Recently it was time for something of an overhaul on the motorcycle. This time, I thought that it might also be a good time to revisit Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (it’s been — well, decades since I last picked it up) … while doing some wrenching!
Here — without any attempt at creating a coherent essay — are some things that came up along the way …
On page 22 I’m reminded that the BMW motorcycle in the road trip narrative recounted in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an R60 (“famous for not giving problems on the road”) — probably early ’70s vintage (Zen was published in 1974). An interesting coincidence: my cycle, while a custom build (based on the much older R71 design) is powered by a 1973 R60/5 motor! Seems kinda auspicious …
Don’t rush to finish a job or take unverified short cuts.
Haynes Service and Repair Manual: BMW 2-valve twins
… it occurred to me, there is no manual that deals with the real business of motorcycle maintenance, the most important aspect of all. Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted … when you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
It seems that we can pretty easily find ourselves in an endless series of hurrying things to get on to something else, which begs the question, “where is this going? at what point does what I’m doing now matter — and will I ever reach that point?”
That’s all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better world …
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
(This was a pretty common sentiment in the early ’70s, I guess. How are we doing, now? Kinda difficult to look around in the summer of 2020 and say things are going swimmingly here in the good ol’ US of A, these days … but, anyway, back to motorcycles …)
It’s not the technology that’s scary … it’s what it does to the relations between people … that’s scary.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
(This quote seems every bit as relevant today, doesn’t it? Mark Zuckerberg’s business ventures come to mind, of course, but let’s not go off on that tangent, now, because there’s wrenching to do!)
The ultimate test’s always your own serenity … if you don’t have this when you start and maintain it while you’re working you’re likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself …
The test of the machine’s always your own mind.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire …
… each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
It’s actually kinda meditative, I’m thinking, when I’m in the right frame of mind, all this disassembly and cleaning of each component …
… I realize Pirsig is talking about what what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi would call flow a decade-and-a-half later.
New tail light assembly … 
… and this nice little light is going on the sidecar fender. 
There seems to be some value in tearing a system apart — cleaning and examining every little bit, understanding the relations between all the parts, identifying and addressing the individual problems (rather than just looking at the symptoms as manifested in the full machine) — then putting it all back together. But it can be a bit of work.
Time for a sando from Lanza Bros. and some thoughts on the subject of “gumption.”
Question: “When will this be done? Today? This weekend? When?”
Answer: “Mu.” (p. 320)
Getting into electrical, now … 
This bit of cable management was from my old live keyboard rig … now it’s going on the bike. 
Had to fab a new clutch cable linkage assembly … 
This is a little custom bit to catch the gnarliness that blows out of the breather tube … 
… in place.
… all institutions of the System [are] based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness … what’s really demanded is not ability, but inability.
… a low-quality form of life … old shepherd and his sheep and dogs … he [the wolf] will never be one of them.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Freedom and individuality are important themes in motorcycle mythology.
We wanna be free! We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. We wanna be free to ride! We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man …
Peter Fonda: Heavenly Blues
The Wild Angels (1966)
Seems to me that wrenching on your bike is an essential part of this idea of independence: being able to fix your machine — by yourself — on the side of the road, if necessary, when it fails (’cause eventually, it will) … or, at least, giving it an attempt before calling in for help (hopefully from one of your pals or fellow riders, and not a representative of “the System”) …
OK, here we are: full circle: the bike reassembled, back to where we started — but better (higher Quality, I think, as it should be, for each iteration) … now if the DMV would just send me the new sticker …
Epilogue
“So what about Quality?” you may be asking. This is, after all, the central thesis of the book, right?
The idea that the “romantic” and “classical” approaches (like Nietzsche’s Dionysian and Apollonian dichotomy), the intuitive and rational sources of understanding and invention — that these ideas are not fundamentally incompatible, indeed that they spring from the same source (which could also be called “tao”) — yeah, this is important, of course … but it’s not jumping out at me on this go-around of Zen, for some reason …
… I guess it just feels kinda familiar, at this point.
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