Many of you may not know it, but motorcyclists have a name for people who drive cars: cagers. Though the "cage" of a car is quite literal, and a rather effective safety feature, it's also fairly strongly figurative (and pejorative.) Motorcycles have always been a symbol of freedom, whether its the freedom from dictatorship of the former WW2 pilots, the freedom from the law of the 1%ers, the freedom from society of the Easy Rider duo, or just the freedom from high gas prices of the modern commuter. The cage is therefor the antithesis of what motorcycles stand for.
While the cage protects you from the outside world, it also isolates you from it. Its not until you ride a motorcycle that you realize how much you were missing in a car. You can see, smell, hear, and even feel everything around you in a way that is unimaginable for cagers, even those who pretend to throw off the mantle of a cage by buying a convertible. When I'm riding, I can see the ground beneath my feet, smell the pot smoke wafting from the car beside me, hear the soft purr of my engine, and feel the force of the wind on my chest.
Some, however, seem to revel in how cut off they are from the world. They pick their noses at stoplights and text while driving by the playground. There was even a car commercial recently which depicted a man locked in a car with a sleeping badger. A cannon was fired outside of the car and the badger didn't wake up. While this might seem like a good thing for those few times where you accidently get transported back to the Civil War and you don't want the kids to wake up, what if instead of a cannon, it's an ambulance barreling down a cross street or a semi truck with failed brakes honking to clear the way to the runaway ramp?
So how much freedom are you willing to trade for a feeling of safety?
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