay may have its own rewards.
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And finally we looked at how what once was hard is now easy and how riding may have seemed insurmountable. As a new rider, many elements of it become a background thread for a skilled rider. So my question for you is what has been the hardest thing about riding for you? Share your thoughts through the text to show link in the show notes, or leave a voicemail at throttleandroast.com/voicemail.
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Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week.
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