Every time on my Royal Enfield is special

 Time. I've written that my old Royal Enfield Bullet, with its circa 1955 design, transports me back in time to my youth every time I ride it. It's just like the motorcycles I wanted when I was a kid. 

It's a cliché that riding any motorcycle is a fun, challenging, enjoyable pastime. 

But have you noticed how riding makes you more conscious of time changes? 

For me, commuting to work by car was a miserable, unchanging slog every day, all year around. Maybe the setting on the air conditioning would change. Nothing else ever seemed to. 

In many ways, riding to work and back put life back into my commute.

One aspect of commuting by motorcycle was totally unexpected, however.

You see, I was kick starting my Royal Enfield every morning at the same time, according to the clock on my wrist. 

But the earth wasn't on the same schedule.

Every morning the sun came up a little earlier (or a little later, depending on the season). Each dawn was unlike the one before, or the one that would follow.

Would I be dressing warmer this morning, or changing into a lighter jacket? Where would the shadows be this morning? What would that flock of birds alongside the canal be doing this morning?

On a bike, literally out-of-doors myself, the changes in nature were evident.

I'm retired now, and so don't commute. But the awareness that came with that daily ride remains with me every time I get on my Royal Enfield. I don't want to every lose it.

Every ride is special.