BREAKING

EditorialFrom The Editor

Are We Becoming Slaves To Our Things?

Just back from Daytona with a camera card full of the photos to go with a head full of stories, I have been sorting through exactly what it was I witnessed at the season opener in Florida. Now of course in the magazine we’ll get to all the particulars and I’m sure by then it will be a much more spit polished version of the rally report but I couldn’t help but to shoot from the hip for just a moment and ask the question from the header of this post; Are we becoming slaves to our things?

No wait, before you get out those poison pens and stand ready to launch hate mail at me like you have been at poor Lemme, just sit back for a minute and hear me out. There I was at the heart of all things custom motorcycle, the central point of the known cool part of the universe and as I looked around everyone seemed to be looking down at their smart phones. Tapping away furiously on them, surely answering questions that demanded immediate responses, solving the problems of the world and saving the day, or where they?

You know, as great s it is to have the kind of connectivity that we do in this modern age, sometimes it would be nice if we could just throw that giant figurative switch and shut it all the hell down. I mean, there will only be one Willie’s Tropical Bike Show of Daytona 2012, only one ride on the beach that year, flat track race, Supercross, or whatever you add to this list. We pay hundreds even thousands of dollars to have these experiences and cheat ourselves out of half of them by our own preoccupation with techno-babble. We sit in groups of people we mean to spend time with and often the entire group may be engaged in conversations with people not actually in that group.

Still, Bookface waits for no man right/ Bullshit. I know I’m as bad as the next guy with the need to post things to it or this blog but lately I have to wonder if by choosing times that are just for me to do the things that make living this lifestyle such a blast, won’t in some ways make it all that much better. Yeah so maybe everyone on my friends list will miss what I had for lunch today, I’m not sure they give a rats ass anyway. But maybe, just maybe the person I’m having that lunch with will actually enjoy my company.

So here’s the deal, all this came to me after the issue went to print this month and I decided to take two days and just do some regular guy stuff. I dropped my cell usage down to a minimum and took a friend to a swap meet, helped another with a project at his house and in general was unavailable for a minute. It’s amazing to me how refreshing this interruption in that steady stream of mental pollution can be. Of course two minutes after I came to this realization I decided it would make a great article for the blog so I guess the madness rolls on…. At least until the next chance I get to run away from the world for a minute. Try it, you might not come back!

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